Thank you Cheryl!

We successfully whisked our friend, mentor and favorite Principal away to the beach for a couple of days of relaxation before she begins her next journey in California. The Pacific Ocean was beautiful, weather was a balmy 70 degrees (while everybody at home was sweltering in the 90s), and the kids were able to get wet and sandy which they know drives their mother crazy!
Thank you Cheryl for being there with Seth for his entire elementary journey and for being such a positive influence on Lacey!

Keep in touch!

Baby Taccori

Baby Taccori has arrived. All 6 lbs 12 ozs of her! She is doing well and hoping to come home very soon.

Feeling right at home being held by Auntie Lori. = )

Priceless!

Seth was in his room today and Erik walked by and asked him what he was doing. He replied "Oh, just writing", so Erik figured that was harmless. Apparently, he decided to write his own "agreement" for Lacey. Not sure if Lacey has agreed, but he has it prominently displayed in his room and I think he expects Lacey to oblige. = )

I had to darken the copy quite a bit because it is written in a light blue. Translation is below.

You clean me room all day

1. clean me bed
2. clean me amil (animals)
3. clean me clothes
4. clean book
5. clean game
6. clean me box (toy box)
7. clean me clothes all (apparently mentioning clothes was not enough, he needed to clarify that it meant all clothes)

$39.95

The Cinnamon Roll

What happens when Seth goes to breakfast/lunch with Grandma and Grandpa?? He gets a cinnamon roll as big as his head! Seth attempted to eat one of Stuffy's famous cinnamon rolls. Of course, he didn't even get around the first section of the roll, not even half of the first section, but he (and the rest of the family) are slowly eating our way around it. You would think it would be gooey or hard because it is so big, but a few seconds in the microwave and it is really quite good. I'm pretty sure it will take over a week for us to make a dent in it!

Fishing Day!

The annual Cast for Kids day was held last weekend at the hatchery. Unfortunately, Erik had to work this year, but we had Uncle Bob and Michelle's boyfriend John to help us out. Here is a video of Seth helping Bob cast.

Seth's first fish, a small but eatable, trout. Seth doesn't have any desire to touch the fish, he's perfectly happy letting John be his bait-boy. = ) Fish number two, slightly bigger than the first one!

Seth with Grandpa, John and the entire catch for the day -- 5 fish.

All of the pictures are on the Picasa page.

New Wheels!

Lacey and Seth both have new wheels. I'm a little behind times because Lacey has actually has had a new bike for about a month now, but here is a picture of her on her new ice blue bike. She definitely needed to move up to a larger size to fit those long legs. So far, we have only had a couple of outings other than our driveway, but she is enjoying her new bike and learning how to change gears.

Seth has never been able to master a bike even with large training wheels that made the bike very stable. I started looking into three wheel scooters so he could join Lacey (and me when I get a bike) riding around. I was hoping for the stand up kind -- the GoPet scooter, but he was not able to navigate it, so we tried the eZip Scoot-E below. When he tried it at the scooter store (Scoot On This), he said to me "Tell the man one word -- sold!". Enough said.

He is still getting used to it, but I know he will get the hang of it eventually. We had all of the controls moved to the left and it has a "turtle/hare" knob that can be adjusted to go no more than 2 mph, or up to a maximum speed of 10 mph. He can control the throttle but is still a little anxious about going forward at a steady speed, so right now there is a lot of start/stop, start/stop. I'm hoping by next summer he will be comfortable enough that we can get out and actually go somewhere other than a parking lot. = )

A Halo of a Predicament

Chloe has managed to get herself into a bit of a predicament. It started on Monday night, we noticed that her eye was watering. By Tuesday morning, she had a "goopy" eye so off to the vet she went that afternoon. In case you ever need to know, a grass seed which decides to take residence in your dog's eye costs a little over $200. Yes, Chloe had the obnoxious intruder embedded in her eye which I'm sure was quite painful. She was much happier after her time with the vet -- probably for two reasons, she was going out of the vet's office instead of in, and her eye was numbed and therefore feeling great.

From Tuesday til today, she has had to endure one daily dose of Atropine to dialate the eye and 4 times a day of antibiotics. She went back to the vet today and her eye is responding well (albeit the huge divot the shape of a grass seed out of the center of it), but it appeared that she had been scratching it. We think it is only happening at night because during the day she doesn't bother it much. So, as if the torture of getting ointment put in her eye 5 times a day wasn't enough to cause her to hate us, we had to lovingly (I tried not to laugh!) put her in the halo contraption. This is a picture of her as frozen as a statue after donning the halo. A very sad specimen indeed.

She's a bit more content after getting some snuggles, but when put down on the floor and required to walk, she will have nothing to do with it. She goes right back to her statue performance. Hopefully, she will only have to endure this for a few nights. Poor baby!

Lacey's Favorite Subjects

Lacey was out taking more pictures of her favorite subjects. There are a bunch of them, but I picked out the best two. I love this picture of Chloe in the grass:

And, even though Lily has a gorgeous face, she does not always want to show it. She was playing and actually paused like this for a 30 second power nap. Don't know why we call her Silly Lily??

New Toy

I have finally moved into the digital world and have consolidated my paper calendar and paper address book into it. It has taken me many days! Who knew I had that much stuff that I needed to keep track of? Actually, I knew, because my brain hurts trying to keep track of it all!

Now, the only thing she is missing is a name -- any suggestions?

Rock On Progress

I'm a little late posting these pictures, I actually put the rocks on for the second grind on June 4th. There was a huge amount of progress made! In fact, some of the rocks actually disappeared in the process. There are a few in these batches that are going to be quite impressive after the polish step (2 steps away, you'll have to wait).

Here is the original picture of Batch #1 (the roughies)
And here, the roughies are not quite so rough.

Here is the original Batch #2

And here they are after 11 days of tumbling:

It's amazing how much they change with the first grind. The purple marbled one in the center bottom of this picture has some incredible patterns in it, can't wait to see it polished up!