Fish and Shark

Two new additions to our household . . .

Flying additions even. 

Kacin and Ky think these are pretty cool

belated birthday presents.

Thanks Hyer family
for providing us
with lots of flying fun!

Bobcat

Kacin did it!
He earned his Bobcat.
All I have to say
is that it has helped us all
so much
with all of this cub scouting stuff
to have a Kyler who did all this a year ago.
Kacin is motivated because he's seen big brother.
And I am not as clueless
as I was when Ky started.
Scouting is a whole other world.
In a good way, you know.

Spring is Here

What a perfect Spring day!

Good thing we didn't have school anyways.
Maybe teacher work days aren't so bad.

Xbox in the House

This was a factor in Eric accepting his new job.

Discounts? Free X-box games?
I'm in. I accept your offer.

He held off on buying the X-box for awhile.
Partly for our kids.
We wanted to set a good example
and exercise self-discipline
because we've been trying to teach
the importance of saving and working,
waiting and anticipating.
And being grateful.

When I was 6 or 7,
we got our Nintendo.
My dad's co-worker or boss (I don't know which)
gave it to us as a gift.
I remember being so excited and so grateful.
What a big, expensive gift!
One I'm sure my family couldn't afford at the time.
We didn't expect it or feel entitled to it.
It was such an exciting surprise for four little girls!
To this day,
I think that man,
even though I don't even know who he is,
is wonderful and kind and generous.
Whenever I remember our old Nintendo
all these grateful, happy feelings come back.

Well, we can afford an X-box,
but I don't want any one of us
feeling entitled to have one.

However, the stars aligned last night
and Eric came home
with this big new toy.
Except we did not want to tell the boys yet.
We had Cub Scout pack meeting to get to
so there wouldn't be time to play it
and we were trying to come up
with a clever way to surprise them with it.

But after pack meeting,
when kids were in bed,
E got it all set up

so we could play some Dance Central.

We stayed up late dancing
and still didn't have a good way
to tell the boys.
We just left it hooked up and decided
to see how long it would take until they noticed.
As it turns out,
not long
at all.
Kyler had been up maybe 5 min.
He was in the kitchen pouring his breakfast cereal
when he excitedly announced to us
that there was an X-box over there.
What?! Where?!
When Kacin got it up,
it was the same.
Maybe 5 min. and he noticed.
Honestly, if I hadn't seen Eric set it up,
there would be no way that I would've noticed that thing.
Kudos to these boys for their observation skills.
E got so many hugs and there were some big smiles.
It's always fun to see the boys get excited about something.

I have a pretty good idea what we will be doing tonight.

Kayak Point

today 

began

dark, rainy, stormy.

and that is a good kind of day

to pull out the pictures

and remember

bright, sunny, fun.

an afternoon at the beach.

 the guys

the girls

the fam

such mixed emotions about these mohawk bangs.
they drive me crazy
and won't stay to the side
and she will hardly let me pony them or head band them
but they are cute, in a funny sort of way,
and they are
her.
so I laugh and I like them.