Daddy's Little Helper

Dad is installing a retaining wall on the backside of the house and Seth is his little side kick!

Seth's 4th Birthday

Seth turned 4 years old this past June.  He helped make his own cupcakes for his birthday!  You are a great little guy, Seth!

First Green Beans of the season!

Alex picked his first batch of Green Beans after getting back from Scout Camp. Here he is anxiously waiting to cook them up! He grew regular green beans and a purple variety. The purple variety turn green while they are cooking! Alex didn't know this and came up to me and told me his purple green beans were missing and was wondering where they could have gone! Too funny!

Playing with siblings is fun to do!

The power was off for three days because of a crazy storm. The children learned that playing games together can be fun. Here's a pic of them playing even after the electricity had come back on!

Old Reliable

It has finally happend. Our nine year old van has had it's final drive in our family. It was such a faithful and reliable piece of metal. We bought it brand new when Dane was almost two months old. Sniff, sniff. (Man, I've been sniffing a lot lately!). The only things we have had to replace in these past nine years was the alternator and the battery. Now its transmission is on its last gear. The kids are even more sad about this than I. They don't want to get another vehicle. Hello 15 passenger van! Hahahahahaha Not really, but we will have to wait a month or two before we can make our next major purchase.

What Todd wants to get:



What I would have an easier time driving:



What we can afford:


Those old station wagons seated nine people!  Now we would have space to take ONE of the children's friends with us!  I remember the one we had growing up.  The back door had two opening options.  It would either fold down, or it would swing out wide.  It was so great riding backwards.  (Especially when you were prone to motion sickness!)  Oh the good ol' days!

Going down memory lane, when we were really young and before seat belt laws, we would pile in the old green station wagon and take drives up to Cloudcroft.  I remember having nightmares about falling out the back window during those rides.  I would dream we were going up a really steep road and we would have to hang on not to fall out.  Another memory just popped into my head.  Remember driving to Mescalero every Sunday?  How was it that six girls were all dressed up and sitting in the back of the green station wagon and we still looked presentable after the thrity minute ride?  Probably because we didn't care how we looked!  Hahahaha!

Odds and Ends

I miss being around everyone I have ever known. It is going to be so great in Heaven because then we'll get to see everyone and traveling won't be a problem! I wish I could live everywhere! Yes, I have very mixed emotions about military life. It is a love/hate relationship. I love having the opportunity to live in so many places, but hate having to move away from friends. We don't have any orders yet, but know the time will come some day. Sniff, sniff.

We are working on getting Seth into a Speech/Language development preschool for next school year. It is great because our elementary school has one and it is only two or three days a week, just what I am looking for. I know I am going to have to probably fight for this placement, but I will just leave it at that. Very frustrated with certain things, but trying to look past it and know that in the end, it will all be just fine.

The children are so antsy to be getting out of school! Four more school days left! Kate is going to Girls' Camp for the first time this year. She missed it last year because we went to Utah. Alex and Todd will be going to Scout Camp that same week, so it will be just me and the four younger children.

We just had our first annual dinner and Auction to help raise funds for the Scouts. It was so much fun and we raised more than anyone first imagined! Emily got herself an MP3 player from it, Todd and I will be enjoying a three course home cooked meal from a sweet Sister in the ward, and sometime this fall we'll be joining a couple of other families to enjoy the weekend at the beach in Ocean City! For me, the most amazing thing in helping to put this whole event together was seeing the ward come together with so many service donations. It has been a great experience.

Alex has finally hit the 100 mile mark on his walking chart! He likes to track his walking and measure his distance with my phone. Actually, it is great that he does this because he cannot cheat! We go out together, but because I jog most of it, we aren't together, so I just look at the map of the route he's taken and know for sure how far he's gone. Monday night it was funny, Alex had walked 2.13 miles. I told him he just needed to walk a tiny bit more to make it a full quarter mile and he could mark off another square on his chart ( one square equals a quarter mile on his walking chart). I told him to walk down the street and back and that it would make it be over a quarter mile, but he didn't want to do that. So then I told him just to walk around on the road in circles and he would eventually get to 2.25 miles. So he did! It was kind of funny watching him walk around our cul de sac in circles. He had to do six or seven times, not to mention that is was nearly ten o'clock at night! The neighbors were probably looking out there window wondering why Alex was walking in circles! Oh well, he did it! And now he has been bugging me to take him to the Thrift store. So, we have a trip planned for tomorrow.

Kate has begun the process of getting the pendulum she will will have to wear for a few months before she has braces put on, today. Two small plastic things were stuck between two of her teeth to start making room for a metal ring to go around the teeth. The plan for Kate is to push her back two molars back so we can pull the remaining front teeth in to correct her over bite. She has no wisdom teeth, but she also has two baby teeth that have no adult molars under them. These will be pulled and a spacer put in place so she can have implants put in sometime in the future. I am a little hesitant about this, but the concern is that these two baby molars have such large fillings from cavities that the orthodontist doesn't expect them to be viable long enough to be worth keeping. I am still concerned about having them removed and having nothing there for several years, why not leave them there until they really need to come out? I think I will discuss that with them, but my guess is that if we don't remove them and make plans for implants and wait to pull them when they have to come out, it will mess up all the orthodontic work they are doing now. If Kate marries a wealthy man, I will forward this dental bill to her later! :)

Random Thoughts and Events

I am sitting here watching Seth stir his Lasagna around in a bowl. He wanted pizza for lunch but I don't have any. Seth loves pizza. So, I tried to convince him that Lasagne tastes like pizza. He has eaten most of it. He is so funny. Today while I was outside weeding my flower bed, Seth comes up to me and just points. I ask him what he wants and he just points. So finally I tell him to just show me. We walk a little bit and then he stops and points again. He is showing me a squirrel! So I try to get him to say squirrel and it comes out more as "quirrel".

Now I am reminded of the snake we saw this morning! I was opening the garage door so I could let Seth get his car out of the garage to drive around when I see this long black snake sitting outside. At first I didn't really realize what it was until Seth started walking near it and then it dawned on me that it was a snake! Just a garden snake, but definitely the biggest one I have seen around here. It quickly slithered off into the flower bed, luckily not the one I was planning on weeding!

My sister, Sarah, will be coming to stay with us for a little while this summer! I don't know for how long, but I am really excited! So are the children. Honestly, it has been the motivation to get me up and to do something lately. I think I have senioritis, you know the disease you get at the end of your senior year because you have been in school for way too long and you still can't believe you have to go to school for two more weeks after Memorial Day! Ok, maybe the Memorial Day part isn't true for seniors, but I just had to insert a tiny rant! Haha! I wish the kids could just be done with school and we can start our playing! Oh well, June 12th will be here soon.

Kate will start the process getting braces here in a few weeks. Anyone want to donate some money to me? Seriously, a piece of wire costs how much? I suppose that is where all the money I have been saving from not buying diapers is going!

Dishwasher is out again. My nails have never looked so clean! What brand of dish washing soap claimed to make your hands look nicer? Was it Palmolive? Like I've said before, having the dishwasher out sure makes it easier to clean out drawers and cabinets.