10 on Tuesday, part I

Hi all! Well, we are off to California soon but I've been meaning to get pics of Chet's visit home on here before we left, so here I am - Ten on Tuesday - picture edition! (Of course, I've loaded all the pics in the wrong order! Someday, I may make it in to the 21st century! I am getting closer! My hubby sent me an iPod for my (early) birthday present! Thank you, Honey!)

Ten on Tuesday - Picture Edition
1. (Above) - Man vs. nature. Chet battled these little finches in their nest building efforts again this year! (Last year, they fought over an outdoor lighting fixture.) So, my husband outsmarted them again by putting a water bottle in their favorite nesting spot! I swear to you he wasn't out of the country more than a couple of days and I discovered this!

2. The BURN pile! The burn pile featured prominently in this visit home! These are all the branches and trees we lost during the ice storm in December. Now, coming from California, it seems like it would be easy to burn a bunch of dead tree branches and that you would have to worry about setting your neighbor's house on fire (and the surrounding 10,000 acres!), but out here, not so much! In fact we had to buy many Duraflame logs to get the pile to stay lit! Amazing! I guess humidity will do that!

3. My favorite three boys! Love this picture of the boys following in their dad's footsteps, eager to be with him and see what he's going to do next!


4. Me & My Honey! This is my new favorite picture! This picture was taken by my friend, Steph. We had Stephanie and her husband Allan and David and Tracey over for a wine tasting dinner. Chet barbqued and smoked steaks that were yummy! We served four courses and had tastings with the first three. It was a fun (and grown up) thing to do!

5. Chet jumping in to our pond! THIS was a Daddy thing! He let them swim in the pond. I don't want to be swimming with all those fishies, but the boys thought it was the greatest thing ever!

6. Ethan's first "gone" tooth! (have I already posted this?) Doesn't matter! The kid lost another one today. He got impatient waiting for me to pull to it, so, he pulled it himself! (Speaking of, the tooth fairy better remember to stop here tonight or she will be in BIG trouble!)

7. My first scrapbooking class!!! I taught my first scrapbooking class at a local scrapbook store last Thursday night! Here it the project I created and taught! There were six people there (including Steph & Tracey-thanks again for coming!) and we had great fun! I've already created a page layout class for the 17th of July! Mark your calendars now!



8. Latest family photo! Can you believe this is the only family shot I got of the four of us while Chet was home? Lucky, I got this one or they would've revoked my scrapbooking license!

9. Me & E. He just kills me with that smile! This was Mother's Day and what a great day I had with all my boys! Chet even had them bring me breakfast in bed! I am a lucky girl!

10. Chet & Dad! This was the last day of school or what we like to call: Super Kids Day!!! Dad was real trouper and manned the bounce house with me during the morning and then we got to watch Chet and his class win the 3rd grade tug-of-war battle! Go, Chet, Go!!!

Well, that's a fairly good summary of our last month or so! More adventures this month as we head off to see many of you out there in California! We are all very excited and I will post more during our trip! Happy summer!

Springtime in OK

Thought it would be nice to post some spring time pics I've been taking around here with my Mother's Day present! It's a new lens for my Nikon camera I got for Christmas! I am having all kinds of fun with it as you can imagine!



It's absolutely beautiful here this time, of course there is the occassional tornado warning, but when the sky is blue and the grass is this green it's a small trade-off! I have been immensely enjoying hanging out on the porch with Chet watching the world the go by and the boys play. It is currently my favorite place to be. This is LIFE! Happy Spring!

Long time no blog!

Yes, it's been a while but I will make for it now! There, of course, has been a good reason - My hubby is home!!!!! Just a mite distracting from everyday life! He came home May 6th for a three week visit. He goes back on Tuesday after Memorial Day. The boys didn't know he was coming. You would think they would be clued with all the extra cleaning I was making them do, but they just thought I was being mean! :) So here are some of the pics of Chet & Ethan seeing their dad for the first time since January! And this of course is my nomination of America's Funniest Home Photo of the year! Ha! (No dads were injured in the taking of this photo!)

"Will you scrapbook with me?" He said...

Now, I was in the middle of a pretty big project I've been trying to finish, but when Ethan came down the stairs and asked me this and looked at me those big brown eyes of his, how could I say no? He even said to me, "You can finish your stuff after we scrapbook." Oh, little boy. I looked at him as he created his page and thought of how much he's learned in the last year and how tall he's gotten. How we've been working on him doing more things for himself. How he'll be in kindergarten all day next year and how he's not quite my little baby boy anymore. You always know as a parent you have to let your children go, but who would have thought it would hurt so much at age 5. I love you, E, and in my heart you will always be my little baby boy.

Treasure Found

Just had to share this last one because I think it is my new current favorite. Probably because the pictures mean so much to me. They are from our amazing vacation to Walt Disney World in December 2004 with the whole family including my late Grandma Dorothy. (Miss you, Gigi!)Most of these pics are from our dinner in at the Biergarten in Germany at Epcot which was an especially fun night and holds a lot of great memories for me. If these pics aren't big enough to really see the photos let me know because I might be able to post them a size larger.

Showing off

Just wanted to show off some of the layouts I've been working on. I got to go with Stephanie to a crop on Friday night, which I haven't done in ages, and surprise, surprise, I completed some layouts. Of course, these pictures we had taken over spring break were pretty easy to be inspired by. Hope you enjoy!

I think Chet looks just like his dad in this single shot of him...

And there, of course, are the three cutest boys on the entire planet! Yes, that's a completely unbiased statement of fact.

Grandma and her boys

This one may be hard to see, but that's my dad standing on the diving board of pool at his house on Alessandro when he was a teenager (or younger?). This picture is a Christmas card his family sent out from Sunnymead, California, one year. It was nice to finally put it on paper, I've been meaning to do it for a while! Now, "Denny" will live in my scrapbook forever! Love you, Dad!

Spring Break

How lame am I that I haven't posted any pics of Mom & Melissa's visit yet! (Well, Chet's birthday was technically during this time, so I guess I did post some....) We had a fantastic two weeks! It does get tiring when we are all together though, perhaps that's why it's taken so long to get these up! Anyway, we managed to cram a whole of fun in to 14 days! I won't bore you with all the details, but one of our favorites was the zoo! It was pretty cool and breezy that day, but it didn't stop us from seeing all the animals and letting our own little monkeys run around they playground for a while! The zoo (just about anywhere) is such a great kid place! We also managed to celebrate lots of birthdays! Melissa's birthday is the beginning of March and Tracey & Rich each had birthdays within days of Melissa's arrival, so we made special plans to go to dinner (Abuelo's - yummy!) the night Melissa got here! Fun for all (except the couple that got seated next to the kids end of our table, if you are reading this - sorry!) Aunt Cindi even came up from the Texas the last weekend they were for some girl time with Mom and later playtime with all of us! Rich made a delicious steak dinner for the whole brood! It was nice to have Mom & Melissa around to help out with dinner and all the other stuff that I don't usually get a break from!




Andy, my little nephew, is getting so cute and so big and he talks a mile a minute....wonder where he could get that from.....The three boys had a ball playing together, at least most of the time. Ethan was a little concerned that Andy was taking possession of all his toys and he had to mediate a few fights, but in the end I think they had a good time together and Chet was really great about helping them work out their differences. Of course, it helps that they both idolize Chet and want to be like Chet.
So, that the quick version for now! Enjoy the pics!