Happy Birthday Dean!

Well, today is Dean's 36th birthday. It is hard to believe that almost twenty years ago I met the man that I would marry. He is my best friend and an amazing daddy to our three boys. He works so hard for us and I truly appreciate all of what he does for us at work and at home. Our house has been a project since we moved in seven and a half years ago and he is still plugging away at it and doing an awesome job. So HAPPY BIRTHDAY BABE! I Love You!!!!!

Trying to find our house from the park.

Hanging out with his new buddy Mickey.

Biking with the boys.

Our Flowers (and a new car)

These small pink flowers are probably my favorite in our garden. I think they are call Japanese anemones but I'm not real sure about that. Anyway, I just love how tall they are but the flowers are still fairly small and I love the color too. They look really great next to the hydrangeas which are absolutely HUGE this year.

I spent a lot of today really cleaning the upstairs of our house (tomorrow it will be downstairs). The clean house was topped off with a pretty bouquet of flowers from the yard. On a sad note though, this will be the last picture of flowers in my favorite pitcher. Right after I took the pictures, I noticed some water around the bottom and then discovered small cracks by the handle.

So Dean was wondering why I hadn't posted anything about his "new" car. So here it is. We are the proud owners of a 1961 Volkswagon Bug. It runs well and will help out with saving money on gas. Dean has been replacing small things on it the last few weeks and I even helped out as needed. The biggest project was replacing the rubber seals around all of the windows since the original rubber was still there and pretty dry and cracked. It was a learning process but we were able to get all of the windows back in.

The Yummiest Treat at Our House

We have had a pretty quiet weekend here. We didn't have anything planned and didn't really do much. It was rainy for most of the weekend so we were inside A LOT. The best way to top off these kind of weekends is to have movie night with the favorite treat of our house. Popcorn and chocolate chips (or M&M's if there happens to be any around). The boys ask for this treat like it is treasure. The sound of their voices when they ask if they can have popcorn and chocolate chips is so great, it is hard to describe. Anyway, they seem to think that there is nothing better.

So the picture that I have of Griffen today are very cute. I hope that you are able to see the reason for my many giggles today. He got himself dressed completely by himself today for church. He was very proud of himself and insisted that all was well and didn't change a thing about his clothes all day.

If you were unable to see, his pants AND his shirt were on backwards all day today.

Family Reunion

We just returned from the annual family reunion at Dean's parent's house in Ocean Park. It is a great weekend of getting to catch up with family that we really only see this one time a year. This year we kept a couple of the same activities for the kids as they were a big hit in previous years. In the picture above, Jacob is making a window cling painting and Jordan (our neice) is working on a fuse bead project. Below, Toni (Dean's sister) is working on the tie-dye shirts. The kids had such a great time with them last year that we did it again this year though the color was bahama blue this time.

Dean had fun riding his dad's scooter around and giving the boys rides. His parents' RV park has lots of space for driving the scooter around. The kids also had fun riding their bikes as usual though their "track" got quite a bit bigger. In previous years they would ride around on a bit of sidewalk just outside grandma and grandpa's house but this year, they rode around the gravel driveways that surround not only the house but some of the RV spots (or tent spots as we use them).


We also had the annual auction to raise money for the food and activities. Everyone brings a wrapped gift to the reunion and then Dean's dad is the auctioneer. You bid on things and only find out what they are AFTER you buy it. You could run the risk of getting one of the gag gifts. A "lovely" baseball hat with clapping hands sticking out of it comes back almost yearly. This year we lucked out with one gift being a crockpot and the other was a nice bottle of wine and some wine glasses. Unfortunately, the box with the wine in it fell out of the car as we were unpacking and the bottle broke. But, even though they bounced on the driveway, the wine glasses are still perfectly fine.

The new activity this year was rockets for the boys. The boys loved firing off their rockets and watching them soar high into the sky. Griffen's rocket only got this one launch because it flew so high that the wind carried well across the street and it was lost in some brush.

Austin's first launch went well and then he decided to not take a chance of losing it so he stopped but the nexted day he tried it again and this time his too was lost. Jacob didn't launch his rocket because as he put it together something happened and the top wouldn't stay on. Better luck next time.

Anyway, it was a fun weekend filled with GREAT food and lots of time catching up with family. The boys were very tired as we headed home yesterday and spent the five hour drive watching movies and sleeping. We look froward to another great time next year.