Why Yes, We Are Alive

You know how you see someone that you haven't seen in ages and they ask "What have you been up to?" and you can't think of a single thing to tell them? I just tell them I'm crazy busy but nothing terribly exciting. How can that happen? Want details? Here goes......

Since we last met, the app "MyFitnessPal" is my new best friend. If you haven't heard of this one, this is a free app that's used to track the calories consumed and even credits you for activities. I won't go in to detail, just that the horrible escalation of the numbers on our scale have finally stopped climbing and have reversed direction.  I've resumed WW, that's mostly to spend time with my friend....and to face someone at the scale as well as receive new ideas, encouragement, and "atta girl". The WW app is not nearly as easy as MyFitnessPal. My man is on board too. We boldly went in to uncharted territory together, so we're righting the ship together.  The first two weeks have worked quite well.

Then there's my new job. Yep, that's right, I'm an employee. First time I've been an employee in 25 years! Funny since I went back to my old job! I'm teaching accounting at the local community college. I wasn't really looking for more work, it fell in to my lap and I couldn't say no. During the summer I had hours, and hours, and hours, and more hours of training, learning, meetings (my idea of hell on earth), and watching online tutorials. Now that class has started, it is exhilarating and exhausting.

Crafting time has been few and far between. I cannot even remember the last time I completed a scrapbook page. I have yet to finish the vacation album for Spain and we're almost ready for our next non-riding trip. I have sorted everything from our riding trip and have yet to put things in their proper pages. Living life now, will scrap it later.

Oh, and the grandchildren? They are even cuter than the last time we chatted! I know, that's hard to believe, but true.

Mr. & Mrs. Telstad

We attend plenty of weddings. I sometimes joke that we're professional wedding attenders. Well, we just went to a special wedding for a very special couple. Our lovely, sweet, and adorable niece was married! We LOVE her husband. At first, we loved him because he loved and adored her. He treated her special, as it should be. Then, we loved him because of who he is, fabulous young man.

The wedding was so wonderful. We enjoyed chatting with all the family and friends. Everyone was kind, considerate, and joyful. If you dreamed of what a wedding should be, this was it. The three toasts were emotional and humorous. Her father brought down the house and had us all smiling and weeping at the same time. He had props too, her elephant slippers from when she was nine!

 

J took lovely photos so here's the link to her post: http://theswensonfamily.blogspot.com/2013/07/michelle-scott.html

We love Michelle, Scott and our whole new family!

Best Wishes for a Happily Ever After!!!!

This Little Guy LOVES Running Water!!!

It's hot, T is having a tough time inside. What to do? I know.....let's take him outside and turn on the faucet!

I gave him a big plastic bowl that he could stand in, arrange for the water to fill it up, lift and dump the water on the plants, put it on his head. There were all sorts of possibilities. I didn't allow him to use the hose though!

And when he was thoroughly soaked, I wrapped him in a towel and we came back inside to put on a dry diaper and toss the wet clothes in the dryer. See how easy that is?

Isn't He Cute?

Here's my youngest grandson. Isn't he cute?

Doesn't he look sweet? And innocent? Well, I should probably tell you that he's sitting in his big brother's seat. Drinking his big brother's juice. He's like any little brother. He wants whatever his big brother has. And that includes the seat and the juice. Still, he is just adorable!

What Do You Remember?

As we're sitting around eating our dessert, Strawberry Sparkle Cake, we're chatting and I say to J, "I wonder what they'll remember about Family Dinner and what they did at their grandparents' home". J turns to E and asks "what do you do at G.Ma's?" and E says "I watch Octonauts".

We laugh and I say, "I wonder what else he'll remember". So J asks E, "what else do you do at G.Ma's?" and E responds "watch more Octonauts".

Argh!!!! What about all those books we read? and the T-Ball? and the walks? and the.....well, you get my drift.

It will be interesting to see what he remembers when he's older. I hope I'm around to hear what he remembers. And I really hope that it's not all the episodes of Octonauts that he watched!!!!

Best Family Dinner, EVER!!!!

I may have hit it out of the ballpark on this one. Thank You to Ree Drummond, aka The Pioneer Woman. I was working on the menu, looking for inspiration, and once again, found the perfect answer on Ree's website. She makes real food, for real people. I read out the title, sometimes give some of the ingredients, to Dave and we go from there. I bet you're wondering what we served.....here it is:

Pork Sandwiches with Cilantro-Jalapeno Slaw

Baked beans....okay, some pieces and parts are just fine dumped from a can and heated up. Sheesh, I don't do everything from scratch.

Strawberry Sparkle Cake, my boys LOVE it when grandma brings out the mixer...they know they're going to get a beater to lick. What happens when all three want a beater? There are only two beaters. Oh no!!!!! I'll worry about that later. And this photo was taken a little late. It was much prettier earlier on.

I pretty much lifted part of her Fourth of July menu. All the food can be prepared prior to dinner, and there was tons of food. We will all be having leftovers for many more meals....and NO ONE is complaining about that!!!!!

Park Time

You may remember last year when we began having both boys, at the same time. We took them to the park and well, I may have let T take a header off the steps where there may have been blood involved. I am happy to say that we have survived and are thriving at the park. We're learning what T can handle and also, what we can't handle. T is doing much better than we are. While we can still move about, it is tough on the joints. Especially difficult is trying to fit in to the tunnels and crawl. We do that once, learn, and do not repeat.

The slide is always fun, for everyone

Theo set up shop, Ezra was his customer before he went pirate

Theo still loves the speakers and I'm happy he can reach them all by himself

Look at that blond hair! He looks so much like his cousin Charis that it fools iPhoto.