Family time at the cabin

We had the opportunity to stay in this awesome cabin while visiting_____. It was about the size of our house (truly). Complete with a spacious kitchen, loft with two sets of bunk beds, large tv with dvd/vcr, and huge deck. We definitely took advantage of it all!

No joke, this sign was posted right next to the front door! For those of you who can't read the yellow script, it reads "ALERT ALLIGATORS". How comforting....not! Thank goodness we never encountered any (you probably would have been able to hear me screaming like a banshee if we ever did). But we were definitely on the look out.


Now this is nice...sitting down as a complete family to family dinner--and at a table that fits us all! I LOVE this place! But even more so, I love having Ryan back with us. Even if it's just for a bit.


Julia and Ryan chilling out on the couch while watching sports. :) Favorite past times right here.


Marcus already loves watching soccer. He kept yelling "gogogogogo!" at the tv. :)


The wii--don't leave home without it. ;) Hey, we were going to be here for a few days, so why not?


Bubble time again! It was so nice to just go on the back porch instead of trying to find a park to do this at. I had bought a huge package of bubble makers at the store and the kids had a great time digging into it to see all the different gizmos and what kind of bubbles they make.





Darn right we were going to be grilling! Hamburgers, hotdogs, and steaks coming right up!

Family reunion and graduation

It was another long three months, but we managed to get through! We are soooooo glad all the separation parts are done with! So here are the pictures of Ryan with all the family at graduation. It was an exhilirating experience--being able to watch as he was sworn in, seeing his drill sergeant come to congratulate him, ect.






He was sworn in (with this group) around this cannon. You can see him in the back in the middle.

Dance Recital!

It's that time of year again! Julia had her dance recital last night at church and it was a hit! The girls have been working so hard for so long. It was wonderful to see it all pay off. They remembered their moves and had beautiful perma grins the entire time.

On a commentary note--Julia begins second on the left. When the girls spread out, she's covered by another girl who hasn't been with the whole group very long. She kinda forgot the moves and therefore placed herself in front of Julia (to Julia's surprise). Julia tried telling her to move to her spot and when she didn't, Julia just improvised and took center stage! Oh, I was so proud of her.

Sneak Preview of Julia's Dance Recital

All the other video footage is much lighter and easier to see (it was on the lit stage), but I just had to capture this--the cha cha slide where she and the other older girls were to pull someone from the audience to dance along with them. Julia pulled her 10 year old cousin, Nathan, who was definitely not impressed! With his head down in silent resignation, he went ahead and did the dance. LOL.

Flying Butterflies and Leaping Frogs...SDC III

Last year SDC added on an entire new section which I believe targets younger children. It's filled with rides geared towards very small children (Evelyn is able to ride them without an adult or older sibling) which I think is awesome. We went and hung out there for a few hours...:) Jacob in the background "Don't forget about me!!!!!" Right next to (literally about 10 steps) the butterflies is the leaping frogs. Evelyn, Jacob and Julia LOVE this ride. They're all able to ride it without having someone older/taller with them. There is no height restriction on these bad boys. I've seen parents with infants on them. Funny thing...I hadn't ever ridden them til Wed. It was always Ryan crammed in sideways trying to please Evelyn. LOL. Well, I feel really bad now...it was quite funny then. Since I deemed Marcus big enough, I took him to ride these and about lost my stomach halfway through. These things really do bounce up and down (uh, I have some serious motion sickness problems). :0! But Marcus was just giggling and laughing the entire time! (while I tried to laugh it off and also hold onto his shirt to make quite sure he didn't fall out).

SDC part II

The ball area...it's an absolute kid magnet! And why? Let's find out....


For some reason, kids are fascinated by these large tubes that suck up balls. The whole purpose is to put the ball in the tubes...cause there's sign everywhere saying "no throwing the balls allowed". What else are you supposed to be doing with them?! Well, then again, there are the ball shooters on every level...and this building is several stories high...:) Marcus was fully entertained for about an hour just watching the balls disappear through the mysterious ball sucker.


"Here Mom! For you!"

Silver Dollar City

This past Wednesday was our 10 year wedding anniversary. Instead of moping around at home, I decided to take the kiddos down to Silver Dollar City with Roya and her kids. I am soooooo glad we went. It's our last year of ever being able to go and they have an awesome deal for military families. We stayed from 10:30am til about 6:30pm. Long day loaded with a ton of fun! We were worried at first cause on the way down there we went through a few showers. It was free and clear by the time we arrived though. :)

I think it's Kid's Fest going on right now. All I know is that when we first walked in, it was like entering a children's dream land. Completely surrounded by kid sized houses, trains, tractors, ect.











Next to all these fun houses (ect) were large tents which had all sorts of games and crafts for the kids to dig into. Here the kids were playing with pails, shovels, rakes, ect in sand boxes with brightly colored sand.