Guess Who's Riding a Two Wheeler?!

That's right folks, it's Sam! He asked Damon to take the training wheels off his bike yesterday afternoon, and he just took off! By that night's walk he was a pro! It was kind of amazing!! We've since raised the seat and are contemplating if he may need a bigger bike for his birthday in October!

An Anniversary Surprise

For all of you non facebook users, Damon surprised me by posting a bunch of our WEDDING pictures on his facebook, and then waited for me to find them - as he knew I would! For any of you who know of my love for facebook, you KNOW how special a surprise this was to me! So if any of you have not yet seen some terribly funny and bad wedding pictures, you may follow this link to view them. You do not need to be a facebook user to view them. (Clicking on each picture will bring it up bigger.)

The thing about these pictures is that they've been rarely viewed. We got married 3 short months after my dad unexpectedly passed away and we were all in a kind of a daze. Although these moments were celebratory, they were also so very raw and bittersweet, and even still, a bit hard to look at. I still feel bad about the fact that I never ordered a single picture, although I had orders from various family members, I just didn't want to deal with it. And then after time had gone by, it seemed less and less important, so I just let it go. So these are all proofs. So see? We do have 'proof' we did tie the knot - even though I hardly remember a thing about the day. Looking at the pictures, for the first in over 10 years, I laughed, I cried...and you just might too!

Happy 12th anniversary Damon, I love you!

First Day of School!

The kids are off to school today! I can't believe we have a 4th grader and a kindergartner. It makes me feel old! I had one excited kid, and one who pretended he wasn't. Any guesses as to who was who?


There! That's better!
Did you notice the new tie-dyed Lemme t-shirts?! pretty snazzy huh?

Walking to school:


Standing in line:

Mrs. Saehler - one of the best kindergarten teachers anywhere - had us say goodbye outside - wise advice.
There wasn't even any criers!
I hope that he gets through the lunch line ok. I hope he doesn't go around wearing his lunch on his face all afternoon. I hope he speaks up and tells someone if he needs to go to the bathroom. I hope he makes a friend. I hope he doesn't actually fall asleep during rest time. I hope he has fun. I hope he's not worried because (as he put it) "but I don't know how to read yet.'
(sigh...) Now what?!

Happy Birthday to Max!

I can't believe that my baby is two today! He's not really a baby anymore. He's a toddler. He still doesn't talk much, but strangely enough, he has a way of getting most any point across. He loves trains and other things with wheels. He's a big copy cat - following his brothers and cousins around imitating their actions and sounds. He loves cheetos, being outside, singing, his blanky, turning anything on and off, bigger kids, reading books, puzzles, and his daddy.







Happy birthday, my sweet boy!

Conquering the Fossil Gorge

Recently we had our nephew over for a sleep over. We thought it'd be the perfect opportunity to take everybody out to the fossil gorge at the Res.

There's nothing like climbing on big rocks to make the men in your life feel like...well...men! Case in point:
Another prime example of testosterone at work:

Just look at that puffed out chest - obviously proud to have conquered the rocks. I think they were getting in touch with their caveman selves -
Pleased as punch to be out in the wild. Now if they just would have had some fire or something to blow up, they'd be out there still.Don't get me wrong - boys can be tender too - there were also moments like these. Showing mom a fossil:

And there were sweet moments like this:
Looking for fish swimming under the rock they're standing on:

Poking at crawdads - (or lobsters as Noah called them):

And then there were puzzling moments - moments of 'what were you thinking' that are a daily occurrence in a household of boys. Can you guess what this is?
Yep, it's a footprint. Because "I didn't know it was mud." Now we're back to another tender moment - cousin helping to scrape mud off of a totally covered foot.
the solution - dip your scraping rocks in the water, and scrape some more. There was some talk about banging rocks together until they'd made really sharp scrapers - but we just didn't have that kind of time:
Then it was off to watch the water come through the dam - always impressive (pay no attention to my nephew's dirty hands - he'd just gotten done helping his cousin scrape mud - I'm pretty sure he washed his hands when we got home):

All my nephews are great with Max - and Max thinks they're hilarious:
More rock climbing. Look. Even big boys can get that 'I've conquered big rocks' gleam in their eye:


The end.

Kinze Family Fun Day

Yep, it's that time of year again, time for some Kinze Family Fun! my mom's husband, Don works at Kinze Manufacturing and they put on quite a shindig for the employees and their families every summer. Joe and Jack were super excited about the kiddie wagon train - can't you tell?
And so was everybody else!

There were a ton of inflatables this year - and Sam really got himself moving down them!

Will and Noah both tried out the rock climbing wall and got way up there!








Lily and Max spent a lot of time hanging out under at the sand tent. He was not too sure about sand between the toes.
Lily seriously could have spent the whole day there.

There were all kinds of free snacks - nachos, kettlecorn, lemonade, pop and SNO-CONES:



Us girls played a little bingo, and despite getting close a few times, none of us won:
Later on, Don won a MEAT PACKAGE in the employee raffle! An OBSCENE amount of meat was delivered to them and it filled up their deep freeze! They'll be set for a long time to come! Then there was the great meal - brisket, hamburgers, and hotdogs, salads, potatoes, fruit, icecream and COOKIES. I think this was my mom's plate. She'll claim they weren't all for her, but I don't know....