Parker's First Day of Kindergarten!!

He has been so excited and not a bit nervous about starting kindergarten this year. I have been quite impressed with his bravery. I think he is just so excited to ride the bus with the rest of the kids in the neighborhood :)

Lookin' handsome

At the bus stop
Cole being Cole

Cleveland Rocks!

We went to Cleveland as a little family vacation and to go to a Mariners/Indians game. You would think I was going to the Bahamas for how excited I was for this little trip. I have not been on any kind of a trip since June 2007 and this was a much needed break even though it was only for the weekend. It was a great weekend to be there because the air show was in town and for two whole days there were all types of planes flying right outside of the hotel. We were on the 10th floor and could see everything. Pardon the long post...we just had so much fun and I didn't want to leave anything out!

The drive up. Cole crashed.

The boys watching the air show. They sat there for hours. When I say the boys, I mean all three of them :)

They took a great nap that day.


The ballgame. Believe it or not, the Mariners won in extra innings and the kids stayed all 10 of them! The Mariners swept the series. I know...shocking.

Emma has a pink Mariners outfit on also, but you can't tell. We didn't have a pink Mariners hat so we had to settle with this one.

Mom and the boys
Brett and I during our "date". We ordered dinner, ate it in the room and watched college footballl all night. It was actually really fun!

Mom and the girl...

Downtown Cleveland outside of the Science Center. It was a great place to watch the air show.
Lunch at Hard Rock Cafe...
We stopped by Kirtland on our way home to have dinner and hang out for a few hours with our favorite great aunt and uncle Herm and Geraldine Caviness serving a mission there. It is SOOO great to visit someone we are related to. They are the closest we have and we love them so much!

This post is for Stace and most people won't get it. I had WAY too much fun going through old pictures. Believe it or not, I had to drastically reduce the amount I used. These are some of the highlights... I MISS YOU!

Love to Love Ya Part II

Visiting Dad in Mansfield, OH

I tried to put these pictures at the bottom of this post, but it isn't working and I don't feel like figuring it out because it is past midnight. So, here is Emma. I know I really have no perspective because I am her mom, but she is just so cute!

Brett had to work at a clinic in Mansfield, OH over the last 2 weeks with his friend in the class, Jeremy. He would leave on Monday really early and come home Thursday night. The kids REALLY missed him so I got together with Jeremy's wife and we decided to drive the hour and a half to get there and meet our husbands for dinner and to swim in the pool at the hotel. It was really fun even though Mansfield is basically just a freeway exit and that is about it. I liked having help with the boys for a night and it was awesome to see my estranged husband:-)

In these pictures you will see that Cole is basically fearless and the more scary something is, the more fun it is. He looks like he is sky diving. Maybe this is foreshadowing. I would like to see him hit his limit of scary someday, but I have still not seen it. He is so coordinated that he can really do anything that he wants to do without hurting himself too much, especially for his age. For instance, we were done swimming and were drying everyone off to go back to the room and get dressed. I took Coles life vest off ( just a few months ago he couldn't even swim even with that thing on) and I was getting Emma dried off and I hear a big splash. He had jumped into the deep end without his vest and I panicked and yelled, "Wait, he can't sw.... oh, I guess he can..." He was swimming across the pool with no problems.

I can't wait...

...FOR PARKER TO START SCHOOL!!! Don't get me wrong, I love the kid, but my 2 boys need separated ASAP. All they do is fight and all Cole does is be the little annoying brother and all that encompasses. I took them to Dick's sports store today to look for some workout stuff that would fit my new, post-pregnant fat butt. My goal is to work that off SOON but in the meantime...sorry, I am getting sidetracked. Anyways, while at Dicks they proceeded to beat the daylights out of each other with swimming noodles for like 2o minutes while I looked at stuff. Luckily we were in our own corner of the store where there was no one around, but still. People must hate me. Cole was being such a stinker to Parker and there was an incident at the end of the day and Parker just lost it. He said, "Mom, my hands want to hit him so bad!" I really couldn't blame him.

I think I am just at the end of my rope because Brett has been out of town for almost 2 weeks (minus the weekend) and I have about had all I can take at this point. Pray for me to make it until Thursday night. Until then...we are in survival mode. Hopefully Cole survives. I have my doubts. In fact, pray for him instead:)

Summer Olympics 2008

As a way of welcoming in the Olympic games, we got together with some of our friends to have our own Olympics for the kids. I would like to thank Natalie and Stephanie for putting everything together, getting shirts for the kids, making medals, organizing the events, etc. We even had the Olympic music playing. It was such a fun night and my boys have showed everyone the medals they won and haven't stopped talking about it. The events that we had were running races, bike races, gymnastics, shot put, long jump, soccer, shooting, and probably more that I am forgetting. We had dinner and then an awards ceremony. Oh, and all of the kid's shirts were color coordinated to what family they belong to. Even the babies. It was so much fun!!


BIKE RACES:
AWARDS CEREMONY:

This is a video of the kids doing "gymnastics routines". Basically they were just dancing. It is funny to see them all dancing around at once. So cute.