The trip: take 2

On the day after the wedding, my mom took us over to Elk Park to have a picnic and walk the trail. The trail follows the river to the 30 foot waterfall. After that I don't know where it goes, we didn't make it any farther. It was beautiful and the hike there was just difficult enough to have to help the kids through parts of it. This picture is the top of the waterfall.

Here is the waterfall from the rocks around the pool at the bottom.


I asked my mom and Norman to sit up on the rock with the kids for a picture. I don't know if my mom was giving Hunter a wedgie or 'helping' him up? What do you think?


This is the after the wedgie, oh, ah, I mean 'helping' him up, picture....


There were butterflies all over the place and for some reason they gather in groups, or are they called flocks, on the sand. There must be something in the sand that they like. They were just watching them flutter on the sand. That yellow line on my mom's lower back is a yellow and black butterfly going to meet up with his buddies on the sand.


She'll huff and puff and blow that dandelion down. They were everywhere. White puffs everywhere you turned.

My auntie Cindi was helping Hunter to make a 'boat' to float down the river and over the falls. It didn't work too well. The leaves weren't firm enough here at the park. Earlier in the day we had floated 'boats' down the river that is nearer to my mom's place. The 'boats' consisted of large leaves with some flowers on top tied together with long pieces of grass.


The butterflies were really everywhere. This one eventually landed on my hand.


See! That's my hand with a butterfly on it.

The butterflies in their crazy meeting on the sand. This is what they were looking at in the earlier picture. You could just reach down and pick them up, they would then fly away, but you could just pick it up again. It was kinda weird.



These next set of pictures are what happens when you let your kids use the camera. Thankfully I only posted the face shots. Well, because all the others are picture of..... well, pictures of all the stuff at their eye level. Yes, I have a bunch of crotch shots from my kids using the camera. Just be glad I didn't post those, okay. Enjoy! (Oh, and that first picture is of my new brother-in-law)

Hubby's new toy

That's hubby's new toy.
No, Hunter is not allowed to ride on it.
He just wanted to get on to see what it was like.
They were just sitting in the driveway.
In case you were wondering, it's a Honda Shadow 1100, black in color.

The trip

So I have been a little too long in posting again, but this post will be picture heavy.
Consider your self warned!

Hunter and Stella are having fun on the plane and not even enjoying the view out the window. I was a bit ticked because I could spend the whole flight with my nosed pressed against the window. I am always in awe of the view from 31,000 feet!



Here is the view from 31,000 feet. Totally amazing!!


After landing and driving the 2 plus hour drive to my mom's place, my Auntie Cindi arrived shortly after and played checkers with Hunter in the backyard. I wonder who won?


Grandma Candy getting some love from Stella. Grandma was in heaven having all of her favorite girls there together at one time.


A picture of all the girls (except Stella). Me, Auntie Cindi, Sister Sara, Mom (aka. Grandma Candy)



The scenery in NC is so beautiful everywhere you look. All the mountains and rocks and hills. It's so different than Florida. This is a picture by Hunter, the view from the front window. You can see the grey gravel, that is the road that runs in front of the house.

While we were there Grandpa made a rope swing and put some boards in a tree so the kids could climb it. All the green stuff is Rhododendron (I think I spelled that right) and they were full of little buds. I imagine it'll be pretty when they all bloom.

Stella loves to pick flowers and nothing pink was safe. Especially those big tulips!

Hunter and Stella looked so cute all dressed up and ready to go.I think that they did really well. We had to kinda hang out while the pictures were being taken and then we had to be still and quiet for the ceremony and then we went to the dinner reception. Thankfully at dinner, my sister Sara had the forethought to have stuff for them to do. They had coloring books and some other goodies.


I didn't take pictures at the wedding because there were so many others taking pictures and I didn't think another flash going off would help things. Plus I can just get copies from my dad. This ONE picture is from Stella taking pictures and she happened to get a decent (for a 2 yr old) picture of the bride. Her dress was gorgeous.


I have more pictures from the day after the wedding that I will post another time.

Happy mother's Day to all the mom's out there!!!

Leeeeavin' on a jet plaaane

Don't knoooow when I'll beeee back again.....

Sing it! It's fun. I have been singing it this morning because,.... well, I am leaving on a jet plane.

I think I am more excited than the kids. That's probably only because they have never flown before and don't know what they have been missing, LOL! I'm actually bummed that I will probably have to give up the window seat to one of the kids, and I will probably have to referee the arguing over who gets it, too.

My mom will pick us up from the airport and then we will have a BBQ tonight and I will meet my sister's fiance' for the first time and then tomorrow afternoon is the wedding (we're hoping for no rain) and then the reception afterwards. Then my mom has some activities planned for the kids on Sunday. Then Monday morning (bright and early, well actually dark and early) we'll leave to fly home.

Andrew will be on his own. I bought him some TV dinners so he won't starve to death. He's got a boys weekend planned with some guys from work, so I hope he'll be safe.

So the next post should be some pictures. See you soon!!

Ummm.... what to do?

I, for the first time in weeks, have nothing I have to read, write or study. I don't know what to do with myself.

Well....
Actually I have an entire mental list of things that do need some attention,
such as the house,
and the yard,
and some posts that I've been tagged for that I haven't done yet (I will get to them soon),
and children that are in desperate need of some quality attention,
and books to read, I have several that have collected dust while waiting for me to pick them up,
and I have a new Nintendo DS that has not been played yet,
and I'm sure there are more, I just can't remember everything!

Tomorrow I am going to go look for a booster seat that I can bring with me to NC, I need something light weight yet safe enough for the hubby to use in his truck when needed, since I don't want to bring or move the Regent because even in all it's safety glorious-ness, is a PITA to move because it must weigh about 300 pounds!

My sister called me today. We haven't in the past talked very much. But she called me today to ask me a question and I had the resources and knowledge to answer because I JUST finished taking that nutrition class. She needed to know what vegi was high in potassium. (Being a vegetarian and preggers she is watching her diet VERY closely) Just so you all know, carrots, acorn squash and artichoke are the best sources per calorie. Broccoli is up there too and it's got LOTs of other great stuff for you too, like iron, which most women don't get enough of BTW.

OK, OK , I'm done.
Good night

OKay okay

I'm here, and writing!

I just got home from a wonderful MNI with chocolate and conversation that didn't include me being asked to wipe someones butt.

I came home from MNI thinking that I was going to try to write my one last paper that is due in approximately 1 hour. But after reading the assignment and trying to sort out what exactly to write, I decided it wasn't worth the last minute stress and plus I really didn't understand the assignment. The assignment was writing about why the historical context of the sociologist was important in how it affected their work. Not my favorite subject nor is writing easy for me, so I did 95% of my work in that class and called it a day, well really a semester. I'm not happy with myself, but I should not have procrastinated so long and then I would have had time to ask the prof questions about what exactly he wanted in this last paper. Oh well. I got an A in my Nutrition class. Yea!! and will probably get a B in the other class, my first non-A in 5 years.

BTW, for those of you who were there tonight, I left MNI locale at 10:14 and arrived in my driveway at home at 10:38 and there was no speeding involved, I swear!! 24 minutes from driveway to driveway, so I would have had 1 hour and 22 minutes to work on the paper. But instead I'm writing in my blog since there were a few comments about my lack of posts. There will be more since I'm not so occupied with school for the summer and I might even join the book club!!!

On some other news, I'm flying to NC on Friday to my moms place for my sister's wedding. I'm just going with Hunter and Stella and I'm excited about flying. It's the kids first time flying too. We'll be home on Monday so not a long trip but we should have fun and I should have lots of pictures when I get back.

This is an old picture of Hunter, he was 3 and 1/2 here, it seems so long ago....

Oh boy!

I'm having a really hard time sticking to weight watchers right now and for the last like 3-4 weeks. I think I've probably gained a pound or two back. My mom will be down in a week and I'm hoping that she will provide some inspiration. My will power left awhile ago.

On a plus side I have been working out. on Saturday I went to a body pump class and now it hurts to walk. I will go again on Wednesday to the same class and then try and make it 2 more times to just do cardio on the treadmill or one of those other machines.

On another subject, today is the last day of the 3rd grading period at school and Lucas might actually get straight A's!!! It'll be the first time in a while(maybe ever) that he's done this well and a big change from him having trouble earlier this year. So we told him if he gets all A's we would get him a small reward, probably a new game. I don't normally like to reward for grades but he really improved a lot from last quarter and I do think it's a big deal and hard to achieve with 8 classes total.

Me on the other hand, I'm still behind in my Sociology class. I'm heading down to the library here in a bit to get a copy of the book I've got to read then write a 1500 word paper on it. I still have 3 other smaller papers to write and one last quiz on the last 4 chapters in the text book (of which I still have 2.5 chapters to read) Shhh..... don't tell Luke I'm behind, LOL!!!!