I Spend To Much Time Driving

My dad turned 70 years old at the end of March. My mom planned a big birthday party for him Easter weekend. Since it was the beginning of spring break we decided to leave on Friday and be gone for 7 days.
My mom requested that everyone write a favorite memory of dad or papa, as the case may be. Some of us did 'extra credit' work- they shall remain nameless. Even the children colored pictures of their memories with Papa.After dinner we all took turns reading our letters to dad. Lots of tears were shed. It was really special to have Uncle Jim, Aunt Marlys, and Granny there as well.

JM's Birthday Party

Last week JM turned 5!!! Can you believe it?? I sure can't. He's getting so big. Next year he'll be in kindergarten! Goodness.
We celebrated his birthday at a local restaurant that he likes after church last Sunday. Uncle Peter was in town from Ohio and made it that much more special. He asked for a Batman cake and batman toys. Target had a great Black Friday sale on the Batcave so he was really happy.Happy Birthday Little Man! We love you very much!

Happy Birthday AJ!

This past Wednesday was AJ's 7th birthday. I can't believe he's 7. It seems like yesterday that he was just a baby. sniff sniff. We didn't throw a big party this year. We usually have a big family shindig but being so far from all of them we just had cake and he opened his present from Mom and Dad.

Happy Birthday to ME!

(* come back the rest of the week....my posts are done and are auto posting for the rest of the week)
Friday was my birthday and I spent the day cleaning the house. The past week or so has been very rough and emotional for us here. I got all my fall decorations out and put away all of my red, white, and blue things for summer.
Nathan took me out to Chili's for dinner. You can't go to Chili's with me without having chips and salsa with a side of ranch. Always red to white! :)
After dinner we came home and had cake and ice cream with friends. A teeny weeny cake. Mark and Connie were nice enough to watch the children and then Candice and Laura came over. We played Apples and Apples and opened a couple of presents.
Mark and Connie.
Candice.
Laura.
It was a nice birthday but I'm glad to be past it and into fall. I guess I shouldn't be surprised but lots of activities are piling up for our family. I thought it might be a quiet month but we sat down and figured out we're not going to have a free weekend until October. Thanks to Tropical Storm Danny we didn't get to go to the Outer Banks last weekend.

Birthday Girl

Peanut's birthday is later this month but since both my family and Nathan's family live around each other in Ohio we decided it would be better to have it here where everyone is. She was so excited to be a princess. The dress and crown were a gift from mommy and daddy. Even her cousin came dressed up for the princess party. It was Aunt Tabitha's birthday so she got to wear a crown too. There have been so many boy parties for so long that it was fun to have such a girlie party.
Grasshopper had so much fun too. He caught some serious hang time.

Little Peanut's Birthday

Little Peanut turned two last month. I love that she is a girlie girl. With all these boys running around and all the mud recently I enjoy a little girl who loves to wear dresses and have her hair fixed. For her birthday we had cake from Auntie in WV. Here's the birthday girl with her cake. You'll notice that she has two different dresses on in the pictures. No, it wasn't two different days. She started out in the pink one and then Auntie get her the blue one and when she opened it she insisted on putting the dress on right there in front of all her guests. So we did. Auntie got to enjoy seeing it on her that day.
Papa made her a great kitchen cabinet for her toy dishes. Cousin Abby was the 'creative consultant' on the project. She even got to play with Little Peanut with the finished product. Mommy and Daddy got her a playhouse specially designed for little hands.
Back around Easter, my mother-in-law got all the kids a rubber ducky. They each got a different color. AJ was green, JM was blue, Little Peanut was pink, and Grasshopper was yellow. Little Peanut commandeered them all as hers. It was really funny how much she loved those ducks. So guess what Grandma got her for her birthday...four more ducks. She was so funny pulling them out of the packages. Happy Birthday Little Peanut ! We Love You!! We can't wait to see all the wonderful things you're going to learn this year.

Happy Birthday to ME!!!

For my birthday Nathan got me this little beauty. It's an ipod shuffle. And yes, I did get it in that color. Let me just say for the record that my husband is not an Apple fan. In fact, he highly dislikes their software, itunes ect, but their hardware he thinks is well designed. Others we know are all out Apple haters! :) (Scott!) But Nathan was sweet and knew that I wanted an MP3 player for my birthday. Sunday we downloaded itunes onto our computer and I spent a lot of time uploading all our cds to it and organizing them. I found a lot of great songs on itunes that I'm sure I will be spending my allowance on. Everything you can imagine, except for the original Beatles, is on there. Classical, instrumental, Christian, rock, pop. I'm becoming a fan of the itunes store. But before any of you panic, I have yet to buy a song. I can't decide where to start. :)Thank you baby. I love my birthday present. And it's so pretty too.

Grasshopper

Please join me in welcoming
Grasshopper!!!!
8 lb. 10 oz. and 20 inches

He was born at 12:34 pm and is doing great. So am I! We're very happy that he's finally arrived. He is currently being admired at the hospital by lots of family and friends. I'll be sure to post more after we come home. Thanks to all our friends' and family's support. We love you all.











This post uploaded by dad since mom is still in the hospital. Any brilliance in today's episode is solely attributable to my lovely wife, and any technical errors are my responsibility. Love you honey!

Peanut's 1st Birthday Party

Sunday was Peanut's first birthday party. It was just family and friends. We had yummilicious cake from our famous Aunt. Since Peanut's so small mostly what she needed was clothes. AJ was quite disappointed in her presents. Mommy and Sarah loved all her new outfits though. Looks like we'll get to enjoy the girl for awhile since it's a baby boy joining us in August.

This was Peanut's first adventure with adult food. I was going to let her touch the cake but when she saw it she was so excited she started kicking. She planted her foot right in the side of the cake. It was covered with icing. She wasn't sure at first if it was something that she was going to like. Mommy helped her get it off her toes, and then she got her own plate. :)

After all that she was ready for a nap. Since Sunday she has cut 2 more teeth. What a big girl!

HAPPY 2nd BIRTHDAY JOSHUA!!

Two years ago today, on Pearl Harbor Day, our second son JM was born at 3:03 a.m. They were going to induce me later that morning but sometime around midnight my water broke. YEA!! Our little man was born just 3 hours later. As always my helpful sister was there to coach and of course my husband. He was just a bit green when it was all over.

When JM was almost 2 months the Lord gave him a special cousin who was just 3 days younger than him. The two of them have grown so much, even though they are small for their size. Joshua has always been faster until recently. Our theory has been that he's trying to escape from Little Buddy.

JM has a great gift for humor. He loves to make people laugh and seems to be pretty good at it. He's very adventerous and can definitely hold his own with his older brother.

Happy Birthday JM, Mommy and Daddy love you very very much.