Summer Vacation June 29, 2009

Since it’s been 3+ months since I’ve blogged…I know- terrible!…..what better reason to catch up on pics than our summer vacation. We did a “road trip” this year, and has been quite fun…and interesting.

 

Our first night we stayed at my dad’s in Tulsa. We had to drop off “Tinkerbell” (our dog) for her own vacation at Papa’s!

The second night we made it right outside St. Louis. Here is a cave we toured. It was a 90 min., 1 mile tour….during Abigail’s nap time- made it interesting. It was very fun, though, and the kids LOVED it!!! It was pretty amazing inside, and the pics don’t even do it justice, but here they are anyways!

 

 

This was the entrance to the vistor’s center of the cave. See, Abigail was NOT cooperating for a “group” shot.

 

I took this pic in the pitch dark, so I couldn’t see exactly what I was pointing at….but I did pretty good at getting them all in the pic.

 

 

Just cool cave pics.

 

 

 

This was at dinner that night before checking into the hotel. Emily is showing us her “gem” necklace she got at the cave.

 

 

Daddy is so fun and cool…..giving rides on the luggage cart at the hotel.

 

The kids LOVED seeing the St. Louis arch….and some very cool bridges going through St. Louis.

 

We made it to Indiana!!!! YAY!!! Our first night at my Grandma’s house we took them to a fun park to let them run off all their energy.

 

Abigail likes to hand me the camera and say “Cheeeese.” So, here she’s saying “Cheeeeese!”

 

 

OK….funny story about the cow. All of Caleb’s and my married life we somehow miss turns, get turned around (AKA- lost), or whatever, but it always leads to some kind of adventure. So….we’re on our way to the Indiana State Dune Park (that was ONLY 15 min. away), but we went south instead of north. Had we really thought about it, it wouldn’t had made any sense to go south, since Lake Michigan was north….but that’s just us I guess. So, 1 1/2 hours later we end up at the exit where we started and had to get the kids lunch. So, we went to Culver’s and they had cows out front. The kids wanted to pet them, so here they are petting cows. And just think….they NEVER would have pet the cows if we hadn’t gone the wrong way!

 

 

And we did make it to the Sand Dunes at Lake Michigan. It was the kids 1st time at a beach.

 

 

Here’s all of our toes in the sand. Don’t ya just love it!!?

 

 

Lake Michigan…it was a perfect day!

 

 

 

This picture melts me….Abigail reached up to hold her daddy’s hand.

 

Me with 2 of my girls!

Caleb and I haven’t been to the beach FOREVER!!! Coming from CA, we went A LOT!!! Caleb (Mr. Romantic) even proposed to me at “our” beach in CA.

 

Caleb went out in the water and Abigail CRIED!!! Caleb is waving to her and she’s sobbing right here.

 

My fam…..someone had to stay dry to take the pics.

 

Playin’ in the sand.

 

I love tootsie pics. (Can you guess which foot is whose?)

 

Abigail doesn’t like to be dirty. So, here she is showing me her sandy hands and saying “Wipe. Wipe.”

 

 

The kids could have dug in the sand all day…they loved it.

 

Abigail got sand in her mouth and was NOT likin’ it!!! Poor thing….

 

Noah was crackin’ me up. He couldn’t figure out why his hole kept filling up with water. Hmmm….could it be that you dug it at the shore where the tide comes in at?!?!

 

Us…enjoying the day watching our kids play in the sand.

 

 

We had them “wash off” in the water, but we sure brought A LOT of sand back with us.

 

 

 

One of the sand dunes- the kids had so much fun running up and down…up and down…up and down.

Before and After….of our house March 28, 2009

Over Spring break, Caleb’s mom and her husband came to visit. And Roy painted the inside of our house for us. We are soo thankful and love love love it! Caleb HATES painting- he’ll have nothing to do with it. And having 4 kids, makes it a bit difficult for me to get it done all by myself. Plus, we have very high ceilings that I wouldn’t even begin to touch. So, Roy spent his “vacation” painting the inside of our house.

 

Before…..

Inside the entry way. Just for fun, Roy painted the kids’ names on the walls. (Although, he did spell Abigail’s name wrong on the left, so he redid it on the right.)

 

In the Family Room.

 

Looking up the stairs.

 

Partly done.

 

I had to take this, so we remembered how to put back the pics.

 

 

Grandpa put Noah to work helping to paint.

 

And After…….

 

The bay window in my kitchen.

 

 

Kitchen- with the old picture that used to hang in my grandparents house….love it!

 

 

The “Wine Tasting” accent wall in the Family Room.

 

Going up the stairs.

 

And we got our pics put back in place.

The rest of our Feb……and family March 28, 2009

Caleb and I had a conference to go to, so we got to have our oldest niece come and watch the kids for us. She did a great job and the kids loved her and had so much fun!!! My dad came down for the conference too, so they both got to go to the cub scouts Blue and Gold Banquet with us.

 

Here is Tara and Emily.

 

Dad and Noah.

 

Kaitlyn being silly.

 

 

Tara and Kaitlyn.

 

I’m not sure what Noah is doing, but I thought it was a coo shot.

 

Caleb and Noah after he received his Bear patch.

 

The next weekend, my sister and her family came to visit. We love having family come visit us- it’s fun!! We left all the kids together (thank goodness for the older ones!) and us adults got to go out by ourselves!!!

 

This was Caleb’s lasagna!!! OK, actually, this restaurant serves family style and we split it. It was HUGE!!!

 

Brent and Julie with “the” lasagna.

 

The cousins had so much fun playing together. Here is Emily and Lauren.

 

Kailtyn, Rebekah, and Kyrsten.

 

Kaitlyn and Rebekah…matching.

 

Emily and Kyrsten…jammie time.

 

Noah and Lauren.

 

Aunt Julie and Abigail.  That white thing Abigail is leaning on is “her” stool. It’s a step stool that she is VERY possessive off. She likes to be at the counter just like everyone else. If you touch it or put your foot on it, she’ll let you know!!!!!

 

Sisters.

Oh blog posts….where have U been???? March 28, 2009

OK….I admit- I’ve been such a slacker in keeping up with my blog. Now that I’m on Facebook and Twitter, I’ve neglected my blog. So, here I sit to update the world (or however it is that reads this) on our exciting life!!!!

As I look back on past posts, I left off with Noah’s bat project. (very very cool I might add!!!) Since then…..hmmmm…. where do I start?? Well, here is some of our Feb.

 

Emily had her 100th day of Kindergarten. Guess how many star  stickers she put on her 100 day glasses??

 

The kids all went to the dentist for a cleaning- that takes a while!!! So, while it was Noah’s turn, the girls had fun in the waiting room. Here Emily is just showing me her “clean” smile.

 

Ohhhh….how I love my girls!!!!! They are just too much fun….as you will see in this video!

 

 

 

 

This here is Valentine’s Day. When you have 4 kids and no family that lives close by, you go out on a “family date”. So, that’s what we did. We went to Texas Roadhouse. Now that week, the kids had taken turns have the stomach bug (AKA…. throwing up everywhere) Well, I had been stuck at home with puke, saltines, and sprite and I WAS GOING OUT!!!! Katilyn was not feeling well, and actually threw up before we left. So, she just brought a bowl with her and off we went. Now I would not have advertised that to the resturant at the time, but I can tell ya’ll that now!!!   BTW- she ended up fine while we were there and we had a great V-day.

 

We went and fed the ducks…..brrrrrr…it was cold.

 

at our neighborhood pond.

 

Kailtyn with the ducks she fed.

 

Caleb and Abigail at the pond.

 

Abigail eating the typical favorite meal of a toddler- black beans and quinoa.

 

Abigail wearing Daddy’s clown hair. It somehow looks cuter on her!

 

Emily being a ninja???? or something???

 

Caleb…just being handsome.

Batman February 8, 2009

For school, Noah had to choose a mammal to do a project/report on. He choose the bat, and more specifically the Flying Fox. We checked out LOTS of books about bats at the library, and he has become quite the expert. Go ahead….ask him anything you want to know about bats!!

 

 

Happy B-Day to Kaitlyn!!! February 1, 2009

Thursday my sweet Kaitlyn turned 5…..yes 5!!!! I can’t even believe it. We had a fun day. Since this is her last year “at home” (next year she’ll be in kindergarten) I took her to the American Girl store in Dallas. She spent some b-day money and got Kit’s ears pierced. (Yes, the dolls can get their ears pierced.) Then we went to the Bistro there so she could get milk and cookies. It was a fun morning.

 

Kaitlyn and Kit

 

 

Abigail was enjoying her milk too!!!

 

Sisters are sweet.

 

OK….then we picked up Noah and Emily at school. We passed our time waiting in the carpool line by taking silly pictures.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then we had her special b-day dinner and it was presents time. She had been waiting ALL DAY for this!

 

The birthday girl…..who is 5!!!!

 

I had to get a pic of this. First of all, Emily made her the birthday “crown”, and there is a reason she got a Lego’s Star Wars ship. Noah has a bazillion legos, and Emily got the Lego Summer Palace for Christmas. Kaitlyn was the only one without her own Legos and she really wanted some. And she specifically asked for a “ship” that Daddy could help build and she could fly with him.  So, she got her ship!

 

Kaitllyn talking to Grammy on the phone.

 

 

Cake time.

 

I’m glad she pulled her hair back away from the candles.

 

The next night we had a little party for Kailtyn. She had a pajama, pizza party.

 

More cake.

 

We set the air mattress up so the girls could watch the movie on it.

 

It was funny….the girls were all laying on the bed and Abigail plopped herself right out in front, so she could see.

Pinewood Derby January 28, 2009

First of all…. Now that I’m on Facebook, I’ve noticed that my blog posts are fewer and farther between. I’ll try and do better.

Noah’s Pinewood Derby was last Saturday. It was a fun day. This year was a “last minute” car. Now the shape was cut and ready at Christmas time, but then it sat in a box. Caleb and Noah started painting it Fri. night and finished right before they had to register the car for the race. Noah didn’t win a trophy this year (his first 2 years he did), but we will say that his car was NOT the slowest.

 

“Drying” his care with a hair dryer to speed up the drying. It was too cold in the garage for anything to dry.

 

 

They were trying to get a Pack picture of all the boys and their cars. It took a few minutes to place all the boys up there….so here is Noah flying his rocket car while waiting for the picture.

 

And they finally got the Pack picture.

 

The girls lookin’ so cute at the race.

 

Abigail playing on the table.

 

Caleb and Abigail.

 

 

Noah and his rocket Pinewood Derby car.

Want to Learn Latin? January 6, 2009

Noah is learning Latin in school. He’s enjoying it very much. He has a big cumulative test over all the words he’s learned so far, so Caleb programmed this game for him to study. How cool is that?!  So, if you want to see how much Latin you know, click here.

I Love Icicles January 5, 2009

Texas weather is so crazy. Seriously….one day is beautiful and almost warm and the very next morning you wake up to freezing temperatures. Well, one thing I do love about freezing temps is the icicles that form. I don’t know what it is about them, but they are just so pretty to me. I love them. So, I of course took some pics of them.

This is one of my favorite pics I took today. I was taking the picture of the icicle on our mailbox,and Kaitlyn peeked her head around to see what I was doing. So cute!

 

 

 

 

It was trash day, so even our trash cans were frozen.

 

This is Noah’s bird house he built…..with icicles.

 

 

Our fort on the play system…..with icicles.

 

Since I was done “photographing” the icicles, I told Emily she could NOW break them all.

 

And Kaitlyn just wanted her picture feeling the ice.

Then we all went inside with red frozen hands to warm up!

And 1st place goes to….. December 17, 2008

Noah Jenkins, of course! Last night was the “Dad and Lad Cake Bake” for cub scouts. They had different categories for best tasting, tallest cake, natural disaster, sports theme and holiday theme. Noah and Caleb entered Tallest Cake. When Caleb does something he goes all out, so……. they built a rocket cake. It involved making 6 bundt cakes THEMSELVES!!!!!, PVC pipe, drilling holes, cutting wire hangers with wire cutters, and much more. Now to tell a funny story….. they had to make the cakes themselves with no help from me. They had to soften some butter for one of them. Caleb asked how. I said how long to do it in the microwave. Next thing I know, Caleb opens the M/W door and says ahhhhhhh! I look. He did NOT unwrap the butter to soften it and it is softened/melted all over the microwave. I asked why he didn’t unwrap it and put in on a bowl or something. And he says I didn’t tell him to. And Noah then says- “I told him to unwrap it and put it in something and he said, No Noah it’s fine.” I didn’t think to take a picture until after he cleaned it up. But they won first place and it was an awesome cake. BTW, we have 6 bundt cakes now, anyone want any cake?

 

And the building begins….. the first layer goes on.

 

 

 

Getting it into the car was interesting. We folded a seat down and took off the top (of the cake) and got it in!

 

 

1st place! Those are my boys!!!!

 

The girls didn’t want to be left out of any pics while I was taking them…..

 

If anyone looks close enough at this picture and wonders what’s on Katie’s chin, I’ll tell you. Almost 2 weeks ago she slipped in the bathroom and split her chin open on the bathroom sink. OUCH! She split it open pretty good and we had to take her to the ER. We were thankful she didn’t need stitches- Dermabond to the rescue!

 

 

Abigail loves this hat. It’s been very cold here and we need hats when we go out, so she’ll tap her head and say : “hat”. (or her version of that)