......Trunnell News

We have arrived!

2012-02-11T01:56:00.000-06:00

Well, we arrived at our hotel 1 am Iowa time. After getting to our room, we were starving since we ate at 5:30 so we came down to get pizza.

Somehow Jim lost the room key so I am hanging out in the food court area while he makes the long trek back to the room.

I want to post more when I can do it justice with pictures, but this place is wild! Way more trendy than we are and crazy busy due to Valentines.

We are on the 60th floor overlooking the mgm grand and aria casinos. They told us to call down on Sunday cuz they thoughtd they potentially have an upgrade...cant imagine what that would be like.

Only downfalls are craziness, never seen so many women in horribly short dresses wobbling around in high high heels. The other is we are over the outdoor nightclub and can hear the music.

Tomorrow ill post a picture of the bathtub, though.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless Phone

Our breakfast!

2012-02-10T13:54:00.001-06:00

Breakfast with my Sweeties!

2012-02-10T13:51:00.001-06:00

This morning I took the kids out for breskfast. Partially because the cupboards are bare but mainly because I wanted to spend some time with them before we leave. I know we will have a great time, Im just always a little sad thinking anout leaving them. Ill be fine once we are gone!

We are almost packed. Just a couple of last minute things Jim needs to throw in the bag when he gets home from work and a stop at the bank needed! Hopefully hell be home by 2:30, we can drop the kids off and be headed out of town at four!

Our flight leaves at 8:40 tonight. Itll be a late night, luckily though it will feel like 12 or 1 to us, but only be 10 or 11 there!

Better go double check the packing list!

Keep us hopping!

2012-02-04T21:50:00.002-06:00

Well, today had a few unexpected surprises in it. First, Kyle went abck to bed about 9 am this morning. When I went in Conner looks at me and says, He says he doesn't feel well. Did Conner come get me?? No, he just kept doing his thing. Poor Kyle.

Kyle definitely did NOT feel well. He was running a pretty good fever. He has been battling a 103 to 104 fever all day. Motrin and tylenol keep it down in the 101 range. He is coughing a little bit and has a headache. Luckily there is no vomit. I am praying this doesn't spread, but it is hard work keeping little miss Callie away from her Kyle!

Hopefully, it will pass quickly and everyone will be healthy by this weekend. Wouldn't that be awful to run a fever while in Vegas? Plus I don't want the kids to be sick while we gone.

Then today, I noticed that when I drank cold liquids one of teeth was really sensitive. It just started happening all of a sudden. So I called my father in law to see if he'd take a look. Well, come to find out, I chipped a tooth. Last week, I was flossing and the floss got stuck. When I pulled it out, I felt like something had broke, but there were no extra pieces and all seemed fine. Apparently the broken part of tooth was wedged up in there and must have protected the nerve enough that I didn't realize it was broken.

My father in law drilled out the broken chip and gave me a temporary filling to allow us to go Vegas happily and to calm down the nerve before we do another permanent filling. It already feels better. It will be interesting, though, remembering for 5 to 6 weeks to only chew on one side of my mouth.

We are in good spirits, just an interesting day. Kyle and I will have our own private super bowl party while Jim, Conner and Callie attend the super bowl party we were going to tomorrow. Callie could stay home, but she is such a little entertainer that I know everyone will want her to come.

It is always an adventure!

Getting Ready for Vegas and the Superbowl

2012-02-03T18:34:00.002-06:00

In my last post, I mentioned how busy it has been around here. In fact, this week was my first day off in 2 weeks. Whoops! Guess, work and home got a little out of balance. Today has been a great day off and just what I needed.

It started last night when Jim and I sat down and decided what show to go see while we are in Vegas. There are tons of options, but we settled on LOVE BEATLES (we know a couple of people who have seen it and JIm loves music so happy compromise). Here is the link to the show so you can check it out. http://www.cirquedusoleil.com/en/shows/love/default.aspx We booked it for Sunday. We figured that Saturday, we will be busy resting up from getting in late and just exploring. Then we might have a spa day on Monday (still undecided on that) and then Tuesday is Valentine's day so we thought there might be fun activity going on that day.

This morning we tried out the jump place here in town. It is small, but the kids had a ball. Even Callie liked to jump! NO school today.

This afternoon, we took naps (jim, callie and I) while the boys played xbox. Then after getting a few small things done, we made homemade pizza for supper.

We are going to finish the evening cutting out football shaped cookies for the Super bowl! Then we might do a little more vegas research or online shopping for a new computer.

A good day with no church work involved!

2012-01-27T09:54:00.002-06:00

Hi blog friends,

Sorry I have been so silent. We had an All Access (volunteer sign up) at church last weekend so I have been busy contacting people. Plus we have a child dedication event this weekend. Those things combined with a cute little Toddler who gets into mischief and likes attention have made for a VERY busy week. Thankfully Jim hasn't been swamped at work so he's picked up a lot of home slack as I try to get caught up.

In fact, I am headed to church here in a minute to set up. I ran out of time yesterday.

Winter has set in here in Iowa so we are back to all of the winter wet stuff every day along with the continual loss of hats and gloves (sometimes the boys and sometimes the cute little sister!). UGH!

Callie is going through a new phase where she is worried constantly that I am going to leave her at home. She cries Mommy Mommy No No Home Home. It really is kind of odd considering she will go to complete strangers, child care at the rec center where she knows no one, and to the nursery like it is no big deal, but she HATES to be left at home with anyone other than me. Go figure. Part of me thinks that it is actually that she wants to go with me more than not wanting to be with whoever I left her with!

I have started exercising. I have been taking the Zumba class. I look like a fool, but it is fun and good exercise. I know because after class on Tuesday night, I was VERY SORE!

I have been released from physical therapy. My jaw is not 100% but it is close and the therapist thinks it will get there by just continually doing the exercises.

Two weeks from today, we will be leaving for Vegas. I am excited, but think I'd be more excited if Jim and I had some idea of plans, but finding time to sit down and look at options for a show or something or restaurants we might want to try hasn't happened yet.

Well, that's all I share today. Off to church with my little tag a long!!!

He's A Keeper!

2012-01-18T13:35:00.003-06:00

So last night at supper, I mentioned to Jim that I was feeling a little stressed by something. Jim said I should should find something to distract me from what was stressing me.

A few minutes after supper, Kyle comes into the kitchen to tell me he has a a surprise for me. I have to close my eyes and walk into the living room.... This is what I saw!

He made up this spot on the couch with a pillow, blanket and his new Christmas book that he has told me that I had to wait for him to read first. I was very touched by this. How incredibly thoughtful of him!!! (he hasn't finished the book yet!)

He wanted me to be distracted by this book so I wouldn't feel stressed so he went and got a different book for himself to read and until bedtime, this is how we spent the night.

Have I mentioned how much I love this kid????

My little Terror

2012-01-18T13:31:00.002-06:00

So little Miss Callie discovered a coffee mug in the living room and decided to have a hey day in her play kitchen. Apparently she also likes the taste because she had some strong coffee breathe too. This little girl is going to keep us all on our toes! Geez!

Most of it came out except the two larger spots. It was pretty soaked in there. I am trying a baking soda paste that is supposed to remove set in coffee stains on the couple of spots still there. They are quite a bit lighter so not the end of the world.

She might be sweet, but she sure does get into some messes!!!!

2012-01-14T22:36:00.001-06:00

It was a fun season to be a Broncos fan. You win some and you lose some (and sometimes painfully), but you did way more than anyone thought you could! Go Broncos! Now to decide who I'm cheering for tomorrow and next weekend!!!!

Callie's newest word!

2012-01-14T22:06:00.003-06:00

This weekend Callie FINALLY said Conner's name and something else that is awfully cute:

Callie was very curious about the cookies I was making today. I told her they were footballs. I was quite surprised by her response! Anyway, please excuse her bed head hair, but she gave me the same reaction tonight when I mentioned the word football. Amazing what they pick up!

Another Home Project!

2012-01-14T21:53:00.002-06:00

When we finished our basement, we did not have enough funds to complete the ceiling. So we painted it white and made the most of exposed beams. After saving for awhile and watching the deals, we finally started on the ceiling (almost 2 yrs later). Today Jim took down the panels and installed the insulation in the large room! Kyle was elated to get to help. (cloths were used as face masks right after these photos!).

Kyle did a great job measuring, helping cut, and putting the pieces up. Kyle developed new skills with learning to make scrambled eggs today and the insulation project! Conner helped with tearing down the panels and various other little things but we didn't get a picture of it!

Jim got the entire family room insulated. Now we still need to purchase the grid so he can hang that and then finally ceiling tile. Hard to think the basement will be almost done soon. We still plan to add a bathroom and small kitchenette someday, but that will require more serving.

Go Panthers!

2012-01-14T21:40:00.003-06:00

We got another chance to go to one of the Panther's games. This time we took the boys. It was a lot of fun. Not quite as much extra hoopla as there was at the Iowa game, but still lots of cool stuff.

The boys REALLY enjoyed this. Conner actually never lost interest and cheered to the very end of the game. It was a close game. There was never more than a 6 point spread. The panthers won at the very end by 1 point so it was pretty exciting. (much better than those broncos today, huh?? )

Here are my boys at the beginning of the game. Callie stayed with Grandma and Grandpa!!!
Snack Time!

The boys really enjoyed the extra stuff like the dance cam. Kyle actually ended up on the big screen when he was dancing so that was pretty cool.
I couldn't get a picture of them actually doing the tricks, but there were these cool guys who did slam dunks with flips and other tricks. Very cool! I will see if I get a video from Jim's phone.

Our Budding Artist or Not!

2012-01-09T16:40:00.002-06:00

Conner loves to draw and create. Unfortunately being that Conner is only 6, he is still learning the fine art of picking up after himself (aren't we all? Ha!). The end result of this is that Callie sometimes gets lucky and finds markers or crayons within her reach.

Sometime last week, she was playing quietly in her room. She came out a few minutes later with her hands covered in blue marker and several marks on her clothing. I had this sinking feeling that going into her room was not going to make me happy!

And I was so right.. Callie had colored her walls (all of them), her toys, her rocker, her kitchen, herself and her dresser. Luckily it was a washable marker so most of it came out, but unfortunately not all of it. Since she went to so much work to decorate her room, I thought I should atleast share a few pictures of her artwork.

This is how it was on every wall. Can you see how she colored on the toys on the table? She got her toy kitchen as well. The only really sad part was that she also colored on the fabric on the rocker in her room.

This is on the footstool and she did the same on the rocker! Conner got in lots of trouble for leaving markers out and miss Callie got her first real spanking (to be honest, though, I don't think it would stop her if she got another marker...this was way to much fun for her!)

I think this sweet little girl is going to give us a run for our money!!!!!

A Fun Day in Des Moines

2012-01-09T16:15:00.004-06:00

I forgot to mention in my blog post that we got upgraded at our hotel to a two bedroom suite so that was really nice for sleeping. After sleeping in a little and enjoying a wonderful breakfast, we went swimming and then took the kids to DM Science Center. Residence Inn has most definitely the best free hotel breakfast around!

I started to not feel good on Saturday, but it was still a very fun day. We laughed because the boys made and shot off rockets, made and raced lego cars, watched a demonstration on fire and explosions, watched about outer space in the planetarium, and saw a real mummy. Can there be a better boy day ever? HA!

This was fun. From right to left, Kyle, Conner, Callie on the bottom and Daddy's head up top!
In the little tot area, they had this place with hug bubble wands. Callie thought this was pretty cool!

She also loved this exhibit, but eventually fell off the stool in her excitement and sliced her head open on the edge of it. Poor thing had quite a bump and scratch her head.

Kyle riding a camel in the Lost Eygpt exhibit. This was actually much more interesting than I thought. I think what helped was that Kyle and I had both read the Kane Chronicles which pretends that ancient egyptian gods and beliefs are real (its fiction), but anyway because we had heard of some of the stuff, seeing the archifacts and history was more interesting.

Conner on the camel!

Here is the area where they made paper rockets and shot them off. It was a really enjoyable afternoon for all of us (less for me since I was so achy and just wanted a nap) and a nice break from the normal routine.

Before we went to the science center, we took the kids swimming. They all thoroughly enjoyed this. We couldn't seem to capture Callie's glee in most of the pictures, but fun was had by all. Here are a few pictures.
Since she had a little floatation device on, we let her swim around with the boys. She thought this was great fun. Kyle is so good about helping her and playing with her. No wonder one of her favorite words is Kyle, Kyle, Kyle!!!
Someone gave us this little swim suit and it is just so cute, especially the little ruffles on her bum.
Daddy and Kyle always have a lot of fun especially jumping off Daddy's shoulders!

So cute floating around the pool. She loved this little intertube!

Anyway, it was just an overnight, but we finished up the weekend watching the broncos play off game with some pizza. That was a nail biter. Jim and I almost couldn't watch. It could've gone either way! Not sure we'll be so lucky next week, but fun to see Tebow improve in spite of his critics. I tend to like an underdog story and since so many people want him to fail, it makes you want him and his team succeed even more. He sets a good example for my boys about perspective and that loving God is more important than football and winning. That's always nice too!

Happy Anniversary!

2012-01-09T15:47:00.005-06:00

On January 3rd, Jim and I had been maried 15 years. It is so hard to believe it is that long. I feel incredibly blessed to have such a great husband. I definitely love him more after 15 years than I did when we got married (and I loved him a lot then). I couldn't ask for a better friend or person to spend time with.

Anyway, Jim is taking me to Las Vegas for a long weekend to celebrate in February! So we had no plans to exhange gifts or celebrate on the actual day. However, I happened to have this past weekend off from work and Jim thought we should go to Des Moines for an overnight, just for fun. We aren't really the spontaneous type, but on Thursday night Jim called, booked a room, and we picked the kids up from school friday and headed down to the jordan creek area.

We had gotten a couple of anniversary cards with money so we thought'd we'd go out to eat somewhere fun and "celebrate" with the kids our anniversary. We ended up choosing the Cheesecake factory! We had a great meal and the staff was so nice. Conner announced to them that it was my anniversary (not Jim's..just mine he said..Jim laughed and said thats usually how they are! HA!).

We all decided to share a piece of cheesecake for dessert. We got their new red velvet cake cheesecake! Anyway, this is how they brought it out to us.. So fun!!!

The kids loved this as much as us and it was REALLY good! Then we decided to just walk around the mall for a bit after we ate. This turned out to be more fun than we realized as well. We forget how much stuff is new to Callie and how much fun we have (even the boys) watching her experience stuff that is old hat to us!

We stopped at Pottery barn kids and they let Callie push this little stroller all over the store. She loved this and the little desk they had with a pink phone!! The boys explored all the star wars bedding and accessories.

Then we took Callie to the play place for the first time. This was funny. She was totally into this. We had to send Kyle with her to keep her safe, she was in such a hurry to go down all the slides and climb all over everything. I guess we just didn't realize that she had never done this before!

Then we stopped in at the pandora store. I don't think I blogged about this, but Jim gave me a pandora bracelet for Christmas. This wasn't something I ever thought I wanted, but he was so sweet about it that I was really touched. It is really pretty and I was so surprised. Anyway, I wanted to buy a clip bead so that when I took it off, I wouldn't accidently drop beads.

When we got in there, Jim announced that he wanted to purchase a bead or charm in honor of out 15th wedding anniversary! It was so hard to choose. Good thing they were patient! Here is how it looks now (and probably will for awhile!). Although, I know now what sort of beads I like!!

The bead on the right is the wildflower one that Jim gave me with the bracelet, the clip to hold the beads on is on the left and in the middle is the heart charm I picked out in honor of our anniversary.

I guess for not celebrating our anniversary now because we are going on a trip in February, we sure did A LOT of celebrating, huh?

A Healthier 2012

2012-01-09T08:54:00.003-06:00

One thing I really wanted for 2012 was not being sick as much. After my bout with insomnia after my Dad died, I seemed to catch any illness that came within 10 feet of me. I think my immune system was just weakened. I have never been as sick as I was in 2o11.

It honestly had reached a point that I found it embarrassing to be sick again. Like there was just something wrong with me. Well, sad to say that 2012 hasn't started off in the fashion I was hoping for.

First, my jaw locked up again, but this time with severe muscle spasms which caused a lot of pain. So while I wasn't sick, I was definitely slowed down by the pain. Imagine you have a toothache. Then also the tightness in my jaw caused some headaches even once the actual jaw pain resolved itself. It was finally time for physical therapy. That was a little eye opening actually. Not until I started physical therapy did I realize how limited my jaw movement was and how I had been functioning most of 2011 with limited jaw movement. Since it has been this way for awhile, I think it might take some time to get it back to normal. I am also not sure if the muscles will ever stretch back to how they were before this all occurred.

Then, over the weekend, I started to not feel well. Upset stomach and body aches. I could've just cried. Some really close friends of ours were really sick over the new year (with two of them ending up in the hospital and the third almost) so I was realy nervous since we had been in contact with them as they were getting sick that I would catch that. It doesn't really appear that I have, but I definitely caught something. It isn't the end of the world, but has slowed me down and kept me close to home. Luckily, I was off work this weekend so I could rest. I am still feeling a little achy today as well.

I keep hoping that I will meet my quota of illness and make more than a month without catching something. I have started taking more vitamins, trying to be extra good about getting sleep, trying to keep from letting stress affect me, and I plan to start taking a couple of exercise classes. I might even try advocare's cleanse to rid my body of toxins. Although, none of these things really will prevent illness, it does my heart good to try to do something about all of this illness.

Happy Birthday Jesus!

2011-12-25T22:43:00.008-06:00

While the kids pizzas were cooking, we took some time to make birthday cakes for Jesus! We actually made the cakes with playdoh and then decorated them with real frosting and sprinkles. It was a crazy idea, but it was tons of fun for us and the kids. Here they are making their cakes into the right shapes! Even Callie made a cake with Daddy!

I love this picture! Look how proud she is of her tiny little cake.

Love this...let's have some sprinkles... :)

Here is Callie's finishhed cake.

Here is Ainsley's cake. You don't think she is proud do you?

Conner and his cake.

This is Kyle's cake. Can you tell what it is? We all though his nativity cake was pretty cool.

Griffin's cake is two tier.

Here we are getting ready to sing Happy Birthday to Jesus. Kyle was in charge of making sure that Callie didn't touch the flame!

Here we are singing Happy Birthday to Jesus.

Sorry about my bad singing, but i don't think Jesus cared.

What a wonderful day to celebrate. You can probably tell that I enjoyed my day by my overuse of exclamation marks in today's posts.

Merry Christmas all!

Christmas Dinner or Supper (Whatever you want to call it!)

2011-12-25T22:28:00.002-06:00

After a lovely breakfast, presents, a lunch of hot ham and cheese sandwiches, and naps/legos, our friends Len and Suzy came over to celebrate! We had a great time. For supper, we had make your own pizzas so everyone could have just what they wanted!

Here are the kids all making their own pizzas. They really enjoyed this!
Since I missed Callie in the big picture, here she is with her pizza (trying out the cheese!!!). Amazingly, she did help Daddy make it for her.

We made our pizzas while the kids ate so they were all done by the time our pizzas were done. So we had a nice quiet adult dinner with yummy pizza!

Lots of love and laughs! :)

Here are our finished masterpieces! (Thanks Len for humoring me..) The pizzas must have been good because there were no leftovers! :)

Treasure Hunt

2011-12-25T22:10:00.004-06:00

So just when all of the presents were done, Daddy announced that there was one more present. It was for Conner. Conner opened this little gift to find a note telling Kyle to look in the dryer, then Kyle found a gift in the dryer than Conner to look somewhere. They went all over the house up and down and even out in the minivan!

In the end, it told them to look under the Christmas tree where Daddy had added one more present so the treasure hunt ended in...

A pirate ship! The black pearl to be more precise!!! So now I can show you the pictures with all of the loot pictures!

Conner and his gifts!

Kyle and his!

Here are Callie's gifts!

While the girls took long naps this afternoon, the boys worked long and hard in assembling their new pirate ship!!!!

We are so blessed. My favorite part was when I asked Conner what was the best thing about Christmas, he said Jesus!!!

Opening Presents!

2011-12-25T21:34:00.004-06:00

It is so hard to know which gift presents to show. First, we take a ton of pictures! Second, they are all so excited and happy about their gifts at this age!!! So here is hopefully a nice snapshot of the fun without boring you, but no promise on that one!!!

I loved the look on Conner's face. This was his first present and something high on his list!!!
This is just so funny. Callie got a little ironing/washer set. Apparently, I must not do enough ironing when she is awake because she went around the room "ironing" all of our hair!

She was SO into opening presents and pretty much did it herself!!!! This was her favorite gift we think...cleaning supplies!

I am hoping Kyle will read this soon, because I want to read it too and he says I have to wait til he is done!!!! I am hoping he either hurries up or I can negiotate with him later!!!

New xbox controller!

Love the look on her face!

This made us laugh. Callie got these cute little dress up heels right after her cleaning supplies so she was cleaning in her heels (that she has to walk very carefully in)!

Daddy... he's so funny!

New hawkeye Sweatshirt!

I just love the sweet look on his face (new hawkeye watch!)

And gifts Kyle made for us at school!!!!

Stockings!

2011-12-25T21:09:00.003-06:00

After breakfast, we started with stockings. It was a lot of fun and the kids were so excited! Callie was very cute about all of it. Last year, Christmas was hard and more about going through the actions, but this year I really enjoyed and treasured celebrating with the kids!

Aren't they cute??
Some Cars II cars!

She was so cute about this! We were surprised how quickly she caught on. She wasn't fussy all morning and that she was really pretty patient!

Kyle showing off his halo guys and his hawkeye hat!

I just had to show you this picture because Callie just loved these little bracelets she got in her stocking. She kept showing all of us! Here she is showing Daddy!

Christmas Breakfast

2011-12-25T21:04:00.002-06:00

This year we made from scratch blueberry streusel muffins. They were pretty good, but not sure if I loved them. The kids ate really fast so they could open presents so I don't know if they really liked them or not! :)

The one meal each year, we eat in the dining room!

Our Christmas Sweetie!

2011-12-25T20:59:00.001-06:00

Happy Birthday Honey!

2011-12-25T20:49:00.002-06:00

Before I can share about Christmas, I must say Happy Birthday to my very best friend! We went out on the 19th with Jim's parents and gave Jim our birthday present!

The new Harry Potter lego video game!!!! Life has been so busy, we've only been able to play it once, but the boys have told us we will really like it!!!!

On Christmas Eve, we celebrated with a special breakfast before our busy day ahead!!! This is Jim's birthday cake.

Happy Birthday Daddy!!!

We also went out for lunch on Christmas Eve to celebrate as well. Then we spent the rest of the day at church celebrating Jesus's birthday and getting ready for Christmas!

Sibling Gift Exchange

2011-12-17T21:49:00.007-06:00

This year, my brother in law, came up with the idea that we would draw names and give each other homemade gifts. It was really quite a lot of fun and impressive all of the ideas that people came up with! It definitely made for some extra fun (and a little stress prior to Christmas when someone like me picks project more involved that I expected. :) ).

I don't have a picture of Jim's gift, but he gave his sister Megan a gift certificate for 4 hours of home improvement assistance or labor from handyman Jim!

I drew Jim's brother Tyler who is a huge bears fan. Some of our friends recently made corn toss games and several people I know have been talking about them so I made a bears one for my brother in law! Here they are before I put the final clear coat on to seal them! ( I did have some supervision from Handyman Jim and a little assistance when I wasn't quite strong enough, but for the most part, I did this from the cutting, screwing, sanding, and painting!). I should mention to that one of the guys in my small group had recently made these and had extra boards so he gave them to me precut with the circles. :)

These are the bags. I did get a little help from my mother-in-laws vast knowledge of sewing. Some friends from church who are farmers gave me the corn!

Here are the boards! I kind of feel sorry for my brother in law having to store these things... Hey Tyler, if you ever decide you no longer have any room, I know someone who would take them off your hands! They did turn out pretty cool looking, though. I guess I won the prize for the biggest gift. HA!

My sister in law, Kate, made me this really pretty scarf! I have a purple shirt that I think this will look really pretty with! I am kind of excited to wear it tomorrow!

Suzy had Jim. This is great. She made him a Christmas wreath using a tow strap (since he is into four-wheeling). Here it is hanging out by our front door!

There were other cool things like homemade brewed beer with cheeseballs, homemade stocking hats, a homemade blanket, Canned pickles and homemade sausage, and homemade muffins.

Lots of fun!

Trunnell Family Christmas

2011-12-17T21:02:00.006-06:00

It was Christmas at the Trunnell's today! Lots of fun was had by all. It was great time to hang out as a family and celebrate. We didn't take too many pictures, but here are a few of the fun!

The kids opened their gifts first. The boys were really delighted with their gifts. Kyle got a Madden football game. Conner got the movie Cars 2! Callie got some clothes!

Probably, though, the absolute highlight for Conner was when he opened the box and saw this Aaron Rodger's jersey! He was so incredibly happy. He instantly put it on and his face was just priceless. I love this shot!!!

Conner also got a Cars 2 Big bentley lego set. He was pretty pumped about this too. He and Daddy stayed up late putting together some of the cars! He still has a lot more to assemble. Not sure why we thought we needed 743 more legos, but Conner was a happy kid! Kyle also got a couple of transformers!

Callie loves to dress up (I think Iv'e shown you how she puts on the boys clothes) so Grandma got her an apron set. She was so cute. She kept saying hot, hot, hot. She wore the apron for quite sometime. Wish her eyes were open. YOu can also see the food she got to put in her shopping cart!

Kyle got a Tim Tebow jersey! He was pretty stoked about it huh?

This wasn't really Kyle's idea, but pretty soon after he got the jersey someone said, "we have to have a picture of him tebowing so he did!!!" I am fairly certain that this jersey and the packers one will be worn tomorrow. I might have to explain to the boys that we can't wear them everyday!! HA!

Grandpa Mark got an ipad so we bought him a cover to go on it!

Here is Grandma Muffy with one of her presents!

This is our youngest nephew Henry. He really likes uncle JIm. I tried so hard to get a picture of him looking at Uncle Jim all adoringly, but this was the best shot I got!!!!

We had a wonderful dinner of beef wellington, cheesy potatoes, beans, fruit, a frito salad, and rolls. Callie thought she was pretty big stuff to get to sit at the little table to eat our supper! Below you will see my favorite memory from the night...

When Papa saw Callie sitting alone at her table, he got his plate and joined her. She was absolutely tickled about this!!! She cried when supper was done and we had to take her plate!!! It was so very thoughtful of Papa and made Callie's day I think!

One of Callie's gifts was a shopping cart! I would say that this is her favorite gift. She drove it all over Grandma's house, over people's toes and into the cupboards! When we got home, we opened up her new package of food. She loaded it all from the packaging into her grocery cart, wheeled into her room, and proceed to put it all in the microwave! I tried to convince her she should put in the fridge, but I learned quick, you don't mess with an 18 month old girl when she is putting her groceries away after shopping! The microwave it is!

Old Fashioned Fun!

2011-12-17T20:55:00.002-06:00

Since I did more shopping online this year, I had a few boxes. This morning, Kyle showed Callie how you could get in the boxes and pretend to drive. She loved this, was making all of the sounds, and having a ball! It got even more fun when Conner joined in!

They used plates for steering wheels!!

I love how my boys play with Callie. She doesn't realize how blessed she is to have such attentive brothers!

Christmas Concerts

2011-12-17T20:45:00.002-06:00

Both of the boys had winter concerts this month. This year they held them at Peet Junior High. They had to dress for success. It was kind of fun to see the progression from kindergarten all the way through sixth grade between the two concerts!

Here are some of the pictures!

Isn't he handsome? Can you see how short the pants are?? The shoes weren't entirely the right size either, but Kyle made due!

Here is Conner. He is pretty handsome too isn't he? He has grown so much that we had to put on two pairs of socks and wear Kyle's shoes because his that he wore on the cruise were definitely too small.

Here is Conner with his group! It was fun to see all of the kids and hear some fun Christmas music!

Seriously Impressed

2011-12-14T21:17:00.002-06:00

This afternoon, I was getting ready to decorate my sugar cookies so I could take a cookie tray to our small group Christmas Party. I wanted to try a new recipe and realized that it called for Corn syrup (Which I did not have). Callie was asleep and could potentially sleep another hour. If I waited that long, the cookies wouldn't be dry enough to place on trays...

Since it was Wednesday Kyle was home from school. So I decided that for a 10 minute trip as long as he had a phone, Kyle could man the fort. He is a responsible level headed kid. So I told him what I was going to do and he agreed. I said I'd be gone 20 minutes at the very most.

So I went right to hyvee, bought corn syrup, and came right home. I was gone 12 minutes. When I get home, I hear Kyle upstairs and find him in Callie's room. Apparently she had woke up while I was gone. I was proud that he had listened, heard her, and came to get her. When I come into the room, I notice that Kyle is holding a diaper in his hand like he was going to the trash can. Yuck! Did we leave a poopy diaper in the room?

Then Kyle says to me...hold on mom.. I got to throw this away and then put Callie's skirt on. I figured since she had her tights and onesie, I should throw the diaper away and then put the skirt on. What? Suddenly, it occurs to me... He changed her diaper! I have never asked him to do that, never explained how one does that and would've expected him to wait. I mean the diaper he had in his hand was stinky!!!!!

I was so impressed. He is a nine year old boy who willing changed a pooey diaper and he did it well. I mean the diaper was on appropriately. Her tights and onesie were on. She was happy, he was happy. (Next time I changed her I thought I'd find some residue, but nothing!). Nothing on her clothes, nothing on the changing station except the wipes, he didn't know to put them in the diaper to throw away..

So I told him how impressed I was and surprised. To which he said, "Well Mom, I was in charge, what was I going to do just leave her in a poopy diaper?" I didn't tell him, but I thought most nine year old boys would've done just that.

Kyle..you are a VERY good big brother! It makes me excited to thing that the time where I can run to the store while he is in charge is closer to reality that I realized!

Lost Tooth

2011-12-11T22:47:00.003-06:00

Conner lost his first tooth today! The shock of it (and the fact that it fell, wasn't able to be found, and bled quite a bit) led to some tears. Once he got past that, though, he was one proud little boy!!!

The tooth fairy has made her delivery so we should have a very happy little boy. It would be awful to forget on the first one huh?

Pure sweetness!!!

2011-12-07T21:03:00.002-06:00

Callie loves her brothers! It is so sweet when she crawls into Kyle's lap and cuddles or let's him comfort her. I know it may not always be, but currently my children have a deep love for each other and it warms my heart to see their relationships blossom!

Cake Pops

2011-12-07T20:57:00.002-06:00

The other day, we borrowed Grandma's cake pop maker and the boys made cake pops. It was the one day last week that I felt good. Well, technically, it was one night while my back was still really hurting, but I am so glad I spent the time with the boys because I got the flu after this and was just terribly ill all weekend! Jim took the treats to work (what the boys were willing to part with!).

It is Christmas Time!

2011-12-07T19:54:00.004-06:00

I have had my Christmas decorations up for quite awhile, but due to sickness haven't gotten this post up! Yes, we have been sick again. I will have to write off 2011 as the year of sickness for me! Geez!

Anyway, this year I decorated early because I really missed Christmas last year. I also got some new decorations to better compliment to my new living room furniture. I didn't spend a lot. Walmart had lots of cheap stuff this year along with Hobby Lobby and their sales. Plus I tried to be creative and reuse as much as I could!

Here is my upstairs tree. I went with white, brown, and a teal/blue color. I really like it. I am missing a tree topper. I couldn't totally decide what I wanted and the one I thought I wanted was more than I wanted to spend. So maybe I will get some ribbon and make a bow or Ill wait til next year (or maybe after Christmas sales).

I wanted a couple other things upstairs to go along with my angel and nativity so I used this bowl I had and added some leftover Christmas balls.

Then I took my normal dining room centerpiece removed the candles and added a few more Christmas bulbs. I was pretty pleased with how this all turned out!

Then I took some of the stuff I'd used upstairs (what I didn't reuse upstairs) and decorated downstairs for the first time. I love this greenery with red and white oranaments in it. I would've loved to have lighted it, but didn't want to spend the money on battery operated lights. We SOOO should've put a plug in here when we remodeled!

This is on my table downstairs! It was part of what was on the table upstairs last year!

Then we have a second tree downstairs. This one was decorated entirely by the boys with leftover oranaments, sentimental ones, and special ones the kids have made. It is not my favorite tree because it is too triangler, but the boys love the colored lights. It is nice to have a homey feel!

UNI Panther Basketball versus the Iowa Hawks!

2011-12-07T19:00:00.003-06:00

Jim's boss has season panther basketball tickets. Last night, the Panthers were playing the Iowa Hawkeyes and Jim's boss was not planning on going to the game. He was really nice to give the tickets to Jim to use. We invited some friends of ours that are Hawkeye and Panther fans to join us.

Wow! It was way more fun than I expected. We had lots of conversations ahead of time being that we live in Cedar Falls, but are also Hawkeye fans. The consensus was for this night that we should root for the home team. I figured I should cheer for the panthers espescially since I am a graduate of UNI! Although, I have never been to a panther basketball game. I am not really sure why, but all through college I never attended one. Plus the Mcleod center wasn't there when I went to school.

Here we are at the game. My friend Mel has a very good ability to take self group portraits apparently! We had great seats. Although the McLeod center is small enough that I don't really think there are bad seats..

Here is a picture of the student section. I was completely unprepared for the fan base that the panther basketball team has. Wow! They were highly entertaining with all of their antics. The crowd was really into this game. PLus UNI had a lot of entertaining fun things going on during time outs, commercial breaks, and half time. Not to mention Iowa brought their cheer squad and Herky as well!

I thought this was funny. They have this little blimp that flies around inside the building. Funny!

It was a good game, pretty close. There were a few calls that were maybe questionable. I think the refs were calling a bit too much. Anyway, the Iowa coach got VERY upset about it. After two technicals for him (and one for one of his players), the coach got kick out of the game. He wouldn't leave, though, so the police came out and escorted him out. Oh my! Someone else who attended the game and had a different vantage point said that the ref that kicked out the Iowa coach told him to go take a shower! It was something!

The team spirit between the Hawkeyes and the panthers was really good. Herky and the panther goofed around a lot together and were really fun. All of the cheerleaders were entertaining as well with their pyramids and such!

During half time, they had a chinese acrobat perform. She was really good. She kept kicking bowls from her feet onto her head while riding this tall unicycle (and she did it all to music)!

Anyway, we had a really good time at the game. The Panthers won (Iowa played well too), the crowd was really into it, and we enjoyed great friends! We definitely think we'd like to go again sometime. I am not sure if it is always like that or if was more hyped because they were playing Iowa. We definitely think the boys would enjoy it as well so we will have to take them if we get another chance to go!

2011-12-05T22:42:00.002-06:00

Sometimes I run out of ideas for Callie for lunch. She isn't really fond of meat/cheese sandwiches or peanut butter. She doesn't really like to be fed so we don't do mac n cheese too often. Usually it is crackers and cheese or leftovers. Today I thought I'd try nutella and honey. Well, I think she liked it.... What do you think????

Christmas Cookies!

2011-12-05T11:36:00.003-06:00

For the past four years, the girls in Jim's family have gotten together to bake Christmas cookies on the day after Thanksgiving. It is quite the production. I believe the count on cookies was something like 145 dozen (yes I am not kidding).

I haven't really gotten to enjoy it since the first year. Two years ago, I was pregnant with Callie and in the midst of the horrible morning sickness. Last year, we were in San Diego over thanksgiving and this year I was fighting some bad back pain. Luckily I have a friend for a chiropractor and she came in on her day off to try to help relieve the pain. I have seen her a couple more times and have seen some definite improvement in my back, but we aren't 100% yet.

Since we had thankgiving at supper time rather than lunch this year, my sister in law and mother in law mixed up all of the cookie dough the morning of thanksgiving. That way on Friday all we had to do was bake (trust me this is a lot even with three ovens!).

Here are two of my sister-in-laws and nieces on baking day!

Here is another sister in law. I am missing our friend Suzy. I thought I uploaded that picture, but must have missed it. Since I have been sick all weekend and am way behind, you'll have to look for her in the group photo!

This is how I did the few cookies I did. Sitting and nursing my back!

Jim helped out after work in my absence by doing dishes! And maybe imitating the hu hot guys??? I am posting this because he is cute! :)

A few of the younger kids helped out dipping cake balls and oreo truffles (and unwrapping candy for the reeses cups!)

We had tons of close up shots, but I am short on time!!!

We rarely seem to take pictures of my in-laws so thought I'd share this one!

Here is the group photo (minus me..I just got back from the chriopractor and was in the process of ice my back so I told them to take it without me). Look at all those cookies!!! Besides, they did all of the work really so they should get the credit! Luckily they don't hold it against me, I still have lots of yummy cookies in my freezer.

Once we got it all packaged up (we split equally between all six families) I was done icing my back, so we took one more group photo!

The first year we decorated sugar cookies, but after seeing how time consuming that was, we switched gears and just bake the cookies. We send them home for each family to decorate when it is convenient for them!

It is a fun way to start the Christmas season. Good thing we got our back friday deals early so I really would've been a mess without sleep and a very sore back huh?

Black Thursday!

2011-11-26T19:55:00.005-06:00

So for awhile, we have been tossing around the idea of a couple of technological purchases. So this year with our Christmas money, Jim and I decided to take the plunge and spoil ourselves a bit. So I was after a television for upstairs for when Callie starts watching tv and when the kids are playing xbox and I'd like to watch television.

Jim decided he wanted a blu ray player and a surround system for downstairs (it drives him nuts that I turn it up SOOO loud so I can hear every word in a movie, he thought surround sound might help that issue).

So we didn't want to go over our Christmas money so we have been looking through the Black Friday ads. In the midst of talking about it, we realized that my mom really wanted a new tv as well. It turned out that Best buy had the best deals for what we wanted. So Jim was prepared to go stand in line outside only to find out that the particular items we wanted would all be offered Thanksgiving day on bestbuy.com. We figured we would give it a try!

So our adventure began...we thought that thanksgiving day would start at midnight on Thursday morning so Jim and I stayed up until then. We had both computers ready to go to try to snag the deals! Jim happened on earlier in the day to see that they had already released the blue ray home theater deal so he snagged that in the early evening!

At midnight, we saw that best buy announced that people could go to sleep, they wouldn't be releasing their deals until early morning. The problem is, they didn't say what time early morning. So we went to bed and Jim set the alarm for three and checked their status every half hour. Just before 5 he woke me up to say that he was pretty certain, it would be five am. So I watched the facebook/twitter page for an update and Jim kept refreshing the sight. Well, about 8 minutes before they updated their statuses, Jim noticed things were available for purchase. So he threw the tv for my mom and the one I wanted into his cart to check out!

We were a little giddy to think we might get both of them without going outside! Except when we got to the check out, it said the tv I wanted was out of stock. I was rather bummed, but we went ahead and checked out with the one for my mom. I could wait for another deal. We couldn't believe that in a matter of seconds, best buy was already sold out.

My mom's tv!

As were looking at people's comments on facebook, it became kind of clear that there was technical difficulty because no one was able to get the tv I wanted. People started posting similiar deals that weren't advertised earlier, but were offered online from target, newegg, walmart, and various other places because they were so mad that it didn't work. The one at walmart was the same price (just LCD instead of LED) so we went ahead and ordered that one. I figured I could always return it if I didn't like it.

We finally went to bed about six am. When we got up at 9 (we kept Callie up so we could sleep in a little and it worked), we checked facebook and saw that Best buy made an announcement that the tv we wanted was now available for purchase at 8:30! It was gone by 9, obviously!

Anyway, we still thought it was pretty good deal to not to have to leave house and on all three items, we saved around 400.00 from the cheapest prices we had seen the last couple of weeks. So all in all, it was a pretty successful Black Thursday! My television came today!!!! I think it is a good size for upstairs. I might have liked a little bigger, but I was happy not to spend anymore than my Christmas money.

So tonight, Jim and I are upstairs watching the little tv while the boys are watching a movie on the big tv! I suppose it should be the other way around, but we wanted to try out the new one!

Food Bank

2011-11-24T14:51:00.003-06:00

This is past weekend, we took the boys down to the Northeast Iowa Food Bank to serve. It was such a great experience for us. I was so proud of how hard they worked. There were a lot of kids, but it was amazing how much work they got done.

We started by sorting supplies for Thanksgiving meals into bags.

Conner did such a great job partnering with me to fill his. Kyle was old enough to do his bags himself and did two or three at a time. Most of the kids were younger than than Kyle.

After we finished that. We emptied pallets of food, marked off the upc symbol, and then loaded it all back up. You wouldn't believe how fast those kids worked. It was all we adults could do to keep boxes of food available for the kids to mark.

We did seven pallets full of food. The kids thought it was so great. Hopefully they learned a little more that life isn't all about them as well. We looked forward to doing it again and hope to find other opportunities to broaden their horizons as well!

Christmas Shopping

2011-11-16T15:24:00.002-06:00

This year, I had started purchasing diapers on Amazon mom. I still go for really good deals when I have coupons, but when I don't that is the cheapest I could find. For the boys, I always just generic diapers, but for some reason both LUVS and the generic kinds I have purchased have resulted in diaper rash for Callie. I thought it was coincidence, but it isn't. So Huggies it is. Anyway, because I have the subscription through Amazon, I have amazon prime which results in a lot of free shipping.

So I am almost done shopping for my children and I have only been out to the stores a couple of times!!! I need to readjust my budget for next year because both last year and this year, I went over by the same amount. I don't go crazy by any means, but as they get bigger clothes and things cost more! It seems like often amazon is the cheapest and then it gets shipped right to my door. Woo Hoo! Plus now that is gets darker earlier, I don't seem to want to go outside as much!

I plan to finish up the kids by Thanksgiving and then on to the adults and a few misc items. I don't have many adults to shop for, but I think I leave them to the end because they are so much more difficult to shop for ! December is busy so this will hopefully give us more time to do fun holiday things like decorating, holiday parties, school christmas concerts, baking and what not if the shopping is done.

Busy but boring

2011-11-15T16:19:00.002-06:00

Life has been very busy around here, but luckily rather boring too. For me this is a really good thing. Low stress, normal life is just what my life needed. Here's a bit of what we've been up to:

The boys started piano. They both seem to love it.
Jim went to Minneapolis for an architecture conference and was gone most of last week.
We had a child dedication event at church last week which made life a little crazy!
Callie is learning new words everyday. Funny all of the ways she communicates. While she can be a lot of work, she beings so much laughter to our house.
Jim and I have finally saved enough (we think) to put a ceiling in our basement. I am trying to decide on what tile to use. It is like carpet...lots of choices that all look almost the same.
We've been scoping out the black friday ads. Jim is wanting to spend his birthday money on a surround sound and I am thinking of spending my christmas money on a small television to be upstairs.

Honestly, that is all that has been going on. This weekend, we are taking the boys to the food bank to serve for a morning (broaden their horizons a bit) and then JIm and I have a sitter coming to have a long overdo date and maybe see the newest twilight movie!

Happy Halloween!

2011-11-04T14:38:00.006-05:00

Well, we didn't carve pumpkins, but we did have a lot of fun dressing up for Halloween! It was the first year that Callie participated and it was lots of fun.. I would say it slowed down the trick or treating for the boys (don't worry they still got WAY TOO MUCH candy), but it was worth it.

Here are my trick or treaters:

My little cowgirl. Jim actually picked out this costume and he made such a good choice. She was just too cute. She really enjoyed the costume and the hat so we didn't even have to try to convince her to wear it!!!!

Conner was a mighty fine Bobba Fett!
Kyle was a desert commando. This was the largest kid size they make and it was almost too small. Luckily it wasn't too cold!!!!

Here is the double pumpkined Cowgirl again. This was just too cute. She has no idea what these are for, but if one is good then too is better.

All of them... I love memories like this!!! Too soon, Kyle won't want to trick or treat anymore. Time is going too fast!

We were ready a little early so we took the kids up to HYvee where they had trick or treating going on in the store. It was really quite fun and Callie's first introduction to this whole halloween thing.

It was cute. You started at the Italian Express where they gave you fortune cookies.

Then you headed to produce where they gave you an apple.

Then it was off to the deli for string Cheese. Now Callie was getting the idea! Then it was bakery for a cookie, meat department for pretzels, frozen for candy, seasonal for more candy, and customer service for stickers.

Then you ended up in the floral department for a balloon. It was quite fun for all of us, but especially to watch Callie start to figure this thing out.

Then we went home. Callie went to about 4 houses and then Jim brought her home to help hand out candy while the boys did the neighborhood. Then we headed out on our annual family and friend trek. Our neighborhood doesn't take all the time so we usually drive around and hit family and friends houses. Then we finally end up at Grandmas!

Here we are at Aunt Megan and Uncle Aaron's house.

Here we are trick or treating at the Searfoss house!

Finally we end up at Grandma and Grandpas where this cute little dinosaur joined us!!!! (Its my nephew Wyatt in case you didn't know).

It was a great night!!!

Carving Pumpkins

2011-11-02T15:50:00.002-05:00

Well, as far as pictures of carving pumpkins, this is the best I can do. Why didn't I take pictures you ask? Well, it is actually worse than that. The truth is for the first Halloween since Jim and I have been parents (over 9 years ago), we didn't carve pumpkins. Betweens sports, busy weekends at church, a family birthday party, and just plain exhaustion, we just couldn't find the time to do it. It makes me kind of sad, but not having to clean up afterwards was nice. There is always next year!

Wax Museum Project at school

2011-11-02T15:22:00.004-05:00

Kyle and his class have been hard at work on their Wax Museum Projects. They each chose a famous person and researched their life. They created a presentation board and wrote a speech about their person. They dressed up as their character and they were wax museum statues of their people. When you went to their station and put money in their cup OR shook their cup, they would come to life and tell you all about their life.

It was really cute and Kyle did a great job (as did a lot of the kids). Kyle chose George Washington Carver. Here he is in his statue position.

Below is a recording of him doing his speech. Unfortunately, it was really loud in the classroom so it is very hard to hear the specific details of his speech. He tells about his childhood, his education, his work and peanut products, and his character if that helps at all.

Correction: I have tried and tried to get this video to post and I can't. At first it was too large (I didn't realize) and so I edited it smaller. However, it still won't load. Darn. It was cute. Oh well...

Phone Shots

2011-10-26T19:51:00.005-05:00

Well, I can't say the quality is always awesome and something about the flash on my phone makes Callie close her eyes, but my phone is so accessible when I want to snap a shot of Callie doing something funny! Just thought it would be fun to share some of my favorite phone shots from the past couple of weeks:

Callie can climb up and sit on chairs now. I was in the living room working on my blog posts when I heard this. Apparently I was ignoring her so she got up on the chair and helped herself to a snack.. You don't think she was proud of herself do you?

I do not know why, but Callie loves to climb in under the laundry bags. The other day, I actually couldn't find her until I heard the giggling. Harder to see when there is clothes in there!

Callie has older brothers so her dress up clothes are a camo sweatshirt and shin guards!!! She wore this sweatshirt just like this for almost 2 hours!

Too Too Cute!

More of the cutness!

Sometimes I find Callie rocking in her rocking chair!

Or emptying out her dresser...

Callie loves to sit in things. We were over at a friends house and rather than push the truck, she sat in it!

This is under the piano..Just the perfect little seat to sit and "read."

Or the baby stroller works too!

As you can see..she keeps us busy and entertained.

Kyle's Soccer Season

2011-10-26T19:20:00.006-05:00

Kyle's soccer season was totally different from Conners! Last year, Kyle had a unique but very invested soccer coach. He drilled and pushed Kyle all year to understand the game, the position to play, to pass the ball, work on ball handling etc. This year, Kyle was a totally different kid on the soccer field. I was so incredibly proud of him. He is not the most talented player, but he played his best each and every game. It was like a light bulb went off in his head and somehow he just instinctly knew where he was to be and what to do. It was so fun to see his hard work pay off and for him to have success on the field.

Living in bigger town, the competition in sports will be fierce for spots to play as Kyle gets older so for this one season, it was really exciting to see him being a large contribution to the game. Especially since he did it by playing smart and being more determined.

I love this picture because look at his face...he is so determined and so focused on what he is going to do!

I thought this picture was great because look at his arm...hmmm...he is pushing a little to win the race to the ball don't you think? He did get called a couple of times for contact this season.

Here he is in the midst of three players, trying to make sure that ball doesn't get past him and near the goalie. I am not 100% but pretty sure, he got the ball here.

I thought this was just a cool action shot!

And I loved this one because he made this goal and scored for the second time in this particular game!

I will confess to Kyle getting old enough that at one game, I got a look and one of those slicing of the neck guestures (you know the one that says stop it, kill it, etc) for my over enthusiastic cheering! He started to give me guidelines as to appropriate parental encouragement from the sidelines. HA! Although, when I told him that I couldn't seem to help myself because I was just so proud, he seemed much less concerned with my sideline cheering!

Despite how much I loved watching Kyle play this season, how proud I was of him for doing his best every game, and so happy for him to have some success, I am also VERY happy to see the end of football and soccer season.

I don't have any pictures of Kyle playing football. I bet my mother-in-law might so I will check with her, but Kyle had a great football season this year. He found he really likes to play defense in football. I think one game he had a block, an interception and got three flags. My father-in-law thought he got video of Kyle's interception in football and one of his goals in soccer so when he gets time and can get those to me, I will see if I can share them with you.

Conner's Soccer Season

2011-10-26T15:28:00.006-05:00

Conner had a fun soccer season. It didn't take him too long to realize that soccer may not be his favorite thing..Too much running. He did make some new friends and have a great memory as Daddy as his soccer coach. Of all of our children, Jim finds it the hardest to connect with Conner because he is such a mama's boy. (He is still pretty connected just in comparison he has to work at it harder with Conner). So Jim signed up to coach Conner's soccer team and they had a great experience together.

I love that Jim doesn't care whether Conner is athletic or even if Conner likes the same football team. I bought Conner a jersey for Christmas (shhhhh..) that is not the broncos and it was Jim's idea!

Here are a few pictures of Conner's last game this fall. He will have six more in the spring!

I loved this action shot and how adorable he is in his soccer uniform!

I loved this shot too.

Here he is with the ball. In all honesty, you didn't see Conner with the ball much. He did score once this season by being in the right place at the right time, but usually Conner was just jogging behind the pack and by the time he made it to the ball, it was already somewhere else!

And if he did get the ball or a kick in, he might actually miss the ball...
Honestly..what is more Conner is this shot. Doesn't he look so thrilled about the game going on? He is the child that was playing sweeper (defense spot in front of the goal but not goalie) and sat down to rest while he waited for the ball. Except he sat down facing his goal so he couldn't see the ball coming.

Conner got kicked pretty hard in the leg at his last game and it was so sad. We kind of thought the way he limped off the field he was playing it up a bit, but the next day he was still rubbing and said it was sore.

Since I tend to think that this might be the only year that Conner plays recreational soccer, I am so glad he is getting to do it with Daddy!

Just Because

2011-10-20T08:01:00.002-05:00

It has been a crazy couple of months with sports, work, and life in general. Yeseterday, I got this wonderful surprise when I got home from work! Just because he wanted me to know he loved me, he was thankful for all I do, and just to cheer me up as we go into winter and lots of reminders of losing my Dad.

It worked honey... still smiling! :)

When Grandpa is the Dentist...

2011-10-19T16:59:00.002-05:00

I have never liked to go to the dentist. I would say this is because my parents didn't take me until I was in horrible pain (because it was expensive and we didn't have any insurance). For my kids, though, it has a much better memory especially since no one has had a cavity yet!!! Callie especially likes the dentist office because it is just different when Grandpa is the dentist.

Because when Grandpa's the dentist, you get to sit in the chair and ride up and down while you wait for Grandpa to come in and see your brothers!

When Grandpa's the dentist, he can't hold you while he checks your brother's teeth so you get to sit on your brother and have a first hand look at the action!
When Grandpa's the dentist, if you say Ah and try to climb in the chair.. Grandpa gets out a mirror and fusses over your teeth too!!!

When Grandpa is the dentist, you get more than one toy from the toy box...

When Grandpa is the dentist, you get a bag with a new toothbrush (we love toothbrushes) just like your big brothers..

When you are 17 months old, going to the dentist is awfully fun....when Grandpa is the dentist!!!

It has been a year..

2011-10-18T22:50:00.005-05:00

It has been a year since we as a family spent any time with my Dad. A year ago, my dad came to our house to meet his grandaughter for the very first time. He watched both boys play soccer, watched Kyle play flag football (oh how he would've loved to have seen Kyle play this year), he played catch with the boys, and he held and fed his baby grandaughter. While I saw him pass away and said good-bye, there are many times when I realize that part of me thinks he is still at his house sitting in his chair. We could call him and go visit. Then it hits you, he is really gone.

Kyle will most likely be the only one to really remember him. My Dad had lots of faults, but he loved his grand children. While they didn't see him terribly frequently and then only for short visits, he made those few hours count and that endeared him to them (or atleast to the boys).

I feel blessed in many ways. My Dad was always the type to hug you, touch you, and even kiss you on the cheek, but he wasn't demonstrative in his words. You wouldn't hear him say he was proud of you or that he loved you. You knew, though, by the smile on his face when he saw you that he loved you. You knew by the way he bragged to everyone that every good trait we had came from his genetic pool that he was proud.

I am blessed too because unlike my siblings, I got an opportunity to say good-bye (in as much as my Dad would allow). Because of a vacation that he was adament that we take even though he was in the hospital (he didn't want his grandkids to miss this trip they had been telling him about), we had a talk before we left on the trip. That night as I cried because I felt so bad leaving when he was facing the real possibility of death, he hugged me and with words rarely said, told me that, of course, he loved me. He looked me in the eye and told me none of what happened to him was my fault, there was nothing I could do about it, and that my priority was his grandchildren and that is where he wanted me to be. He knew from my tears and my words how deeply I loved him.

I miss you Dad! I want to call you to tell you that Kyle had a great football season! I wanted to tell you that Conner has learned how to read. I would like to tell you that Callie is walking, talking, and exerting her sassy little personality everywhere she goes. I'd like to tell you that she has a little of you in her because she doesn't seem to know a stranger. I am pretty sure you'd claim loudly that she got all of her good looks and great personality from you!!!!

Here are a few pictures from that wonderful day last October...

I miss you.....

2011-10-17T10:20:00.004-05:00

I am not sure why I haven't had any interest in blogging lately. Probably because I am in a season of life where I can't keep up and blogging seems like just another thing to do! It certainly hasn't been lack of blogging material!!!! This shall be another one of thoe miscellaneous posts to try to highlight what has been going on around here (a tiny snippet).

Kyle is home sick today. Yesterday at church, he suddenly looked very pale and wsa complaining of an upset stomach. It was a little sad for him because we are in the midst of a campaign to raise fund to launch our next campus or campuses (among other things like debt reduction). Anyway, the kids had been working on filling some banks to help with children's ministry costs at a new campus. They were pretty excited to get to walk across the stage in big church and place their banks on the stage. Check it out....

Kyle felt too ill to put his bank on the stage so I walked as an "adult helper" with Conner's age group and put his bank there for him while he watched from the balcony. So today Kyle is home sick from school. He is not running a temp like yesterday, but he definitely is not eating much and says his stomach hurts.

I really don't mind having him home especially when he isn't terribly sick. First of all, he totally entertains himself AND he often helps with his little sister to give me a break. This is nice today as I woke up with a pretty upset stomach. Not the end of the world, but I won't be really active today or eating much I don't think! Days home with Callie are hard for me!

Kyle finished up his flag football season. He had such a great season. He has really gotten into playing defense. He had an interception, several batted passes, and tons of flags this season. We were proud of how hard he worked, but more than anything just enjoyed watching him have such a good time.

We have one more week of soccer. I am sure Conner will be delighted for that to be done. He loves having Daddy as his coach, but isn't so fond of soccer! Conner would be the kid who is playing in the back field and decides to sit down in the middle of the game! What makes it worse is that he sat down facing his goal so he couldn't even see when the other team came with the ball. Conner (and kyle) are going to start piano lessons in November and I think that will be of much more interest to Conner!

I am good with Conner not being athletic. I am ok with all of the practices and games for Kyle because he absolutely loves sports and can hardly wait for practice and games, but to have extra crazy schedules for something Conner doesn't love isn't definitely not worth it. I do think Conner will try football next year just so he can see if he likes it (although if he decides he doesn't want to, I'd be good with that).

Work continues to be busy for me! I would say the largest time taker right now is Callie. She just demands a lot of attention and gets into EVERYTHING...ALL OF THE TIME.. That makes for a lot more work. This is not my favorite stage. It is good thing she is so cute and so entertaining because that helps me get through it day to day.

Friday night, we had a free night which is rare around here so we went out to dinner (just KFC) and went shopping for Halloween costumes. Kyle is going to be a desert commando, Conner is going to be Boba Fett and Callie is going to be a cowgirl. We had planned to shop for pumpkins too, but it took a long time for the boys to make final decisions on costumes. Plus Callie was tired so we needed to get back home.

Well, I could go on, but long posts without pictures are usually rather boring so we will call it quits for now. Besides while I was writing this, I am pretty sure Callie has emptied all of the clothes out of her dresser! I better go tell her NO!!!!! Is it naptime yet????

The BIG Game

2011-10-08T21:32:00.005-05:00

The first weekend in October, we got a chance to take the boys to their first NFL football game. We had such a good time. My boys are far from perfect, but they are excellent travelers and truly seem to enjoy every adventure we take them on. Their enjoyment makes it even more fun for me.

It was a little odd, of course, because we are Broncos fans (well Jim is and the rest kind of follow suit, but I doubt it will always be like that!). Anyway there weren't a ton of Broncos fans so we drew a lot of attention..pretty much people were always looking at us. All in all, though, the fans were super nice and offered to take pictures and chat with our boys and be generally welcoming!

They are just too cute...
Love this! Conner really didn't watch the game, but Kyle watched every single play (with the binoculars a lot). Kyle actually got annoyed when they did the wave and it went around the stadium like 7 times (think the packers fans were a little bored). How can you do the wave and watch the game he says???

Great memories!

At teh end of the game, we went down to see the field closer. Might as well explore rather than sit in traffic!

As we headed out of the stadium, you could see where the broncos buses were. They had a little area for the broncos to come out and see people. They weren't really social, but Matt Prater, who is the kicker, signed the boys tickets and got his picture taken with them. Kyle was a little disappointed because Tim Tebow came out into the area to talk to some people he knew, but didn't come around to sign autographs or meet people. Kyle was probably about 30 feet away. He did use his binocculars to get an up close look he said.

They really lost so don't imagine they were too cheery, but rarely do you get so close to a player without many fan s(probably only 3o standing around). Kyle understood why he didn't and was pretty pleased to meet Matt!

It is raining...

2011-09-26T13:16:00.002-05:00

Normally when I have a day off and it is raining, I feel myself starting to feel sad. Today, that doesn't seem to the case. I think since most of my house got cleaned yesterday for small group, that helps a lot., I just had one bathroom, a bedroom and some picking up to do! Now there are a couple of errands that I need to run like returning some books to the library, but I don't want to drag Callie out in the rain!

It was a good weekend for us. Saturday, we spend the entire almost at sporting events, but the weather was fairly nice and we had a good time. It reminds me why I am a fan of getaways and vacations. At home, I am easily distracted from my kids by the computer, housework, and a million other things. However, we get out and about, I find myself more easily engaging. On Saturday, Kyle, Callie and I had a picinic in the car while Conner and Daddy got their pictures taken. That 45 minute picnic was such a good time.

Speaking of get aways, we have a big one this weekend. Jim, the boys, and I are going up to Lambeau field in Green Bay to watch the Broncos plays the Packers. I am looking forward to hanging out with my boys and while we all love Callie, it will be nice to focus on them without her needing our attention too (Callie is having a getaway with Grandma!).

It promises to be another busy week, with practices, work, and FX (plus I am playing a drama part in FX on Wednesday). SO today being a home day and doing things like organizing winter clothes and washing everyone's sheets is a good thing! I might even make some cupcakes... Well see..

Here are a few of my favorite pictures from the last week or so...

Callie is really starting to have personality and she is pretty funny. Today she found the boys sunglasses and was having so much fun. Why she puts them on her neck I don't know, but she does! Anyway, it is interesting having a third personality to contend with. She is definitely unique. She loves people at church and will let almost anyone hold her. She loves to tell everyone we see at walmart Hi! Then she gives them her big cheesy grin. Her flirtaous ways are pretty cute, but we certainly hope she outgrows them by junior high!!!!

We finally got Callie's one year old pictures taken. Here is a peak of a few!
Just like Mommy... Using her laptop and talking on the phone!!! ;)

Despite our best attempts to talk him out of it, Kyle desperately wanted to play the cello. This week, his rental cello arrived and he had his first lesson. He is so excited about it. I do think if he had to play an instrument that I don't really mind the cello because atleast when he practices, it doesn't sound too bad!!!

Weekend One of Craziness

2011-09-17T21:18:00.004-05:00

It was the first weekend of all of our sporting events. My mom came up to join in the fun. Luckily I am off this weekend so we could try to transition slowly into the craziness. It was a pretty good day. A little chilly, but fun none the less!

We started the morning with a football game. Kyle got two or three flags. He seemed to always be in the action when the play was going so you could tell he was reading the plays well. He missed the one pass that got sent to him on offense, but you can't win them all. His buddy from school got a touchdown so they were pretty excited about that!

Then this afternoon, we had soccer games. Both Kyle and Conner's games were at the same time so Jim went with the Conner (since he is the coach and all) and I went with Kyle. My mom went with Jim so she could see each of the boys play something this weekend.

Here they are all ready to go!!!

Kyle was quite relieved not to be wearing purple this year! It was a pretty good day for both! Jim had a good experience coaching his first soccer game and despite Conner's lack of natural ability, he managed to score a goal in his first ever soccer game. He and Daddy were both quite proud about it!!!!

Kyle's game was a little more interesting. After last year where we had a bit more of an intense coach that really pushed the boys to run plays, be in the right position and play soccer, this was a little different. We have lots of younger boys who haven't played in U10 before so they aren't sure how to play and our coach is much more laid back. Despite that, I was really proud of Kyle. He played well, was in the right place at the right time, and managed to score a goal even though he was often the only one going to the net. I am hopeful that as the season goes on, they'll all improve. Their coach has genuine care for the boys. You can tell they really like him. You can't really ask more than that!

I do have to confess to getting in trouble with Kyle for being that mom yelling too much on the sidelines. At one point, he looks over at me and does the throat slashing action. He told me that I had to learn to be more quiet or he would have someone record the game and I could watch at home!!!! I suppose it won't be the last time, but I'll work on it. Funny how sports can bring that out in us. Also, last year, our parent section were loud cheerers so I think you get used to that too!

Misc. Stuff

2011-09-12T15:46:00.002-05:00

It has been another busy week or two at the Trunnells. I thought I should update because it is a good stress reliever for me, but I will get into that later. This post is going to be rather random, but hey that's o.k. Here I go:

I worked 38 hours last week in a short week due to labor day and the first week of two kids in soccer practice, one in football, and wednesdays nights at church starting back up! It was all good stuff and very rewarding, but to say it was crazy is a bit of understatement.

My brother in law and sister in law had a garage sale on Saturday. It was a great success. They let us bring our stuff over even though we couldn't be there for the actual event due to a training at work and Kyle's first football game. I got rid of a TON of stuff and made 175.00. I was rather pleased with that. THANK YOU MEGAN AND AARON!

Apparently I have been under a lot of stress lately (I wouldn't know why... geez..), but anyway my stress has manifest itself in some jaw issues. I had been having some issues with my jaw popping and cracking a lot, but on Sunday I had a new issue (not totally new since it happened once after my dad passed away after a few days of no sleep and tremendous stress). Anyway, my jaw is locked. Actually, I just can't open my mouth more than a thumbs width would be a more accurate description. It makes eating rather difficult. I am getting a night guard made to keep me from clenching my jaw in my sleep, taking iboprofen and putting heat on it. Guess I need to add more stress relievers into my routine.

Soccer and football has started. The schedule is not as horrible as I thought it would be, but still it makes every night, but friday and sunday busy. Jim is coaching Conner's tean to Conner's great delight. I think it is a good thing for both of them (although hard with JIm's work because of the practice time he ended up with).

I have realized that I really like little girl shoes. Plus I have realized that unlike the boys one pair of tennis shoes, a pair of sandals, and some flip flops don't work for girls... Tennis shoes don't go with everything. It is just so hard to choose which pairs to get too when they are all SO CUTE!

My boys have said some pretty funny stuff lately. Here are a couple of the examples: Kyle wondering if since I won't let him have a facebook account. How about a twitter account? or Kyle finding out that I lived in the dorms in college. Looking at me so shocked, he says "Don't you know those places are expensive?" Kyle asking me if there is a jail for animals who get in trouble and Conner replying "yes, there is.. the ZOO!" Conner's finger was hurting. I asked him if I could kiss it. He says, "I tried it, it won't work, but if it'd make you feel better you can."

Callie is starting communicate more and more. Our favorite is that when she is hungry, she takes you to the kitchen points at the food cupboard and says "num nums". She is also saying more people's names. She is starting to participate in family stuff and add her personaility. Brings us a lot of joy (and a little stress. :) )

I still have NOT gotten Callie's one year pictures taken... Maybe this week... geez

Jim is still not 100% after our shigella ordeal. Some of it is that it will take awhile for his colon to return to normal, but also he wasn't ever treated with antibotics since his tests were negative for shigella, although, the doctors feel like that is what he had so his body is still trying to fight the bacteria on its own. They finally gave him antibotics this week so hopefully he will start to have some energy soon.

Well, Callie is up from her nap. I need to finish the laundry, make supper, take Conner to socccer practice, and a million other things. While, of course, reducing my stress!! HA!

Labor Day Weekend

2011-09-07T20:32:00.002-05:00

I have been totally overwhelmed the past couple of weeks, but we took a little break over Labor Day. The weather wasn't great at the river, but we were able to spend a lot of time together, playing when we could, resting a lot, and doing some projects together.

I didn't have many pictures but here are a couple:

Kyle skiied again. He is really starting to enjoy that. It was the first time that we pulled Kyle behind Jim's parents boat. It took several tries with a couple different set of skiis, but we found a speed and a set of skiis that worked.

On Sunday, it was so cold, but the boys wanted to go tubing. So I put on my sweatshirt and went along. It was a great time with the boys even if I did scream like a girl cuz I was getting wet.

Kyle had his worst tubing wipeout too. He doesn't weigh very much so the wind got under the tube and flipped him over. He was pretty scared by it, but was o.k. praise the lord!

While we were tubing Callie and Wyatt (who are quickly becoming friends...) wanted to ride in the boat. They were such troopers. Grandma and Jim had their hands full, but these two weren't scared at all by the boat speed or anything. I couldn't get them smiling together, but they were very happy about sitting in the boat together..

Aren't they cute?

Jim's four wheeling weekend

2011-08-30T22:25:00.002-05:00

I was too sick and I had to work so I wasn't able to join Jim on his annual four wheeling event. It sounds like it was a great success. His Dad, one his friends and his children (which meant friends for my boys), and my boys were all able to go.

Jim's Dad took a lot of video, but less pictures. Here are a few taken by some of other four wheeling guys on Jim's first day. Jim had his first scary moment (well... that might be debatable I guess). I guess I will let the pictures speak for themselves...

Yes that's Jim truck. As one of Jim's friends so aptly said, The side of the truck no one is supposed to see...

Amazingly, the only damage was a small crack on the wheel fender. I suppose I should let you know that he was barely moving when it happened. He kind of tipped over in very slow motion and the guys did a great job getting him back on all fours. From what I hear anyway!!! :)

Wow..what happened to me?

2011-08-30T22:04:00.002-05:00

I have been rather absent from the blog haven't I? Well, as usual life happened. In other words, I got horribly sick. Potentially with what made Jim sick, but his tests showed no bacterial infection while mine showed preliminarily positive for shigella (similiar to salmonella or ecoli). Whew! It wiped me out for a good solid week. I wish I was being melodramatic, but honestly I am not. It took me days to recover (if I even am fully). I should get the final results sometime this week. The State Health Department even called to interview me in case other cases broke out and there was some sort of infected food or something out there.

It is not ideal to be sick especially at this time of year. I feel horribly behind at work and home, but here is what I know. I have had a rough year. I just have. Lots of yucky stuff has happened to me and around me. Yet in the past two weeks in midst of my latest crisis, I felt so immensely loved. My family, church family, and friends stepped in and helped me, loved on me, and encouraged me. On the flip side, other people in our congregation or near to our congregation have experienced immense pain and tragedy. There have been several funerals, cancer diagnoses, and just plain yucky stuff. Stuff yuckier than my stuff.

So I am thankful. I am thankful that my yucky stuff has been survivable. I am thankful my troubles were more of the temporary kind (minus losing my Dad of course). I am thankful that a heart that has been healing got a chance to be reminded that it was loved at its worse without reservation. I am thankful for my wonderful children who are flexible and resilient. I am thankful for a marriage to a wonderful man. I am thankful for a home, a job, and to live in the country I do. I am thankful to God who has chosen me, some one so unworthy to be chosen.

Thankful and once again humbled. It is a good place to be....

Back to School 2011

2011-08-21T18:50:00.004-05:00

My boys were troopers through the ordeal of the past week. Even when I had to confess that I messed up and missed backpack night, they stayed pretty positive about things. I told them we would go have a back to school morning (by going early to see their desks etc).

Luckily neither was starting at a new school or anything that was high anxiety. Both were excited about their teachers. They are both new to us unlike last year where we knew the kindergarden teacher already.

Daddy missed the back to school stuff, but the boys seemed o.k. with that as well.

Our traditional back to school picture on the first day of school. We took goofy pictures too, but I am still wore out from the stress of last week so I am going to skip posting those!
Kyle and his backpack. Interestingly enough neither boy chose a character backpack this year...

They got these new shirts a couple of weeks ago (because they are little obsessed with pirates of the carribean) and decided they wanted to match on the first day of school. I am thinking that years of them deciding to do things like that are quickly fading!

Callie, of course, wanted to be right in the middle of the action!!!!

Here is Kyle in his classroom. I am still in shock over the idea that I have a fourth grader!

Here is Kyle and his teacher Ms. Hewett. All of the moms I talked to said this is the fourth grade teacher you really want so hoping it is great year for Kyle. He seems pretty happy already, but then he got most of his buddies in his class so thinking that was more important than which teacher!!!!

Here is Conner in his first grade desk. He was a little more hesitant on the first day, but it helped that he knew a few of the kids in his class. There are three sections of first graders so he isn't as familiar as Kyle would be with only two sections (and 4 years of school together already). He did find one little friend so that seemed to help. His favorite buddy wasn't in his class, but we are thinking that might be a good thing!

Here is Conner and Mrs. Watters. Kyle did not have her in first grade, but Conner is pretty agreeable and we have heard wonderful things about her so thinking it should be a great fit as well!!!!

They also did well with other people besides Mommy meeting the bus for the first couple of days of school.

I can't express how thankful I was to have friends and family come to my aid this past week. It was so hard to figure out and plan since you never knew when he might go home, a doctor might come, and what not. One of the hardest things in those situations too is telling people what you need. Since you don't know what each day will hold, it is hard to know what you will need! I am decided that the day after one comes from the hospital after a long week is the perfect time to have someone bring supper. I will remember that when others face these circumstances!

That was not expected..

2011-08-21T18:27:00.003-05:00

Monday, Jim was feeling like he had an upset stomach and was experiencing several trips to the bathroom. The rest of us were kind of avoiding him like the plague (we didn't want to get sick). Tuesday, he got worse, and that night said he was in a lot of pain and went to urgent care. They prescribed some pain meds and anti-diaherra medicine.

Tuesday over night Jim's pain and trips ot the bathroom got worse. Then he started to have bleeding. So Wednesday morning, he got up and went to the ER. By the afternoon on Wednesday after some bloodwork and a catscan, they admitted him to the hospital. They could see on the catscan that he had pancolitis which means inflammation of the colon from beginning to end. When the ER doctor came in, he didn't even hesitate. He just said, we have to admit you because this pain is going to stay this way or get worse plus they need to determine what it is. The ER doctor said he thought it was symptomatic of an infectious colitis (infalmmation caused by bacteria or virus), but wouldn't know for sure until stool cultures came back.

Jim ended up being in the hospital through Friday around supper time. They kept him on IV and a pain pump. They also did a colonscopy to see if they could determine more. All of the cultures came back negative so there was some speculation that this was an acute inflammatory condition. In the end, though, they still think it was infectious because of how sudden it came on, what they saw in the colonscopy and the fact that Jim started to heal on his own without medical interevention (for the colitis). They intervened for pain and dehydration. They did take some biopsies that Jim will get tests results for this next week.

Jim is home and healing, but it is a slow process. He still is taking pain medication, very weak, and sleeping a lot. However, the bleeding has stopped, reduced bathrooms trips, and he has been able to eat. They have him on a lactose free diet for the next three weeks.

He is going to try to go to work tomorrow for atleast a half day and he is praying that he is healthy by next weekend so he will be able to go to Tall Corn (his annual off roading event).

We had planned to go spend the weekend with my family which we haven't seen since Callie's birthday in May, but we have stayed close to home instead.

If that wasn't enough to make it absolutely crazy week, we had the first day of school, missed backpack night, Jim's parents went to Florida for a long weekend, and while watching our kids on Friday night so we could sleep, Jim's brother had a racing heartbeat and had to be admitted to ICU for the night!!!!

We are thankful, though, that it wasn't anything more serious. We won't know that for sure until the biopsies come back, but it seems likely since he is healing. The other more serious conditions should require treatment to heal. We have been home all weekend just resting. Which is just what the doctor ordered.

August Update

2011-08-15T16:30:00.002-05:00

Wow! I know it has been a long time since I updated. The honest truth is that I have just been overwhelmed trying to keep up with life and try to enjoy even a little bit of the end of summer with my kids. I don't really feel like I get ahead, but like every day I get a little bit farther behind. Here is a quick update to let you know what we've been up to. There is more than this, but honestly I can't even remember what else we've been up to.

We reorganized offices at church so I have a new office mate. We have been trying to fit in a little time to decorate the space and make it more personal (why when we both feel swamped, we thought this was a good idea..I can not explain).
Jim is getting ready to go to Tall Corn (his annual off roading event) next weekend so he has been working on getting his truck ready. He lifted it and is now building a new bumper to hold his winch.
Works has been very busy for both Jim and I. Just a lot of extra stuff going on. Lots of meetings and extra commitments for both of us. Trying to balance that in the summer with kids at home more has been interesting.
We registered the boys for school. First and Fourth (how did that happen?). We also did the annual school shopping trip.
We have finally gotten our yard put back together after the egress windows a year and half ago. Geez. Now we need to weed/feed and plant grass seed.
I attended the Willow Creek Leadership Summit. It was really good.
Just trying to keep the house clean and spend some time with my children before they go to school on Thursday.

Here are some pictures of a little of the fun that we tried to fit into the schedule in the last few weeks.

Mike and Denise Gowen invited us out for an afternoon of waterskiing. It was rather cool and even rained a little bit, but didn't stop the fun!

Jim and Grant, our nephew, went wakeboarding together. Jim loves to wakeboard, but it usually throws his back out and causes several trips to the chiropractor. (He was there today and he didn't really have time so not sure how wise that was!)
They did several high fives for us, but we didn't catch one.
Here are they are waving as they went by the dock!

Kyle has really taken to waterskiing. This really adds a new dynamic to the fun!!!

He made a few turns and almost got over the wake (he will have to keep working on that one!!!)

He did get brave enough to let go and wave at us. We missed that picture, but here he is at the tailend of the wave!

Thursday is the first day of school and my father-in-law's 60th birthday. We took some time out on Sunday afternoon to celebrate him!!!!

Lots of thoughtful and funny gifts were given. It was a great time by all. My mother in law catered in Famous Daves. Happy Birthday Grandpa!!!!

Healthy again..we hope!

2011-08-03T14:21:00.004-05:00

Callie seems back to her sweet little self (well sometimes she isn't all that sweet, but most of the time) and I am feeling better too. It was kind of sad for me to feel like we missed another week of summer.

I know we had an awesome vacation, but somehow we have missed most of the fun summer things we usually do. Some of it is Jim's busyness with his new job, some changes with my job (all good stuff!), and the age of Callie making it a little harder to do stuff! Of course, this week of sickness didn't help either.

So I am suddenly looking at my bucket list for the summer and I am sad. School starts in two weeks and we haven't been to the pool, gone bike riding, had a picinic, gone to four queens for ice cream, and the list continues. We have had a couple fun weekend river trips and enjoyed strugis falls, but somehow we missed everything else that I associate with summer. So I am trying to make the last two weeks count as much as I can.

A dear friend of mine invited us to go for free bowling today. I have been a little hesitant to bowl since it reminds me of my dad, but it was o.k. I wish my Dad was here to coach Kyle in his bowling because he is old enough now that they could have that moment. Not that he has to be some great bowler but just because I want him and my Dad to have that experience. Grandpa passing along a skill that he was REALLY good at and because it would've been so fun for the both of them. Instead, I will share the few tips that my dad passed along to me (I so did not inherit his skill) and say this is what Grandpa used to tell me. I do have some bowling badges that my dad won in tournaments (one for each kid) and I will someday put them along with a hat of grandpas and a picture of them with grandpa in a shadow box for them. Hard to believe he's been gone 7 months. Seems like a long time, but in other ways, it hasn't been very long at all. I am reminded more recently because in our normal routine, we would say, we haven't seen Dad in awhile, lets plan a time to go see him.

After bowling, my friend's children and mine did not want to be separated so we had lunch at mcdonalds and played at the park. Honestly, I didn't really want to stop hanging with my friend either! It was good to hang out and do something that is summer fun. We plan to do something next wednesday too. Normally I work a half day on wednesday, but this week I have to work extra saturday and next week work all day friday so I am taking these half days with my boys.

Friday we are hoping to do the pool, maybe a picinic the next week and four queens over the weekend! Not sure on the bike ride, but if I can fit it in.. I will...

Poor Callie!

2011-07-28T15:05:00.002-05:00

I mentioned in my last post that Callie had gotten sick at the river. We figured with the antibotics that she would be up in running pretty quickly.

Well, we were wrong. On Monday, Callie started to get worse. Her fever went up and she started sleeping alot. From Monday evening through Wednesday evening, she was only wake maybe a total of 4 hours. I was getting worried. I have never had except a newborn sleep over 20 hours a day. I called the doctor, but they said until she still sleeping like that on Friday, as long as she is eating and drinking, it is o.k.

Last night, she woke up for a good two hours, but then slept all night, woke up for maybe an hour and a half this morning and now has been asleep for five hours. Since she ate breakfast, I thought I would let her sleep a little longer before I wake her up. Her temperature is lower more in the 100 degree range and when I wake her up, she is responsive and lets me know what it is she wants and doesn't want. That is some progress I think, but wow that is still a lot of sleep.

She doesn't really get down and walk around though. That has to be some awful virus she got in addition to the ear infection for her to sleep like that.

I am praying none of the rest of us get it especially Jim or I. We can't afford to sleep for 4 days straight in order to get better!

River Weekend 2011

2011-07-24T21:37:00.011-05:00

It was our 5th annual friends river weekend this weekend. This year was the best one we have had yet (we say that every year, but it is true). This year, the Gowens and some of their family joined us. Mr. Mike as Kyle named him when he was little is an extremely talented skier and teacher so we were pretty excited to have a second boat and lots of education. Most everyone did something or learned something new! Mr. Mike said he logged 8 hours of boat time over the weekend (actually boat running time..not including all the waiting and getting ready).

Here are some of the pictures that I happened to get of the fun! We had 6 people ski for the first time, several people ski in pairs, some new tubing fans, and lots of people learn how to ski better! These are all messed up in order of the weekend, but oh well!

Kathleen had never skiied with someone so her and I gave it a whirl. We got up on the first try thanks to our boat driver we think. The best part about this is that Kyle was in the boat with Mike and we yelled for him to take pictures. He hasn't even really used my camera, but he got this shot and about 12 others that were really good!
This was the highlight of my weekend. Kyle made the transition from skiing with the boom arm to getting up behind the boat on his own! He wasn't the only one! Four other kids got this far and two made it from teh boom arm to the short rope!

This picture warms my heart. He was SOOOO pleased when he got up. He struggled a bit more than the other kids to master this. Anyway, when he got up and realized he was really skiing this was the look on his face! He got up 6 times. Mr. Mike told him needed to practice on his getting up skills so he kept getting up and then skiing for a very short time and letting go so he could do it again. Mr. Mike had way more patience than me!!!

Another great highlight of the weekend. Conner starting jumping off the dock where he couldn't touch with Daddy and once by himself and he discovered tubing. Conner has tubed before many times, but always slow, very controlled, and quite nervous. Well, some reason today, he decided he was ready for wild rides! He was so adorable in his enthusiasm for it. His wild was wild enough for me, but nothing compared to the teen boys!

The other boat was at the sandbar so after tubing, we dropped the boys off to go climb the mountain of sand!

Just wanted you to see some of the wild Conner thought was cool!

Just cute... Conner being like the bigger boys.

After Conner realized he loved tubing, he came and got me and asked if I would go with him and Kyle. He told me not to worry, we would go fast and I might be a little scared, but we wouldn't fall in! After seeing Kyle learned to ski, this was the best moment for me of the weekend. Conner was so thrilled and I was honored to share the fun with him!

He doesn't appear to like this does he?

Me and my boys!

I really did not want to post this one, but I had to. Conner requested it. He wanted everyone to see how much braver my boys are than me! I like to think I am more aware of what's coming, but Conner was pretty proud to be braver than Mommy. I guess I will let him have his moment!

I loved this one because you can see Kyle putting his arm over to keep Conner on the tube! In reality, I think Conner was safer in the middle holding on than Kyle is in this picture, but it warms a momma's heart!

Just a cute picture to share!

Due to Callie being sick, I missed my annual adult girls tubing run. Luckily Denise Gowen was there to fill in. They were still laughing later so I think so! I think my neck and body are probably thankful I missed this one.

Callie had kind of a rough weekend. She was a bit off on Friday, but she did play on the beach, swim a lot and go on her first waverunner ride with Daddy. Saturday morning, though, she would cry if I put her down so I thought she was tired. It took me several tries to get her to bed and then slept for four hours AND I had to wake her up. Who knows how long she would've slept. By Sunday, it was obvious that she was running a fever and sick. We wanted to maximize river time, but also catch urgetn care because we suspected a potential ear infection. We made it just in time. She does have an infection in one ear and a really red sore throat so we got her some meds.

Also as a side note, Callie and the boys are all on one policy, but when we got to the pharmacy tonight, they told us that Callie's insurance had been cancelled (not the boys though). We had to pay full price for the medicine. OUCH!!!! Hopefully, we can sort it all out tomorrow and then send in a pharmacy claim!

I have tons of wonderful pictures of everyone and all of the fun they had, but I will let them share their pictures on their blogs and facebook. It was so fun to cheer everyone on as they learned new skills, laugh, relax, and enjoy life with friends. I can't wait til next year!

Happy Sixth Birthday to Conner!

2011-07-23T21:26:00.004-05:00

This past week, Conner turned 6. He had a great time celebrating this much anticipated day. The Sunday before his birthday we had a party. Then on his actual birthday, we had pancake breakfast and then went out to applebees for a birthday supper!!!

The traditional stack of pancakes with sprinkles!!!
Conner wanted to have a Pirate of the Carribean party. That cake was a bit beyond what I wanted to tackle so we ordered this cute cake from target!

We had just a small supper and presents party, but we went ahead and decorated some!

Conner dressed as a pirate for his party! Here is his imaginext air craft carrier. He loves this, but will probably grow out of way too quick. However, knowing that the days of buying cute boy toys for him almost gone, I told Grandma to go ahead!!!! They grow up too fast as it is..why rush it?

Kyle helping us read a card that Conner was struggling with!

Blowing out the cake. He seemed thrilled with all of the birthday celebrating. We fussed a little extra because Conner just saw Callie's party and always thinks he gets less in life than Kyle so we wanted him to know just how special we think he is!!!! He might be the middle child, but he will always be my baby boy and the only momma's boy I got!!!

Kyle and Waterskiing

2011-07-20T11:33:00.003-05:00

This past Saturday, we got a chance to go out to the Wahawks ski team lake and ski for the first time this year (that is highly abnormal for us, but the water was so high over the 4th and the cruise kept us away in June). It was especially fun for my niece and Kyle who got to waterski with the boom arm. They both did GREAT! Here are a few pictures of the fun.

Unfortunately, I don't have any photos of Kyle once they moved the weight on the boat over to the other side, raising up the boom arm and allowing Kyle to stand up much better! He skiied several times and once he went out with Mike in the boat by himself to ski. He told me that skiing was TOTALLY awesome.

He is pretty pumped about this weekend because Mike and Denise are going to go to the river with us for our annual friend weekend so he will be able to practice again. He isn't quite ready for the rope (still relys too much on the stability of the boom arm) so this is the only way he can ski for now. Maybe this weekend, hell try the rope! I will let you know.

Misc Cruise Pictures

2011-07-13T15:48:00.003-05:00

Well I think one month after our amazing cruise and vacation that I have finally come to the end of my cruise pictures. Are you sighing a big sigh of relief? Next plan is to post them to facebook. :) I had some general photos that I thought were fun and wanted to share, but they didn't necessarily fit into other posts so I forgot them so here goes.

Kyle mid-week started collecting wristbands. He wanted to sign up for as many things as he could that would get him a wristband.. Just funny!

For my children, extended time with their cousins was a really neat part of this trip. Since we don't see each other as much through the winter as summer, this was really Callie's first chance to get to know her cousins! It was so fun to see her loving and playing with all of them. (And nice for mommy to have other people to entertain her when we had long times in the airport etc!)

There was laughter about all of the girls in the pink strollers in the airport!

Just a cute picture of my boys and the ship!!!

Love this shot of Daddy and Daughter!

One night the boys went to the kids program where they had a pirate pirade all over the ship!

Just loved getting Callie all dressed up for dinners! So Cute!

Not the greatest picture, but another night of her all cute.

Anyway, I think that is it folks! On to other topics! Coming up is Kyle's attempt to learn to water ski this weekend and Conner's 6th birthday!

Second Formal Night

2011-07-13T15:32:00.002-05:00

We dressed up for both formal nights, but the second one resulted in some great pictures that I wanted to share with you! The first one is only part of a 11 by 14, but it was so sweet of all three children that I scanned what would fit into the scanner for you!!

Then I really liked this family shot because everyone looked nice and Callie was smiling!

Johnny Rockets

2011-07-11T12:16:00.002-05:00

We are lunch at Johnny Rockets on our last at sea day. I have to confess that the hamburger and onion rings I had here might possibly have been my favorite meal from the entire week. Oh my was it yummy!!! They were really nice and even gave Kyle his own milkshake for free instead of having to share with Conner!

Here are the boys dancing with the guys when they did their dancing break! I also discovered that Callie likes onion rings! Although, she has suddenly got rather picky at home so I don't know if she is getting more teeth or is just getting picky...

Lots of fun sitting on the deck watching the water go by, eating yummy food, and some good laughs. I would go back in a heart beat!!!

Flowrider part 2

2011-07-11T11:18:00.003-05:00

Well, I promised pictures of me on the flow rider so here they are. The workers were so nice because I was rather nervous about starting! Can you tell from my face?

This is from the night where we rented the flow rider just for our family.

Then, of course, Jim trying it standing up. He didn't last as long this way and wasn't doing tricks right away like on the boogie board, but he was happy to say he did it!

I love that man

2011-07-09T22:32:00.002-05:00

Life has been crazy for this past year with lots of loss and change for our family especially me. One thing has remained constant, though, and that is my amazing husband. He offers me such unconditional love and stands by me no matter how I feel, think or sometimes act.

Last week sometime I told him that my love tank was a little empty. Not from him but just in general. I kind of felt like our children were getting less of me than they should because I didn't feel like I had a whole lot to give. I had been trying to take more me time, pray more, study more, and just generally recharge, but it was slow going I felt.

Probably getting a summer cold making me feel all tired and yucky didn't help either. But back to my husband. He has been really busy at work, learning a new job, and taking extra time to make sure he does a good job. He also has had lots of other little things to take care and extra watching of the kids so I can do meetings I need to. We've been sort of trading kids back and forth a bit the last couple of weeks.

This morning, he got up early to go get the skid loader to finally deal with the yard that never got repaired after the egress windows (over a year ago!). He left Kyle watching Callie and let me sleep a little while longer (until Conner came to tell me they just couldn't play with her anymore because she just smelled too bad. HA!).

When he got back, I was just trying to clean up some of the clutter around the house. He told me that I needed to be all done at 4 because he was taking me on a date! He had lined up a babysitter and everything. He also told me to be sure and bring my list. The other day I had told him I had so many things I wanted to talk him about that I had made a list!

He said he wanted to put some love in my love tank! It is moments like that you feel so blessed. He remembered what I said one evening when I was tired, feeling cruddy, and a little overwhelmed by life and then made a plan to help. He even remembered my silly little list (and didn't act like it was silly at all).

So tonight, I enjoyed a dinner out with my hubby where he tried new foods without a complaint, open the doors for me, sat and listened to everything last thing on my list (not that we decided everything, but certainly made progress), and then took me to a movie just for fun.

I would say a nice deposit was made into my love tank tonight. After almost 15 years of marriage, I still adore him, best friend a gal could have! Thanks honey!!!!

Xel-Ha (Playa de Carman)

2011-07-08T17:14:00.009-05:00

One of the ports that we landed in was Cozumel. We didn't get much of a chance to explore Cozumel because we left Callie with Grandma and Grandpa and went to the main land that day. We had really wanted to take Kyle snorkeling because we knew he would LOVE this. However, we really wanted to take Conner and we knew that he would be very nervous about something like this.

So we decided to go to Xel-ha which is an ecological waterpark in the Playa de Carmen. Since it is half salt and half fresh, we knew it would that would be better than snorkeling in really salty water. We also know that this area is protected so there aren't big waves sloshing you around and they keep out sharks and creatures like that. Oh and the fact that you don't have to jump off a boat in the middle of nowhere, you can walk into the water to snorkel. Plus we knew we would see fish. You never know when you just jump off somewhere. So even though it would be a really long day, we decided to give it a try!

We had to take a ferry (took about 30 minutes) across the bay area to the mainland and then probably only 30 minutes on a bus, but we got to see open ocean, beautiful beaches in playa de carmen and some of mexico as we traveled. Unfortunately, the ferry made Kyle get seasick, but he recovered pretty quickly afterwards.

We saw lots of these running around at Xel-ha. It was funny to be eating and see one of these run by. It was all inclusive so all of the food at the park was included in the cost of admission. Not that we had much time to eat. We had about 4 hours to be there, but by the time you get all of your snorkel equipment, get Conner to stop crying because he was scared about this little adventure, and figure out where you wanted to go and what you wanted to see, you have wasted A LOT of time!

As you walked in, they had areas where you could watch the dolphins and for an extra fee, pay to swim with them! We watched for a bit as they swam and jumped around!

They also had a lot of birds around. You could if you wanted, get your picture taken with the bird on your shoulder. What's funny about this is Conner is kind of ducking because they were so noisy, I think he was worried they were going to fly into him or something!

Isn't this beautiful? I don't think the pictures do justice, but you almost didn't have to put your face in the water to see the fish, it was that clear. There were lots of fish around the rocky areas. We saw tons of different colored ones and we did see a small stingray, but the picture of that one didn't turn out so well.

Lots of people snorkeling, but it didn't seem crowded really! We did figure out that it is very easy to underestimate how big it is. You think you will swim over to something only to realize that it is a much LONGER swim than you expected.

This floating walkway has a net under it and to the left is the open ocean and then the protected inlet on the right. This swayed a lot as you walked so we were a little nervous!

Now we start our adventure and switch to the underwater cameras. Since it was film, you didn't know how your pictures would turn out. Here are the boys in their snorkel equipment getting ready to go snorkeling!

They had lots of beautiful walkways that went by cenotes that were really fun to explore as well!

Conner did snorkel..the proof is coming soon, but after a bit, we got him a tube and he floated around with us while we snorkeled and then as we floated down the river as they call it, I joined him!

Conner didn't actually mind putting his face in the water to see the fish...what he hated and made him nervous was the floating even though he had a life jacket. Here we are after we finally got him to stop crying about it!

Most of the time, Conner rode around on Daddy's back while Daddy snorkeled! Jim was VERY tired at the end of this little adventure. Especially since we got too far out and had to put the boys on a tube and swim full out to get back on time!!!

They had a cave that the water went through. It was pretty cool and there were tons of fish in there.. Mainly because the picture guys were feeding them. In fact, they threw out a bunch of food right in front of me and I got swarmed by like 50 fish. I am not exaggerating and they weren't all little either!!! I confess to letting out a little yelp!

Here is Kyle. He could've snorkeled longer than we were there. He got the most snorkeling because he snorkeled all while we fussed with Conner. We almost lost him a couple of times because he wouldn't come up for air (obviously) and he would just follow swarms of fish that he saw not realizing he was going in the wrong direction from us!

Jim underwater!!!! I think Kyle took this one!

Picture of Kyle underwater!

Conner and Daddy going into the cave.

Conner snorkeling!!!! He was excited about the fish he would see becuase he would bop up and tell you, but he still claims he doesn't like snorkeling! Although he says he is glad he did it, he just doesn't want to do it again!!!

Probably the only underwater picture of fish that actually turned out!

Conner snorkeling again. He could touch in this little area and loved that. He would've happily snorkeled in this one little place all day I think. He just didn't want to have to float around (except on the tube..he liked that!)

Isn't this the coolest picture? There is a hole in ceiling of the rock in the underground river and they have a camera guy up top who will take your picture. We saw this on our way out and thought that was worth purchasing!!!

All in all, it was a great day and made for some wonderful memories.. Even for Conner!

Fourth of July Weekend

2011-07-05T12:23:00.008-05:00

We had a great fourth of July weekend with the family. The actual 4th wasn't that great for me personally because I came down with a cold so I didn't feel the greatest, but I did get to take a really long nap so that is good.

We are back home today. I didn't have to work today and I am so glad. I am still feeling rather yucky and am happy to have a day at home. My boys are being so sweet and helpful to me as well. So nice when you are not feeling well to have extra hands to help with Callie!

Here are a few pictures from the weekend. THen I am going to take a nap. Here is to hoping Callie has a long nap today. Swimming lessons start tonight so it will be good to rest this afternoon.

We didn't get the boat or wave runners out this weekend because huge trees (Full size ones like this one) kept getting stuck on the dock. While there were a lot of boats, tubs and what not out this weekend, we chose not to take the risk. Also it was different too because there was no beach, The water was so high that the entire beach was covered. It didn't stop us from having fun, just a different sort of fun!

Grandma Muffie brought a slip and slide and a pool to put at the end of the slide for the swing set. The kids had a lot of fun on both of these!!!!

They also roped off a pretty big swimming area so the kids and some of the adults had a wonderful time swimming!

It was Callie's first time playing in the river. She was a tiny baby last summer so this was all new to us. To our great surprise, Callie loved the river and didn't even seem to mind the life jacket. I posted several pictures of her fun since it was her first time.

Look at her lounging and floating!! Isn't that cute?

She would even just lay back in the life jacket and float. You could also just hold on to the handle of the top of the jacket and she would float around kicking her feet! She also liked to sit on the dock, hold my hand, dangle her feet in the water and watch the big kids play.

The water was so high you had to walk in the water to get out to the dock!! The end part Kyle is sitting on is normally on sand!

Callie loved standing in these little tubes because she could keep her balance in the water and walk around. The only problem was she kept going where she couldn't touch. Luckily she floated!

He is getting so big. Where is the time going? It really hits me how old Kyle is getting when I think that Conner is going to be 6 in two weeks! I need to start planning for his birthday I think!

She liked floating around in this too. It has a bottom so she could stand and look out!

Conner is still the least brave of the older cousins, but he is getting braver... slowly but surely!

I would say Callie's first river weekend was a great success!!!!!!

Grand Caymans Pirate Adventure

2011-07-01T14:50:00.012-05:00

In the Grand Caymans, we went on an afternoon Pirate Adventure. The pirate boat was cool, the guys had good costumes, but their pirate acting and what they did was just not very impressive. However, we got to swim off the side of the boat in the ocean (you could walk the plank) so all in all, we had a great afternoon. I just thought I could've come up with a better acting experience that might not have scared little kids and would've been a bit more fun!

Before we went on the excursion, we shopped a bit around the grand caymans. We went on my mom's birthday so we want to honor her by getting her a gift since we couldn't call her that day! They had lots of pirate statues all around so the boys wanted to their pictures taken! They also had participated the night before in a Pirate night in Adventure Ocean so they had their pirate bandanas on!

Here is the boat that we went on. We are actually on the tender going ashore here, but we were pretty certain that this was the pirate ship!

All of us on the boat enjoying punch!

They made all of the kids line up to get inspected and what not (the part that was really not as cool as it could've been). They gave them all brushes to scrub the decks!

Kyle srubbing the decks!

They tied up a mom and tossed "diamonds" on her (ice cubes)!

Then everyone who wanted to walk the planks could! There was a low one and a high one and we all had a good time jumping and swimming except Callie. She would've like swimming, but since Conner can be nervous when he has to float, we decided that we would just take turns swimming and leave Callie on the ship!

Here is Jim jumping off the high plank!

Here is Kyle walking the lower plank and jumping. Grandpa jumped off after him!

Just thought this was a cool picture as we weren't too far from our cruise ship!

This is all of our family that went swimming minus Myself who is taking the picture!!! This was one excursion that most of us did together so that was kind of fun!

Falmouth, Jamaica

2011-06-30T20:19:00.008-05:00

When you got off the boat, there were musicians playing jamacian music and lots of these guys in stilts. They were super nice and catered to the kids! A lot of the area was under construction, but it will be a beautiful tourist area when they get it finished!

Callie is sound asleep for this picture!

One of the guys on stilts make the boys balloon swords, they had a good time with those!

We didn't have excrusions planned in Jamaica. We figured we would just get off the boat, explore a bit, and then get back on. They had tours of the town for 10.00 so Jim's parents and us decided to see what the town was like. Here we are all getting ready to go.

There is no story behind this picture, I am simply posting it because it is SOOO CUTE!

They toured us around town. It isn't really much of a town, but it was interesting. The stark contrast between the tourist area and the local areas was interesting. Our tour guides were fun especially when they explained that they say No Problem Mon because they don't have problems only situations!

We stop at a local cafe for refreshments while on the tour. Honestly, we thought the tour was never going to end! We thought for 10.00, it would an hour tops. Honestly, it was a good solid two hours atleast.

Callie was very facinated with these little crabs that one of the tour guides got from the edge of the water.

After the tour, we did a little shopping. The boys were fascinated by all the carved animals that the Jamacians made. They were so nice to carve the boys names into them with the year. It was a great souvenir and lots of fun for us to shop for. Conner's is a crocodile.

Kyle decided on a dolphin!

The Dreamworks Experience

2011-06-30T20:06:00.004-05:00

Royal Carribean recently added the Dreamworks experience to some of their cruise ships. Our ship was one of them. So the boys had fun seeing how many of the characters they could manage over the course of the week to get their picture taken with. They weren't out a lot so it wasn't the easiest thing, but they managed to get quite a few. They missed the hippo and king julius from Madagascar. Honestly, their favorite was probably Kung Fu Panda but then one afternoon, we did get to watch King Fu Panda 2 in 3D in the Arcadia Theater!

Just for you Mom!!!

2011-06-26T20:10:00.001-05:00

The Flow Rider Part One

2011-06-26T17:05:00.005-05:00

The day after Labadee, we docked in Falmouth, Jamacia. We didn't have an excursion planned so we went down to the Flow rider for a morning boogie boarding session. Jim and Kyle decided they were going to give it a try. Kyle really impressed me because he and Jim stood in line and then Kyle went first! He actually did very well. Here are a couple of pictures him boogie boarding for the very first time! He did it twice that morning (there was quite a line so in an hours time, you could only get two really short turns, but fun for him) even though the first time, he really wiped out!

Doesn't he look so good?

I am not sure if I was impressed by this or annoyed, but the first time out, Jim gets on and then immediately waves at me. Seriously....the first time you are supposed to hold on for dear life!! Or maybe that is just me!!! HA!

Here is a video of Jim's second time on the boogie board. The sad part is all of his little tricks, he did them on the first time too. Just watched what others were doing and did it too...

Here is a little clip of Kyle trying to get up on his knees with some help. The top of the flow rider has a lot of water so when you go wiping out for someone as little as Kyle is a little overwhelming. There was no trying to get on our knees after this one.

More to come.. Pictures of Jim standing up on the flowrider and pictures of me giving it a try! There will no video of that!!!!

Labadee Haiti

2011-06-26T16:25:00.005-05:00

Our first port of call was Lababdee, Haiti. This is actually a small pennisula that Royal Carribean owns. They have really made it a very nice area with excellent facilities that you can't help but enjoy. The boat even brings off a pretty impressive bbq onto the island for you to eat for lunch.

You do feel somewhat bad though to be enjoying such a wonderful oasis knowing that the other side of Haiti is still in terrible turmoil. Also when you come to the end of where royal carribean owns the land, there is high fences with barbed wire on them. I know that is to keep us safe, but still so very sad.

This was just a wonderful wonderful day. I have a lot of pictures from that day and honestly mostly of Callie. The truth is and I am not the pictues willconvey this, but Callie loved the ocean. She pretty much wanted to be in all of the time (which resulted in her and I getting sunburn despite our attempts to keep everyone sunblocked). It was so hot too that it felt really good to be in the water for long periods of time!

So after the zipline, I went back to the ship, got my family and we headed to the beach!

I spent most of my day swimming with Callie. A friend sent us too a cute picture of her pushing me around on a float, but I couldn't figure out how to get the picture out of the email. She loved that, but she kept pushing to wear she couldn't touch and then I would almost fall off trying to pick her up so she wouldn't go under. She also wanted nothing to do with just floating around with Mommy. That wasn't close enough to the water for her!
Truly...she LOVED this.. Look how clear that water is!

There was lots of swimming and playing with the cousins! While the big kids all played at the aquapark, Alex and Conner who were too little had a great time with their floats!

Later in the day, Kyle and his cousin Hunter had a good time as well!!! They got smart and all started to hold hands so they wouldn't float apart!

Most of the time Addie joined in the fun as well!!!

Isn't that beautiful? I should've taken more pictures of the island and beach for you to see, but sometimes you are so busy taking it and enjoying it that you dont' think to take pictures to remember it by too much!

Out in the deeper water, they had an aquapark. It was 15.00 to go for about an hour. The older kids really seemed to like it. It has this huge slide, several trampolines, lots of climbing structures. Callie and I traveled over to try to get some pictures, but this is all I got. Callie either wanted the camera or wanted to get out of my arms into the water so I had to settle with the fact that I atleast got a picture!!!!

Later in the day, Callie discovered sand! Then she was happy to sit in the shallower water and play with the sand!!!

GO GO GO!!!

Another family photo of us all!!!!

Callie

2011-06-24T16:51:00.003-05:00

So I am taking a break from my vacation blog posts! I sure hope you aren't sighing a sigh of relief, because I still haven't even finished our first port of call yet!!!!

I have never had a baby girl before. I know that seriously shocks you huh? :) Once in awhile, there are moments where I see glimpses of the difference between boys and girls. It can catch me off guard in a good way. This morning was one of those moments.

Callie without anyone really teaching her really likes her baby and will often choose to play with baby over other toys. Now we think its cute so there is a lot of encouraging her that happens in our house. Anyway, as I was blogging this morning, she was playing and it was just so cute that I had to share....

Then just cuz I can't help myself, here is photo of her driving her little truck around. She has figured out how to get on and off and move forward. Isn't her joy about it just precious?

The Zipline!!!!

2011-06-24T10:28:00.006-05:00

So all of the adult ladies on our trip decided to try something new and do the zipline. We took the early morning slot at 8 a.m. As a side note, this was probably the hottest I was all week. At 8 in the morning, you were sweating just standing!

So having read people's reviews and watched some video, I was definitely a little nervous about this. This is supposed to be one of the longer and faster ziplines in the world. I would say more of an excited nervousness, but still nervous. Funny thing is that I don't think it was nearly the rush that I thought it was going to be. I wasn't scared at all (my stomach did a little flip flop for the second you stepped off the platform and the the first practice on the little zipline, but no real adrenaline rush I don't think). It was just fun. I could've and would've easily done it a second or third time if it wasn't so pricey! I just don't like the feeling of falling, but you didn't feel that for even a second.

Here are a few pictures of the fun:

All of the girls getting ready to get off the ship and go on our adventure. It was really fun to do it together especially since none of us had done it before.

Lots of giggles, funny comments, and general fun!
Suzy and I in the harnesses before we headed to the practice zip line!

This is a picture of the top of the big zipline from where you end!!

This is what you see on the platform where you start. Isn't that totally amazing? That pennisula you see is owned by Royal Carribean in Haiti. It was a really nice beach area with amazing facilities, but more on that later!!! See why that first second of letting go caused a bit of a stomach flip? That is a long way down there and you are only attached by a couple of clips,big clips, but still!

Here I am all harnessed up and ready to go.

Thanks to my sister in law who brought her camera along and shared the photos!!!

No pictures of us up high. Just no way to do that really, but here I am near the end. The gal in front is my sister in law Katie and you can see me doing the torpedo position in the back. I had to do that most of the way otherwise, they said I wouldn't make it bottom. Sure didn't want that to happen!!!! My mother in law doesn't weigh much and I guess she stopped just short of the landing platform.

Here I am coming in to land in the normal position!

Jim was a little jealous that us girls were doing this so as a father's day surprise, I booked him a time too. He had to go alone, but he didn't mind. His dad waited at the bottom for him. Here is a video of him coming down the zipline and landing!

First formal night and Callie is easily entertained..

2011-06-24T09:44:00.002-05:00

I am not moving too quickly through my pictures for you am I? I am still on the first full day on the ship! Good thing about the blog is, you can stop reading at any point!!! HA!

So the first formal night was a bit overwhelming as I am not used to getting us all ready, but I loved this dress that I found and everyone looked so nice. Callie was VERY tired so she wasn't all that thrilled with it! She was much happier on the second formal night, but that is way later in the picture queue!

This is a professional photo on the ship of that night. Very Nice!
I couldn't help myself. Callie isn't smiling, but I just loved this picture, plus you can see the dining room and our table. We were at that table right in the front of the stairs. The ony difference is that the table was turned 90 degrees!

Just a picture I took of the dining room as we were sitting down to dinner!

Then on to something totally unrelated. Callie LOVED the bathroom of the cruise ship especially the shower. If you at all left the door open, she moved very quickly to get in there. Here are some pictures of her fun!

p.s. Callie starting walking like 6 to 8 steps at time this morning. Of course, she won't do it so I can get it on video for my mom, but I shall keep trying!!!

Lots of Swimming

2011-06-22T19:50:00.004-05:00

It was really hot on the cruise so we hit the pools a lot (this was different from when just Jim and I cruised), but it was lots of fun especially knowing other family to swim with.

On the first day, we went swimming, attend a REALLY good ice skating show in the afternoon, and then had our first formal night (I will post pictures of that later!). Plus lots of exploring of the kid's areas and what not. The boys went on the first night after formal dinner to Adventure Ocean where they had a Star Wars themed night. We never sent Callie to her area, but you could check out bags of fisher price toys and then exchange them throughout the week. That was fun for her.

Anyway, here are some pictures of swimming from throughout the week!

Callie could only swim in this one little designated area (see below for more context). She seemed to enjoy it, though. The older boys couldn't swim with her which was a little sad, but here is Kyle coming over to see her from outside the pool. He is rewarding her with a BIG KISS!
On the last day, there weren't as many people and the pool attendant let the boys in long enough to just get a picture of them (and apparently Jim's hairy legs).

They can this small pool that moved in a circle and the boys thought it was great fun. This is all in their H20 zone.

There was a cup in the pool one day! So fun for Callie...

They really enjoyed the pools!

There was a small deep pool in the H20 zone that Kyle enjoyed jumping into.

Here is a look at the whole area. The round pool is to the left with the baby pool behind it. Then in the back was the deeper pool. To the right were two hot tubs. Conner liked those too. He called them the Hot Pools! I didn't get in them much because it was hot and I was a little sunburned for most of the week.

I should post a picture of her standing in this suit. She looks like a little ballerina.

I do have to say though that I was very tired of sunblock by the end of this trip.

Even if it was hot this week, I don't think my boys could've talked me into a trip to the pool...not if I need to sunblock everyone!!!

Boarding the ship!

2011-06-20T20:53:00.003-05:00

We all wore our matching shirts on boarding day! At first it seemed a little odd, but as the day went on it was actually kind of fun. There were several other groups wearing matching shirts and it started lots of fun conversations with others. It was cool to get our picture together. This is the only time that we are all in a picture so fun memories.

Plus it was easy to find people that belonged in our group. We all rode from Orlando to the port in a couple of small buses. It was fun as we turned into the port and we all saw the boat for the first time. People were amazed by the size and really started to get excited!

Here is a bunch of us standing in line.

It was pretty easy and relatively quick to get through the process. After getting on the boat, we went right for lunch and some exploring!!!!!

The boys on the upper deck checking out the scenery!!!

In the middle of the boat, they had a promenade. It had several shops, a pizza shop, and a coffee shop. It was fun to hang out there plus very close to us for snacks (the windjammer buffet and dining room were on the opposite end of the ship from us)

Here we are in the hall outside our room once we went to check it out. I REALLY wish that I had a picture of our room to share with you. It was so neat. It had a small alcove with a set of bunk beds in it that the boys were in. They loved this. Another thing they loved was they had their own sea passes which doubled as room keys. They would race to the room to see who could open it (and sometimes go in one and a time so they could both do it!)

The beginning..traveling!

2011-06-20T20:33:00.003-05:00

Well, I thought I'd start at the beginning and share our vacation with you. Not that you probably want to know all details, but it helps me to make the memories last longer! It was such a great trip. I am happy to be home to my house, but not so much the cooking, laundry, or having to go to work. I am fairly certain I could've stayed another few days!

We were really proud of our children. They traveled so well. On the way there, there were no delays and it was a pretty easy trip. Callie was realitvely good on the plane (but I have to confess I was ready to see it land). We spent Saturday night then in a hotel in Orlando. We ordered pizza as a family and then slept in a bit!

Here is Callie in the plane looking out the window! She slept part of the flight and then we had to entertain her for the second half, but no screaming was involved so we were pretty thankful. The boys are seasoned travelers at 5 and 9 (hard to believe since my first real vacation was in 5th grade). They were just great!

The next morning before heading to the Pier we went swimming. We discovered that Callie LOVES the water. We thought it was just the bathtub, but apparently she loves the water in general!!!

Swim Swim Swim Swim

The boys hanging out with Daddy!!!

Some of the fun of traveling with cousins. Lots of cousins to jump in with, play with, and have races against! Definitely makes swimming more fun. The best part of this is it is like 9 am and we weren't even cold!

Wow! This is amazing!

2011-06-16T09:13:00.000-05:00

We are having a great time! The weather has been great (VERY HOT) but sunny and no rain so far. Ellen is sun burned (and callie a little) despite our best attempts to avoid sunburn. The kids are doing wonderfully. The boys say going on a cruise is awesome. I am not sure we are getting much rest, but we are making great memories. I can’t wait to share more pictures with you and tell you all about it. The week is going TOO FAST!

Monday was a sea day and consisted of swimming, exploring, and resting (Ellen had a bit of cold, but luckily zi-cam beat it!).

Tuesday we were in Lababdee. We did the zipline. That was amazing and not scary at all. The ocean was beautiful and the kids swam and swam. Callie LOVES the ocean. We couldn’t keep her out of it. She swam as much as the boys pretty much. (and got her first little sunburn, but she is a trooper).

Wednesday was Jamaica and that was fun too! We took a trolley tour and explored the island. The boys got some cool souvenirs.

Today is Grand Caymans. We are going on a Pirate Cruise! The boys are very excited about it.

On the ship we have had amazing food, rode the flow rider, watched the ice show, swam a lot, watched a very cool magician show, and the boys have attended boy a stars war adventure night, and participated in a shipwide pirate pirade. Oh and we have got our pictures taken with shreck and Fiona! So much to do and so little time! You can’t do it all. I look forward to telling you all about it in much more detail when we get home.

Testing

2011-06-10T10:26:00.000-05:00

I can hardly believe it, but we are packed (minus the last minute stuff and reweighing the suitcases). We have been waiting for this trip for over a year and tomorrow we leave. It will go by so fast I am sure. We are pretty excited!

I wasn’t going to take my computer, but then thought I might really like to have it at night to organize pictures if kids go to bed a bit earlier than I might want to! I am not sure I will ever actually connect to the internet since you have to pay, but thought I should test an email blog post just in case I might connect and update my blog!

Let’s see if it works!

Ellen Trunnell

Wee Kids Coordinator

319-290-6472

Prairie Lakes Church

Love God. Love People. Influence the World.

E is for extras and eats (and some other stuff)

2011-06-04T23:14:00.004-05:00

We got our last package in the mail. It was full of snacks to pack in carry on bags for traveling and a few things like luggage tags, blow up floats to play in the ocean etc. VERY fun!

Jim lifted his truck this weekend. I haven't got to see in person yet because a couple of bolts need to be replaced, but looks really nice from the pictures. I will try to post some pictures when it comes home. I guess I should've taken before pictures. He is pretty excited about it. Despite some frustrating moments, he really enjoyed the project.

The boys went to Bait your hook with Grandpa this morning. It is a church sponsored fishing event for kids. It was so nice of grandpa to take them since Daddy was busy working on their truck. They both caught a fish and won a prize so they were VERY excited about it. Kyle won a fishing pole and Conner won a small tackle box of stuff. They also got to eat lunch. Great memories. I should've sent the camera with grandpa!!!

While all of that was going on, I started packing for the cruise. In the midst of that, I realized our air was not working well, Callie kept destroying stuff every time I turned my back, and the piles I was making by the suitcases were looking daunting! When Jim got home today, I was in a bit of a muddle trying to figure out what I needed to leave behind. Jim took a few minutes and started looking at it all and assured me that everything will fit just fine (with one more suitcase than I planned) and said I could even take another pair of shoes if I wanted. I seem to have way too many shoes for this trip!!!!! :)

The rest of day was spent celebrating with people and was truly a lot of fun! We celebrated a dear friend's birthday, another friend's son graduating, and another friend retiring from UPS. We had time to chat and catch up with people and enjoy good food. I got a break from my little packing stress. We went to church in the middle of all that. This weekend everyone showed up and the children were well behaved making for a wonderful evening.

Tomorrow I am going to church in the morning while Jim hangs out with the kids at home. Then I think he needs to do a couple of things on his truck yet. Then we are going to get a few more things ready to pack. Might as well pack what we can and then I will make a list of everything left so through the week, I can slowly add things, but not have to think about it.

It is hard to believe we are actually going. It seems like just yesterday that it was over 300 days. Any hoo, off to bed. I am starting to get excited about the trip and as soon as I lay down in bed, I think of something I want to make sure gets done or packed this week which means I have a hard time going to sleep! I will have to put a flashlight and notepad by bed tomorrow night so I can write stuff down or I might not sleep much this week. Silly me!!!!!

Follow-up to yelling for Kyle

2011-06-01T12:19:00.001-05:00

After Callie yelled for awhile, Kyle came up to spend time with her! By the number of pats that he received in their little cuddle time, I'd say she was very pleased to see him!

We love our brothers!

2011-06-01T11:34:00.004-05:00

For my boys having a little sister is such a good thing. You would think they would inconvenienced by her, but rarely are they. They are happy to help out, play with her, and be great big brothers. I try to make sure not to impose on their help so they don't feel burdened. However, I can't control one little girl who wants to be wherever they are.

She is fine to play by herself if she doesn't realize they are home, but if she happens to hear them, she really wants them to be with her.

Last week, we realized that Callie says Kyle's name. It isn't totally clear, but she knows what she is saying. Here is the funny part. We yell for the boys at the top of the stairs on a somewhat regular basis I think. Callie has seen this and realizes when you yell for them, they come......

Check it out!!! She is actually yelling Kyle's name. If you listen you can hear that it is a form of his name. Also, the little giggle at the end is because they came around the corner on the stairs. See you call Kyle and he comes (with a little help from Mommy!).

Yet another new era...

2011-06-01T10:57:00.003-05:00

Callie is taking her first steps around our house. More and more we find her like the picture below. Standing without holding on to anything (still for brief moments not long times..thus the blurry picture. I was in a hurry before she fell).

She also will take a couple of steps from one parent to another. Every once in awhile she will take a single step between furniture, but she isn't that brave yet!

Love the baby!

2011-06-01T10:49:00.002-05:00

She is eaily distracted and this isn't her best love the baby, but here is a little clip of Callie taking care of her new baby she got for her birthday!

For the love of a sister...

2011-06-01T10:41:00.002-05:00

This weekend we did not go to the river because I needed to work. I didn't feel bad about this because the cruise is in 10 days so I needed to work now to be off then. Plus, Jim took the weekend off to just try to finish up a lot of things that have been hanging over our heads. We put new down spouts on the house, mowed, trimmed the exterior basement windows, painted the shutters, trimmed out one interior window (only one more left!!!), and rearranged the boys room.

We also tried to have a little fun. We went to a birthday party, went out to eat and did a little shopping for the cruise. We had to get some toiletry items, new drawing paper for the backpacks, some whtie sandals for callie and stuff like that. We had a lot of fun.

Callie did too... Because her brothers agreed to ride in the cart with her. Oh how fun she thought this was. Actually it made for great shopping for us because except when they got out to look at things, you didn't have to check to see if you lost anyone (because they were busy looking at stuff and forgot to come along!)

Times continue to change...

2011-06-01T10:21:00.002-05:00

My boys are growing up.. way too fast.. I have realized that I love the mid elementary age. They are still in love with Mommy and crave family time and togetherness, but they are independent. They can do much themselves. Kyle (especially) and I can have real conversation (not just talking about legos or video games). I love that and I know he is soon headed toward the tweens years and it is happening all too fast for me.

Kyle has been having a hard time sleeping. There were a couple of things affecting this we thought. One was his bed was extremely difficult to make so I think the covers were often rumpled and uncomfortable. The second issue is the air flow isn't the greatest in their room and we thought Kyle was stuffy and overwarm in his bed.

In the past, we have offered a solution but it has always been strongly rejected. After a couple of bad nights, Kyle finally said he thought it was time. It was time to say good-bye to an era of bunk beds. To think it has been over three years of them sharing a room and bunk beds. So this weekend, we made the switch....

Before....

And after.....

The next step is to install a ceiling fan in the room to help the heat circulate. Even without that installed Kyle has been sleeping better already. They like to rearrange their room and we told them we still had the bunk beds just in case so they seem o.k. with it.

And I am too...really I am.. I like that we can easily make beds, but its another sign of how fast Kyle is growing up and that makes me just a little sad.

S is for.......

2011-06-01T10:15:00.002-05:00

S is for shirts!

We all got matching shirts to wear I believe on the day we board the ship. That will make for a great photo of everyone together and individual families.

Yesterday my mother in law had Callie and said she'd bring her home because she had to stop at the post office. Hmmm. Just a hunch, but thinking e was put in the mail yesterday! :)

The suspense is killing me...

2011-05-27T10:34:00.004-05:00

As I write this, there are only 15 days until our family cruise to celebrate my in-laws 40th wedding anniversary. I am getting very excited about this vacation and extra time with my family! I am a little nervous about packing and the last minute items I need like white sandals for Callie and an ivory colored sweater for me, but for the most part I have what I need to go. I am nervous if I can get it all to fit, but worse case scenario is that I take an extra suitcase.

I am also extra excited because it looks like this might be a vacation we can enjoy without extra stuff hanging over our heads. We enjoyed San Diego, but in the back of my mind the entire time, I wondered if I would get the call saying my dad didn't make it. So although fun, I wouldn't say it was refreshing or relaxing! Hopefully, no major job situations or anything major happens in the next 15 days so we can just go explore with our kids and extended family without worries for a week!

I have managed to take Callie off the bottle which was another thing I was worried about and have been attempting as much adult food as possible so we don't have to take a lot for her. I will pack some snacks I know she will eat and some baby cereal for times traveling in case I can't find the right thing.

I have gotten out the suitcases and started putting some things in. I have started a list so as I think of things I can write it down to hopefully not forget stuff!

Back to the title of the blog. My mother-in-law has gone out of her way to make the planning for this trip extra fun. She took us shopping for formals and we have had lots of times in smaller groups to talk about plans etc! Probably one of the most fun things she has done, though, started a few weeks back. We were out to her house for dinner and she handed each of us a binder decorated for the cruise. Inside were copies our travel forms, a place for our passports, travel information, etc! Then there was this little note to watch the mail for envelopes and packages....

The following week, our packages started to arrive. It took us two weeks to figure out what she was up to! Check this out:

Week One: An envelope with a C on the front and inside it said C IS FOR CASH (there was a check for a little spending money on the ship)

Week Two: R IS FOR RADIO (We got a set of long distance two way radios so we can talk to each other on the ship when one parent is with a sleeping child etc)

Have you figured out what she is up to yet????

Week Three: U IS FOR UNDERWATER camera (yep a disposable underwater camera)

Week Four: I IS FOR ITUNES (an itunes giftcard to get new music for ipods to listen too for traveling or on the beach)

Week Five: S IS FOR ... I don't know... every other package has come early in the week, but this one is yet to arrive. That is why the suspense is killing me. She hinted that it should "hopefully" arrive today so I will keep you posted, but what could it be????? I have a couple of ideas, but in hopes of not feeling or looking foolish, I will keep those to myself.

I must confess that I don't have any ideas for "e"... If there is an "e" that is!

I love this sort of thing..it just makes life fun!!!!

Go! Go! Go!

2011-05-23T21:32:00.007-05:00

When spring FINALLY came around, we discovered that our boys had grown significantly over the winter. Lots of new summer shoes and clothes were needed and we discovered sadly that both Kyle and Conner had outgrown their bikes.

This caused me some dilemma. The responsible person in me said that it would make the most sense to buy a new bike for Kyle and give his to Conner (given that it was just the right size for Conner). However, Conner often thinks Kyle gets to do and have everything. Most of the time is imagined like at the restaurant when Kyle got two straws to distinguish his pop. Conner almost cried over only getting one straw. In the end frugality won out and we went bike shopping. We explained that this new bike was a "family" bike meaning Kyle could ride it now, but eventually it would be Conners so they both needed to like it.

So here is the choice that was made from the allowable choices (you know the cheap ones)!

The new bike appropriately sized for Kyle. Despite all of my worries, Conner happily calls it Kyle's bike and didn't care much at all what bike Kyle chose.
Instead he smiled ear to ear about his "new" bike. Know what the made the difference? A measly five dollars.....

and a new bike horn. Conner was beyond excited about his hand me down bike because we let him choose a special accessory all of his own to put on it. Yep! He has a horn!! Best five dollars I have spent in a long time. He was as excited about that horn as Kyle was about the brand new bike that he got!!! That led to this sweet picture of my kids all three..

Riding on their bikes!!!! Isn't that fun? Callie thought this was a hoot because she could go go go like the boys.

Go! Go! Go!