HAPPY 30th BIRTHDAY, Robin:)

We have a gray, cloudy day here which is a bit of a bummer but we need the rain so I won't complain! It would be the PERFECT day for sleeping in but I had to get up early to get a donation out for the Sherwood Center so I decided to stay up and get some things done! Ethan woke up with me but after a bottle he went back to sleep for awhile.

I spent this week house cleaning (ughhh) and getting ready for our trip next week. We leave in the am for a weekend of camping with the Weiss's and than Monday AM Ryan and I take off for a "Look, See" trip to Singapore. That's what his company calls it! The closer it gets to leaving the more anxious I am about leaving the kids. Usually it doesn't bother me much and I'm thankful for the break but I think that the distance this time is my problem. It's not "quick" to get back home in an emergency!

We are set up with Skype now and can talk for free to anyone else who also has it. We're going to try it out next week from Singapore to make sure everything works okay and than will decide for sure once we're there what will work best. Ryan's been gone this week to North Carolina so we've been able to try out the webcam...Ethan was SO excited the other night when he saw Ryan on the computer screen! He wasn't sure what to do and was squealing and jumping around:)

I'm heading to Back To School night tonight for the twins and than we head out in the morning. I've got a LOT of packing to get done today!

BTW: If you click on any of the pictures in my blog you can see them much bigger on the screen.

AHHHHHH!!!!!

Odds and Ends Pictures

These flowers were sent to me from Melissa, Valarie, Katie, and Rachel with a LOVELY note attached to them! Thanks, girls for helping me to feel SO old:)

This picture was from the first day of Kindergarten. They came off the bus wearing those hats...they say,"I'm a Kindergarten Star" - I think that they were made in Art.

Kaitlyn received a haircut before her second day of school as I was tired of fighting tangles! It sure does grow fast! It's much more manageable now but can still be pulled up.

And last but not least - here's the birthday girl! She doesn't look too old, now does she?

Birthday's and such

Well, I'm officially another year older...and wiser:) 30 really isn't all that hard...the gray hairs are completely a different thing! I had a nice birthday lunch with some friends at Jalapeno's - a Mexican restaurant. Joan decided to bring me a cake when she heard that I was going to make my own...I don't usually bother with a cake for myself except the twins are now old enough to know that a birthday means a cake! Don and Eileen stopped by with a birthday balloon and gift basket and to see the twins come off the school bus....we had a really hot, humid wait for them! Oh - and I had flowers awaiting me when I returned home from my lunch...they came from my four LOVELY, young sisters:) Other than that I have been spending my day cleaning out the coat closet...I don't think that we are going to need coats in Singapore. Or hats. Or gloves. Or scarves. Or boots. I'm getting all the things that we're getting rid of ready for a big garage sale to be held sometime in September. I came down to wash up some of our winter coats and realized that I had left the clean clothes in the washing machine, AGAIN. This will make the third time that they are being washed to freshen them up...clothes sitting wet for a couple of days tend to start smelling mildewy! If that's a word. Well, I'm going to go and check the mail to see if there's anything in there for my birthday:)

First Day of School

These pictures are a little out of order. I still need to figure out how to download them in chronological order.



It didn't take Kaitlyn long to make a friend and start putting together a puzzle. We weren't there long when she learned where the bathroom was - always important info for a little girl!







Kenton found some toys after sitting at his desk sizing the situation up!







This is Mrs. Wiley, their teacher. She was very patient in posing for pictures for all the moms:)







AND of course we can't forget Ethan! He and mommy went on errands after the twins left and he was a happy little guy - doesn't seem to miss them too much! I found him pulling himself up to standing on the back of the chair - he'd than get stuck and cry until I rescued him or he fell. He's going to walk before he's crawling!

Kaitlyn and Kenton were ready to go about 30 minutes before the bus actually came so we went outside to take a "first day of school" picture! They were running around the house with backpacks on saying, "Mom, how long NOW before the bus comes!"

We were inside the house when I heard the bus pull up - she was about 5 minutes early. I think that it helped the twins as there wasn't really any time for them to be nervous about actually getting on - they just ran outside and straight onto the bus. Once they were on they may have had some second thoughts. Isn't a cute, little bus?

Of course I had to beat the bus to school:) This is the twins getting off the bus at school - Joan rode up there with me for moral support. AND, I wasn't the only parent there and armed with a camera.

It didn't take them long to figure out where to hang up their backpacks. I felt a little sorry for the teacher as she was overwhelmed with anxious parents in the room - I'm pretty sure that we were more nervous than the children were:)

Kenton went right to his seat and sat for a minute looking around trying to get his bearings. We had gone to school yesterday to drop off school supplies and to find out where they were to sit.

E got a haircut!

We finally cut Ethan's hair:) Ryan took him onto the back deck Friday evening and cut away. I was in the basement working on e-mail whcn Kaitlyn came down and asked me if it was okay if Daddy cut Ethan's hair. I told her that was fine, not really paying attention. She turned around and ran back upstairs saying over her shoulder, "That's good....because he's already doing it!" I wonder what she would have said if I had replied no!

Pics - finally - from Co

Ethan was so tired one day that he fell asleep in the middle of the living room floor! He never does that! I was trying to hold him off so that he would sleep while we were driving up the mountain to the east of B. Ridge as I didn't think that sight seeing would be all that appealing. BUT, refer to the picture below:)






This was a favorite past time of the kids - checkers! Many games of checkers were played while we were there! The twins learned the game for the first time while A. Rachel had fun beating them:)









This is the front view of Pine Ridge Condominiums. We were on the top right on the third floor. We had fantastic views of the ski slopes and mountains to the west. See picture below, though, to see exactly what our views looked like!








This is a view looking back down a road that we had just come up on the mountain to the east. It was pretty narrow at times and since it had rained a lot that week it was a little scary to pass people - you didn't want to get to close to the edge of the road since we weren't sure how soft the shoulders were and how much weight that they could take!






This is the view from our balcony. We had good days with sunshine and blue skies but this was the predominant weather while we were there. It actually made for a cozy trip as we gathered in the evenings around the fire:) We had to dodge the rain a few times but that made things all the more memorable.







A. Rachel liked pushing Ethan around while we were out and about town. Even though it's hard to see we were heading down the hill from our condo to the downtown for crepes and some shopping. The crepes are my favorite part of the trip even though they take forever to make and some boy grabbed mine and took a bite without realizing it wasn't his;)






E is looking awfully happy about sightseeing! The last day that the kids and I were there we all went up the mountain directly behind B.Ridge to see what we could see. It was a little scary driving - I had the bigger vehicle and as it was a rental Dad couldn't drive it - and I never told Dad that I was NERVOUS the whole way up!! Coming down wasn't nearly as bad. One of the stops we made on this trip was beside a mountain stream - one of our favorite past times. My dad hiked a little way up to where he saw a cross behind a pine tree. He thought that maybe someone was buried right there but mom thought that the more likely explanation was that someone actualy DIED there! We were glad to be leaving that area especially as there was fog rolling in behind us! We beat the fog and rain down the mountain and enjoyed one last meal at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co.




I attempted to get a Christmas card picture - out of the many that I took this is the only one that semi turned out:( Not bad but not really what I was after, either!

Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow!

Before I had a chance to close out it STARTED RAINING:) We need it although I understand that it won't really cool things off much - probably just make things even more humid...good thing we're heading to an INDOOR waterpark tomorrow!

zai jian! (Good Bye in Mandarin Chinese - don't even think about asking me how to pronounce it!)

Back Into The Heat...UGH!

Well, we're back from the beautiful, wonderful, cool, sweatshirt weather of the Colorado Rockies...and into the hot, humid, yucky, dry, peel off the sweatshirt that you still had on from Colorado, and did I mention HOT Kansas summer days! Oh - and nights! On our way home from church tonight the van thermometer was reading upper 80's. Sniff, sniff! I want to be back in Colorado - when the kids and I left yesterday it was 54 degrees!!! You know that it's hot when even I don't want to go swimming. We went shopping today instead! Every time we walked into a store we all collectively sighed at what a wonderful thing air conditioning is! I guess that it's all conditioning us for what's ahead....

I will try to get some pictures posted of our vacation in the next few days. We really had a wonderful time and it was really hard to leave. I tried not to cry the whole way back to Denver from Breckinridge!

The twins had their Jumpstart Kindergarten this morning. They went into school for an hour and were shown what to expect next week when they start school...can't believe that it's next week already! Kenton held back at first, like usual, but soon was on his way with the other kids. They are 100% ready to go and now that I know they will be fine I am ready for them to go too! Well, not exactly but I think that I will be able to make it through the first day of school without crying:)