It's the Little Things...

that make every day wonderful. We have been crazy busy over the summer which you, I am sure, noticed by my lack of blogging. It has nothing to do with a lack of material, just time. Anyway, last week Jacob went back to school. This is his first year to be gone all day. I was worried that the adjustment would be hard (for me; him, not so much). Anyway, I was also excited about the prospect of having more time alone with Ethan and the opportunity to do some things that quite frankly just don't get done when there are two little boys and one big boy hanging around the house. I love them all to distraction, I think that is the problem.

On Monday, my dear friend Rachel came over with her little girl. While Ethan and Hope played (very well I might add) Rachel and I scrapped our little hearts out. I was amazed at the amount of scrapbooking I got done in such a short time. And, when she left for an hour to run an errand, I did a few chores. It was amazing. (Am I tooting my own horn a little?).



As a side note, Rachel and I put both Ethan and Hope down for a nap while we did a little more scrappin', and they both slept really good. Poor Ethan was so worn out that I had to wake him up to go and get Jacob. When I went in to get him and saw how precious he looked I had to grab the camera. Even the flash didn't wake him up.


On Tuesday, I was able to drop Jacob off at school and then go into town to meet with the ladies from our Mom's group at our church. It was wonderful to get together with these ladies again. It is a chaotic hour and a half, but so much fun. Afterwards, Ethan and I went to Sam's Club to get some goodies and then came home and had lunch. When I put him down for his nap I came back upstairs to my scrapbook desk and decided to reorganize (again!). But, this time I made labels!!

Today I decided that Ethan and I were going to make some treats. I found a recipe on a website that I frequent and it looked almost too easy. (Isn't there a saying about that somewhere?) Anyway, Ethan and I decided to make pretzel hugs. I didn't have any Hershey's Hugs, but I had Kisses -- "Surely they will work". Uhh, no. I thought that maybe they were just old because I had dug them out of the candy jar. I still had an unopened package so I thought I'd try those. No again. Ok, is it because they are Kisses and not Hugs? Is there a big difference (besides the stripes, of course) that I am unaware of?? HHMMMM. So, Ethan and I hop into the van and drive up to Felpausch. "Surely they will have some Hugs". No. Seriously?? Ok, so I also heard that you could also use Rolo's. We gave it a try and it finally worked. Wow, I thought it looked too easy. At least we were successful and I guess it was a lesson to Ethan on persistence (or stubbornness, whichever way you want to look at it).

Don't they make your mouth water??

First Day of First Grade

....isn't that a line in a Veggie Tales song?? Anyway, here are a few pics from Jacob's first day back at school.

Outside on our back porch.

Here he is out in front of his school.

Here he is in his classroom right next to Gracie.

He was so happy when he got home because he didn't even cry today. He did have some butterflies in his stomach before school, but he kept insisting that he wasn't nervous. His tummy just felt a little funny.

Ethan's Birthday Fun Day

This year, because of the expense of our trip to Florida we told the boys that we weren't going to have big family parties for birthdays. They were both OK with not doing birthdays the traditional way we had in the past. Instead, we opted for a trip to Chuck E. Cheese with both sets of Grandparents. Now, I have to mention real quick that although the boys get to play the games, it gets a little hairy when we are down to the last few tokens. You see, the big people are just bigger kids. So far, we haven't had any tears, but Curt was close this last time.

I think Curt would make a splendid jockey. See how he isn't too big for his horse.


Jacob had my Mom in on a little gunfire action. They were shooting giant spiders.


I found the Deal or No Deal game. It was a blast and soon, both my Mom and Joanne couldn't stop playing.


Ethan was dragging Grandpa around and having a ball knocking down little ducks.


I think our favorite game was the racing game. Both the boys played it and Curt and I took a turn or two. Imagine our little family wanting to race cars.....hhmmmm.

Pool Party

The last two years Curt's parents have won a pool party from a silent auction that their church holds during the yearly garage sale. A very nice lady named Mary hosts this party at her house and provides all the food and beverages (and of course the pool). The first year that we went I thought it would be really awkward because we didn't know Mary. But, after about the first 5 minutes I found that Mary just really likes people, she is very generous and loves to share her home. This year, I wasn't nervous and was looking forward to seeing Mary again. This is probably our last pool party though. Mary and her husband are preparing to move to....NEW ZEALAND. Doesn't that just sound so fun and adventurous? She's also an airline pilot. The more I get to know her, the more I like her.

Here are some of the pictures of our fun that day. Most of these were taken for me by Mary (she also scrapbooks!!).

This is all of us

This is Jacob trying to beat his daddy with a giant noodle

Here is Ethan going down the slide. Have you ever seen anything so funny?

Thank you Mary, we had a wonderful day. Thank you to the Ford's, without your winning bid and invitation we would have missed all this fun.

Parade Day

Curt's dad is a barber in the small town of Grand Ledge. Curt and I both grew up there. Curt was born and raised there, I moved in in time for seventh grade. Anyway, we go to Grand Ledge for our haircuts and on this particular Saturday in late June, Gary (Curt's dad) asked us to come in a bit early because there was going to be a parade downtown and parking was going to be a bear. We got there about an hour before the parade and were done in time to find a spot on the main drag and watch the parachuter land smack in the middle of the bridge.

It was really cool to watch him come in. They even had a little target for him to aim for and he landed right on it.

W also saw a lady walking on stilts. You don't see many stilt walkers anymore. Its kind of become a lost art, so to speak.

Anyway, watching the parade was fun. The boys filled my purse with candy, which we still haven't eaten and thought the coolest thing was the old police car we saw.

Calling All Scrappers.....

I was just on QVC.com (my favorite shopping site) and saw that on September 23rd, (the day before my birthday) they are hosting a Paper Crafting Fair. They only do this two times a year and it is coming up. Start saving those pennies. They are going to have a Today's Special Value which will kick-off the event at Midnight (am. on the 23rd) and all day they show new tools, product lines, papers, etc. It is fun to watch and just get some new ideas. I hope that you enjoy watching. Let me know if you buy anything.

Back at the Zoo

If you know my family you know that one of our favorite and very cheap excursions is to the zoo. Curt's mom and dad get us a family pass to the zoo that is less than 30 minutes away from our house every year for Curt's and my birthday. We like it because we can use it as often as we want and if we happen to go away to somewhere close to another zoo we can get into that zoo at a discounted rate. It is a great deal for us all around. Keeping all that in mind, I have a lot of scrapbook pages about the zoo. It is a great joke among my Rachel friends.

Anyway, this year our first zoo trip didn't happen until the week before we went to Disney. Yeah, I was packing away and then had to stop and go to the zoo. But really with those cute little boys wanting to feed the giraffes how do you say no??

The boys are very fond of maps. They don't really know how to read them, but they hold them open and look at them all the time. They've done pretty good at not running into things while they study their maps, but they've had some very close calls.

I love taking their picture while they are sitting on stuff. I don't know what it is, but I am sure that I have at least one picture from every trip to the zoo with the boys sitting on this same pile of elephant tusks.

This picture is pretty exciting to me. Ethan is the one feeding the giraffe a little cracker (especially made for the giraffes and provided by the zoo). Ethan is afraid of animals including dogs (even puppies) and cats (including kittens). He doesn't like them to get anywhere near him (especially with their mouths). But he did really good feeding them here.

Here he is petting the goats. You see he's petting it way up on its back and he wouldn't let Curt put him down to walk among the goats. Oooh No, that isn't going to be happening for a while.

This is the little elephant statue in the children's play area. I told you I liked taking their picture sitting on things.

I hope you all have a happy day today!

**I haven't had much opportunity to update our blog lately. I am going to try to catch up with some of the goings on over the last month or so that I haven't been able to share. I am going away again this weekend (scrapbooking with cousin Beckie, I am soooo excited) and Curt is going to join me on Saturday night so we can spend Sunday with Beckie and Mike. I will try to post more early next week.