Two Year Anniversary Party!!

Thanks to a lot of support and help the office recently celebrated its two-year birthday!  We did things up right with a Cars bounce house

 We had seated massages and a canopy for people to enjoy delicious band booster hamburgers.

 Kids and adults got their money's worth in the bounce house.

 Rock wore his little self out jump, jump, jumping around.

 Ryker doesn't usually get sweaty, but he was plenty sweaty after some time in that magical house.

 Lil' Jens didn't so much jump as she was thrown when her brothers landed.  She still thought that was pretty cool.

 After jumping she decided to help Mommy give seated massages.

 She didn't have lotion so she used Cheeto powder.

 DeA has worked really hard to look even better than before.  I'm pretty lucky that she wasn't content being beautiful, but she wanted to strive for sexy beautiful.  Happy anniversary to me!

  Maddy made the office's cake and did a fantastic job.

 Dad's help was especially valuable since he did the food permit and all the serving. 

 I paid the therapists to do the seated massages but they ended up watching DeA do them.  I guess she misses it more than she says.

 Hubba hubba!

 People were pretty impressed with the hamburger sauce.  When we did our first open house two years ago we ended up with 85 hamburgers leftover.  This time we had six.

 The kids loved the balloons and Rock managed to go through a can of helium in under ten minutes.

  DeA made some delicious blueberry cobbler and let Jens taste test it for her.  I think she liked it.

 "Mmm...Blueberry crisp!"

 At church on Sunday Jens tried out a new dress.  She looks pretty good in pastels or anything.

 Jens is learning how to give her brothers the stare down.  She can look pretty menacing. 

  And sometimes she can look really sweet and innocent, too.

   She sure knows how to make her brothers smile and laugh.

Summer Party: Homegrown Edition

We all made it home safely from Oregon and are settling into our summer routine.  We were coming home from Papa Dale and Mama Rae's house when Jens loaded herself into the red wagon.  DeA couldn't tell her no to a ride so they cruised while the boys got ready for bed.

I think she liked the alone time.

   DeA planted a garden a few weeks ago and was excited to come home to some unprocessed zucchini bread.  Jens was pretty happy to try out the produce.

 Unprocessed zucchini bread isn't delicious, but Jens didn't seem to care.

She worked on that thing for a long time. 

  The boys were so excited about the goods that they ran out to check their sunflowers.

 They were pretty proud of their tall and almost budding flowers.

 Jens figured it would be great to work smarter and not harder, so she brought over the tractor.

 DeA was so excited that she started scanning all the plants for goodies.

 "Vroom vroom!" 

 "So, um, we gonna dig something up or what?"

 DeA couldn't believe that her carrot plants grew carrots!  She pulled them before they were ready to prove that eventually they would be ready!

 Jens didn't know if they were ready or not, so she did what any baby would do and ate them. 

 Ate them all gone.

 Meanwhile, Ryker wanted to 'lop' some things so he got the 'tweezers' to cut branches.

It was such a good growing day that even the thrown out pumpkins are producing stuff!

 Farmer's market here we come!

  

Summer Party: Despicable Me Edition

While I was on the plane ride to Medford to pick up the family I watched Despicable Me.  The timing was perfect because the movie ended right before we landed.  If you haven't seen the movie you probably should, it is pretty funny.  Here is a sampling of the minions from the movie:

Right after I landed I turned on my phone and had an email with a video.  Tell me that they aren't Dave's minions.

Summer Party: Science Edition

After two long, lonely weeks I was finally able to fly down and pick up my family.  DeA and I went on a lunch date while the kids got some last minute fun in with Papa Dave and Mama Lisa.

Dave has a backyard driving range that the boys spent a lot of quality time on.

Rock just had to take me to the ScienceWorks Museum.  As you walk in there is a robot that explains the exhibits and shows.  He had to listen to the whole talk.

He ran all over the place hustling to show me all the cool things.

They had tubes with air that blew the wiffle balls all over the place.  Jens loved walking around with the basket and feeding the balls into the tubes.

This bike let you turn on the light, the fan, a radio or move a train in the ceiling.  Rock loved it and we loved letting him wear his little legs out.

The bubble room is probably the kids' favorite, they got to play with bubbles, make a mess and Mom couldn't say anything because it was all in the name of science.

"Science!"

Rock loved sticking his head in this cutout thing.  He normally hides from pictures, but this time kept asking me for more pics.

They had a giant rope jungle gym for science that kids got to play in.

Isn't science fun?

Jens eventually had enough science and checked out for a while.

Maybe you noticed, maybe you didn't, that Ryker wasn't in any of those pictures.  That's because he chose to stay home with Mama Lisa and cuddle.  He wasn't too happy about our return home.

The boys love helping Papa Dave make their playhouse.  I think helping is the right word...

They did a good job of marking stuff up with pencils, drilling screws in random places and measuring anything and everything.

They even helped pull the trigger on the nail gun!

Mama Lisa brought Jens out in the stroller to watch.  She really wanted to help, but since she had just taken a bath, didn't have shoes on and is a girl she had to watch (just kidding!).

They really are hard little workers.

We drove home Saturday afternoon which gave the kids a chance to swim one last time.

I guess you could call the trip a big success, at least the kids think that way.