I was so excited Saturday Evening. I was able to sneak out of the house all by myself for a grocery shopping trip. Low and behold I returned to this…

Okay, so he wasn’t quite like that – I had to give him the bath and put him in his jammies, but his hair was all chopped off….. (compare to the pictures below) I should have known better than to leave him home with daddy – he was just waiting for the moment when I wasn’t looking! Poor baby. I asked him what happened to his hair and he said “all gone”. He must have cut off a good 2 inches or so. I was sad… but it will grow back I guess. It was so blonde and cute though!

Oh and at the grocery store we are obviously not from around here. Pretty much every time I shop I buy about $200 worth of groceries. That lasts us a couple of weeks. Well apparently no one around here shops like that because every time I shop I always get a comment from the checker such as “I have never seen someone buy so much” or Saturday it was “Wow, how many kids do you have?” I respond three. Her response “Wow, you guys must really eat a lot!”. HMMMM I guess no one out here shops like I do. I stock up on the sales and I don’t want to drive the 25 minutes into town every other day to buy groceries! In WA everyone in line had that many groceries. Anyway… I guess I’ll step off my soap box now.

Dane can finally say his name now. He also says Christian all the time – he is always calling “Christian Where Are You?”. His newest thing is sitting on the potty right before his bath. He remembers every time and won’t let you forget! He is already 22 months tomorrow. I can’t believe my baby is almost two! This is right around the time Ryan also got interested in potty training…. but Dane is so much smaller than he was! He can’t reach the potty at all without help. That and he has a ton of fall clothes that are one piece type outfits. I had forgotten about the potty training issue…. His legs are still too short for a lot of his 18-24 month outfits and pants. Hopefully he’ll grow a bit and get some use out of some of those before we go full force into potty-training.

Well it sounds like Matt has to do his first funeral and burial this week. It is a sister of a church member, so he didn’t know her. She was older and was deaf all her life and blind the last few years or her life. Most of her friends were also deaf, so there will be a sign-language interpreter present. We’re not sure what day that will be yet. We just got the call tonight.

John ended up not making it out here afterall. His original flight got cancelled and he was able to find a non-stop flight straight home to WA so he wasn’t able to come for his three day lay-over as originally planned. The boys were a bit sad, but hopefully we will see him soon.

I’m off to check on the kitty to see if she is having any kittens yet and then off to bed.

C-

Sorry it has been a bit since I posted. My computer decided it had served its useful life. Thankfully Matt was able to recover everything and install a new hard drive. I’m so glad he knows about that kind of stuff. I am clueless!

It is harvest time around here for many things. Our house is abounding with potatoes, fresh peaches, and sweet corn. YUM! You get spoiled when you’re the pastor’s family. Everyone seems to enjoy sharing their crops with us.

We went school supply shopping a couple days ago. That was fun – our first experience with that! Even Christian has a school supply list this year. So their backpacks are all packed up and ready to go for the first day of school – which is Aug 22nd. Both Christian and Ryan have seperate registration days coming up. Then the first day is only from 8:20 – 11:00 – Ryan only. Then the next day – Ryan’s Birthday – school starts full force.

Dane learned to walk down the stairs this week, so he has a whole new space to explore and get into trouble in…. Ryan and Christian are kind of disappointed their hide-out has been invaded. He used to go up and down the stairs all the time at our old house, but these stairs are hard tile – not carpeted, so he wasn’t willing to try them out for a long time. I guess he finally got brave…

Ryan and Christian did swim lessons this week. The baby-sitter we had the other night also teaches private swim lessons at the local pool. However, one day she had to cancel due to a family emergency and then one day it rained, so they have to have two make-up days sometime soon.

We went to pick corn yesterday at one of the congregation member’s farm. The heat is back on here, so it was HOT but the kids had a good time. I forgot the camera, but did try to capture a few pics on my cell phone. I haven’t checked them out yet to see if they turned out. If they did I’ll post them later. We were also going to pick raspberries, but we couldn’t find the place. I think they took their sign down – perhaps the season is over… If our memory is correct the place was near the fairgrounds, so the fairgoers probably did them in.

Well, tomorrow Uncle John arrives for a visit until Wednesday. I’m off to clean the house a bit. Matt mowed the lawn this morning, but everyone else has stayed inside for the most part. It is 99 degrees and humid. YUCK. It’s supposed to be that way for a few more days and then cool off again. We seem to be getting in a routine of 4-5 days of weather like this and then 4-5 days of thunderstorms and then it repeats itself. Although, fair week turned out to be rather pleasant.

Oh, and Snickers – the kitty – STILL hasn’t had those kittens! I thought for sure they would have been born by now. Maybe she’s overdue??? She sits on your lap and you can feel the kittens kicking in there like crazy. I feel kind of sorry for her.

Well, I better get some cleaning done before Dane wakes up from his nap.
C-

All right, here are the promised fair pictures. Christian loves all rides. I think Ryan inherited my take on rides and is a bit more cautious – although more daring than I was at that age. He had a good time though. I ended up with more pictures of Ryan than Christian that turned out. There were other rides we didn’t get pictures of too. They really had a good selection for little ones.

And then here is a couple days ago. I just bought the boys these cute monkey shirts and they want to wear them all the time. I got Matt one too! LOL Now I just need to find Dane and I one and we’ll all match.

All right, I am off to finish the last batch of auctions…
C-

We’re still here alive and well. Just a bit busy the last few days. Wednesday we took the kids to the fair. It was so much fun to watch them enjoy all the rides. It was the first time we got them a wristband and let them go on lots of rides. They had a great time. I have pictures, but I’m not going to post them tonight, I’m too worn out. Hopefully tomorrow.

Thursday and Friday I spent the majority of the day listing E-bay auctions. They were having a listing sale and I have a lot of fall baby clothes to list. I ended up with 80 auctions running and I have probably about 30 more to go. It’s kind of sad to see all the baby clothes go – looking at each outfit brings back memories… If you know of anyone who has a little guy 0-18 months who needs clothes, send them on over to my auctions! Here’s the link: Little*Blessings*Boutique. Oh, and there are a couple stray girls clothing, women’s clothing and books there too. The books I am done with and the rest was leftover from when I was actually buying inventory to sell on E-bay. I am hopefully going to get the rest listed tomorrow. (which is all little boys stuff).

This morning I woke up to my e-mail completely crashed. It could not open, which is not a good thing as I store lots of important stuff in Outlook….It’s my calendar, my address book, and lots of business stuff…. Thankfully Matt knew of a program we could purchase to recover lost files. $90 and half a day later, my files were recovered. Phew! It was worth the $$.

Tonight was date night! It was the first date we have gone on since we moved. We had a college girl from church baby-sit and we went to the fair. We walked around a bit more (although it got boring pretty fast as we were already there Wed. and it isn’t that big…) We had our chicken skewers and funnel cake, and then went to the figure 8 car races. That was a lot of fun. The weather was perfect – not too hot, not windy, not rainy, not humid. AMAZING! Lightning did start lighting up the sky towards the end, but we didn’t get rained on. It was a nice evening. Now Matt is putting the final touches on his sermon and I am jumping into bed.

C-

I am just curious who all is reading our blog these days. If you are here, please click on the little comments link right under this post and enter your name – like in a guest book. Of course you are welcome to comment on any other post as well. We love to hear from you!
THANKS!

We seem to be keeping busy as usual. I have been working a lot on my web-site the last couple days. I had some things that needed to be updated. I launched a new site with my partner, Susanne, from Healthy Menu Mailer yesterday. The site is www.partnerupdates.com It is a site for our affiliates, so probably not that exciting to most of you.

We started our new Bible Study Sunday Night at our house. We had two families and a college girl attend. Oh, and six kids plus our three. Things went great and it was a lot of fun. We are hoping that group will grow in the weeks to follow. I made yummy ice-cream pies for dessert and they were a big hit!

Have you tried the new Cookies & M&M Cookies that come in the yellow package in the cookie section of the grocery store? I most certainly should not have those in the house! They are soooo good!

I think tomorrow evening we will head out to the county fair. It’s the first night so the admission and rides are reduced rates.

All right, here are some pictures for you! I had to upgrade my hosting so I could add more pictures. I was running out of space! That means that the older pictures will probably get taken down eventually before my hosting costs me a fortune! So if there is a picture you want from the past, be sure to right click on it and save it. Of course those are web-quality. If you want print quality you would probably be better off e-mailing me and asking for it.

Here are Matt and the boys yesterday. They got a wagon ride behind daddy’s lawn mower. You can see the corn is starting to get tall across the street.

Here is Dane and his trusted blanket. Those are our soybeans growing directly behind him and if you look really closely to the right before you hit the soybeans we have three pumpkin plants.

Ryan and Christian enjoying the swing set.

Here are Christian and Dane swinging. Notice Dane still has his blanket….

Snickers the pregnant kitty.

Dane and guess what….(His blanket)

The boys and their Teddy Bears. This was their idea. They set it all up and asked me to take their picture.

That’s it for now.
C-

My parents helped me buy some Pottery Barn End Tables and a Console Table for my birthday. We ordered them while they were here, but they hadn’t been delivered before they had to leave. So these pictures are for them to see our new furniture.

We love it! Thanks!