Soccer camp and new playground

Nathan participated in a soccer camp a few weeks ago. He loved it and it was even better that his cousin, Andrew, participated in it with him. He is hilarious. He did not want to participate in the warm ups. They would play games like dribble the ball then freeze and touch their elbow to the ball. They did this for several minutes while touching other body parts to the ball. Nathan just stood there the entire time. I asked him why he did not participate in the warm up and he said, "cause I didn't want to." Which is a typical Nathan answer. He is always so honest and is not afraid to tell the truth. Lately he has been telling me and Julianne that, "Julianne is mean." Despite him participating in warm up he still had fun. He was very proud when he could dribble the ball down the field and kick it into the goal.





This is Nathan's proud moment after he kicked the ball into the net against another little friend.

Some fun pictures of the girls.






Our city has a new center city playground/natural area. It is really more for adults but it is pretty cool. It is a enormous rock wall. If I had carabiners and rope I would suit up and go climb the wall. The kids had fun on the related kids climbing playground.


Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-my large tomato plants
-great cooler weather
-Graeter's Buckeye Blitz Ice Cream
-The quilt finishing lady and her amazing long arm machine

Where do I start...

*disclaimer-I have not edited this post. I do not have time and it took me long enough to write it so I am stopping now without editing it. So sorry for the unedited version.

Well it has been a long time since I have lost posted. I have been extra busy since I started working three days instead of two days. So once again I have three less days to do what I used to do in 5 days. So the compromise has been I don't really do very many creative activities with the kids. Most of my two days off are spent grocery shopping, running other errands, working out, cooking dinners for leftovers and getting the house organized. So there has been some adjustments. Now that we have cleaning people once a month then I don't really have to worry about the deep cleaning. D is great with the yard and now the weeding so I no longer have to worry about those duties. The kids are having a great summer, the babysitters have taken them to lots of movies, library, the mall playground, and the pet store (which is kind of like a mini zoo). The kids love when the babysitter is around since they know that they will be doing fun activities. Don't get me wrong I have done fun activities with them just not as many as last year. We have gone to the pool a lot this summer and the kids are at ages where they can actually swim and I don't have to be watching them constantly. I just remember last year I would plan crafts and activities for them during the week. I actually miss that but I guess that things change. I know that the sitters are doing some of that stuff for them and the kids are constantly outside with the neighbors making up games and riding their bikes.

Julianne has been riding her bike with me one morning a week while I run. It has been great because I love the company and she loves getting that one on one time with me. So we are out at 7:00 am and we enjoy the quiet neighborhood routes.

Our nephew celebrated his 1.5 birthday party a few weekends ago. His actual birthday is December 30th but my sister wanted to celebrate his half birthday since it was so close to Christmas. So it was a little different but we still had a good time.


Cousin Lexee was in town and the girls enjoyed playing with her

Random picture of Mallory

Nathan had a small asthma episode last month and just a few days ago. This month, he actually had several bug bites on his head before it happened so I don't know if it started it or not. But we did not have to use any treatments on these ones so they were very minor and mostly just consisted of dry coughing for a few days and then productive coughs after that.

Here is is bump. The picture does not really show how large and protruding the bump was.

Nathan participated in his first "summer camp". It was actually a golf camp that was one hour a day for 4 days. He was pretty shy at first but it did not take him long to get involved in the activities. He really liked the coaches and the other boys. The football helmets were great, they were extra big and most of the kids kept trying to keep them on their heads.




Nathan had a minor asthma episode last month and just a few days ago. These were very minor and just consisted of dry coughing for a few days and then productive cough for a couple more days. He did get a large bug bite the day before this last episode. So I don't know if that has any correlation to this past one or not but it was a large swelled up bug bite. This picture does not really show how big it really was.


We celebrated the 4th of July by attending the large fireworks display. The kids had fun with their cousins and they were happy to be able to stay up late.




The next day we got up early to attend our local parade. I love going to this parade because they have it all, bands, horses, Shriner cars, veterns, floats, and flag ladies(what?).




Our holiday weekend ended with our annual neighborhood picnic. We had a great time and it was a good turnout. This year we rented a jumpy house so the kids really enjoyed that.


My garden is out of control. I now understand why they suggest you plant tomato plants two feet apart. I did not have enough for that so I planted them one foot apart and they are really crowded. My poor red pepper plants are kind of being squashed out by my aggressive, sun loving plants. My basil is doing really well. I had a lot of lettuce plants and enjoyed lots of salads from my garden. I had to rip out all the lettuce plants since I put the red pepper/garlic spray on it. I had some caterpillars on my lettuce leaves so I made a homemade red pepper/garlic spray and my lettuce ended up tasting like red peppers. The were so hot I could not eat the lettuce. So next year I will have to figure out another organic spray to put on the lettuce. I must say that the spray did work and I did not have any more caterpillars. However, I had spicy nasty tasting lettuce.



Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-Mallory saying she was dirty after she really looked at her tan belly.
-Having a good time with family
-Our great cool summer tempatures, it is now steaming hot that is why I am trying to be grateful for the cool summer days that we do have.

We're back from Vermont

Well we just got back from our trip to rural southern Vermont. D and I had a great time and we loved every minute of it. We had 4 days of relaxation, romance and quiet. The kids stayed with D's mom and we are so grateful that she was able to watch them for that long. Our bed and breakfast was so cozy, historic, and the staff was so accommodating and gracious. We spent our time trail running, shopping, talking, taking pictures, touring small historic towns, and eating delicious food. Our daily routine consisted of getting up around 8:00 a.m. We ate breakfast at the inn and their meals were all delicious overfilling meals. After breakfast we figured out which trails we were going to run we went out on our adventure. We love to run trails because we both love to run in new places and we love that we can go farther by running and faster versus hiking the trails. The last day we did hike the trails around the inn because we were both tired of running and we enjoyed the slower pace of walking the trails. It was nice to slow down and actually enjoy the surroundings and I was able to take pictures of the hike. Rural southern Vermont was so adorable. There would be tiny towns within 5 miles of each other. We would drive for 5 miles on a road then have to slow down to 40 mph then to 30 mph and then it would probably take about 1 minute to drive through the town before we would be back to 40 mph and then back up to 50 mph. There was a really cute town called Jamaica, VT that was so cute and we loved the general store there where we bought homemade desserts and soft serve ice cream. We also went to Townshend where there was the local emergency room in a large house. We stopped by the general store and bought wine and other treats. We went to Fanfare, VT where there was an adorable General Store. We bought lots of souvenirs for our family. They had lots of fantastic handmade quilts. I could have stayed in the store forever. The craftsman ship put into these quilts were amazing. I would have love to buy one, but I did not. I got a lot of ideas from the quilts and viewing all the them made me want to tackle one of the more traditional quilting patterns.

I could go on and on about our vacation. We loved our time and we always become closer when we spend a lot of time together. We missed the kids but we knew that they were in good hands. It is nice to be home and to have them around us. Nathan seemed like he grew and his hair was lighter so that was wired to come home and see him.

The best thing that happened this week was that we have a new extended family member. I have a new nephew. My sister's baby Ryan was born on Monday and he is so adorable and cute. We went and visited him the next day and the girls loved holding him and loving on him. Julianne kept saying that she loved the baby and that she wished that Nathan was that small again. She did not like that Nathan was not as snuggly or loving as Ryan was. I had to remind her that baby's do grow up and are not that way all the time.



He was so sweet. It was hard to tell who he looks like. He looked kind like her other kids but you never know since he is still so young.

Here are the pictures of the largest rock quarry. It was too cold to swim in but it was interesting. The rocks slabs were so large it was amazing to see them stacked on top of each other. There were also faces etched into the corners of the slabs. Can you see one in my pictures?





Here are some pictures of the longest covered bridge. The craftsmanship on this bridge was amazing. The wood beams were so large and they used wood pegs to keep the the beams together. It is now a pedestrian bridge but it was an amazing piece of artwork.



This was another bridge that was amazing. I loved the wood floorboards and the steel construction. It was a sweet one lane bridge that was well used.


This is Jamaica's Town Hall. It was so cute and adorable.


This was the parlor of where we stayed. It was actually an old refurbished barn. The ceilings were so low and the wood in the barn was amazingly old and rustic. So we loved the "duck" signs of which D had to duck every time. I have pictures of the outside of the barn but they did not upload so I will have to post them later.

Here are some of the beautiful flowers from the Inn.


Did you see the chipmunk?


The first day we stayed at the Inn we went running in the rain. So our shoes were wet and we put them in front of the gas stove. The gas stove had a timer on it and we also did not think that it was very hot. However, shortly after I went to bed I started to smell smoke so I looked over and my shoe was smoking. I quickly jumped out of bed and moved my shoe and turned off the fireplace. The next morning I looked at my shoe and this is what happened. I had no idea that my shoe was melting. I felt terrible that we could have set our room, and the historic barn, on fire. I am thankful that my light induced sleep allowed me to wake up and look over at my shoe. We continually laugh about it since it did have a happy ending. Needless to say we spent the next morning driving around southern Vermont looking for a shoe store.

I have more pictures but for some reason I did not upload them. So I will have to post them later.


Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-the amazing sights and places in Vermont
-spending time with D and loving him more today than I did when we were married
-Having a great MIL
-seeing my kids after 4 days away from them