Ladybugs & Stinkbugs

Andrew wasn't sure - brother and sister did it, but he didn't think he really wanted to...until it was time to leave!

He finally did!

When Annie hit the water


Taking turns


Annie jumping agaion


Matthew's jump - You have no idea what a victory this was for him. For the past three summers he has been TERRIFIED of the water, and now he's jumping off the diving board! It's incredible...he's getting so big!

We are blessed to have wonderful friends. In addition to teaching our Sunday School class and just taking good care of us, they also let us use their pool from time to time. Here are some pictures from the fabulous afternoon we had. We wanted to do something special with the kids, since Jeremy is leaving for Denver tomorrow. It was a very relaxing afternoon:

Jacob LOVES the water


Jessi & AJ chillin'

Jeremy thought Jacob wanted to fly! (BTW, Jacob LOVED it.)


Annie's gettin ready...

I'm getting Annie's recital video transferred to a digital format, and hope to most some clips of it soon. Until then, I did want you to see a couple of additional pictures from her recital.

This is Annie and her BEST friend. You know the kind of friend I'm talking about - the one that you see, squeal a high-pitched scream, and run to with arms open wide - and that's when you saw each other YESTERDAY. :) They are in the same class in Sunday School, and AWANA, and ballet, and just LOVE each other.

Here are Annie & Rachel:

This dog knows which side of his bread the butter's on.

Teenager craziness


Matthew's in there somewhere


I think they put Jacob in a cage

Andrew! He was 3


Jacob was about 6 months old!


Annie looks so little in these pictures.

All the VBS ladies.

In honor of VBs, I'm post some pictures of VBS from LAST year, and then I'll post pictures of this year's (once I get them on my computer...)

A few weeks go we got the pleasure of seeing the Houston Astros beat them, um, Jeremy will have to comment because I don't remember who they played! We went with one of the Sunday School classes at church, and we all had a really great time. We took ALL FOUR kids, which we won't do again for a really long time, but it was a lot of fun. We even got to see...um, Carlos Lee? his a Grand Slam!! It was a really amazing game, and Matthew, especially, was in heaven. :) Here are a few photos.


It was hot! Jacob liked all the food!


It was ALMOST a date...:)

Brothers - they really enjoyed watching the game together. I love those guys! :)

I'm really not good at telling who looks like who - when people ask me that, I always shrug and say, "Oh, I don't know."

BUT - when I saw these pictures I almost died! I have SEEN Jacob make these faces at me in the bathtub - and, especially before we cut Jacob's hair, I seriously thought I ws looking at Jacob in these pictures. It's amazing the resemblance.

(BTW, sorry to Jeremy for posting these, but I couldn't resist.)

Another group of pictures from our family reunion. From the top right:

AJ: He's my newphew who lives in Illinois. He & his sister are staying with us for the summer to go to camp with our church youth group. They're also doing random jobs for us around the house, and we're doing lots of Movie Watching - or we will be now, since VBS-week-from-you-know-where is now over. Pirates & LOTR here we come!

Katie: She was having WAY too much fun eating her food that night.

Landra: Um, there are no words.

Dad & Katie: Lanae had just finished french-braiding Katie's hair, so she was posing for a photo with Daddy.

Me & Jacob: Post-haircut. Ain't he a cutie?

Center: All the little guys with Granny & Grandaddy. They are all my sweeties!

Does life ever just catch you off guard? These last couple of weeks have been crazy for our family! We've been gone every single day for the last almost two weeks - that never happens in our family. It's been worth it - it's all church/VBS-related - but, still, it's getting hard.

Anyway, that explains my absence from blogging in the last few weeks. Not that much new to share, either, though I will post some VBS pictures later in the week.

Oh, and one thing that's just total silliness - my son (8) has a "facebook for kids" page!! He has been begging me to let him have a real FB page, and I just did not feel comfortable with that at all. You just never know...however, I found a website that does the same thing, only for kids, that is strictly monitored and also lets me see everything he access or who talks to him, and he is just having a ball!! Any of you with young ones might want to check this out, if they are in to that sort of thing! :)

Facebook for Kids

--
Lindsay

This is a really hard time for me. A haircut signifies "growing up", to me. And I don't like that one little bit.

Before:




After



It turned out looking really cute! He just looks so big now! He really looks like his older brother (Andrew).

I'm gonna go cry in my closet now...

From Consumer Reports:

"...people using too much laundry detergent [is becoming a problem], an issue perhaps caused by user mistakes or poor design of caps on some containers and bottles - or maybe a combination of the two."

The report goes on to explain that, because the lines on the caps are hard to read, people tend to use more laundry detergent than is necessary.

What I'm wondering is, if the people at Consumer Reports are so smart, how did they not make the connection that maybe manufacturers intend to make the caps too big in order to trick consumers into using more than they need - and therefore having to buy more detergent.

Am I way off base here? What do you think?

I haven't blogged (is this a verb?) for a week or so because we've been out of town at the Lee Family Reunion. It was a really amazing time - ALL 6 of my sisters, their husbands, and children, as well as Mom & Dad, managed to make it for at least a couple of days. This hasn't happened...well...ever, that I know of! The closest we got was at my wedding (10 years ago), when all of my sisters made it. But this was the first time I'd seen many of my family members in a long, long time.

Because we had so much fun, I will probably be posting a TON of pictures to try to share with you how much we did. In addition to all the "family together-ness", we were able to go swimming at the pool, and at the lake (sometimes unintentionally), kayaking, tubing, and fishing. There was also a LOT of food, and a lot of relaxing, some card games, and a lot of Conan! (His late show debut was well-watched at our family reunion. The reviews were mixed.)

So, to start out, here are just a few pictures from the reunion, as well as some cute faces Annie made that I couldn't resist sharing.

Landra, Leanne




Jeremy, Jacob & I relaxing


Andrew was upset. He didn't feel good most of the weekend. I think we wore him out!


Madi posing - as usual, when the camera turned her way