a visit from Grandma B & Maryn turns 3!

We had a super fun time during Grandma B's visit. Many crafts created, many treats consumed, many Wii hours logged, and many memories made. Thanks for coming Grandma! For more photos of the fun, click here.

During the visit, we threw a birthday party for Maryn (a few days early). She invited 5 other little girls and we had a great time! They made necklaces, magic wands and crowns. They watched a clip from Enchanted (Maryn's favorite movie), went on a treasure hunt, ate decadent pink cake with ice cream, and attacked the mound of presents with the voracity of baby tigresses- all in the course of 90 minutes. For complete pics of the event, click here. The photo below is of Maryn in her favorite gift- a Cinderella dress (from Grandma B).

I saw them tonight

In other news, I apologize for the hiatus, just getting my bearings back after an awesome week with Mom.  Pictures of the fun, including Maryn's princess birthday party, coming soon.  Here's a few preliminary ones.

Yes we Can(on)!

We just got a new Canon A580 Power Shot.  It's nothing too fancy, but soooo much better than our 5-year-old Fugi crappy point-n-shoot.  Here's some pics of our day.  (The first pic's a little grainy, apparantly we need to figure out how to shoot indoors better.)



Plus Grandma B made it!  Let the fun begin!

Charade

The following video is a 5 minute animated short titled "Charade". Apparently, it won the Oscar in 1985, although I just barely found this fact out today.
This film is very important to the comedic history of our family.  (Along with this movie, in all its un-PC-ness.)  At some point (probably around 1985), my parents had recorded this film off of HBO or some other sort of pay channel while they were doing a free weekend promotion or something like that.  As I recall, my dad saw that it was coming on and threw a VHS tape into the VCR to record it, therefore it was recorded in the middle of some other show at some random spot on the tape.  Whenever one of my parents' friends came over, the tape (which of course was not labeled) would have to be dug out and the intricate work of rewinding/fast forwarding would ensue to locate the perfect spot on the tape.  We watched this so much, that I had many parts memorized.  At the time, I didn't understand about 75% of what I was watching, but I knew what parts my parents thought were the funniest- so I laughed at those parts too.  Watching it now, almost 20 years later, I now get most of the jokes.  The best line is the last one which gets cut off in this video, it's "Gone With the Wind" (which I knew was funny, even back then). 

via videosift.com

anticipation

I've been busy: swimming, playing at the park, reading, watching movies, enjoying our awesome summer weather. Seriously, I think 85 degrees is my favorite, most comfortable temperature- that is- with 0% humidity, which is not what we're experiencing here, but I'm still trying to enjoy it.

And Mom is coming on Saturday!!

hippo birdie, two ewes

Today is my dad's birthday, born in '54, turning 54 this year- I think that's kind of cool. A few more cool things about my dad:

• Is a gifted musician with an awesome singing voice who can play pretty much anything on the guitar by ear. He has written a number of great songs and can sit down and write a poem (that rhymes) in minutes.
• Has an incredible ability to remember hundreds of song lyrics and random facts about a variety of topics (he calls it "useless information").
• Is a trailblazer as the only member of our church in his family. For this I'm so grateful, my life would have been very different if he had not chosen to take that step.
• Continues to be an example of dedicated service and hard work. (He has worked two jobs for at least the past 10-12 years.) He taught me that we never turn down an opportunity to serve. I'm also grateful (now) for the lessons on manners and respect that he and my mom drilled into me during my childhood, a lot of those behaviors have become habits.

Happy Birthday Papa! We love you and miss you so much!

the sirens went off last night

The atomic bomb ones, left over from the cold war times.

We had to wake up the kids, our neighbors (who don't have a basement) came over and stayed for a few hours.  We all slept in the basement.  Muddy water seeped in through the drain in the floor of our bathroom, but not too much.

We have a least two more nights of tornado weather to look forward to.

Toto, I think we're not in Arizona anymore.

should we build an ark?

Our basement flooded last night.

This is how we figured it out (short version)- I had been up with the kids since 6:30 (thank you Jonas), lounged in front of the TV, ate breakfast, took them all upstairs to get dressed, got in the shower, Seth said they were going down to the basement to play Mario Kart, got out of the shower, Jon woke up (he's been sick), he went downstairs, he called up to me "Why is Jonas all wet?", I came down, called to Seth "Why is Jonas all wet?", Seth replied "Because the carpet is all wet down here", Jon and I run downstairs to find standing water throughout the entire basement, soaking wet carpet, our computer cables in water, and two amps belonging to a friend soaked as well.

Apparently the rain outside flooded our entire porch and seeped into our house through our french doors. (I guess I kind of need to explain that our home is three levels- the middle level opens up into the front yard and the lower level opens up into the back yard- the place is sort of built into a hill.) The water line left on the outside of our back door is about one foot above the ground. Maybe I'll take a picture and post it later.

Thankfully, there is not much damage (except for those amps that aren't ours) even our computer sailed through the waters and is still working. The worst thing is the wet carpet (it's in two pieces though, so we have it propped up off the floor).

But it's not over yet, we have heavy rain in the forecast for the next several days.

little boys- following their example & preschool's over

Yesterday at church, the kids were sitting side by side in the pew with Jon and I on either end. During the opening prayer, I looked over to see all three kids sitting quietly with their arms folded- even Jonas. I was amazed! He usually will fold his little hands if we annouce that it's prayer time, but he won't hold still more than a couple of seconds, until yesterday. He sat through the whole prayer, just like the other kids, and even bowed his head a little bit.

Hopefully he will continue to follow their good examples (and not the bad ones).

In other news, Seth has completed preschool. There was no "graduation" ceremony or anything like that, which I think Seth was disappointed about. His teacher handed me his completion certificate through the car window when I picked him up on his last day. Kind of uneventful.

I've included the pictures I took on his first and last day (in front of the sign on the building). Jon mentioned the other day how Seth is starting the thin out and loose a little of the baby face chub. And he's also grown taller, you can a little bit in the pictures, he's made it up to the "R" in Springer.

Seth is so excited for kindergarten! He can hardly wait until August (and frankly- neither can I!)