Back Home again, in INDIANA........

Yes you read the title right. I'm in Indiana, visiting my parents and grandma. It has been a fun trip, and a tiring trip. We arrived last Friday. My niece Molly and I left VERY EARLY (3:45a.m.) yes you read that time right. My kids for some reason weren't sleeping and at 2:30a.m. they got up and I thought, what's the point of sleeping two more hours, will it really help me at all, will I actually feel rested. Obviously the answer to my own questions were no. So I got up fed the kids cereal, since they were hungry. Then I took a shower. I woke up my niece as we were loading the car. So we got to my parents house about 11 hours later. We stopped a few times. The kids were all ready to get out of the car and so was I! My sister Christine and her two kids arrived Saturday. Then my sister Marilyn with her husband Greg arrived with their kids Saturday too. We spent the next few days with the kids getting along, and then arguing over things, time outs and other things that kids do. We did go to the Ft.Wayne Childrens Zoo which is excellent! The kids had a lot of fun. (I will post those pictures when I return home). My sisters and I on Tuesday went to the salon and all got our hair done and pedicures. It was fun. Then we went shopping. Wednesday we went to Science Central. Every evening was spent playing our family card game Mormon Bridge. Thursday Marilyn's family went home, and Christine, Nick, Cami, and my dad went to Cedar Point. I traveled to Muncie to visit my mother-in-law Nori, and my newest sister-in-law Jenny. My brother-in-law bought a 1975 Corvette, it's nice. It's yellow, not my type of car, but I'm sure he and Jenny will love it. The next week for me is very flexible. I love vacation! I am looking forward to seeing old friends.

It's summertime, summertime, sum sum... (Okay I'll stop singing now!)

I know you're thinking, well duh, of course I know it's summertime. But for me summertime means VACATION! And finally my vacation is about to begin. Unfortunately it will just be me and the kids on this trip. Josh has to work. So to help me on my journey to the heartland, we purchased a duel screen portable dvd player. Can you believe we didn't have one before, and that we didn't get one when we purchased our new vehicle last year? I can't either. So I made the decision, and convinced Josh, that for my sanity of those long 10 HOURS in the car with me and three kids (and with my niece Molly who is THANKFULLY riding there with me, but won't be there on the ride home) I will need something to keep them occupied. It came with a remote control with 30 video games, hopefully that will keep Jonas entertained, and Maddie can watch any movie she wants while he plays. I've already started packing, well we leave on Thursday, so I need to! The kids keep asking if today is the day we leave to go to Indiana, and I have to answer no not today. I'll be glad when I can say okay it's time to go!
We now have passes to go to Busch Gardens which also gets us into watercountry USA and we went two times last week!
Eliza is now cutting some teeth, finally! She'll be 8 months old on Thursday. She's just amazing to watch how much she is doing. She has started climbing the stairs, and she loves feeding herself, and that usually means lots of clean-up afterwards, but it's fun. Here's a picture from the zoo a few weeks ago, I will try to add more later, I'm having problems putting pictures up! This is Jonas, Maddie, and Eliza with my friend Jenn's kids Shelby, Savannah, and Emily; they're in their bathing suits because they were running through the fountains. You can click on it to make it bigger! (just an fyi for anyone out there!)

Happy 4th of July

Just a quick post. Yesterday was insanely busy for us! We went to Watercountry USA for the first time! We had a lot of fun, but are glad we bought a pass so we can return anytime we want. It was SOOO BUSY! Can you believe I forgot to take my camera in! Oh well! Maddie especially loved the waterslide in Cowabunga, Jonas thought it was okay. I think he got a little scared. He did really enjoy playing in the water an on the boat in Cowabunga. Then that evening we drove up an exit (really it's only an exit away!) to Busch Gardens and the kids did some rides, and then we saw the fireworks... they were AMAZING! They had them timed to music, which to me is very cool. As I watch the fireworks as they lit up the sky it reminded me how blessed we are as a country that we get to enjoy the freedoms we do, what our ancestors went through for us so we could watch fireworks, and eat grilled hot dogs. I'm forever grateful, and of course having a husband in the military helps this. Here is one of my favorite pictures of him receiving his first salute as an officer. Maybe not a big deal to some, but to me, it was neat. And a picture from the WW II memorial in DC that we went to last month! Happy 4th of July!