4th of July Photos

We had a BBQ with my mom, my brother, and our niece and nephew last night. These are the fireworks pictures. My particular favorites are Bruce helping Emmarsyn with her sparkler and the close up of Matthew plugging his ears. Of course, the sparkler poses are pretty awesome too.

4th of July Artwork

Spencer created this using Paint yesterday. I thought it was pretty cool so here it is. Happy slightly late Fourth of July!

Father's Day Gift

I saw this idea for a Father's Day gift and tweaked it a bit to come up with this...

Bruce loved it and the kids loved being part of making something special for him. We framed it and it is going to have a prime location on his desk at work.

Measure Twice, Cut Out the Window Once

We are finally getting around to redoing our master bathroom which has needed it for, oh, about 10 years. In case you think we are slackers, we really haven't needed a master bathroom. When we first moved here without kids, we only used the upstairs. Slowly we have reclaimed the rest of the house and the master bathroom is the final frontier.

For the remodel, we went with a one piece fiberglass shower. Not exactly top end, but then again neither is the house. Bruce is usually meticulous in his preparations for any project. So when he informed me that something went wrong with his measurements and that the shower which had taken up a semi-permanent residence in our garage was not going to fit through the hallway and bedroom door, I was pretty surprised. (There were other emotions as well, but I won't go into that.) After a few days of mulling it over, Bruce decided that the bedroom window looked to be just about the right size through which to shove a shower. And it was"just about" the right size. There was some minor damage to the back of the shower and a piece of hopefully superfluous metal will never be going back into the window opening, but the operation was generally a success. After all, the shower now resides in our bedroom - only one doorway from its intended location. If all goes well (it won't), soon it will move into the actual bathroom and we will get to move back into our bedroom.

Fortunately, I was able to document this little adventure. Our friend Matt was kind enough to spend way too much of his day off helping Bruce. Thanks Matt (and Suzanne)! Here are the pictures...

Has It Really Been Two Months?

I'm not sure what happened in March, but April has been crazy and I didn't manage even one blog post. My first problem was that we left town at the end of March and didn't get back until April 4. For some reason, when I am gone for the beginning of a month, it takes me until about the middle of the month to even realize the calendar has changed. And, unfortunately, it was around the middle of April that we were first hit by an evil stomach bug that came and went for a couple of weeks. That brings us to just about now. I have wanted to post some pictures from our trip to Portland and I am finally doing it. Our niece, Amy, got married and since it was Spencer's spring break we decided to go. These are a few of my favorite pictures from the reception. The kids had an amazing time getting to know some of their cousins from California and Oregon.

And a few pictures from a little outing to Washington Park near downtown Portland. We were loving all the green!






















And finally...the fish. We noticed this on the back bumper somewhere along the way to Portland. It was stuck there because of all the rain and snow that we were lucky enough to drive through. We decided to see how long it would last. It made it all the way home with us. A pretty tenacious "not-so-gold-anymore" fish.

Because Your Kiss, Your Kiss, Is On My List

If you sang that title in your head instead of simply reading it, YOU ROCK! If not, you need to brush up on your early 80's pop music. Matthew had never heard the song before tonight, but this post is about him.

A few months ago, he decided that - in his words - "nobody kisses me and I don't kiss anybody either." I have tried diligently to repect his wishes, but I did slip up several times. I mean sometimes you just kiss your kid without thinking about it. Well, I used to anyway. Now, I find myself pausing slightly before kissing Spencer or Emmarsyn just to reassure myself that I am not violating any rules when kissing that particular child. When one does "accidentally" kiss Matthew, you are required to remove the kiss. This is done by grabbing it with your hand and putting it back on your lips - kind of a kiss eraser. Isn't parenthood great?

Anyway, recently we have entered a period of kissing detente. It started with some sanctions for some undesirable behavior. Who says diplomacy doesn't work? (Not sure how I got on the foreign policy metaphors, but it's working for me.) Matthew went through a growling phase. These growls were pretty much a verbal eye roll. So I told him, that everytime he growled at me, I would kiss him. I got a few kisses in and he even growled at me on purpose a couple of times just to get a kiss. Then about a week ago, we had our biggest breakthrough. We are now allowed to kiss him...but each time we do our names go on his "Kissing List". Kind of like the Terror Watch List, he's got his eye on us but he is still letting us through security. So now I get to kiss all my kids, but I have to be careful about timing. If we are in a hurry to get out the door, it is not a good idea to kiss Matthew because he has to stop and add my name to the the list again.

The other problem is that I can't get that song out of my head!

A Suessical Day

Matthew has been all about Dr. Suess lately. We listen to his books in the car and read them every night at bedtime. Since we have such a fanatic in the house, we decided to celebrate his birthday this year. March could use an extra holiday anyway.