Fishing and Fun

So last weekend Brian went with his dad and some of his brothers down to Southern California to go deep sea fishing. He had a pretty good time and actually caught some fish (which Jen enjoyed eating). And he did the one thing Jen instructed him to do. "Don't fall off the boat!" Hopefully pictures will be coming soon.

Brian's sweet mom came down Friday and took me and kids to her place for the weekend. She had rented the Molly: An American Girl movie for Liz. Liz brought Molly along and they both enjoyed the movie. Liz is like her mom though and said, "That wasn't really like the books." The boys got to see Grandpa's new motorcycle and Megan spent some special tiem with Aunt Jenalee. Saturday we had lunch at Pizza Factory and then played at the aracde. Grandma got a bunch of tokens and the kids played skeeball and some other kids games. We even had a free game of minigolf. It was a really fun morning. Grandma is wonderful!

Save the Family

Someone emailed me this and I thought it expressed so clearly what needs to happen in our nation. I am not a big fan of politics, but I feel like we are truly in the midst of a war to save the family, and we need to fight to protect what is MOST important.

Michael is off to school

So Michael headed off to work with Brian this morning. HE seemed very eager to get to school; they even got out of the door early. Brian said he watched a show on PBS while waiting. When Brian took him to school it took Michael a few minutes to warm up. Brian helped him find the play dough and then Michael saw all of the other kids having a great time. Then a teacher asked the kids if they were four, and Michael was hooked. He loves saying how old he is. I can't wait to hear all about his day. The first two pictures are from his "get to know you" day last week. They have a neat "loft" where they can go read. This is Michael standing on it and looking down.

ANd here he is with his teacher Mr. Brad. This is the same teacher that Liz and Nathan had and Michael is very excited to have him too.

Here is this morning, all ready to head out to school.

I still can't believe that this year has come and that three of our kids are in school. It is so fun.

For Sue

Sue, this is for you! For everyone else, I made this collage and tried to email it to Sue and she is having eamil issues so she couldn't see it, so I am posting it. I had fun playing around with the beach pictures I took last weekend.

Really fast trip to California

So on August 30th my mother-in-law threw a surprise picnic party for her mom who is turning eighty this week. We haven't seen her in almost three years, and she has never met Megan, so we made plans to go. It was a really quick trip (we left Friday morning and came home right after the party, getting home late, late Saturday night) but we arranged our trip so we could do some extra fun things with the kids. We made plans to stay close to the beach Friday. Even though it was a longer drive, we got to see the beach in the evening, get a good nights sleep, and then take a drive to a special place in the mountains before heading to the picnic party. Here are some fun pictures from our weekend. I know there are a lot, and so I used the slideshows to cut down on the size of this post.

At the Beach I felt bad for the lady who had to clean our bath tub at the hotel. It looked more like a sandbox, than a bath tub when we were done bathing the kids.

Chantry Flat Up in the Angeles National Forest of California is a place called Chantry Flat. The land was owned by a great, great, great (I am not sure how many greats exactly) uncle of Brian's named Charlie Chantry. When he died he left the land to become part of the National Forest and they named it after him. Since the kids love hearing their names anywhere (even if it has NOTHING to do with them) we thought they would like this place with a family connection. And they did! We hiked for a few minutes along a path that Brian helped improve for his Eagle Project. It was a beautiful area, and a place the kids want to go back to someday.

Not Your Typical Petting Zoo At San Dimas Canyon Park (where we had the picnic for Brian's Grandma) there is a little "zoo" as Sue called it. IT has changed a bit since Sue was there last, and now their focus is helping small animals who need help for any number of reasons. We caught the tail end of a short "lecture" about a few different animals, then the kids got to pet some of them. Liz was fine with petting the possum, but preferred to look at the snake and tortoise. Michael touched all three, and so did Nathan. However, Nathan is most proud that he touched the tarantula, because as he says, "I am scared of spiders." Megan was fearless, literally. I think since she is little she doesn't know that some people get scared or squeamish around some of these animals, because she pet the possum, and went right on to stroke the snake, tap the tortoise and then she touched the tarantual OVER AND OVER again. It was pretty fun to watch them all.

Grandma's Birthday We had such a good time visiting with Grandma. It was wonderful to see her, and for her to meet Megan. Megan warmed right up, and even smiled for a picture with her Great Grandma. Hopefully it won't be three more years before we see her again.