Sunday

Sunday morning I drove Claudia and Jordan out to Marble Falls, which is about 45 minutes NW of Austin so they could hang out with their dad and his family for the day. Jamie and Sammy stayed here and rested from the trip. After dropping them off I stopped and got some barbeque for us to have for lunch. There's a place in MF that sells turkey sausage which is excelelnt and the only place you can get it is there. It's not even a little bit like the sausage you get in the store. After I got home we ate lunch (so good!!) and then we headed off to Barton Springs Pool so Jamie and Sammy could swim. It's a spring fed pool that's 68 degrees year round.

Here's Sammy about to jump in.


This Jamie and Sammy swimming.


This is Sammy waiting for Jamie to sunscreen up.


After swimming we took Sammy to Amy's Ice Cream. Again, so good!


This is Sammy hanging out on the front porch of my parents' house.



Then that night Sammy, Jamie and I went to pick Claudia and Jordan up and Sam and Jamie got to meet the girls' dad and his family.

More details

Ok, so, we're having a few down minutes, so I thought I would put some more trip photos up.

The trip up was a really beautiful drive. We drove through Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi and then Louisiana. We stop for *really* good barbeque in Alabama and cajun food in Louisiana. And I was so happy to see Jana and her adorable boy J. Jana was awesome--we didn't get to her house until three in the morning (yes, it was embarrassing--did I say "sorry", Jana?!?) and Jana was just as gracious as could be. The littles had a blast playing in the pool the next morning, her dog was so cute we almost kidnapped him and Jana made us a beautiful breakfast.

After we left Jana's we headed towards Galveston and decided to take the ferry over. I don't like driving the car onto the ferry, but was really glad I did because it turned out to be very cool. But because of road construction, we didn't get there until the sun was setting so we dashed in to McDonald's to change into swimsuits and we hit the beach anyway. Swimming in the ocean in the moonlight is highly recommended. The girls found and captured a tiny sand crab and found some nice rocks and shells. Then we drove to Austin and got to my parents' house pretty late.

Looks like we made it!

We're in Austin! Yay!! We're super tired but everyone's having a great time. Here are a few photos and I'll post more details about our trip and more photos later today. Jamie, Claudia and I are about to dash out the door to go to the LBJ Library (the little girls are going swimming with my parents).

Oh, and Happy Birthday to the wonderful brother/brother-in-law/Uncle Dr. Jason--we're sorry we missed your birthday! Happy Birthday!

Kids in the car on the way to Louisiana.



Here are Sammy and Jordan swimming in the pool in Jana's back yard.

This is Jamie with Jana's super-cute little dog, Buddy!


Here we are on the ferry over to Galveston Island. There were pelicans and dolphins and we fed the seagulls until the captain yelled at us to stop.



This is after swimming in the Gulf in the moonlight.


You can see the waves right behind where they're sitting in this one.

Texas Bound

Well, day after tomorrow and we're off! I've bought groceries! And an atlas! We've plotted our route! Tonight we pack and clean out the car and try to find a nice, inexpensive styrofoam ice chest somewhere. I think I might even wash the car!

We've had one pretty large wrench tossed into our plans, though. A friend of ours volunteered to come over three times a day and walk/feed our dog and she's fallen ill so now we're scrambling to find a place to board him. Beverly and Walter took the bird, some friends are taking the turtle, but what of poor Bobo?!? And my tomato plants? Oy.

Happy 4th!

Today was cool and rainy. Loved it!

The girls worked on making flag pins today.



Beverly and Walter came up for a little while today and that was fun. We've seen them three times lately and how cool is that? It's very nice! Plus, they took Jordan's bird back with them so they can take care of it while we're in Texas. Our friend, R., is taking care of the dog and we have a friend that is possibly going to take care of the turtle and then we're all good to go!



Then this afternoon we cooked and had people over. I love having the entire family in the kitchen cooking. Jamie made fried chicken, I made jalapeno potato salad, Claudia made buttermilk dressing, Sammy made cupcakes for the traditional red/white/blue cupcakes and Jordan made a poundcake for the traditional flag cake. The girls are really doing well with the cooking. I can now give them a recipe and just be close for questions and they can do it themselves. We do very little non-scratch cooking so this is very good indeed!




Tonight we went to the Noblesville fireworks display which is possibly the lamest fireworks display on the planet.

Random Stuff!

Yesterday Sammy and Jordan were trying to win a contest on Radio Disney (for Hannah Montana tickets) and the cordless phone battery was about to die, so they brought their radio up into the kitchen near the phone, put everything on the floor and tried to win.



After that, they went over to their friend K.'s house and played their Warrior Cat game all afternoon.

This is Jamie and Sammy making chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast today. But surprise, kids! Jamie's found a new Whole Wheat Version online!


Bo helping Sammy wake up as she watched What Not to Wear on tv this morning.


Then Bo went to Claudia's room to help her wake up, too.


July 4 Photo!

It's Go Box time!

Tonight I made Go Boxes for the kids. These are travel boxes they can use for all future trips. They're sturdy plastic and large enough to use as lap desks in the car and to store most of their little things, like books, they'll want for the driving portion of the trip, but small enough to go on the floor of the car when they're not using them. I stocked them with cute erasers, mechanical pencils, pens, a spray bottle (for spritzing in the 100 degree heat. Spray bottle rule--no drinking out of the spray bottle--it's gross!), a travel journal and a sketch pad. They'll also put cameras, mp3 players, book lights, etc. in them.

Inside the lid we're glueing maps so they can put a dot on each state they've visited. They each already had a bunch of states to mark. Claudia has ten!

Total Success (with Dan Abrams!)

Sibling argument overheard at our house tonight (and how could I help but overhear--they were both bellowing at each other) that was so funny, I couldn't be annoyed:

Claudia: WHO CHANGED THE CHANNEL?!?
Jordan: I did. NO ONE WATCHES VERDICT WITH DAN ABRAMS!!!
Claudia: I DO!!! TURN IT BACK!!! And I HATE YOU!!!

O-K. It's possible that they both get their dramatic natures from their mother. Could we call it "passionate about life"? Thank you.

These girls. I'm enjoying parenting all three so much right now. They're all such completely interesting people. For just a few instances, Jordan and I had the best time going to see Wall-E on Saturday night. She's so fun to go out and do things with. And she's asking me to call the Obama headquarters so we can volunteer. Claudia's totally immersed in politics and so *smart* about it. And she's been drawing increasingly cooler things and I've had need of an artist lately for social justice stuff and it's been really fun to tell her what I need and watch her work on it. The latest thing she's doing is helping me with the logo for the church's Social Justice blog. Sammy's skipping two grades in math because she has a totally amazing math brain so she's been working on math this summer and it's really cool to watch her working on it with Jamie who is another person with a totally amazing math brain. And she's having a really fun time with a make-believe game she has going with Jordan and one of their friends based on a series of books she's reading.

Sunday, I stayed home from church with a migraine. Jamie took Claudia and Jordan and a list as long as his arm of things I needed to do for the Social Justice committee. Thank you, Draling! When he arrived home from church he had an additional child with him--Claudia's friend K. So he made lunch for everyone and took Claudia and K. to the festival our town was having and dropped them off and then came home and we started getting ready for the party we threw Sunday night. The festival has a big fireworks display every year and they do them right, like RIGHT, next to our house, about 200 yards away from our back patio. So we invited people over to watch fireworks and we made a bunch of food and had a really great time. Jordan dubbed it "a total success". That's what I like to hear! The only thing that would have made it better is if it wouldn't have been on a Sunday night so out-of-town friends and family could have been here.

While we were getting stuff ready for the party, Jordan and Sammy went and sat by the curb near our back patio where the Festival parade started. They totally cleaned up--they got tons of candy and a huge bunch of balloons.


Jamie made chocolate chip cookies that were turned into ice cream sandwiches with vanilla ice cream and I made gingersnaps that were turned into ice cream sandwiches with lemon sorbet. Other made from scratch items were salsa, flour tortillas, corn tortillas and ranch dressing.


Here's Jamie enjoying an icecream sandwich. Yes, those are really tall weeds. You know, when you let them grow tall like that and, uh, artfully arrange them, they look um.......super great.


Watching the fireworks.








While we were waiting for the fireworks to start, we played with sparklers and those popit things.




See how happy and unknowing Jamie is here? When he's totally unaware that right behind him is Bo the Demon Dog! (what the hell is up with that dog's eyes?!?)

Thursday

It's pretty much all good news at our house at the moment and for everyone all around us!

Jordan's finally feeling better and going to her first tennis lesson this morning. Jamie found a really cool tennis program that runs every day for two weeks and she'll be taught by highschool tennis coaches. Unfortunately she's going to miss three days due to illness and other things, but that's (going to have to be) ok.

Jamie took Claudia to see the new Get Smart movie last night. The little girls were bummed because they weren't allowed to go. It's PG-13, so just no way without us seeing it first. But Jamie and Claudia had fun.

Leah just turned in her thesis and she defends on July 31. You are awesome, Leah!!!

Amy has some of her photos in a gallery in Los Angeles and how cool is that?!?

Jana is updating her blog again! Wooo!!!! You should check it out.

And we're planning our trip to Texas and are super excited! We're leaving on July 11 and we've decided to drive south instead of through Illinois/Missouri/Arkansas (which, for the most part is very boring and ugly and I want my break from the midwest to start as soon as humanly possible), so we'll go through Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. I'm going to be a two-fisted bbq eater starting at noon and hey, kids, I don't care if you don't want barbeque, because that's what we're having!! We'll stop for the night and stay with Jana & Co. in Baton Rouge and then head to Texas the next morning to take the kids to the beach in Galveston. Then we'll buy some shrimp off the boat and head to my parents' house in Austin that evening.

The Weekend

This pretty much sums up our entire weekend. Poor Jordan was sick for all of it. She's finally, thank God, feeling better today.

Jamie bore the brunt of the running around this weekend. Friday after work he had a meeting at church, which I skipped to stay home with Jordan. Saturday we had a party to go to and he took Claudia with him and I stayed home with Jordan. Saturday afternoon he took Claudia to the mall so she could get a birthday gift for a friend and then that afternoon I took Claudia to her friend's birthday party/sleepover. Today Jamie ran by Sam's mom's to pick Sammy up for church (they were finishing their ceramics projects from last weekend). Jamie ended up going to the store I don't know how many times this weekend, including a middle-of-the-night run to Walmart for pedialyte last night. We are exhausted! I was up several times each night pushing fluids on Jordan so she wouldn't get dehydrated and she was up off and on all night.

Sammy reports that her tennis lessons are going well and she won all three of her matches on Friday! Jordan's taking tennis lessons at a different place this year and hers start on Tuesday. They were supposed to start tomorrow, but there was a scheduling conflict for the courts which is GOOD, because no way she can play tennis tomorrow!

Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day + 1!

We started out the day by dashing to church and were only a few minutes late! It was our minister's last day so the service was kind of painful. Claudia opted to stay with Jamie and me instead of going to class because she likes the minister. The RE summer session is very cool. They have people from the congregation teach the kids arts and one woman gives them lessons on animals and they also learn some other stuff I forget at the moment. Anyway, one of the many professional (is that the right word?) artists we have in our congregation does ceramics (she had one piece on display in the sanctuary about a month ago and I want it so much. It was nothing like I've ever seen before) and she taught the little girls' class this weekend and she's teaching it next weekend, too, so they can finish up their work. Jordan said one of the things she made was a rattle which I think is intriguing and I can't wait to see it.

After church Beverly and Walter drove down from Ft. Wayne to hang out with us and we had a great time! We just threw out some sandwich stuff and made strawberry shortcake for dessert. I made it with homemade biscuits (I added about 3 tablespoons sugar) and it turned out pretty well. I usually make pound cake for that purpose but this worked, too. They once again declined to take the beagle when they left so we STILL HAVE HIM! Yes, I'm joking--we wouldn't actually make him move out.

Sammy decided it would be very funny to lick Jamie's forehead and his grossed out response totally cracked her up so while he was trying to eat shortcake, she licked his arm. And Jordan thought it was hilarious, too, so poor Jamie was fending that off for a while.




Beverly ended up being Thumb Wrestling Queen and Sammy was very funny with her mock disappointed face and wail "I lost to my GRANDMOTHER!!!".




Then last night the girls and I gave Jamie Father's Day gifts. One of his friends asked him to play soccer on his team so he asked for a soccer ball and Claudia got him that. The kids had a blast playing with the dog and the ball!




The little girls both got him pretty polished stones which I think are supposed to be good luck charms for his tests and I gave him a sketchbook journal so now he has to draw every day!

Pride Parade

Saturday was completely chaotic but so much fun! We dropped one car off close to the festival *early* on Saturday morning, checked in for our booth assignment and got the booth set up. Then we drove the other car over to the start of the parade. We put all the banners together and met our group. We had more people show up this year, which was my goal, but not a lot, so we didn't have enough people to do the Chinese dragon moose we had.











When we got to the booth we sat around and talked to everyone and that was a lot of fun. Sammy, Jordan and one of their friends were running around getting free stuff from all the different booths and Claudia was hanging out with one of her friends.


I had woken up with a migraine and so the heat was making my headache *super* bad, so around 1 we left and went home for lunch and then Jamie went back to work at the booth again. I felt a little better after more medicine and sleeping for a while so I took the girls back up there in time to buy stuff they wanted and help Jamie break down the booth.

All in all, I think it was a success. I think it's meaningful for faith communities to march and participate in the festival. I think we got the ball rolling this year so next year will be even better.

The event made the paper.