Aren't weekends great?! It amuses me when I find myself or hear others slipping into the "It's the weekend, I'm not going to see anybody, so who cares what I look like" mentality. That's where I found myself yesterday. I didn't plan on remaining 'unpresentable' of sorts - it just kind of happened that way. Instead of showering, shaving, etc. I just got dressed, brushed my teeth (this is an essential) & threw a hat on to take Si to school yesterday. It dawned on me on the drive home that I was going to be doing absolutely nothing that day & so I decided that I wasn't going to bother showering or shaving. I have to admit it - it felt great!

Continue reading "An Unkempt Heart" »

All three kids are sick now, though Josiah is almost out of it. He went to school yesterday for the first time since Monday. Micah had his worst day yet, on the other hand. He was depressed most of the day because he kept coughing pretty rough. He'd keep coming up to me saying, "I sick ... I need medicine" when it had just been 1/2 an hour since his last dosage! Hopefully today will be better. Emerie and Andrea went to Joplin for the afternoon/early evening to get a perm [Andrea, not Emerie :-)]. Emerie started sniffling and getting sick somewhere in the afternoon. I even have a dry throat and feel a little stopped-up this morning. Hopefully it won't hit Andrea & I, too.

One other note - we have gotten a TON of rain the past couple of days. I'm not complaining about not being able to mow the lawn as needed - I'm longing for the day when I can stop until next year. I am complaining that we were up several times the other night trying to stop leaks from the roof over our bedroom. It seems they didn't roof it right when they worked on the house this summer. The contractor was out here yesterday to take a look at it & informed us that as soon as the weather took a turn for the better that they'd come back out & reroof the part over our room to get it fixed.

Well, we've had a sick couple of boys the past few days. It started with Josiah developing a cough and running a fever on Tuesday. We kept him home from school on Tuesday & Wednesday. It turns out he has bronchitis. We were hoping he would get back to school today (Thursday), but he's still hanging on to it. We'll give it another day & hopefully he'll be back on schedule tomorrow. I'm glad it's just Kindergarten. This opens my eyes to what it is going to be like one day when he misses school with an illness & we have to deal with contacting the school, arranging for homework, etc.

Continue reading "One After Another" »

We finally got Emerie's 3 month pictures taken last Friday. These two are just a glimpse. She was soooooo cute! The photographer did a great job & Emerie kept smiling at her whenever she needed a smile. We wound up ordering more pics than we had originally planned on, but we figured this is the last go round & pictures are forever, right? Anyway, the finished products when we get them will include some that have had effects added - sepia toning, color accents, black & white, etc. They should be really cute.

Continue reading "Isn’t She Cute?" »

I think I just convinced my husband that starting a batch of homemade brownies is a good idea while I type this. Is there anything better than warm homemade brownies and a glass of cold milk (from Braum's, of course)? I think not. While he's heading to the kitchen I wanted to tell you a little bit about the boys' first day(s) of school.

Continue reading "Back to School" »

We decided to take the kids outside tonight for a swim. This was the Emerie's first chance to wear her adorable little swimsuit. She wasn't quite sure of what to think of the water at first, but seemed to enjoy it after a little while. We have a little inflatable baby float that she sat in a little bit, but she much preferred to have either Mommy or Daddy hold her and play with her. I posted a few pics in a "Emerie's First Swim" album [not currently active] in the gallery.

Does anyone know of a good digital camera that doesn't cost too much? I've about had it with the one we have. It was a freebie with Windows XP when we bought it a year & a half ago. I like being about to take pictures & post them, but half of the time they don't turn out. You have to have the flash on all the time or the pictures will definitely be blurry. This makes a lot of shots very dark (just take a look at the last couple of albums & you'll see this). Anyway, we're not ready to buy, but I thought I'd start researching so that when we have the money we will know what to get. So - any suggestions?

We've had a good weekend so far. We took a little trip to Claremore, OK, yesterday to get away for the day. We wanted to have some time as a family before both of the boys started school next week. We went to the Will Rogers Memorial, a local dairy & took the boys bowling for the first time. I've put up a "Bowling" album [not currently active] in the gallery with a few pics from the bowling alley. It was a lot of fun. The first few frames took a little longer waiting for the boy's balls to roll all the way down the lane. After that we found a little contraption that looked like a ramp that we used with the boys to make it go a little faster. I think they enjoyed rolling the balls down the ramp better also & seemed to have a good time. It was nice having the alley almost to ourselves as well.

Continue reading "Bowling in Claremore" »

I've got the Gallery working again & re-uploaded all of the pictures in a smaller format. The only album that is not online is the "Smiling Baby" one that had a few pictures of Emerie first smiling. I'm having trouble locating these pics & will post them as soon as I find them.

Something happened with the computers where this website is hosted & the Gallery has been doing strange things ever since. I'm planning on redoing the photo albums & reducing the picture sizes at the same time (I've learned how to do it better since I first started posting pictures of Emerie over 3 months ago). Because of this I've had to temporarily delete all of the pictures that we had previously posted. I will try to get them all back up within the next week or so.

As I write this I'm catching up on some of my favorite web sites, drinking my cup (or 2 or 3) of coffee, still in my pajamas & loving it! It's so nice to have a day or two off. For me this one has been singing my name for quite some time. I think the summer finally caught up to me this week - just in time for our youth summer to officially come to a close. It hit a lot later than any year in the past (which is a blessing in and of itself), but it hit, nonetheless. I'm taking today (Thursday) off since I'll be working all weekend with Destination Unknown. That coupled with my usually busy Sunday schedule will exhaust me, I'm sure. So today I get to lounge around a bit more, play with my children for a little longer, and enjoy the time with Andrea that seems to slip away more often these days. Okay, enough about me ... now to the real reason for this post:

Continue reading "All Talk" »

We had a family outing last Thursday to Kiddie Land in Bartlesville, OK. It's this great little kids theme park where they can ride most of the rides for a quarter. It's pretty cool - a lot of rides you would see for little kids at an amusement park or fair. People have been talking about it to us for years & we've even made plans a time or two to go, but something always came up. So, we finally decided to try it out & we wound up having a great time. I've posted a "Kiddie Land" album [not currently active] in the gallery with pictures from the evening.

Continue reading "Kiddie Land" »