The summer trip - Part 1

This summer is flying by. We've not been home for most of it.
I decided to take the kids all over the country this year.
First we headed to ND to see my parents. The little town of Tuttle where I grew up had it's 100th centennial celebration. Good times and great memories of me as a kid there. The kids hung out with cousins Sam, Livia, and Annalee Cook. They got lots of "scooter" rides from Uncle Duane and watched him feed his little calves twice a day. Only sad thing was that it rained a lot of the days we were there. Andrew had his 1st birthday party and we got to see a lot of our extended relatives. We hung out at the farm with Nana and Papa for over two weeks.
Then we came to Nebraska where we are now. All week long the kids have had fun at this day camp they've attended.
Cassee managed to break her arm on our anniversary and Emmee came home with a sunburn today. We'll stay through the 4th of July before we head to Utah to see the Christensons and all the Jones Family.
More later will come on that leg of the trip!

Busy, Busy, Busy

We've been busy this last month.
Emmee turned 7 years old!

Cassidee turned 5 years old!

Cassee graduated from preschool.

Dan's parents came to visit for 4 days.
We went to some Ancient Indian ruins near our house.

Leesa had her first piano recital with her 13 students. Emmee played in it as well.

Andrew discovered suckers! Yum Yum.

This is just a cute picture of Andrew falling asleep on the floor one day. Poor tired little button.
Notice the blanket in his mouth! I guess it's a substitute pacifier for him. All my kids have been blanket babies!
School is finally out for the summer. (Except for Dan. He's in the middle of his first semester for his master's program.)
We had to ND, NE and UT in one week and we will be gone for 6 weeks! Fun stuff ahead!

Passing the Blame

The other day there was a book on the floor in the family room. It was a chapter book from a higher shelf the kids really don't mess with. I said to the kids "who took this book off the shelf?"
Emmalynn said, "I didn't, it was probably Cassee."
Cassee said, "No I didn't, it was Adam!"
Adam said, "I didn't, Andrew did."
(Andrew is 10 months old and doesn't walk or stand by himself yet.)
Who do you think is obviously telling the lie? I had a feeling Adam took out the book.
If you're going to pass the blame, you'd better at least pick someone who can actually commit the crime!

Spring Break in Arizona

This year for Spring Break we went to....
well...actually we were in Chandler most of the time. But yes, we were in Arizona with our friends the Johnstons.
We started off the vacation with a trip to the Mesa Temple.
It was a busy day there. Thanks Russ and Stacey for watching our kids too.

Then we headed off to the Saguaro Lake for a picnic and boat rides.
Waiting at the dock. It took two trips to get us all there.

Picnic time on a little beach.

Emmee and Paige playing in the cold water.

Adam having some fun. (He had previously fallen in the cold water and his shirt was drying on a tree limb.

Andrew and Brandon chillin' on the blanket.

Having fun on the boat.
Russ driving the boat.

The next day we headed to a park for another picnic and a trip to South Mt. (a look out point)

Here's the lookout point over Phoenix.
Paige, Cassidee, Emmalynn, Adam and Kallie.


We had lots of fun. We also had a BBQ at Stacey's parents' house that night.
On the last day we went to the Reniassance Festival. It was super fun. Those pictures will need their own blog.
Thanks for the fun weekend, Johnston Family. (We missed hanging out with Will and Kyle too.)

Dan the College Man

I know what you're thinking. What? Dan is going back to college?
He is... in a way.
Dan has been wanting to get a Master's degree for about as long as he's finished his bachelor's. Both of his brothers have a masters now and Dan didn't want to be left out. Somehow we've never gotten around to starting.
Dan's company will pay for a master's degree and we thought now would be a perfect time for him to do that. Hooray for Raytheon.
Dan got his application for reimbursement to Raytheon accepted and now he just found out he was accepted into his master's program with Kettering University. Where you say? Yeah, I don't know either. But he can do all of it online so who cares!
The next couple of years are going to be pretty tight on time for Dan! We will be going on family vacations without him I think.
Three cheers for Dan.

Time Flies!

Wow, the last 3 months just flew by. I tried posting a few times with adding pictures from our new camera, but the pictures were too big and they would never load. I was getting pretty irritated. I finally figured out how to adjust the camera, so hopefully they will work from now on. (I am pretty media retarded!) Posts are just not near as fun unless they have pictures!
We had lots of fun over the holidays. We had a fun week in Utah for Thanksgiving. We stayed home in New Mexico for Christmas and had my parents here for a few weeks.
Our New Years' plans were changed when a snow storm through Arizona prevented us from getting to our friends' house in Gilbert, AZ. We were very disappointed to miss seeing them then. We spent New Years' quietly at home watching movies and playing games. None of the kids actually made it to midnight though.
The kids are growing like weeds and I've been hopping busy with Boy scouts, piano lessons and PTA activities. I'm looking forward to the summer time more now than any year previously!
Soon I hope to get some more pictures and videos of the kids on the blog.

Sloppy Joes

Tonight we had Sloppy Joes for dinner. The kids were eating along great until I looked over and saw Adam spit a bite out of his mouth onto his plate.
"Why did you do that?" I asked.
He looked at the spat out piece and pointed to the meat. "That meat was poking me."
I checked it out and found no poking pieces. Funny kid. He did finished the rest of it though!