Fathers Day

Father's day was a total blur. We were so busy preparing for our upcoming trip that I'm afraid that it wasn't much of a day for Tom. He told me earlier on in the week that the only thing that mattered to him was being in Ocean Shores at bed time, the rest was all good no matter what we did. I laughed as I typed that because as Tom and I sat at the table eating breakfast on Sunday morning, he told me that "it wouldn't be be horrible if we didn't leave for the ocean until Monday morning" and then he proceeded to sit on the couch. A little later that morning when I assumed (based on his non-packing actions) that we were leaving Monday, he came upstairs and said, "are you done packing". We clearly had our signals mixed. So I rushed around the house, cleaning and packing and getting stuff ready for the Father's day BBQ at my parents house, then I met up with my sister at Costco for a quick shopping trip for our vacation. So when I say it was a blur, it really was a busy, blurry day for me. :) But, it's not about me is it. :)

Tom had to work a little bit, so while I was at Costco with Becky, Tom went to the office to finish up a few things. I was glad he went in so that he would be able to completely be on vacation while we were gone. By 2, we were all back to moms and ready to grill.

I tried to get a picture of Tom with the girls, but this was as good as it got. Emerson was way too distracted by her cousins.

Dad took on the task of grilling. He does it well. :)

The kids enjoyed the new deck that Mom and Dad had put on. It has a new bench that makes for a perfect stage.

Dad and his girls.

David and the sun that apparently eats Oreos like Hannah.This is what happens when your uncle holds you down, while your bigger cousin smears a marshmallow in your face. She was NOT happy. But of course I had to take a picture. :)

And this is the face that I couldn't stop looking at today. She just looked extra cute today. Hence the remaining pictures. :)

And this is what happens when Papa Larry is around...

And picking flowers for Papa...seriously I can't get enough of her cuteness.

Sorry I got a bit off track there.

Despite our little communication mix up I think Tom had a good Father's day...we did after all, make it to Ocean Shores for bed at 11:30.

Happy Father's day to an amazing father, husband and friend. I love you, sweetie.

Last day of school

Everyone told me that the first day of Kindergarten was hard on the mommy, but no one prepared me for the last day of school! The last day of Kindergarten was by far the hardest for me. I was not prepared for my little girl to be done with her first year of school and I am really, really, REALLY not ready for her to be in the first grade and to go to school ALL day. It was an emotional day for all of us but probably more for me and the other mommies that have been meeting every weekday at drop off. We were all a little misty eyed.

Hannah had a play date before school with her friend Abigail, which was probably a good distraction for Hannah and I.

Kira, Mimi's mom, had the great idea to make Mr. Kusler a quilt with all the kids names on it. She worked with Mrs. Lincoln (the class para educator) who was able to have the kids write their names on the petals when they went out to work with her. It was a big secret and the kids loved keeping a secret from Mr. Kusler. :)A close up of the quilt. Above the picture of Mr. Kusler it says "thank you for helping our children blossom".This is where we dropped the kids off and these are the moms that I'm going to miss.

One last Kindergarten group picture.This is Scout. Scout is a 5th grader who would walk the Kindergarten bussers to their buses and make sure they got on the right bus. For some reason Hannah just gravitated to Scout. Whenever we would see her, whether it be at school or at the grocery store, Hannah would run up to her and give her a great big hug. I love that Scout loved her back. :)The last day of PM Kindergarten just happened to be field day for the rest of the school. This is what happens when you get to go to field day but don't get to participate in field day. Poor Emmie.There were bubbles, bouncy houses, water fights, cotton candy and lots of excited kids.This is Mrs. Lincoln. She was Mr. Kuslers para and Hannah LOVED her and LOVED going out to work with her. I could always tell when Hannah got to work with Mrs. Lincoln she would always have a great big smile on her face at pick up. As the yearbook says, Para's are the glue that holds the school together, and I believe that wholeheartedly.Hannah and Mr. Kusler..."the best teacher in the world". I am going to do my darndest to have Emerson in his class when it's her turn. He is AMAZING.Tom and I are so proud of Hannah and all she has accomplished this year. She really did have a fantastic first year!

Big news

I absolutely cannot believe that I am just now getting around to posting this giant piece of news. Hannah FINALLY lost her first tooth! She actually had two wiggly teeth and the one that fell out isn't the one we thought would go first. We'd been bribing her with everything possible to try and get her to let us pull either of them out. Well actually we were trying to get someone else to pull them out, Tom and I were physically unable to even attempt to pull them out. We both don't do wiggly teeth, we're too squeamish.

Hannah was eating her waffle and she came to me, spit a mouthful of waffle out into my hand and said, "mom, what's in my waffle". When I told her it was her tooth, she looked like she was going to throw up - but that quickly turned to sheer joy. She was SO proud of herself for losing a tooth before the end of the school year. More importantly she was going to get her name on the tooth chart. :)

I bought this tooth fairy pillow off of Etsy when her one tooth started to get really wiggly. I wasn't sure we would get it before the tooth actually came out. Little did I know that my daughter's tooth would be as stubborn as her. :) The tooth fairy had no trouble finding Hannah and she left behind a nice little letter along with $3. I had to work the next morning so I wasn't here with her when she discovered her treasures, but Caitlin said she was pretty darn excited. :)

Hannah's other tooth finally fell out three days later on 6/13/10. How it stayed in that long, I'll never know. She swallowed it in her sleep and I gave her strict instructions to NOT go looking for it. :)

Not really sure...

I have so much to get caught up on that I thought I'd ease back into it. I found this picture as I was looking for the next set of pictures to post. I love to watch these two play when they are actually getting along and when they don't know I'm watching. I'm not exactly sure what Emmie is doing to her sister with the nail buffer but Hannah seems to be enjoying it. :)

LSHS Graduation

Tuesday night was Caitlin's graduation. We are so excited for her and we can't wait to see where her life takes her. We are also very excited that she is going to start out at EvCC so that we don't lose our wonderful babysitter. :)

Caitlin and Alex before the ceremony. Aren't they so cute!

Sue's family decided that sitting at the tip top of the arena was the best place for our rather large group. Talk about having sweating hands. I was a nervous wreck with Emerson climbing around. You can barely see their faces WAY down there.

Caitlin and her best friend Casie. Love those girls.

We're not sure where Cameron had to rush off to, but just imagine that he stuck around and that he's standing behind Brittany.

I would post more pictures but my sister is the one who did all the important picture taking and I haven't gotten my copies yet. I ended up giving her my lens and letting her get the close up shots, while I put my camera away in disgust. It's looking like I am going to need to send it away to be serviced. I think I've narrowed it down to a battery compartment issue. We'll see. I'm charging my old camera now so I'm not completely camera-less.

Adventures in letterboxing

We had a brief break in the rain last week. I like the rain, but enough is enough. There is a time for the rain and June just isn't it. We took advantage of the sunbreak and headed out on a letterboxing adventure. We went to Flowing Lake in search of the Flowing Find box but never ended up finding it. We found were it was supposed to be but someone must have found it and not knowing what it was, taken it. At least that's what we're telling ourselves. If you look at the clue, it wasn't much of a hike or even a walk, but the girls enjoyed it none the less. I don't have many pictures, my camera is still on the fritz and I'm just sick about it. Every time I'd want to take a picture, I would get an error code that asks me to take the battery out and put it back in. Once I'd do that, it would work for about 3 pictures and then I get the error again. *sigh* Here are the very few pictures I took on our afternoon saunter.

Emmie wanted to ride in the backpack. We haven't used it since Hannah was 1. She loved it, but I think she's almost outgrown it.The rock bridge. This picture makes me laugh, Emerson was in the middle of stumbling.

Hannah found the stage and could have stayed there ALL day.

Like I said, not many pictures and no box to show you. Hopefully, my camera will be working before our next outing.

Paint...finally

We've talked about painting our living room for quite a while now, but on Saturday Tom woke up and was ready to paint. Had I known that Saturday was the day, I would have done a little cleaning up and started prepping the room on Friday night...it was an all day project. Thankfully, unlike the rest of the country, we had pretty crummy weather for Memorial Day weekend. It actually worked out to be a perfect painting day.

We thought we had our color picked out but the more we looked at it the more we didn't like it. My friend JJ has this wonderful container full of paint colors that her husband brought over for us to look through. I think she might have every single color available at Lowe's and Home Depot. It makes me laugh, but I'm glad she's collected them. It definitely made our trip to Home Depot a lot quicker which was good for everyone involved. We found a new color but once we got there we ended up going with something different. It's a lot darker than we imagined it would be. (I'm not very good with colors.) We like it now and are happy with it, but the first wall scared me to death. :) Tom was quite the painter. He knocked over the paint which leaked through the drop cloth...twice. Painted part of the ceiling in the hallway that we weren't going to paint, stepped on the clock and shattered it. I finally had to tell him to just stop and chill out. He was cracking me up with all of his little mishaps. It was quite the adventure!

Hannah helped us paint while Emerson was taking her nap. She's quite the painter. Once Emerson woke up she was in charge of keeping her out of the way. I felt bad...they watched a lot of TV that afternoon.All she wanted to do was touch the walls. We had just caught her seeing if it was dry. :)It's hard to really capture the color, but you get the idea.Tom's next project, you know, when we win the lottery, is to replace the trim. We want white trim instead of the cheap ugly stuff that they put in when it was built. Hopefully that home project will have fewer mishaps...that's doubtful. :)

Ethan Donald Schweinfurth

I got a text from my cousin at 6:30 yesterday morning. This is what it said...Ethan Donald Schweinfurth was born today at 4:23am. 7lbs 10oz and 18.5 inches long. Came into the hospital at 2:30 and was 9 cm dilated. Didn't even have time for drugs!... Seriously?! What first time mom gets to the hospital and is already at 9 cm? Absolutely crazy! Mom and baby are doing great after the rather quick delivery. We are SO happy for Heather and Jeff and we are all in love with this new family member.

Hannah and I left the room during his hearing test. Emerson and Tom stayed home and it is just as well, can you imagine Emmie at the hospital? Down the hall from Heather's room was a waiting area with a wall of windows. Hannah was eyeing the playground below.

This little guy is so good. He didn't even make a peep and he was passed around quite a bit. Basking in the brief moment of sun. Practically the only sunshine all weekend long.Welcome to the family baby Ethan. You are loved!