The First Day in the greater NY area!

WE FOUND A HOUSE!!!!!!!

I will post several times about our trip, but the highlight of it all is that we found a house. We are still working through the paperwork and are waiting for it to be all official!!!!!!! We looked at so many houses and we would walk through as quickly as possible snapping photos so that later we could look and compare -- so sorry if they are blurry . . . but it gives you the idea! Somehow I missed pictures of the family room and more of the back yard -- oh well --

The best makeshift Bib

It is a flour sack rag (or whatever they are called) tied on top and bottom and it worked great!!!!

New Craft

I have a friend with a very fancy vinyl cutting machine and so I bought the black letters from her and made this pretty tile. I think it turned out great!

Julianne's Baptism

The Last Swim Meet 2008

June 18-23

Like Father, Like Son

Adam loves to shave.

Adam loves to clean (by clean I mean spray the spray bottles everywhere while holding onto a rag and ultimately creating a mess where none had previously been)

I wonder where he gets it from??????

Family Photos

Family photos are sure an interesting experiment. . . So many personalities in so little space. Trying to capture everyone at just the right moment is a challenge. Enjoy these of the whole gang! For added humor, watch the slide show paying special attention to Catherine's antics. (Catherine is the blond on the right).

Swim Team Times

Julianne's fastest times for this year
25 Yard Freestyle 25.94
25 Yard Backstroke 31.30
25 Y Breastroke 36.74
25 Y Butterfly 38.75

Catherine's fastest times for this year

25 Y Freestyle 37.16
25 Y Backstroke 44.34

Best of Friends!

My friends had a "farewell fiesta" for me and Sheree as we are both moving. The food was delicious and the company was the best! Thanks to all you girls! You made me feel at home in Katy, taught me many new recipes, played with me and my kids at playgroups, and were the best listening ears whenever I needed them. I hope we all stay in touch (doesn't that sound very high school yearbooky?) Thanks for all the memories!

Baby Shower for my neighbor Amy

Madelyn and Julianne Celebrate Birthdays Together

We went to Westwood Gymnastics for their joint birthday party and had a great time!

Cool Blog and Links

I was looking at a friends blog and I followed one of her links and then followed one of her links to Pink Penguin. I loved all her sewing stuff andproject ideas. I really do love sewing, but I always need new inspiration otherwise the busy-ness of the rest of my life prevents me from doing it. But the other fun thing was this set of links to japanese sites. . . I have printed some of the matching envelopes and stationary for the girls and they love it.

Some cool Japanese links to share...

• Downloadable Sewing Patterns : baby-related items Just click on the green button under the picture to download!
• Printable Letters/EnvelopesLook for a tiny button for download. Another
• Letters/EnvelopesLeft button for letters and right button for envelops. And one more...
• Letters/EnvelopesFrom the top, the first one is for an envelop and the second one is for a letter!

Just what am I cooking

I have finally started my very own recipe blog. Just what am I cooking. Click here or click on the picture of it on the right!

Cute and Easy Birthday Party Invitations

I made these invitations in about 10 minutes. I think they are cute and they are so easy to make I thought I would share it with all of my blogging friends. The trick to simple and cute invites is to let your printer and computer do the work. Utilizing different fonts and different font colors, you can create a look that would involve lots of stamps, lots of ink, lots of mistakes, or lots of money at a custom paper place. Both of these fonts are free to download. The first one is called "2Peas Gift" (Hey I don't name them, I just use them). The second is called "Girls are weird". If you click on them it will take you to a site where you can download them for free! When you get to their site click on the download button and then install them on your computer.

Brain Download

Things are always busy at our house in the summer. My childrend who normally wake up at 7:00 am during the school year, fell compelled to push it to 6:30 or 6:00 and even occasionally 5:45 in the morning. Part of it is the sun is up and so it feels like morning earlier and earlier. But most of it is excitement. I like to pretend that it is because I am so exciting as a mom and have so many fun things going on, but evidence tells me that they are excited to watch TV (something they cannot do on mornings during the school year). They know they cannot watch TV until all the chores are done (get dressed, make beds, eat breakfast . . .etc. .. ) and so it is amazing that since school has been out they have hopped right up and gotten to work.

Seriously though, I do try and have fun things and some not so fun things to do each day.

• Swim Team -- We go each day to practice. It starts at 9:00 (by then they have done all the chores and even watched a 1/2 hour of TV). We ride our bikes for the exercise and I bring toys and games for the little ones to do while the big girls practice.
• Summer Reading program -- I make the kids read by themselves for 30 minutes each day. Every year we go to the library and sign up for the Summer Reading Club. This year, you can sign up for it online and track your books on an online journal. Whenever you hit one of the benchmarks, they will have your "prize" ready and waiting for pickup at the library.
• Summer Math Bust -- In an effort to keep up their "fast facts" Julianne and Catherine have to do 2 math fast fact sheets a day. They have a chart and if they can get 100 % on the sheet in their time frame (julianne is 1 min 45 sec for 35 problems and catherine is 4 minutes) then they "bust" that square. The squares are (Adding 0's, adding 1's, adding 2's, etc. . . ) Hopefully we will get through adding, subtracting, and more. (So far the 0's, 1's, and 2's have been pretty easy. I keep telling them it will get harder!!!
• Playing, playing, and more playing -- we go to the pool, play with friends, and play with each other. It is no wonder they pretty much drop into bed each night totally exhausted.

Last night was our first "real" swim meet. We got there at 4:45 p.m. It was a bit overcast and quite windy which meant that the 88 degrees did not feel all that hot. The meet was set to begin at 5:30, but it actually began at 6:00. By 7:45, Julianne and Catherine had each swam 3 events (the 4x25 freestyle relay, 25 yd freestyle, and 25 yd backstroke). Adam was getting tired and Madelyn was pretending not to be. The meet was on event #26 and Julianne's final event was event #64, the 4x25 medley relay at the end of the meet. I decided to take all the kids home and then come back with Julianne for the end while my sister Carrie stayed with the kids at home (since Trent was out of town). I proposed that to Julianne and she did not want to go home. She wanted to stay with her friends. I asked some of our good friends to keep an eye out for her and we quickly packed up (all but one chair so I would have somewhere to sit when I came back). I headed home with the 3 others and quickly got Adam bathed and asleep and the other 2 ready for bed. Carrie stayed and by 8:35 I was headed back. I was trying to hurry, because I knew that despite Julianne's desire to stay, that it would not take very long until she was nervous and missing me. (She puts up a good face for a little while and then she worries). Sure enough as I walked back into the pool she was sitting in my chair, next to our friends, in near tears. She said her stomach hurt. (I know she was just nervous -- would I make it back before she swam, would I ever come back, are there bugs in the grass?, it's getting kind of dark . . .). I figured that she would recover now that I was back but I think the nervousness combined with fatigue was setting in. As I listened to the announcer, they were on event # 34 and it was now almost 9:00. I quickly calculated that her event (#64) might not occur until close to 11. I asked her if she wanted to go home and she said yes and I did not try to talk her out of it. We packed up, informed the coaches and were home by 9:15. She told me on the bike ride home that she was just really tired, because we never stay up that late. I told her I would remind her how bad it feels to stay up late the next time she wanted to. (Isn't that bad of me????) By 9:30 every one was asleep. And they all stayed on their beds, all night long, until 7:00 am. YEAH!!!

The Baptism Invitation

You are all invited to attend Julianne's Baptism. She has chosen to be baptised on June 21 at 4:00 p.m. I did 2 different invitations because I could not decide which one I liked better.

Cute, but naughty

In the past 2 days Adam has been exploring boundaries and limits. Yesterday, while the girls and I were out, he found some markers in Catherine's backpack and proceeded to decorate himself and the carpet. (Yes, he did this once before and we have banned markers, but she just brought them home from school on the last day while clearing out her desk!) Trent about died when he saw the damage, but he got straight to work and by the time the girls and I got home, Trent (and Adam) had steam cleaned all the carpets downstairs.

And then today after church, he was upstairs and got a hold of tube of toothpaste and squeezed it out over the carpet. Now our upstairs carpets are clean, too!

The problem is that Adam loves when we vacuum and use the carpet cleaner. He gets his play lawn mower and vacuums right along with us -- He likes it so much we are worried he sees it as a reward!!!!

Julianne's Baptism Photographs

Julianne will be turning eight in a few weeks. She will also be getting baptized. Today, we went and took these pictures of her in her white dress. She is growing up too fast.