Marc and Suzy

Ryan and I had a great time watching the meteor shower the other night. We put the kids to bed, then laid out on the trampoline and had a nice evening watching some of the most amazing meteors I have ever seen. I didn't take any pictures of it, but I found this one online and thought it looked just like what we saw, so I am posting it. Ryan turned 1 billion seconds old on August 13th at 3:16 and 40 seconds in the morning. Yeah, I know. But we had a little party with some friends and got him a silly "birthsecond" gift.

Marc, Suzy, Emily, and Carter came to visit last weekend. It was so much fun to see them. We do have a tendency to harass Marc a little too much, but we love them and miss living near them.

We went to a park:

For some reason our pumpkins quit growing and turned orange. I am not sure why that happened, but we picked them and new ones are growing now. Crazy.

The Hawks have a tradition that one of the baseball payers reads a story to the kids before the Tuesday night games. It was so fun, and a pretty cute story.

The kids have been begging to stay up with mom and dad instead of going to bed. So we told them they could earn a movie night. Well, they did. They worked hard and did some grueling chores (toilet cleaning was involved). So we ate caramel popcorn, watched Ghostbusters and slept together in the family room. All after bedtime.

We went to Cascade Lake this weekend to explore where girl's camp will be next year. On the way there, the kids got car sick and Brandon threw up all over everything (at his feet were all the kids blankets and pillows). So we pulled over to clean Brandon up as he continued to throw up out the side of the van. Then Kathleen got up and started puking out her side of the van.

It was like puke shooting everywhere. But at least none ended up in the van. Just on all of Brandon's clothes and the kids blankets. Luckily Ryan's boss has a cabin there and let us do laundry. Thanks Justin, you're a lifesaver.

Kathleen and her personality:

Kathleen and Cody were playing so cute on the edge of the tile the other day.

Sometimes boys like to do their hair too.

My sister-in-law sent me this picture and I though it was pretty funny. Go Sox!

Kathleen drew this picture for Cody. I thought it was really good for a 7-year-old.

Portraits

Ryan set up the bunk bed for the boys. They were pretty excited about it. We went geocaching at Kathleen's old school.

Ryan and Kathleen learned a new secret hand shake.

There were these crazy giant hawks flying all around making all kinds of noise. They were so close the kids thought it was exciting.

Ryan jumped over this huge mound of bark. I cut off his head in the picture, so he had to do it again.

Brandon in "jail".

Ryan was throwing wiffle balls at the kids on the trampoline. They LOVE that game for some reason.

We went out to daddy's work to have a picnic for lunch.

Kathleen got Cody to sleep on her lap. It is funny that he is 3 now and still snuggles with his big sister.

We decided to try and take portraits of our kids all by ourselves. As you can see, they aren't as great as if we had someone else do them, but they are not terrible. We just didn't have time to try and make it a bigger deal than that.

Brandon is ready to go to the pool.

National Night Out

Creepy Clown. Every year our subdivision has a "National Night Out." We all come to the park and play. There was a clown there that the kids LOVED. He rode his unicycle and juggled at the same time. Kathleen's Ballet Photos:

For Kindergarten registration, we got a book of things to do. One was to have Brandon narrate a story as I wrote it down. Then he had to draw a picture to go along with it. Here it is:

Once upon a time there was a land far away. And then he went to outer space. And he needed something to drink, but he didn't bring any water. He wanted to bring water, but he forgot. He went back to Earth. And got some water and then he went back to outer space. Then he needed to go potty. The End.

Ryan took this picture of the moon one morning before work. If you look closely to the left, you can see Jupiter.

You better believe it. That is a picture of Cody in underwear. He likes to wear his underwear backwards so he can see the pictures. The result is a massive wedgie, but he doesn't care. He has been accident free (with pee) for two weeks. Hooray! Now if we can just get down the twosies.

We decided to pick some rhubarb and strawberries from our garden to make a pie. The boys loved helping with the harvest. And the pie turned out GREAT!

Proof that they are friends. I caught them snuggling and reading.

The other day, the sky was amazing. This picture doesn't do it justice. But to the right, totally blue skies without a cloud in site. To the left, black clouds and rain. In the middle, a strip of awesome clouds separating the two.

More National Night out pictures.

They had unlimited Schwan's ice cream. You didn't have to tell me or Ryan twice.