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.

Orphan Alert

These children need families and they have grants!! Madison Adoption has a camp for these children to get to know them and find families for them. Such a wonderful organization!
take a look-

Camp Ox Blog

Natural Falls

Yesterday we went to Natural Falls State Park. Just beautiful. The weather was cool, the park was empty, and it was just lovely.

Natural Falls is just outside a very small town near the Oklahoma/Arkansas border. Now I've seen and lived in some small towns. But you KNOW you are in a small town when there is a big dog taking a nap right in the middle of one of the main streets of town and isn't too worried about getting hit. I wish I had gotten a picture of that dog. We slowed down and went around him and he just kinda raised an eyebrow at us but was unimpressed.

We really enjoyed the falls. I'm afraid Brent and I will always remember that trip being about Amy. She is a little unsteady on her feet so I was making her hold my hand all the way down the path to the falls. She was doing great. We get to the falls and have 2 steps to go down to get to the viewing platform. She lets go of my hand runs forward to the steps, trips and bloodies up her knee and just howls and cries the whole time we are "enjoying" the falls. As soon as we get her knee cleaned up she has a different kind of accident and we've got nothing to change her into. That was fun. She wasn't in the best of moods for the rest of the visit. It's just too good of a story that she will really hate for us to retell when she gets older, oh and we have pictures too. :-)



Here's Karianne and Angie having fun:



Here's Amy not having much fun:



Here's Amy after both accidents, don't look too close at the spot next to Amy there. :-) Karianne and Angie and I climbed back up to the lookout deck to wave at Brent and Amy and Lucy.

Toad Incognito

I love my little backyard toads. I used to have cows, snakes, wildcats and wild hogs in my backyard. Now I just have toads. The girls are still unsure of them, but I enjoy seeing them. Here they are hiding, but I see them.