Tucker's Birthday

Because my sister, Elizabeth, and her two cute boys live just six houses down the street from me, we get to spend lots of fun family time together. Here's a little snippet from Tucker's birthday on August 6th. He's already 2 years old! It seems like just yesterday we were anxiously awaiting his arrival before school started that year...

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Ariel's Quilt from Grandma Bonnie

Now that Grandma Bonnie is finally feeling better after her car accident (oh yeah, I need to post that story too) she had a chance to present Ariel with her graduation gift. The quilt was about half-way finished when the accident happened so our great family friend, Mollie, took the quilt to her house and helped grandma finish it for Ariel. Grandma Bonnie is eternally grateful and Ariel is so happy with the way it turned out! Thank you Grandma, for another stunning piece of work. We feel very lucky to be blessed with so many of your beautiful works of art, from the Easter & flower girl dresses you made when the girls were younger, to the Christmas P.J.'s you spoil them with every year, to the baptism quilt for Devin, and now this beautiful graduation quilt. You are one TOP NOTCH Grandma!!!

Happy Birthday Devin

Today was Devin's 10th birthday! I'm especially excited about this one because he will be in 5th grade this year. He will be in the class right across the hall from me and there are only 2 fifth grade classrooms at our school. We do lots of switching and intermixing for various activities. That means I will get to see him in action and be right on top of his homework for the next 10 months. Here's to hoping we can survive the upcoming school year...Happy Birthday Dev...we love you tonzzzzzz!

Boy Cousin Sleepover

On Thursday, July 30th, we had a boys only party/sleep over with cousins. We had a lot of fun;

playing with "Sam" the puppet, "How's it goin' brothahs?"

splashing around in the water,

watching Peanut catch his very first mouse,

jumping on the tramp,

eating pizza for dinner,

playing video games,

WHAT THE..???...

and building marshmallow shooters for a fun game of war!

Tucker thought it was a brilliant way to eat marshmallows from a fancy tube!

Oh, we have so much fun with our cousins!!!

Ariel's First Car

This week we broke down and co-signed with Ariel to get financing for her first car. This is a pic of the kind of car she got. It's a 2002 Toyota Echo, gets 32-37 miles to the gallon and is in excellent condition! We saw it on Ken Garff's Internet Site and by the time Ariel and Roger got to the dealership to test drive it, someone else had gone before her and someone else was scheduled after her! The price on the internet was listed at $6,000.00, but Roger worked his magic and talked them down to $5,300! Ariel's car payments should be around $140-$150 per month and insurance will be right around $70 per month. We are all EXTREMELY happy she has her own car now...

Monte and Alisha's Engagement Day

On July 11th Roger videoed Monte's proposal to Alisha so I put it together with some music, words and hearts and posted it here.

My little brother, Monte, asked Alisha to marry him at the end of the auction at our family reunion. You can't understand what's being said on the video so I'll explain it a bit.
Alisha thinks Monte is bidding on an iPod, but during the day when she wasn't looking, he put the ring inside the container. She is obviously not pleased with how high he is bidding...most things at the auction go for $5 -$25 and he was getting up to $60, then $80, then $100 and so on. You can tell she’s getting more and more upset each time he makes a new bid because she hits him and tells him (through gritted teeth) not to bid one more time. Finally, when he makes the winning bid of $120 (I think) he takes her up to the front, gets down on one knee, grabs the wrong hand (hee, hee), then she says, "You're going to do this here?" He said, "Will you marry me?" And the rest is...well, you know.

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An Afternoon at the Gallivan Center

Ariel and Eryn spent the early morning hours of June rehearsing with the Granite Youth Symphony. They were practicing mostly patriotic music to play while on their summer tour during the first week of July. They had a couple of weekday concerts downtown at the Gallivan Center so one afternoon I gathered up the boys, got on Trax and made an afternoon of it!

We're boys...we'll take any excuse we can to ride the train downtown!

We enjoyed tasty snacks and drinks,

watched Eryn play the piccolo solo in 'Stars and Stripes Forever,'


applauded the excellent sounds of the Symphony,

played on the bars,

chased each other around the park

watched people walk their little doggies,

and had the most fun of all running and cooling off in the wonderful water fountain!

Outstanding concert girls!

Lions and Tigers and Bears..Oh My!

It's summertime and that means none other than using our imaginations on a rainy day indoors.

After too much quiet in the living room one day, this is what I came out to find. ALL of the chairs from upstairs (including the piano bench) had been taken hostage to create a cave for a picnic and a game of Pokemon Sorry. (Boy, I've sure developed a lot more patience in my old age!!!)

A Big Mess -Before and After

So, umm, ya... This is (was) a little peek into my kitchen pantry. (I can't believe I'm actually owning up to this mess!!!) These pics were taken about 20 minutes into the dejunking process, so some items had already been taken out and moved to the counter or the garbage can. Better late than never with the camera. right?!
On Monday, after a big shopping trip to Costco, Roger and I had finally had enough of our messy, cluttered and disorganized pantry! Before we even brought the groceries in from the car, he went to the pantry, pulled EVERYTHING out, made piles of items we never use and threw away MANY outdated items. That left us with less than half of what was in there to put back which in turn, gave us plenty of room to store the groceries from the Costco trip. WHAT A MENTAL RELIEF!

Don't some things hang around buggin' you forever until you finally take care of them? After the mess has finally been dealt with, it feels like 10 years of stress and frustration just disappear into thin air! Thank heavens my husband and I got a wild hair at the same time Monday night!!! Now we are the proud owners of a dejunked, cleaned out and organized pantry! Can I get a Woo hoo ?!?!?!?

"My second favorite household chore is [cleaning the pantry]. My first being hitting my head on the top bunk bed until I faint." ~Erma Bombeck


"Housework is something you do that nobody notices until you don't do it." ~Author Unknown

We Love the Rain!

"I am a mushroom on whom the dew of heaven drops now and then."
We have had so much rain this June, little surprise visitors are starting to pop up all over our lawn!
Can we eat these things?

and the New Kitty's Name is...

Peanut! After a few weeks of trying to find out if the new kitty is a boy or a girl we decided to google it! Turns out (according to the lovely sketch on Paws Online Info.) our kitty is a boy. We had kinda been stuck on Peanut anyway so I'm glad it was a good unisex name. Any tips on raising boy kitties would be greatly appreciated. Peanut is still so cuddly, playful and good natured, especially with the little kids! We're falling more and more in love with him every day.
He likes to dart outside when someone opens a door. The other day we thought he'd gotten out without being noticed. The kids scoured the house and couldn't find him anywhere. They started searching outside in the front and the back along a very busy road behind our house...all to no avail. They were becoming quite distraught by this point. Soon, Ariel came home from work and went down to her bedroom to change and who should she find burried under the blankets on the bed? You guessed it...Peanut! That saved us much weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth!!!
He likes to hang out with me when I'm on the computer, sometimes on my lap, sometimes in back of me and sometimes right in front of my working area!The other mishcheivious thing he's done is chew the leaves off of two of my potted house plants and knock another one off the cupboard, dirt, pot and all! You can imagine the mess that was!!! Luckily it happened in the kitchen so sweeping up the mess was a LITTLE bit better than having the dirt spill into the carpet. Let's hope he doesn't get into too much more trouble or it's gonna be LONG summer!!! ;D