Wintergreen

We took advantage of the four-day weekend to take a big group of kids to Wintergreen overnight. On Sunday night, we had fun eating, playing games, and watching movies. Somehow the girls got into playing with makeup, and ended up looking kind of scary. They all packed in like sardines to sleep, but they didn't seem to mind. The weather was beautiful on Monday, and we all had a blast tubing.

The Hope of Spring

I came home to find these on my counter the other day! A thank you from a friend. It gave me hope that warm weather will come BECAUSE I AM SO COLD!

Cracking up...

I went grocery shopping last night. I remember buying eggs, I really do. I picked out a carton of 18 large white eggs, scanned it, and placed it in the cart. Using the self-scanner cuts down on lots of potential forgetting for absent-minded folks like myself because once you scan it and place it in your bag, you don't have to take it out again until you leave the store. So I KNOW I left with them.

But this morning, as I heated the pan to make scrambled eggs for Cal, I COULD NOT FIND THE EGGS. Talk about frustrating. I checked both refrigerators multiple times. I checked the trunk of the car twice. No luck. Pop-Tarts for Cal.

I'm making dinner this evening and realize I need one egg white. The frustration returns, and this time I send Bailey to look. I mean really? Where could they be?

She found them in the freezer. Turns out eggs don't freeze well.

First Swim Meet

AJ decided to swim again this winter, but she got off to a rough start when she came down with pneumonia just as the season was beginning. We've eased in slowly, and Christmas break helped a lot with keeping her rested. Our crazy snowstorm on the 19th postponed our first meet until today, and AJ was ready! She improved her times in the three events she swam: freestyle (4.05 seconds), backstroke (1.73 seconds) and butterfly (11.99 seconds).

Happy New Year!

Wishing you good times and good health in 2010!

Texting While Driving

My friend Angela sent this yesterday, and it cracked me up...

Halloween 2009

The rain held off long enough to make Halloween very pleasant.  This year, the kids all went their separate ways.  Cal's friends had a party at the home of a girl in the neighborhood, and about ten of them ate together and then headed out for brief trick-or-treating. He started out as a baseball player but appears to have morphed into a baseball player/gangster.

Bailey went out with her friend Hannah - her step-brothers Nick and Quinn were in for the weekend from Indiana, so they were thrilled to see each other again.  Should have gotten a picture of the group, but I didn't.

 

Sydney went out with her friend Skyler.

I took AJ out with her friends Katie and Kate.

Mark took care of passing out candy. He had at least one cute customer!

Syd's birthday party

This girl is now 11!

She and a few friends celebrated at the bowling alley.

I arrived with the cake, and that was all I had to do.

I strongly recommend a party at Kegler's!

Cool spider

I may have never used the words "cool" and "spider" together, but check out this guy that was on our front porch:

First day of school 2009

Ok, ok, I'm a little behind!  Yes, school DID start and we DID take pictures (both for your pleasure and the children's dismay). First we had Syd and AJ heading off for 5th and 4th grade, respectively. This was Sydney's last first day of elementary school!

Next we loaded Bailey and Cal on the bus for 7th and 8th grades. They REALLY love getting their picture taken. You can see Cal also loves getting his hair cut these days.

Demolition Derby

Mark was pretty excited about the county fair this year -- he wanted to see the demolition derby. This fair is not even in our county, and it's more than an hour away. I was not excited about any of it, but I had resigned myself to going. And then a last minute reprieve! Reuben was willing to go, and that meant no room for me in the truck. Too bad!

What a nice group shot! No grumpy me to ruin it.

Looks like they had lots of fun.

There were rides:

And tractors:

And exercises:

Food, of course

And the best part of all - the demolition derby!

Out on the Water Again

The best part of RI may now officially be the trips to the pond where Emily's family has a summer home. They drag us around in tubes on this beautiful water, and Mark takes a million photos.

Bailey and Sydney went first:

Next came AJ and Cal:

Notice the wildly different emotions:

Next it was my turn:

I look like I can handle this, right?

And things started out well...

But for some reason I had more problems like this than anyone else did:

That happened three times before I gave up. But it was fun!

And here's a bonus picture of Wyatt because he's so cute:

Time with the nephews

Our RI vacation this year was mostly about this:

That's me holding a sleeping Wyatt.

Sometimes we mixed it up a little with some of this:

Or this:

How about this?

Or this?

One time we let Sue hold him:

But you get the gist. We held Wyatt a lot.

When we weren't holding Wyatt, we were playing with Jackson.

He could be a bit of a rascal:

But how cute is he?!