Cherry jelly!

Regan and Erin and even Jordan got involved in picking the cherries out in our tree and Grandma Meyer helped them make it into cherry jelly. Aren't they pretty? We are thinking what fun gifts for teacher's on the first day of school, huh?

Grandma is here for a visit

Grandma is here getting settled in. I think she might be still working on reading the 10 pages of directions I left her ;). The girls are beyond excited and are a bit on the loud side showing off for their biggest fan!

Vegas baby!

Christian's mom is flying in right now as I type this to come and watch the kids for the week while Christian and I take a little vacation to Las Vegas to meet up with my sister Mandy and brother in law Gary. I'm so excited to have our first vacation without kids ;). We are going to see a couple shows while we are there and take in some of the sights.

In order to make myself feel better I wrote out all the directions or tips that I thought Grandma needed to know included the kids insurance cards for emergencies. I also made a list of all the activities that I thought they may want to take advantage of in the area (if she can find time around Jordan's football practices) I think I covered everything she needs to know...am I forgetting anything?

Wanted to add a bit from Erin's birthday

I wanted to share this cute story from Erin's birthday. The night before her birthday she saw me making her cake and asked what it was for and I said well someone is turning 5 tomorrow. She got a big smile and said is it me? I said I think so! She said how many more sleeps? I said you sleep tonight and you wake up in the morning and you will be five. She said all giddy and excited you mean I'll wake up and not even know I'm five! All right!!! Well I went to my Yoga class that night and when I got back I asked Christian where the girls were and he said their both in bed. I said really? He said yeah that's the easiest I ever got Erin to go down. I told her it was time for bed and she ran and got into her bed and said she was going to hurry up and go to sleep so she could hurry up and be FIVE!

Oh Yeah Mandy she loves her bike. Epecially the fun streamers. She went out to ride it today and ran in screaming b/c she saw a spider. So we will see how much use it actually gets...

Highlites from a 5 yr old dream birthday party

We asked Erin what she would like to do for her 5th birthday. She instantly said I wanna go bowling! So that is where we took her and for dinner she wanted to go to Dennys for pancakes.

When we got home we surprised her by decorating the porch with balloons. She LOVES balloons and put her cake out there and set her gift which was a new bike out there. What more could you ask for?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ERIN!!

For those of you that at early birds no you didn't miss it I realize I am posting this Wednesday evening but wanted to get it up while it was on my mind. So Happy 5th Birthday to the baby of our family!

The picture is of the best part about baking a cake - licking the beaters!

Date with Dad

Erin our future zoologist




The girls both got to enjoy an afternoon out with dad for a trip to the zoo yesterday. Here are some of the highlights.

Regan the future photographer

We had a big picnic/bbq the other night to celebrate the ending of a week of VBS at our church. Regan asked if she could take some picture b/c in her words "You know I am going to be a photographer when I grow up." So here are a selection of her best shots she took that day.

www.stealsdeals.blogspot.com

For all you bargain shoppers that can appreciate a good deal check out the new blog my sister Mandy and I started at www.stealsdeals.blogspot.com

Sweet sixteen

For Jordan's 16th birthday party he invited a couple of his friends to the local Laser Quest and played arcade games and laser tag for a couple hours. The boys all seemed to have a great time. One of his friends was not able to make it and so we had extra tickets for the games. Jordan is such a sweet kid he asked me if I wanted to go in and play I told him I would pass ;). I went and got reimbursed for the extra tickets instead.

Do you think we should try this?

Looking around the internet trying to get info on what the doc thinks Regan has on her wrist is a Ganglian cyst. Do you think we should try this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57VGLzg9-EQ&feature=related

The music accompanied to this has one naughty word. (just a forwarning)

When it rains it pours

I spent the morning at the doctor's office with all three of my kids today! The first two have got some weird things going on (pictured below) and Erin I thought had a bladder infection. The results: Erin is fine. Regan the Dr thinks she has a cyst of some kind in her wrist, Jordan jammed his finger and it healed all funky. Both Regan and Jordan have referrals to Orthpedics now.

Sixteen candles!

I can hardly believe that my beautiful boy is SIXTEEN today! Where does the time go? I know this is so cliche to say but it doesn't seem possible!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JORDAN!

I GOT it!

Daddy set up the firing range of tin soda cans in the back yard and Mommy and Erin decided to have our go at it. Erin cracked me up b/c every time she yelled I GOT it. Whether or not she did. BB guns are so much fun!

**Don't worry we have a big ravine behind our house so we wouldn't be hitting anything but trees if we miss.

Conversation at dinner

Abby: So Christian how was your run?

Christian: It was good although Maggie was running so slow today she held me back. That dog just wanted to stop and smell the roses.

Regan: I didn't know we had roses on the trail?

Family: Ugggh Regan

Miss Suzy

Remember playing this hand slap games when you were little? Some things never change!

Here are the directions-

1. Pick up the nearest book, turn to page 123
2. Find the 5th paragraph
3. Find the 5th sentence in that paragraph
4. Post the 5th sentence
5. Tag 5 people

Here is mine

"Granny Prine sent me to fetch you, Aunt Sarah."

(book is called Sarah's quilt)

I tag
Mandy Billingsley
Karen Lamb
April Fronhert
Lori Bonnot
Laura Skogz

Hula dancers

Both the girls are loving the movie and Disney TV show Lilo and Stitch right now. Regan asked me if I could pick them up grass skirts so they could be just like lilo and practice their hula dancing. I thought it was so cute I had to oblige!

Swimming lesson update and one other funny store

I haven't been to the girl's swimming lessons since the first day as Christian took them while I went to random appointments I had scheduled. I was happily surprised on Thursday when I came back to see their progress! Erin who would not even let her face touch the water the first day was going under and swimming a ways without even holding her nose AND on her own accord at that! This is the same child that last year screamed that the teacher's were trying to drown her! She looked like a little fishy out there and with a smile to boot!

Regan seems to be progressing along as well. I have to say that poor child inherited from me her gracefulness. She is a lot like me in that anything athletic just is not going to come naturaly for her. But like me she is happy just to play in the game. She smiles a lot but when it is her turn to swim water is EVERY WHERE from all her kicking!

Also wanted to share a funny story from when I went to pick Jordan up from football practice. The boys were all running off the field from practice most without their shirts on as it was pretty hot and I am sure they had worked up a sweat. This one boy comes running off and he has shaved INTO his chest hair what looks like the superman symbol but with the letter F in the middle. I ask Jordan about it and he says yeah that's Buffalo (apparently he got the name for being quite the hairy guy) we were teasing him about his chest hair and told him he should shave the Batman symbol on there and he said no I'm gonna do the superman one except with an F instead b/c apparently his last name starts with an F. Silly boys I tell you!

Tiny Bubbles

Regan and Erin started swimming lessons yesterday. Here are some pictures of Erin in her class learning to blow bubbles in the water. Erin's class is so adorable with the little bitty ones in the baby pool. Regan's class is the bigger kids looking more like drowning rats oops I meant swimming. The lighting in this building was awful so I didn't get any pictures of Regan's class that turned out sorry.

Goofy girl!

Regan cracks me up on a daily basis! This girl is pure sillyness most of the time! I came downstairs and this is how I found her. I said what are you doing? she said you like how I fixed my hair today (through her giggles) She used her robe belt as a hair accessory today apparently.

Happy 4th of July everyone!

My kids were oh so thrilled to be able to shoot fireworks this year! We haven't been able to do fireworks ourselves since we lived in Missouri 8 years ago. Every where else it has been illegal to do them inside city limits. Actually in Alaska we were still dealing with 20 hours of day light and it was not so much fun to do fireworks in the broad daylight ;)

Funny things today:

watching the kids (including Christian) chase after the little army parachute guy

Erin said oh Man Jordan do you have to light them?

Regan said why is there so much smoke?

Remember this picture?

I just loved this sweet moment caught of Erin. Wanted to share the finished scrapbook page I did of it.

Time to get some chores done

So we need to get some chores done today. I sent Jordan to clean the van, Regan took care of the dishes and I didn't have any pictures of it but Erin is taking out all the recycling.

Taxi driver

I feel like I have become our official taxi driver in our family now! Now that Jordan is involved in so many activities all my life is any more is dropping him off and picking him up! Here is my schedule for today

11:30 stop at library to return books
12:00 drop Jordan off at driver's ed
2:00 pick Jordan up from driver's ed
4:00 drop Jordan off for football practice
6:30 pick Jordan up from football practice
7:00 drop Jordan off for church activity
8:30 pick Jordan up from church activity

next week the girls are going to start swimming lessons too. Sheesh when am I am going to find time to fit that in?