My little girl

I am so proud of my little girl. She is such a sweet child and is growing up so fast. I'm constantly amazed at her imagination and joy in life.


The other day I caught her reading, unprompted, out loud...alone. I was so filled with pride. My baby is reading...and I didnt' have to force her to sit still to do it! Our entire family is made of readers...we have more books than pretty much anything else, so I'm glad that she is at that magical stage where she "gets it".

So when she was asked to read a scripture on baptism at church on Sunday, I was excited. I looked for a scripture that she would 1-really understand and 2-be able to read! We settled on this one....after church I recorded her reading it. The first one is full of silliness and a bit hard to understand, so watch the second one if you want a "good version". I have to admit that the one at church was pretty funny. She would look at her paper, lean way in and say ONE word, then lean back and look at the paper...lean way in and say another word! By the time she finished the scripture, the 3 and 4 year olds were all repeating after her! Super cute!



take 2-not so silly

catching up on life

So there are a lot of things that I've not blogged about...so here is a quick recap.  Check my flickr for other pics...

Girl's Night Out Thanks to Becky, Sarah and Denise! They had 29 kids! We had a few hours of mom time. Alice, Mitchi, Janice, Tresa and me! Pedicures and Lunch.





The best Mother's Day's gift....a child who is quiet in church.  I had to go take care of the Primary kids and while most people know me...I figured it wouldn't hurt to leave a note. The carnation is the Mother's Day flower that they passed out.


Diet Coke...Mentos and a Mom with a Camera

Here are a few of the pictures I took from that angle...here you see Beth with the camera.

Connor's 7th Birthday Party

It was a day of fun and mess! I think I billed it as "The mad scientist, high on sugar, hopped up on caffeine birthday party that every kid dreams of and every mom is scared of." I am publicly begging for forgiveness from all the moms!

Actually, it was a blast. We played with a volcano and tornado tube. There were several dry ice experiments, to include what the kids dubbed "Poison Soda". It was koolaid carbonated with dry ice) and amazing exploding bubbles.

We also went through LOTS of Diet Coke and Mentos (If you want to see the real think in action, watch THIS-it's what started it all!)


They really had fun with that one! Mitchell won the award for "Most completely drenched with a drink" although it felt like I was wearing most of it!

A great big thanks to Becky for watching Maddie, Beth for the moral support and camera help and to Mitchie for helping out too!

Click on any picture to open it in a new window and see the caption (If you want to know what's going on"

Created with flickr slideshow.

A Baaad waste of time.

Well, I admit that this is a waste of time....but it's well worth it for the "huh?" factor. "Why? Why?"

I know you can't stop watching it...but console yourself. At least it was less than 3 minutes...how long did it take them to do this?!

a good brother

Maddie always pleads to have a "sleepover" with her brother but he is not as thrilled with the idea. I promised to put her back in her own bed after she fell asleep so he agreed to the event.

When I went to check on him, this is what I found. The tiny girl sleeping her brother's bed...alone. Connor sleeping "indian style" (on the floor, with no shirt, "Because Indians didn't wear shirts, mom!")

Ignore the stuffed animals...Maddie must have decided to bring them into his room...normally it's not quite this bad!


BTW: I love my camera. 1600 ISO. Love it! Not 100% noise free, but pretty darn sweet for SOOC.
Camera: Nikon D300
Exposure: 0.125 sec (1/8)
Aperture: f/3.5
Focal Length: 18 mm
ISO Speed: 1600
Exposure Bias: 0 EV
Flash: No Flash

flashback friday...

I dont' know what made me decide to look for it, but here are some of the places from my past....

a house that I lived in in Skandia....if you click on the link, you can look around and see the "neighborhood".

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my highschool. Right off the main drag, run down as ever...

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The middle school (7th grade) We had no lunch room, so we had to go to the high school for lunch...but heaven forbid we ever TALK to a high schooler!

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This is the house I spent my early childhood in ...303 Commando. All the streets were alphbetical and named after aircraft. My house was the second one in...the tree in front was planted when I was just a little kid. I'll have to find some pictures of me in front of it when I was little. My bedroom window is obstructed by the tree now...

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KI Sawyer is a ghost town...parts have been turned into low income housing. They relocated people from Katrina...I have no idea what jobs are there. I can't imagine there is anything. The planes that were on display were too big to move, so they still sit there....

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For a while we lived on 111 Vigilante. Third building over, left side of the duplex. No pictures because that part is still rotting away...you can see how there was a lot of green wilderness for kids to play in. The fence that surrounded the Air Base was a joke. Huge sections were missing or rolled up. After all, who in thier right mind would be out there? We often saw wild animals and occasionally snuck off post via a back road that avoided the gate!

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google is being uncool, but here is a link to the place where Matt and I listened to a band playing on our first date....

Here is the view from about 1/2 way up Franklin St in Monterey Ca. See the big wall looking hill in the distance? Yeah. That was the hardest run....ugh.

The Golden State Theater...our first movie...John Cusack in Grosse Pointe Blank.

Bay Books...our first kiss. And a cheap date hangout. We could sit and read books, make out and leave...without buying anything!

The beach...not as clean or nice as the the one in Marquette, but the site of monthly company runs....in the loose sand. 5th platoon was the red headed stepchild of A Co and we would often run there (2 miles)...do the company run and then finish with a run up the hill home(another 2 miles!). Everyone else was bussed to and from these runs, but they always ran out of busses before we got on! Matt fondly remembers those runs! Personally, I prefered running here...on the Pebble Beach Golf Course...Pirate's Cove had cool boardwalks
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the Lone Cypress








Dennis the Menace Park..we used to walk down here after church and sit on the train and talk....ahh, the days before a car!  If you look across the lake you can see the playground.
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Only 4 months after we were hitched, the Army decided we were actually allowed to live together! Here is our first house! 183 Bataan (yeah, named after the death march)
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Can't show pictures of Fort Sam or Goodfellow AFB or Ft Huachuca, but here is the apartment building we had when we moved here in 1998...yikes!  That was a long time ago!  At the time a "gated community"  sounded safe...little did I know that it was to keep the scary people IN!

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so there you have it...google maps and a travel in time.