She's an angel

This past weekend Lily was baptized and here are a few photos from the special day. Jenni and I chose Jenni's cousins Casey and Paul to be Lily's god-parents. Casey was able to come visit us over the weekend, but Paul had to participate from afar, he lives in Connecticut and couldn't make it back in time for the baptism. She was such a pretty baby in her little white dress.

The kids and their Great-Grandpa

While we were at the park Jenni's grandparents came and visited and here are some pictures of the kids with their great grandparents.

Wedding = mini-vacations

As with most people our age and with families our size we get to go to a lot of weddings and we had another opportunity this past weekend to head to Nebraska and celebrate. As the time got closer for the wedding we started looking for hotel rooms and the realization came to us that there weren't any rooms in Lincoln that weekend because of some big football game between the Tigers and the Corn-Flakes (or something like that). So Jenni came up with this idea that we'd take an extra day or two and stay in a cabin at Mahoney State Park, located just 25 miles from Lincoln. She had heard good things about the park and we gave it a shot. It turns out that all the good things she heard were true and it was a fantastic weekend. First off, the park has everything a water park (which was obviously closed, but looked fun), paddle boats, horse trails (and rental horses), lots of playgrounds, nature trails, and all the other great state park stuff. And it had a ton of lodging options, you could camp in a tent, camp in an RV, stay in the main lodge hotel, or rent a cabin. We went the cabin route it costs about the same amount as a hotel room and we had two bedrooms, a big bathroom, heat and a/c, and a kitchenette. It was great. They also have different kinds and sizes of cabins, all of them reasonably priced. I bet you can't pick the one we stayed in (hint-it wasn't that big).


We would highly recommend that any of you take a chance to visit Mahoney, especially if you are like us and have a couple of rambunctious kids and a low budget. The park is also close to Omaha so you can visit the zoo and the other museums around there. We really enjoyed the outside time and all the activities at the park and here are just a few pictures of our adventures.



I did say we went to a wedding as well and I'd like to say that it was also a nice event and I want to congratulate Neal and Lori, thanks for the invite.

Country kids aren't always farmers

Here's the back story...

For the last five years Jenni has wanted to plant a garden and for the last five years we've gotten to some point of starting, most years we bought seeds, one year we actually picked a spot for the garden, the next year I tilled the spot....and so on and so forth. So, this summer we decided to actually give it a go and wouldn't you know it it was the wettest summer ever. All the spring rain and our normal busy lives caused us to plant a little late, but we actually got the seeds in the ground so that's a big step for us. We planted cantaloupe, green beans, peas, carrots, corn, pumpkins, watermelon, and gourds and we watched them grow, flood, grow a little more, flood again, and grow a little more. It was pretty pathetic watching those little green bean and pea plants drown in all that marvelous rain. Needless to say we didn't have a whole lot of success with peas, green beans, corn, or watermelons. BUT WE CAN GROW GOURDS....HOLY SMOKES.

Our carrots were washed out about three hours after we planted them, we went to bed and it started raining and flooded the seeds and spread them throughout the entire garden. And we didn't do well with them either.

The cantaloupe turned out great we ate four or five and gave a couple away and we have big enough pumpkins to adorn the sidewalk for fall. It was definitely a learning experience and we'll probably try again sometime.

She's mobile

It has finally happened, Lily is mobile. For a couple of weeks she has been accidentally scooting and rolling all over the floor and about two weeks ago she finally did it...she started crawling. There is now nothing stopping her, she is everywhere and she's getting there quickly. I can't believe that she my baby is growing up this fast.

Kayla can hear again

Many of you probably don't know but Kayla gave us a little bit of stress over the past several months. During the last school year it was brought to our attention from her teacher that she was having difficulty hearing, we had noticed it at home as well, but we thought she was just ignoring us and causing us grief. We got her hearing tested and she failed four different tests and we found out that she had significant hearing loss in both ears because of an inner ear infection. The good news was that they said it was correctable with tubes. We scheduled her surgery for this summer and got it done at the end of July. She had tubes in both ears and her adenoids removed. It was pretty hard on us to take her in to have surgery at such a young age, but she was a super champ and went through all the motions like it was nothing. We were so proud of how she did and we had the follow up doctor's appointment and her hearing was perfect. Here is her picture in her hospital gown right before they took her off to the operating room...she's awful cute.

Garage Sale cleanup

This summer Jenni and I held a much needed garage sale and cleaned out a lot of the extra stuff that had been cluttering up our home for years. We had a very successful sale and netted enough to by ourselves a much needed new recliner. Anyway, as we were cleaning up the kids found my old ironing board and decided to play surfing with it. It was pretty funny to watch them cart it around under arm and pretend like they were hitting the waves.

Our Big Boy's Birthday party

This was the year that our baby boy turned the big 5, so it was his year to have a big birthday party with all his friends. It is a little stressful on us as parents to figure out what kind of party to throw. Jon has a summer birthday, meaning getting all of his daycare friends' address's for invitations and finding something that they can all do. Then we received our Friends of the Zoo pamphlet and it showed that the KC Zoo will throw your party for you. Jenni called them up and set up our date, we invited all his friends, and we had a great time. It definitely was the way to throw a kid's birthday party. The zoo provided a place to party, the cake, ice cream, drinks, gifts, and of course animals for the kids to touch and learn about. Jon really liked his party and it seemed that his friends had a lot of fun as well. It's just hard to believe that Jon is 5 years old, he's getting so big.

Independence Day

Since Jenni and I bought our house we have kind of taken over the duties of hosting the family Fourth of July party, and this year was no different. We were blessed with another wonderful weather day for the fourth and we took advantage of it. We grilled some chicken, blew up some of our own fireworks and watched the city celebration from our back deck.

Memphis Vacation part 2

Well, in the last post I discussed the first leg of our Memphis vacation and now we'll move onto the part that actually talks about our trip to Memphis. We rolled into Memphis in the late evening hours and went straight to my aunt and uncle's house to have dinner. Rob cooked up some pretty good BBQ and we visited for awhile before we went hunting for the hotel. We got there alright and settled in for the evening.

The next morning we made the decision to go to the Memphis Zoo, and we are really glad we did. The day looked like it would rain all day long and it would make the trip miserable, but it turned out that the clouds moved in and the rain stayed across the river in Arkansas and we had a perfect 80 degree day to visit the zoo. The animals were all out and playing and the people all stayed home leaving just my family and a few others to enjoy the zoo.

Overall, the Memphis Zoo is one of the best zoo's we've ever been to. We started in the cat house where all the cats were out playing and showing off for us, the cougar actually gave us some cat calls. We moved onto the reptile house where we saw some snake feedings, and the panda's were cool but kind of uneventful. Our favorite exhibit was the polar bear's, they were so playful and gave us many photo ops. The bears would dive down in the water and then push off the glass of the the observation room and swim by all the people. They were really fun.

After the zoo trip we went over to my Aunt Janice's house and celebrated her college graduation and mingled with all of my family that made the trip to Memphis. We left on Sunday and headed to Centrallia, Illinois to visit my cousin Steph. We hadn't seen her or her kids in years. They are all so big and seem to be really great kids. It was a fantastic family vacation.

Memphis Family Vacation part 1

We no sooner said good bye to our friends Doug and Laura and we were packing our car for our next big excursion...Memphis. My aunt threw herself a college graduation party and we decided to make the trip to the land of Elvis and Southern BBQ for our summer vacation. Knowing Lilly was probably not going to be found of an eight hour car ride we decided to split our trip into two days and stop in St Louis on the way down.

We spent the morning driving across the state and went directly to the St. Louis Science Museum. I'd been there before and I thought that the hands on activities and the Omnimax movie would be a good activity for the afternoon. We had a good time, the bonus is that the museum is free (kind of...parking is ten bucks). When we walked into the museum the first thing that greeted us was a full size Tyrannosaurus Rex. Which tied in nicely to the movie on dinosaurs we saw at the omnimax. And the big ones out in this little learning playground.

They have a walking bridge over the highway and you can point radar guns at the passing cars and clock there speed and a wing dedicated to space exploration. That's where we learned how much money it would cost us to blast one of the kids into outer space. We let Lily demonstrate that for you.


Anyone want to donate, we need about $164,898 more dollars to get her there before she gets any bigger.

And finally, what would a trip to St. Louis be without a stop by the arch. We had a picnic lunch there before we headed south to the land of the southern drawl and sweet tea.

Tractor Show 2008

Jenni and I got back from Vegas only hours before we had some of our friends from Des Moines come and visit us. Doug and Laura had made arrangements to come see us and since visits with them are few and far between, we couldn't cancel just because we were tired from our trip. So, while they were here we ventured over to the Lathrop Tractor Show. It is one of our favorite yearly activities, people from all over bring thier antique tractors and steam engines and we walk around and enjoy the way farming used to be...and it looks like it used to be hard. The show usually also has some period activities like corn husking and rope making and the kids usually get plenty of opportunities to participate.




Here's our friend Laura, her daughter Hanna, and the yet to be determined tyke in her belly.

Later that day us boys: Doug, Jon, my little brother Andres, and myself all went to the baseball game. We had a lot of fun there as well, it was bobblehead doll night and the two boys were excited just to go, then as they walk through the gates someone hands them a present. They thought that was pretty cool and the Royals actually won a game, so that made it better.

The girls all went to a local park where they have a fountain system that the kids can wade through and play in the water. I guess Kayla really didn't like the shooting streams and stayed a little off to the side. And Hanna really got up close and personal with one water spray and it upset her a little.



I think everyone had a good day and a great weekend with friends.

Viva Las Vegas

Towards the beginning of June I go to a massive audio video geek conference for work and this year it was in Vegas. Jenni and I had talked about her trying to go with me a long time ago, because neither one of us had ever visited Sin City, but that looked like it was going to fall through. But just a few days before I was suppose to leave our plans changed massively and Jenni was able to go out to stay with me. I flew out pretty uneventfully on a Monday morning, Jenni was on a different flight later that day. Only it turned out to be really late on Monday, she was slated for a 2pm flight out of KC, but instead it was canceled and she didn't get out of the airport until 10pm. Luckily with the time change she landed in Vegas at 11pm. Still, I had to go pick her up at an unfamiliar airport in the dark, and it did a good job of raising my blood pressure.


We had a good time, I went to my classes and the conference show floor and Jenni spent her day reading by the pool. Then in the evenings we walked the strip and looked at all the bizarre people. And then one night we took in the Medieval knights show at Excalibur. It was fun, just look at the meal.

The bad news was that we were big losers at the slots, we lost a total of five whole dollars. It was a fun "adult only" trip, the kids split time with thier grandparents.

Mother's Day / Jenni's birthday

Jenni's birthday and Mother's Day are one week apart, which makes my life a little more difficult. I have to try and come up with two very special days in such a short amount of time and it is a challenge to plan just one. So, this year I decided to give my wife a new digital camera...a digital SLR. Since I dropped the big bucks on that we decided to keep the rest of our celebrations simple. So I asked Jenni on a Wednesday night what she wanted to do for a special day over the weekend and her answer was, "go to the zoo." I was in the middle of thinking that was a fun idea when she continued her sentence, "....in Omaha." I thought that sounded like a good idea and we made reservations in a hotel for Friday night in Omaha and planned to go the zoo on Saturday morning. We had an absolute blast! We got a hotel in downtown Omaha and even though we didn't get there until 9'ish Friday night, we took the kids down to the pool and swam for a little while. Then after a long night of the two older ones not sleeping, we piled in the car and headed to the zoo. And of course we tried out that brand new camera and thought we'd share some photos.


Funny story with this one, we were walking to get lunch and we came across this guy wearing butterfly wings and carrying a tiger skin. So naturally we had to ask what he was doing. Apparently the tiger used to be a resident of the zoo and died of old age, so they now carry around the pelt to let kids touch and feel a tiger...as for the wings, I don't know.

And here are just some pretty pictures.


Lily continues to surprise us at how good she is, she slept the entire night at the hotel and didn't punish us too much for strapping her into a car seat all the way through the zoo and the ride home Saturday afternoon. She really is the easiest baby we've had...so far (I'm terrified she'll make up for this good behavior when she is a teen).

We've been busy

Okay, please forgive us on our lack of updates over the last TWO months. We've been pretty busy since May and I'll be throwing up a lot of posts to get you all caught up on our summer adventures. It all starts with a last minute Mother's Day surprise and we'll take you right up to the Fourth of July. Stay tuned, the second half of the summer is just as busy as the first half.

T-Ball Mania

A few months ago Jenni came home and told me about a new t-ball league they were starting in town and said she wanted to sign the kids up to play. I was kind of (okay, very) skeptical at first, I really didn't think that they'd get a new league started in time for the season and I didn't want to be that Dad that pushed his kids into sports too early. But after Jenni took the initiative and went to all the meetings she convinced me it would be fun. I conceded and signed Jonathon up, but not Kayla I didn't think she was ready. ***Are you starting to notice a theme of me being wrong in this post***

Anyway, we got a phone call one night that said there was a coaches meeting the next day, it was then that Jenni informed me that I had a meeting to go to. I again hemmed and hawed about that decision, but I went to the meeting and found out that this was definitely a league that had the kids' fun in mind. So, Asst. Coach Jamie and Jon showed up for our first practice and our first game and we had a good time, Jonathon was the pitcher and if you've ever watched t-ball that meant he was the busiest kid on the field. He had a blast, and so did I.

I then learned that Kayla was very upset she didn't get to play, I hadn't signed her up because when we try to play around the house she is only good for about 5 minutes of ball then she gets bored and moves on to something else. But, I did get her added to the roster and she went out and played just as hard as the other kids and really did very well and had a lot of fun as well.

To see the photos in better detail just click on the picture and it will be a bigger size.

Moral of this story is....My wife is a very smart woman and I should probably listen to her more often.

I hope she doesn't read this one.

Family Pictures

For Mother's Day this year Jenni really wanted to get a new family portrait, since we've obviously grown recently. So, Saturday morning we woke up early and took some pretty pictures. Remember if you right click you can download the picture for yourself.



Later that day we continued our Mother's Day with a trip to the T-Rex Restaurant out at the Legends shopping center. I know...it doesn't sound like a great Mom's Day dinner, but the place was really pretty cool and it was a lot of fun going to a place that didn't care if your kids were a little obnoxious. We had a great day and it freed up our Sunday to spend with the other mother's in our lives. Overall, I'd say, we had a very successful weekend.

Pictures of the Baby

Lily gets plenty of love at home, but she is missing from he old blog. Mostly because she doesn't give us a whole lot of good stories, yet. So we snapped a few cutesy photos and we promise to try and do better about including her.