Frogs again

One of my garden toads emerging from his hole in the evening.

Mr Incredible

sheep

I took this picture because it makes me smile. It's a bunch of sheep seeking shade under a car in a pasture.

Amy and the snake, a story in pictures

Portraits

Brent took some nice close ups of the girls- thought I'd share.

Goin' for a ride

So we were out in our hometown of Collinsville today and the town was having it's annual Hogs n' Rods show. We were actually trying to drive around all the activity and a helicopter kept making loops around the town over our heads and it was landing somewhere near Main Street. Karianne insisted that she LOVED motorcycles and always wanted to go to a motorcycle festival. Brent wanted to get closer and show the girls a helicopter close up, so we went to the "motorcycle festival".
We found the helicopter landing site pretty easy and realized they were giving rides! So Lucy and I stayed behind and Brent Karianne, Angie and Amy all went up in the helicopter and circled the town flew got to see our house.




That's our house there in the middle with the white van.

bubbles

We were outside this evening blowing bubbles. We have some bubbles from Gymboree that don't pop right away. They can land without popping and you can catch them too. Our yard was very pretty covered with bubbles.

Branson

We went to Branson earlier this week for a few days. The first thing Karianne said when we arrived in Branson was, "how do you say "hi" in Branson? Not being able to resist playing a good joke on the kids, Brent told them to say "Ooolaboola" to say hi in Branson. They were so polite in greeting everyone with "Oolaboola". We went to the Shanghai Acrobats act (fantastic! We didn't realize it is the same acrobats that perform in Shanghai that everyone wants to get tickets for when visiting Shanghai). That night we had to greet everyone with "Ni Hao". The first person Angie tried out Ni Hao on was the very non Chinese old guy taking tickets at the back of the theater. She said "Ni Hao to him several times and never got a response. The next day we went to the "Island Fire" Show that showcases different dances from the Polynesian Islands. Here we told the girls to say Aloha to the performers after the show. Amy still wanted to say "Ni Hao" to them since she is Chinese. Angie said Oolaboola AND aloha to people. Things got a little confusing.
On the way home, we stopped by the BIG Bass Pro Shop in Springfield, MO and we were very impressed with the stuffed taxidermy animals. Angie told me they were just pretend animals and we didn't have to be scared. I tried to explain to her that they were actually real animals, they were just dead and stuffed. I didn't do a good job explaining it because soon after we saw a manequin of a man fishing and she told her daddy, "him not real, him just dead and stuffed."

threes

when you have 3 kids all the same age, toys have to come in threes. Even Litebrites.

Another men's shirt upcycle. Karianne looks so cute in this if I do say so myself.

Remember

Remembering our sweet Jason who would have been 6 years old today.