To a Special Person: )

Happy Birthday Alicia!

May God bless your day and may it be filled with lots of fun things!
Thank you so much for all that you have invested in my life! The runs and the wonderful walks back: ) The listening ear whenever I need someone to talk to, comforting me when I'm sad, and smiling with me when I'm happy. And I still love you, even after you pretty much scared me to death that one night....what will I ever do without you??
I love you Alicia!

I was given this award and told to pass it on! So I give it to you Alicia, and I can only guess who you will give it too???? *smile*

Will you all help me in wishing Alicia a happy birthday?

Chop till you drop!

In preparation for Joe's open house we had a lot of things cleaned that hadn't for a long time! On Monday we tackled the outside, all the gardens were weeded and mulched, everything was mowed, and the "parking lot" was cleaned out. Thursday was house cleaning and Wednesday and Friday was the day to chop and make all the food! Mrs. Grady, Abby, Betsy, Suzannah, Rachel and Alatheia came over, and helped us make all the food and all the little treats.

~Abby

~Esther

~Rachel browning the meat

Betsy and Mrs. Grady cutting up the mushrooms and peppers

Mom and Stephen tackling the job of 5 watermelons!

Alatheia was getting a little bored of just mixing, and stirring: )Thank you all for your help! We couldn't have done without you!
Things Completed!

Food Made

180 Won Tons
14 dozen mushroom turnovers
7 pounds of chicken made into chicken salad
49lbs beef made into barbecued beef
1 batch of choc. chip cookies
Fruit Chopped
5 watermelons
9 cantaloupes
3 honeydew melons
4 pineapples
10 things of strawberry's

It was a successful day!

More cute cards!

Anna Nelson recently got a bunch of darling stamp sets so we decided to combine forces. I let her use my stamp pads and she let me use her stamps! It was so much fun! I got 8 cards done in the course of two days (we didn't stamp the whole time)!

Which one is your favorite?

Welcome Back!

Josh and Dan left for Colorado right after Sunday school for some brother bonding time: ) Josh tried his hand at planning a vacation, start to finish, and from what I heard did a fantastic job! Since Dan sprained his ankle the Wed. before they left we weren't sure quite sure how it was going to hold up. Evidently it was as right as rain! God definitely blessed them with wonderful weather!

They climbed 14,000 feet to the top of Mt. Beirsatdt, way to go!

Wow look at that pack..how many shoes did you pack? *smile*

The gorgeous view!

Climbing through the clouds: )

Our God how great Thou Art!

Taking a quick nap are we?

The top! This is what he was born for!

They arrived back home at about 9:30 Tuesday evening. We hardly recognized them with their fierce sun burn! The picture really doesn't do it justice! Dan got it a little worse then Josh did (poor baby) his lips are all blistering up..and you can really tell that they wore sunglasses....hopefully they will both be much better by Sat.!!

Welcome back! We missed you!

Josh's Surprise Party

Josh is probably the hardest person to surprise, he always likes to stick his little nose into everything. For example if you put some, say some candy in a special place that you think no one knows about...a couple days later you'll find Josh eating it...in front of you with a quirky lil' grin smacked on his sneaky lil' face. If you whisper something to somebody, Josh just "happens" to be around the corner to hear it, so when Alaina told us she wanted to do a "surprise" birthday party for Josh's 21st birthday it was hard not to laugh! But she did a great job! Concealing everything from that little sneak was a challenge but I think we "mostly" surprised him! Or at least he faked it pretty well (which he is pretty good at doing that too).
He got off work for his birthday so he and Alaina were going on errands while we set up everything. Mom made sloppy joes, Mrs. Moore made pasta salad and Alaina provided the cake! The cake itself was a work of art!

Betsy, Abby and Rachel came early and helped set up!The Birthday boy with his cake.

The activities for the evening was mostly basketball, once some of the guys were tired of basketball they played ultimate Frisbee with us girls....maybe not the most "advanced" game they ever played but it was still fun!

Dan sprained his ankle during basketball, so when he retired to sit by the bonfire mom offered to bring out marshmallows. But on further discovery we realized that we had no normal size marshmallows, only the tiny ones. The boys wanted marshmallows so much that the tiny little ones didn't even stop them. The toothpicks were brought out and a shovel of coals scooped out of the fire to roast them over. They were either desperate or very tired!

Wonderful party Alaina, it was a big success!

Happy Birthday Josh!

Happy 21st Birthday Josh!!

Thanks for being such a great big brother!
I am not sure what I am going to do without you when you go and get married!
Love you lots!

I will post pictures of his party hopefully soon!

Mother's Day

It's tradition on mother's day to go to the resturant of mom's choice and her pick of how we spend the afternoon. Her choice has almost become tradition as well, since we have been going to Boston Market and a walk in Heartland Parksince for Mother's Day since I can remember. But this year was the first year having a special extra person come (or should I say an extra special two people) with us! Also since Scooters was having their big, free any small drink day we made a couple stops there too. (I think we should add that to our traditions) *smile*

Heartland Park is beautiful and it has been fun to see new things added over the years!

The whole Family together!

It was a gorgeous day, perfect for enjoying God's beautiful handiwork!

The three little boys

The three older boys still left at home...but not for long....

It was a lovely day!

Cute small children!

Lately every Tuesday Esther and I have had the opportunity to take care of a lot of kids while their mothers are doing a bible study. It has been so much fun! Anna Nelson normally is with us but she was sick (poor thing) so Alatheia gladly filled in.

Here are a few cute pictures of the small children!

Felicity! She is such darling!

Daton, he is so much fun!

Christian, he was just full of smiles!

Alatheia smiling through it all: )

Oh how cute!

"....children a reward from Him."
Psalm 127:3b

Picnic!

On Friday it was Esther's dinner day and she wanted to do something out of the ordinary, so she convinced mom into a picnic at Standing bear lake! The little boys had caught a ton of Night Crawlers that they wanted to use to catch or feed the fish so...we all packed up and headed out to the lake. We started out with everybody but Josh, but then Dan and Joe got a work call so it ended up being just us younger peoples.

Phillip was the most devoted of fisher people, he had hardly finished eating and he was back out again!

Some of those hooks were a little tough to get out!

John was fast on his way to catching the most fish!

It was so much fun to watch them! I think they caught about 10 (little) fish each.

Another Cute Dress!!

Carly Nelson took me up on my offer from a previous post (much to my joy and delight) and asked me to make a dress for her younger sister Emily! Seersucker just happend to be on sale that week: )

It turned out so darling I could hardly give it away!
So now you know that I was serious...if you want me to make your cute little girl a cute little dress...just let me know!

A Pleasent Surprise!

Mom and were almost home from delivering bread and we came upon this cute sight!

Every Tuesday is Josh and Alaina's day off work, so they normally spend it together: ) And since the days have been so beautiful they have done a lot of tandem biking! Normally its not just a mile either but a long ways! With matching jerseys who wouldn't smile when passing these two?

Look at them! They don't even look tired!

Darling Dress!

My darling seersucker!

The large rack to choose from! I still don't know how I chose which ones to get!

Esther diligently working on the scrapbook for Aunt Paula! She did such a great job!

::The completed project::

*Smile*

My new shoes!

Dad and mom got me these running shoe just last week to encourage me in my running! I have to add that Dan picked them out himself: ) I haven't tried them out yet due to the wet weather... but I am sure they are terrific! ( I mean who would want to get brand new shoes dirty the first day?)

Sneaky Snake!!!

This afternoon while I was shopping for my cute seersucker, John called and gave us a graphic account of how they had caught a HUGE snake!! Right when we pulled in the driveway they rushed out to the car to get us to go look at it in the pasture. So I grabbed my camera and headed out. It was a large thing and I still don't know how 3 sneaky little boys managed to get a very sly not to mention angry snake into our small aquarium. But they did!! I could hear the thing before I even saw it! It was hissing up a storm!!! So I wanted to take a video of its ferocious sounds but.....as I was, it well ummm...it tried to strike me and let me tell you it was a surprise!!


It was really quite startling I still jump every time I watch the movie!

Steve really enjoyed watch him hiss...

The sneaky little snake...I don't think I like him anymore!