Memorial Day Weekend

Zanesfield- Logan Hills Festival

Brad and Dane eagerly waiting for candy to be thrown during the parade.

Happy Birthday to

my Mom (June 5th), Me (June 2nd) and Randi (May 29th)

Randi made the cupcakes. Super cute with our ages in chocolate. Brad noticed at the party that Randi and I's ages both add up to my mom's. Pretty cool, not sure that would happened very often. I'd have to sit down and do the math, but I'm terrible at math (and I hate it) so that's not gonna happen.

25 + 28= 53

(Are my mom and sister shrinking, or am I getting taller!?!)

For all the kids there was a sprinkler set up and here's the biggest kid of all running 2 of his grandchildren through :) Dane thought that was hysterical.

The sprinkler was also hitting the trampoline which all the kids thought was fantastic! Dane spent most of the party here, he was exhausted when we got home and even slept in alittle the next day.

Let's go far far away from here honeybee

Our neighbors stopped us outside on Sunday to tell us about this crazy swarm of honey bees that came in that morning and took up residence in a tree by their front door. Of course we promptly headed over there to check it out. It was pretty cool.

However, they were not thrilled to have them in a tree that was right next to the front door so we gave them the number to Skidmore Apiary who we'd recently bought some honey from at the local farmers market. They called and he said that he'd been looking for something like that and he'd be there in 45 minutes.

I have never seen so many bees! They were non hostile, I could get as close as I wanted. They were much to busy building a comb to care about me.

The weird thing about this story is that when the bee guy showed up, they were standing there talking and the bees just up and flew off! As fast as they showed up, they disappeared! They had been there morning to night and only left the tiniest little comb behind.

4X4 Fun

Really it wasn't fun at all. By the time we got there the giant monster trucks were over :( Then we stood in line for over an over so that Dane could ride in a monster truck and when we got up to the front of the line they closed it down so they could start more races!!!! WHAT?! I just waited in line for an hour with a 2 year old and he doesn't get a ride!? That sucks. After that we just strolled around and checked out all the BIG trucks. Dane loved it, I think he had a good time. He had no idea all that had gone wrong.

Seconds after I took this pic, Dane said......."Gotta Pee!" and proceeded to unbuckle his pants! We rushed him off to the potty before we got a hill-billy beatdown for pissin' under someone's precious truck :) giggles.

I am so many things.......

It was mother/daughter dinner night at my grandma's church. I have to admit, I wasn't to keen on going but I think that has more to do with my social anxiety issues than anything else. I always plan things/agree to things and then regret it until I get there and have a good time. It's just what I do. Plus, my family makes me laugh and I love that about them. My grandma is almost 91 and it's special to have these times with her and I know she's so proud to have us together.

We were also blessed to have Aunt Mary with us this week (from florida). It's her birthday tomorrow. Happy Birthday with much love! In the picture from the left......Aunt Mary, my mom, Gerda, Trena, Randi and grandma S.

A group photo. (Thanks Michelle for taking this.) For those of you wondering, Gerda is Trena's mother in-law. She's a sweetie, glad she could make it.


Me, My momma, Randi, Trena

Loving my mom's new dress..... I kinda picked it out:) Might have to borrow that someday.

** I am so many things. A daughter, sister, wife, aunt.....most importantly I'm a mother now too. The greatest gift ever given is the gift of a child. I am constantly evolving.

Someone mentioned at dinner tonight on how I turned into the family shutter bug. I know how and why. It's a long story but in short. These memories seem so fresh now, the here and now so unforgettable but we do forget. Someday we can look back and remember.

Dane Rides

Dane's been riding all over the house these days. One day Brad took his bike over to grandma's for him to practice in the driveway and that was it! He's so good on it, he rides all over the house and never runs into anything..... He's gotten quite good at steering! He's also riding his fourwheeler all over the yard and on the trails in the woods. Can't believe how much he's grown.

Dirty ol' Scamp

Oh My Gosh! I did it. I figured it out!!! Finally got these videos to upload. I'm so tech-savvy :) or not, it only took me WEEKS to figure it out. So the next few posts will probably be videos since I have a back log of them that I've never been able to show.

Here's The Scamp on it's 1st run! Brad was so nervous something was going to go wrong. He had a few kinks to work out but it's good now. We've been out in it a few times when the weather is nice and not raining......which is basically 1 day a week these days. It's pretty funny, Dane's carseat is in the back seat. He LOVES to ride in it.

Like Father, Like Son.

Dane & I

This is Dane and I on Mother's Day. These pictures made me realize that my son is THE CUTEST!

Unfortunately they also made me realize that I'm looking really tired. Oh No! Am I starting to look old?!........oh great. I was hoping this day would never come.

Sort of fitting that on Mother's Day, I would realize in photos how old/tired I'm looking. I mean after all, I'm a mom now. I'm always tired! It would probably help if I went to bed earlier. I think I'm going to try and do that.

**On another note, I figured out why my videos won't upload. I realized that my old camera(Fugifilm) formatted them in AVI and I never had a problem uploading those. My new camera (Canon) formats my videos in MVI. Um, huh? To upload video's on Blogger you need to have them formatted in AVI, MPEG, Quicktime, Real, or Windows media. Not sure what to do...... How do I change how my camera formats videos, or how do I upload the videos to a different program? Anybody know? S.O.S.

Arts-N-Crafts

A few months ago I ordered this kit called Windows into Nature from a One Step Ahead catalog. It's adorable. The theory being that you put this birdhouse together, paint it, stick it to the window and then watch from inside your house as the birds turns it into a home. A cute idea.

However, The birdhouse comes in about a million pieces that don't really fit together that well and they give you cheap like Elmer's glue to hold it all together! It turned out to be more of a craft project for me than for Dane. Someone should have be photographing my expressions as I tried to do this!! As I was holding/gluing the pieces together is when Dane was unscrewing the deck boards! Anyways, I did finally get it together (not sure I would trust it to hold a little family of birds) and Dane did get it all painted. He liked that part.

He took it pretty seriously.

Here it is all finished and suctioned to the window. Pretty cute I think.

The view from inside. I wouldn't trust those suction cups either. I don't think any bird is stupid enough you build a nest in this thing but I've been thinking I might try to entice the birds in by putting out some seed nearby.

Bradly Jr

Well, I gave birth to a mini-Brad :( Not only does he look just like him, he acts like him too. Minus the attitude Brad says (he got that from me) Ha! I blame this on the fact that Brad has been with him almost everyday since layoff. Since then Dane has learned valuable things from Brad like how to fix a car, the names for and how to use every tool in the garage, etc. Seems like a good thing until your working on something in the back yard and you look over and your son is disassembling the deck by taking the screws out. (yes that really happened!) Some how Dane managed to take out the screws holding the deck boards together......a deck that has been on the house for 10+years! Screws that were put in with a drill, screws that should have been stuck in there pretty good, and probably rusty!

Anyways, Here's a pic of Dane sitting in the Scamp and reading a pocket reference book. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's a tiny book that hold A TON of useful information regarding vehicles.

When I asked Dane what he was reading about he told me that he was looking for a car part :)

I Heart Faces: Celebrating Mom

In honor of mother's day, I would like to post my all-time favorite photo from Dane's early baby days. Brad took this photo of Dane and I cuddling in bed. I was in pure baby bliss!

Just for fun I entered the photo at I Heart Faces

Dane was almost 3 months old in this picture. He's almost 2 1/2 now so these super cuddly moments are fleeting :(

He's much to busy to sit still for too long. My best bet for a cuddly moment is to catch him in the morning when he first wakes up or nearing bedtime.

Chicken Scaloppine Al Marsala

Another recipe I copied from the Family Circle magazine. It's basically alot like chicken marsala with a few differences and it's served over couscous.

4 chicken breasts pounded thin

1/4C flour

3TBS evoo

1pkg mushrooms

1/2C marsala

1/2C beef broth

1/2tsp salt

1/4tsp pepper

1/4 TBS butter

1 TBS parsley

I toasted the couscous in alittle evoo first, then added diced onion and chicken stock and let it simmer for 10-15 minutes.

Then served the chicken/mushroom over the couscous.

Turned out really good! Brad actually LOVED this one. Dane did too, esp. the couscous which of course he proceeded to pick out the onions (crunchies) and eat those first......... So Weird but ok.

A storm's A Brewin'

We had a storm roll in Tuesday night. These were taken off the back deck. Not sure if I've ever seen a storm move in as fast as this one did, time lapsed in these series of photos is less than 5 minutes probably. You could hear the rumble of thunder, see the lightening strike off in the distance and feel the wind pick up. It had been such a nice day, really warm and sunny and it was sooo cold suddenly!

Still can't get those video's uploaded. Super irritating! I try again tomorrow. I thought maybe it was because they were too long, so I went in and cut them both down to maybe 1 minute long and they still won't upload! WHY?!? Uggg.

S.O.S. I need some tech support!

Self-portrait

Playing around with the camera settings, I took a self portrait. I took this with the aperture set as low as it would go.

This is NOT what I wanted to post today! I tried for 1 1/2 hours to upload 2 different videos, one is the cutest video of Dane singing and the other of Brad firing up the Scamp and getting it out of the garage for the 1st time. Bummer. I'll try again when I have some time to figure out why it won't upload :( Grrrr. Irritating!

Brad took Dane to town this morning to get groceries and I've been quite productive......2 loads of laundry (folded & put away), dishes, a batch of ice tea made, and now I've got to get ready for work. I won't know what to do with myself getting ready for work without Dane running a muck.

And a small prayer for the day....."Please god let this be a good day, stress free. Please show us what you have planned for Brad (a job maybe?) and help me not to worry about things I cannot control." Amen :)

Brown Eyed Baby

Dane insisted that I take a picture of his eyeball, not really sure why but I indulged him. Dane's eyes are the darkest brown color and one of my favorite facial features that he has. At times you can barely see a pupil in these eyes...... I could stare into them forever. Yeah, I'm in love.

Look close, Can you see me?

Zoo & Momo

Dane and I invited Momo to the Zoo thursday morning. We got there about 10am, the weather was alittle chilly but warmed up not long after we got there. Turned out to be just about perfect. We had a great time! Here's Dane and Momo being followed by a goose (he was after Dane's snacks)

Dane loved PePe the penguin, and wanted to keep posing with him.

PePe needed his hat.

The sweetest Orangutan.

Love how she's looking at him and he's looking at her.