If only Summer would last all year

Why I keep my floors clean....

2009-08-05T14:06:00.000-07:00

So I was cooking dinner and heard my 1-year-old grunting and didn't think much of it. I look over and she is laying on her belly; which is not her normal position for the grunting business I thought she was doing.

Apparently it's more fun to eat raisins this way:

Notice, though, her shirt. Yes, it does say, "Future Valedictorian". I still have high hopes. She also decided to tatt herself up today. Her sister has similar tatts on her arms and stomach.

I think it blows my chances of running a licensed daycare.

South Dakota

2009-07-12T04:35:00.000-07:00

We traveled (by car) to South Dakota a few weeks ago to visit JB's family. It was a pretty painful car ride for all of us, but it was worth it to visit with his family we don't see but once every few years.

El & Shay didn't care much for South Dakota. Shay busted her lip within the first 2 hours we were there and I thought she was teething, but turned out she had double-ear infection. El cried everyday saying she wanted to go home and turns out she had this fever/sore throat thing going around. Needless to say, we left on a Friday to go up there, and we left on Wednesday the following week to come home. Not much fun for mama either, who couldn't set Shay down....ever without her screaming.

It may be a while until we travel that again. JB's mom decided it was probably easier on all of us for her to travel to IL. We agreed.

4 Generations (Great-Grandma Ole, Grandma Cathy, Daddy JB, El & Shay (notice how Shay loved it).

Nanny with El on the carousel

The family outside of Great-Nanny's house.

Happy Birthday, JB!

2009-07-12T04:26:00.000-07:00

It's been a month since my last post and it seems all I'm finding time to post now are birthday announcements. :) Well, it's time again. JB's birthday is today.

Happy Birthday, Honey and we love you.

Here's a pic of JB with the girls taken at Storybook Land in Aberdeen, South Dakota. Notice El on the right; she's saying "YeeeeHaaa". She's going to be a cowgirl.

Happy 3rd Birthday, El!!

2009-06-15T06:10:00.001-07:00

My oldest turned 3 this past week so we celebrated with a party yesterday. Lots of jumping, swimming, fighting, eating, and candy. :) My big girl...where does the time go?

Can't pass up this pic

2009-05-03T05:39:00.000-07:00

This is the morning of Easter. I love pajama pics and who can pass up posting these smiley girls!

The BIG 1!!

2009-05-03T05:21:00.000-07:00

What a week. El has pneumonia and to find that out has had been poked for blood samples twice, had chest x-rays done 2 different times, a catheter put in to get urine to test, and a CT scan to find out if it was more than just pneumonia. What a trooper. I racked up 12 hours at Dr. offices this week and that was just 2 days. Got bless medicine. I'm thinking about getting some myself.

My baby turned one yesterday. I can't believe it. Seriously can't believe it that a year can fly like it did. She told me she wanted to eat at Red Lobster for her birthday....who wants to turn a baby's request down? El fell asleep during lunch, but Shay was loving the attention.

Change

2009-04-26T03:45:00.000-07:00

I thought it was about time I took dad & Jenna's picture off the main screen. :) The girls & I visited JB a few months ago on a day off while he was working in Southern IL. I thought it would be good if he was in a picture once in a while with them. Otherwise, people talk. :)

The water was friggin cold and we were even indoors; Shay tried to like it but her lips were so blue. El swam anyway with her blue lips. We moved to the hot tub and that was much better for all of us.

My Perfect Parents

2009-03-20T04:44:00.001-07:00

My dad, living a Vegas dream.
My mom, the always serious, never-funny.
They're a perfect pair.

CONGRATULATIONS, Mr & Mrs. Cantrell

2009-03-20T04:37:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Beth Iffert & Gary Cantrell who traveled to Vegas last week and got married Friday the 13th. 50 family and friends ventured that way to celebrate.

Word was, Christy & Beck had celebrated a little too much before the wedding, but they made through. Here are some pics of the family. You decide....I think everyone had a Vegas time.

I wish you forever happiness.

New pics

2009-02-24T03:31:00.000-08:00

We are sooooo ready to be able to go outside and play. Here are some random pictures. We've been getting pretty bored lately. The girls even wore bows in their hair for about 4 minutes while I got pictures. :) I also thought I'd better get some pictures of them loving each other before they figure out that they don't really want to love each other.

The big 40

2009-02-20T03:30:00.003-08:00

My parents celebrated their 40th Wedding Anniversary on January 25. I put it in the paper but never got around to posting it. Sorry about that.

Congrats and may you have 40 more!

They were the grade-school sweethearts who got married during mom's senior year and I'm sooooo happy that they did!

We love you and many of us can take lessons from you two.

Snots & Sayings

2009-02-20T03:22:00.001-08:00

You would think there would be only so much snot a kid can produce. My girls have been working OT producing snot. Kaydo spent 3 days in the hospital this week for pneumonia. Kids and their sharing. Why couldn't they just share peanut butter crackers....wait, maybe not.

El is so adorable and comes up with new sayings all the time. Now she says, "Mommy, I'm sick. I have the coughers. I'm sick real bad." So cute. I say, "No, honey, you're not sick real bad. You'll be okay." and she's happy with that and moves on. I just wish she'd quit using her arm as a Kleenex.

Shay now says, "Mama" along with other jibberish as she crawls using one leg to push her along. I bet JB can't wait until another year or so and he'll have 3 hott girls talking his ears right off.

And the Award goes to.....

2009-01-21T04:01:00.000-08:00

Thanks, Mrs. Campbell for tagging me with the Fabulous Blogger Award. I would like to say that my five addictions are:

1) Definitely coffee. I like it as bold and fresh as can be. My coffee maker will grind the beans and then drop them into the filter but that is way to noisy for early morning sleeping babes, so I grind them the evening before. I drink 4-5 cups. I don't sleep much; is it cause I drink coffee that I can't sleep or is it I don't get sleep so I must drink coffee. It's the latter. I figure I'm a coffee addict like my father.

2) My DVR. I mean, come on, if you have it, you know what I mean. I would pay $50 a month instead of $5 if I had to maintain this luxurious pleasure of having my shows recorded. I don't miss setting the VCR.

3) Rock of Love Bus: As dumb as it may be, I can't live without it. Haven't missed a season. Will Bret Michels find love this time? Oh, the drama. I do have to watch the DVRd version which is fine because I normally watch Little Einsteins, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, and Go, Diego, Go during the day (not by choice).

4) My hair straightener. I think back to before I had one and my hair really must have looked like crap. Not that it's beautiful now, but at least I have control. Before I bought one, I never thought about it, though, so I guess it wasn't on priority. :)

5) My family, of course. I have a pretty good husband and perfect kids. Husband may be gone quite often to work, but it makes it that much sweeter when he's home.

Happy Birthday, Mom!

2009-01-08T12:27:00.001-08:00

Happy Birthday, today, to my wonderful mom. She truly is a wonderful mother. I learn from her everyday. We love you!

El's new sled

2009-01-04T05:38:00.000-08:00

We thought 2-year-old El was ready for a Jeep. She's not so good at steering, holding the pedal down, or stopping, but we have high hopes. Here she is in our basement since it was cold outside. She already has a bit of road rage.

What the Santa?

2008-12-17T04:39:00.000-08:00

Okay, here is the classic picture of a young child damaged by the "big guy". Props, though, to the Junior Women's Club for their Breakfast with Santa setup.
Shay simply questions why the hell is she sitting on the lap of this weirdo? El just wants to get the frig off?

Happy Birthday, Scout

2008-12-17T04:35:00.001-08:00

Scouty turned 4 on December 2 and that Saturday her padres had a bowling party for her at Parklanes. It was soooooo much fun and El may turn out to be a professional bowler. Daddy is hoping for a tennis player and golfer (but I'm not good at either of those). He's coaching her in this pic. Get used to it, El.

Shay's First Thankgsiving

2008-12-17T04:32:00.000-08:00

A little late, I know, but I wanted to post this pic of Shay &

her first Thankgsiving. She is truly a Schackmann....which means she loves to eat. My mom used to make the comment that whoever I dated better have money cause it costs a lot to feed me. Thanks, Mom. It's true.

I was tagged!

2008-11-22T04:48:00.001-08:00

Sorry, Hannaman, it took so long for me to do this. :)

Here are the rules:
1. Post the rules on your blog.
2. Write 6 random things about yourself.
3. Tag 6 people at the end of your post(or as many as you want)
4. If you are tagged, do it and pass the tag along.
5. Enjoy

Here are some random facts about me.........

1) I have a heart-shaped uterus. Weird, I know. The Dr said it's kind of unusual. I say my kids definitely start life being loved.

2) One eyebrow is much higher than the other. Not really noticed until I wear my glasses.

3) I broke my leg when I was 6 when swinging from a rope playing Tarzan in my dad's shed. My neighbor Marissa Dion and I were hanging on the rope jumping from insulation bag to bag when the rope broke mid-air. We fell to the concrete and Marissa landed on my leg in a not-very-good position. I had a home tutor (Stephanie Pasero) for weeks. I figure that's where El gets her love for climbing.

4) I have had 7 speeding tickets, all before I was 23....my dad was my driver's ed teacher.

5)I, like Hannaman, LOVE my kids and can't believe I actually have them and feel very blessed everytime I look at them.

6) This is difficult. I'm a pretty boring person, really. I, also, pretty much only wore black t-shirts (either Harley or Hair-band) in high school and thought I was cool. I thought my hair was similar to Axl's and loved it. When, really, I rarely got my hair-trimmed, bought boxes of color regularly and really didn't know how to take care of hair (still don't).

I'm thinking nearly everyone has been tagged and I'm not sure who hasn't, but I'll tag:

Angie K
Sammy Jo

Morning Joe

2008-11-18T04:05:00.000-08:00

I get up pretty early. Not necessarily because I want to; sometimes I'm prodded by little voices. But, I must say I love mornings and when I'm on my 4th cup of coffee, the sun is starting to come up. This is a pic of the sunrise over my favorite hickory tree in our backyard. Just thought it was cool.

Scouty the Beautiful

2008-11-18T04:01:00.000-08:00

While I'm at it, I better add the cutie little Scouty on here in her costume. She looked BEAUTIFUL. The girls wouldn't sit still, so this is the best I could get. :)

Mr. O...aka Brian Urlacher

2008-11-18T03:57:00.001-08:00

Check out Mr. O's Halloween pics. (Scout started calling him Mr. O, so we all do now). Ignore the goofy dork holding him.

Madagascar 2--

2008-11-13T04:24:00.001-08:00

I loved Madagascar 1 so I was pretty excited to see the second one. I took Kaydo & El to the opening Friday night at Robinson. We, of course, had to start the night at McD's with the Madagascar happy meals.

The movie.......it's okay, and the kids did pretty well for the first 45 minutes. After that, they were wanting to run around. Totally understandable. They were wanting to "move it, move it".
The scratch on El's face is from falling off the brick porch at my parent's. She climbs on the wall and thank God fell on the concrete step side instead of the 5 foot down landscaped brick side. I mean this girl has permanently scarred knees already...she's 2. I figure she'll never be Miss America (not that I was shooting for that anyway). I bet she would make an awesome wrestler.

Halloween 2008

2008-11-13T04:19:00.000-08:00

This year's Halloween was a little strange. We planned on going out on trick OR treat night but Shay had the poops and El had snots so I thought I still had another good year of El not remembering what exactly trick or treating is so we stayed home. JB is home on Sundays so we did dress the girls up and golf cart around the neighborhood trick or treating.

El was a monkey which is very fitting. This girl will someday be the star of a circus. She'll be the one that does flips on the high wire.

Shay was a lion and quite frankly didn't give a crap about trick or treating or being covered by a stupid lion costume (her words). But, we did it anyway.

What's going on with 2008?

2008-11-13T04:07:00.000-08:00

Wow. It's been a while since I've been here. School started and now it's almost over. I'm not complaining. It's been a great semester but I'm ready for the next one.

Gotta love JUCO. We have 16 weeks in a semester and we're down to only 4 more then finals. Ahh, this is when all of my schooling pays off.

Babysitter-on-backup

2008-10-03T04:12:00.000-07:00

Shout out to my bud, Rbka Su. She asked me if she could watch my kids last Friday while I was at school & JB & JG were working on the house. The girl is awesome. My words were, you really want to? On your day off? Okay.

Well, she is an awesome mom with anyone's kids and El & Shay both loved her and had a blast. The boys said they heard Shay cackling outside and didn't know what Rbka did to make her so giggly. She's awesome and we are actually have a girl's night out tonight after the game and I can't wait to hang with my old pals again.

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, Captain

2008-10-03T04:05:00.001-07:00

Mom & Dad decided about 2 months ago they wanted a pontoon boat. They did minimal searching and then mom hooked up with ole' Ebay. She found exactly what they were looking for for less than what they planned on paying. And, the location? Salem, IL. It was fate.

We took it out last Saturday since we are running out of time and warm weather to take a pack of kids on open water. Fun was had by all. Here's a pic of all the captains we had manning the ship. It was a good time. Can't wait until next year when we can drag a few kids behind it.

The best is when out of the blue, Kaydo says, "Hey Captain! There's a pirate ship over there!" Apparently it was something dad & K had worked out. It was cute. Dad calls him, "Sir" or "First Mate".

El only tried to open one of the doors and jump a couple of times.

Happy Birthday, Dad

2008-09-25T09:50:00.001-07:00

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!

It must be a popular birthday month for awesome people!! I want to wish my Dad a happy birthday, September 26. He's the best dad anyone could EVER ask for, and I mean that. He ran his traditional birthday 10 miler this morning so he's good for another year. I love you, Dad.

My girls got him an EIU flag for his flagpole--his alma mater.

Football fever

2008-09-17T11:12:00.001-07:00

We finally made it to a game. We all missed the first home football game because the kids all had colds/fevers/snots and the "grown" boys were away fishing that weekend. Kiki & I didn't want to handle 3 kids by ourselves. Mom would have been there, but so would have Kaydo & Charlotte which just adds to the mix of chasing kids, wiping noses, etc. You know what I mean.

But Owen & Shay got to attend their first games and they were sooooooooo excited as you can see from the pics.
Shay didn't make it to the end of the first quarter. She thought it was too loud and she said they weren't playing well enough for her to sit there and take it. El on the other hand, LOVED IT! She loves the rails they put up at the rows cause they are the perfect height for her to swing from. She's part monkey....it's on her dad's side.

Ready to cruise

2008-09-17T11:09:00.000-07:00

Not that they are jumping the gun, but look at the truck J & Kiki bought for Owen. He's been crawling for a month, now, so I guess it was time. Owen told me he plans on putting a lift kit on it and some black 20's. If you see him cruising around, don't let the law know.

Splish Splash

2008-09-15T04:50:00.001-07:00

My Saturday nights used to be filled with a lot of Captain, dancing, and maybe even falling off a chair or two, but now it's full of slippery, naked kids. Much safer on my liver. ;) The boys were out of town fishing for the weekend, so we had a girls gone wet & wild night.

This is the Big O's first time in the big tub and who better to share it with than 2 of the hottest little ladies around. He had a pretty good time but I think his mom isn't ready for him to have that much freedom just yet. :) If you haven't seen him in a while, he has gotten his hair cut. He's such a stud...and my girls' bodyguard.
Grandma was in on the action, too.

The Scout

2008-09-15T04:46:00.001-07:00

Here are a few pics of Scouty down at the camper. She LOVES to hold babies. She always says, "Oh, is this the baby? She's sooooo cuuuute." It's pretty adorable. Here's a pic of Scout & El in the tub of the camper. These girls were NASTY dirty; you know, they were hitting the camping pretty hard core. You're not camping unless you get dirty. These 2 had a blast in the tub. I think the neighbors didn't appreciate it.

Lil' Miss Evil Knievel

2008-09-01T13:51:00.000-07:00

Labor Day of happiness. El woke up this morning, and here she is (see below). The hair looks like this every morning. I've never been very good at doing hair so I always just leave it. As the day goes on, it usually lays down.

I checked out the Dorn's little Evil Knievel so I thought I'd show my little Knievel in the early stage of madness. I picked up this little bike from a garage sale, and I mean it's little . The bike belonged to no other than the boys of Daniel Stark (we had a discussion about definitely keeping his boys away from my girls....he agreed). This cute little bike HAD to be the right size for El. I know she's little, but this bike is little!!! Well, it took her a about a week and she's definitely got the handle on it. Here are some bike pics.

This is Shay watching her big sis. Shay says, "it's a nuckle-biter!!"

Wet & Wild

2008-09-01T13:34:00.000-07:00

"Uncle & Aunt" Matt & Amanda Ewertowski were down visiting us this weekend and Matt & JB got a lot of fishing time in as well as setting up the deer stands and JB's deer camera. Matt is one outdoorsy lover. Matt was JB"s college roommate back in the day and he lives in a suburb of Chicago. He lives near his hometown growing up which if this tells you anything about the affects of the windy pooptown, I mean city, he had 55 in his graduating high-school class and one stop-light in town. The "town" now has 4 HUGE high-schools and too-many stop lights to count. It's only been 15 years.

Anywhoo, For Labor Day weekend, mom & dad planned a big fish fry at the camper on East Fork on Sunday which worked out for all of us but Matt & Amanda since they had a 5 1/2 hour drive north for home. We took our 'awesome' boat out to give Amanda a ride and El & I went as well. El is such a fish and it was so friggin' hot out that I did something that is going to get me in trouble any other boat ride from now on.

I let El touch the water.

I then let her put her feet in.Needless to say, we ended up dragging her alongside the boat. Matt is holding her here only because my arms hurt so bad from holding her; we had to switch. She was SOOOOOO mad when we pulled her out. I think other boaters thought she hated the water. What did I start?

Got Milk? Warning to the squimish

2008-08-18T04:32:00.001-07:00

The picture below is not me nor my daughter

Okay, so I'm still nursing (which it's only been almost 4 months; props to those that go way long (Sara B)). I have to go back to work today (suckass) and so I'm, of course, getting little Shaymeister hooked on bottles but still giving her boob milk. I have 24 bags frozen but the little squirt eats ALOT and I want it to last more than a week. I HATE pumping milk. For those that can pump 8 ounces in 10 minutes, (you know who you are), you can get on with Prairie Farms if you need a job and leave the rest of us alone. I pumped this morning for 25 minutes (this is my net surfing time) and I got 2.5 ounces. Okay, to those that don't know, this may last a 3 1/2 month old for maybe an hour. Well, I'm dry. I'm pouring the gold (needs to be on the stock market) into the bottle and the F'n bottom wasn't on right and I lost an ounce. I'm sure for a guy it's the equivalent of being kicked in the balls repeatedly by a 4-year-old.

Why do I nurse? Sure, it's the "best" for the baby, but a large part of it is due to the price of gas...aka "the boat" and our inability to qualify for WIC, I want to hold off buying formula for as long as I can.

Anywhoo, to the nursing mom's out there, I heard you can sell your milk somewhere on the internet. Hook me up, please, and I'll happily "hook-up" to that friggin' pump.

Where are the fish?

2008-08-12T05:40:00.001-07:00

Well, the big tourney proved unsuccessful for the duo of John & Brad. They showed up at 4:00a.m. ready to get down to business, and the deal fell through. They did catch 2 keepers but needed 5 big keepers totaling over 18 pounds to win.

On a happier note, while they were out fishing from 6 until 2, we were having a party at the campground. Brad's wife, Becky, (my cousin) and their son Brayson were there; my cousin Christy who is expecting a baby ANYTIME; along with their parents Lynn & Don. Of course mom, dad, me & my girls and Kaydo were there, as well as Jarad, Kiki, & Owen.

mom & Shay having a conversation

No $$ for the day for the big boys, but we had fun, anyway. Sarah D's blog with the description of rules is correct (JGosnell knows a little something about fishing). The top 2 winners do have to go through lie detectors because of the possibly of cheating exists out there and there was word that someone did cheat but it's hard to watch all 85 boats and check their live wells before starting, etc. Supposedly someone had a stashed several keepers in a cage and planted it in a spot on the lake but someone last week found it and let them go. For the cheaters, may they get hooked in the hand and have to get stitches and get the screaming cha cha's.

Owen did hit another milestone and CRAWLED for the first time!!! He's such a stud. He's getting his hair cut today for the first time so you may see a new little man soon.

Too many young boys...stay clear

2008-08-07T14:24:00.001-07:00

I was thinking the other day that there our friends have mostly boys. This leads to many troubling thoughts from the parents of 2 daughters. I mean, Farley boys, Diel blood boys, Fritschle boys, Baltzell boys....where does the list end??? But, I do know my girls won't be "girly" per se. As JGosnell asked, "Why you girls raising tomboys?" to Jess & I. I looked over at Scout as she is jumping on the hood of Jess's truck and El is rubbing sand in her hair and I thought, you know, I'm not too worried about all our friends boys being wild for my precious girls. I know my girls will be able to kick their asses and not worry too much about it. Oh, here's a pic of Shay agreeing.

Shay says, just try it.

Boilermaker, Mason, Carpenter....

2008-08-07T14:12:00.000-07:00

JB wears many hats this Summer. Besides boilermaking, he's been completing many projects this summer. He's really getting good. Here's a pic of these AWESOME benches he made out of left over stringers from our stairs. The bench part is hickory from our woods that he hand-peeled. He had enough to make 4 adult and 1 kid bench.

Also, I had him put a dusk-till-dawn light in and I wanted him to stone it. He used some of our leftover landscaping rocks and rocked-out on my lamp post. He had to make the frame and all and it turned out AWESOME. While he was working on this, it took me back to the LHOP (Little House on the Prairie) (SarahD knows what's up) when Charles made the alter out of stone to pray to so that Jason Bateman would heal from his sickness. Rockin' cool.

He also made the handrails for our front and back porches. I tell you, he's going to have to watch out or he'll be switching careers.

Tournament of Champions

2008-08-07T07:30:00.001-07:00

JB is "practicing" (I didn't know you could) this morning for the big fishing tournament that is coming up this weekend. He's out right now with JGosnell but will be fishing with Brad Shew on Saturday for the tourney. The prize is $5,000 so let's hope & pray he wins so we can make a boat payment :( and pay our property taxes. If he wins, I may even not be so bitter about purchasing the boat.....well, we'll see.

I'll be @ the tourney to take pictures, so stay tuned if you're interested.

Birds

2008-08-06T07:12:00.000-07:00

So it's a normal Summer Wednesday morning at the Bennett estate. JB opens the door to the garage and says, "Man, another bird." Just then, the bird beelines it into the house. Shay & I were standing in direct line of the bird and I of course scream & duck; El is on the couch scared cause I screamed so she starts crying and the bird heads for the windows after taking a few spins in the ceiling fan. We have a 27 foot ceiling in our great room so I'm thinking we're never getting this bird out and we're going to have crap everywhere. JB goes & get one of his fishing nets and is on a mission. I grabbed the camera. We're all screaming and cheering (El included) and JB succeeds after it runs into the window a few times and gets itself loopy. Here are the pictures. JB

JB's the stud of the day.

Assistant, anyone?

2008-08-02T13:07:00.003-07:00

I'm blogging like CRAZY today! I thought I'd post this pic of El "taking pizza orders" in our hotel room. I'm thinking the front desk person was not happy with us; she pushed the front desk button ALOT.

Indy-Restaurant

2008-08-02T09:39:00.001-07:00

So, the italian joint dad loves was our plan. It's located in the Circle Center so we go, park, and start looking at the shopping stores while preparing ourselves for this unbelievable food we had coming. Mom had a business card from the place and dad calls to make a reservation.....it closed 3 months ago. Damn. So, now we had to decide what to do.

We are next to a Harry & Izzy's, we check out the menu....no go. High priced and not that interesting. Dad heads out to the street to try to find this italian place he heard about somewhere sometime ago. In other words, he's going out on a whim. We hang out in Nordstrom's dreaming of $400 boots and JB is ticked off at the price of t-shirts and dad comes back. He's not sure of a restaurant so we head out walking. We see a sign for seafood and we all LOVE seafood so we head to it. It's The Oceanaire. We check out the menu and it was higher priced than Harry's. We say, screw it, it's vacation. It was the most ultimate place EVER and we cannot stop talking about it. If you love seafood, go. It's worth every dime. They also have an actual oyster bar with something like 18 different kinds of oysters. I didn't know there were that many kinds. Here's a link to their website. http://www.theoceanaire.com/Location/Default.aspx?id=5

We had 3 people as our wait staff and were a little leary with the girls, but they were sooooo nice to us!!! They even have a crumb picker upper and our waiter cut up El's shrimp scampi so I didn't have to! Wow, this place was awesome. In the front of the restaurant was a Ferrari and a Bentley. I had to take pics. JB says our waiter saw my boob while I was nursing Shay so that's why he was sooooooooo nice. :) I said it was so worth it.

Our vacation 2008--zoo

2008-08-02T06:35:00.000-07:00

We finally decided that we are just going to have to pic a day and head to Indianapolis so that we can get some kind of vacation out of this summer. Mom & Dad were hoping to get the whole crew to go, but it's hard to get everyone on board due to work and other stuff going on. JB actually didn't get called to work so we said, we're doing it.

Mom, Dad, and my crew headed out at 6 Thursday morning for Indianapolis. We were planning on hitting the zoo, the circle and this awesome Italian restaurant that mom & dad go to anytime they are in Indy. After stopping in Terre Haute for some IHOP we got to the zoo and it was awesome. It helped that my girls were AWESOME despite the hot weather. It's a nice zoo. You do have to pay (unlike St. Louis), but we got free dolphin show tickets and it was soooo worth it. We fed a giraffe, saw koalas and you can get much closer to the animals than St. Louis.

http://indianapoliszoo.com/

See slideshow of our pics here. http://picasaweb.google.com/shastaschack/IndianapolisZoo2008

Professional pics

2008-07-30T08:10:00.001-07:00

Cathy--

Here is the link to our family photos we had done.

http://photographicsgallery.net/p887960697/

The cutest stud on the block

2008-07-30T07:55:00.000-07:00

Owen is such a cutie. His mom is dreading the first haircut since it's his trademark.

Dad's fish

2008-07-30T07:51:00.001-07:00

Mom & Dad have a camping spot at the campground on East Fork so they try to get down there a night or 2 every week. It's their place to relax and dad actually gets to use his boat instead of walking around it in his shed. This is a pic of him and a fish he caught. He was so proud so I thought I'd get him on the net with it to make him feel good.

ice cream social

2008-07-30T07:45:00.000-07:00

Ah, Grandma's house. Nothing like an ice cream cone at 9:30 in the morning, but look how good they act when they are eating. They were celebrating Charlotte's first birthday, so the early sugary snack is just fine. It goes along with the popsicles they had a half-hour after that. :) No wonder they love Grandma's house.

Oh that damn potty

2008-07-27T13:09:00.000-07:00

Okay, so she sits on it and likes to read, but there's no action. She doesn't give a crap about the M&M's I use to tempt her to go. What's the next step? Suggestions would be great.

Awesome Blanket

2008-07-27T13:08:00.001-07:00

Check out this blanket that Shay's Godmother Kiki (Kristan) made for Shay's baptism on June 1. She loves it!!

Our Son

2008-07-27T12:12:00.000-07:00

Let me tell you a story.

So, it's May 2, 2008 around 9:30 in the morning. I gave birth to Shay at 6:15 that morning and JB is now ready for the next step.....ordering his boat. He skins out of the hospital that morning so he can get order what I'll call his "son". I had to put pictures of his boat on here because his mother (grandmother of the boat) wanted to see the pics. This new son, so far, is more expensive than our 2 daughters. What the shnike?

I think he's getting tired of me telling people that we have a boat for sale. Everytime he tells me I can't spend $$, I say, well, we could sell the boat than we'll have more $$ for diapers. He spends a lot of time with his son.

Time

2008-07-15T19:55:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I'm having a heck of a time finding time update my blog. Is it weird you need to go back to work so that you can have the time to do things that have nothing to do with work?