Boating fun.

On Monday we got together with our Friends and rented a boat for the morning. It was so much fun. We got a pontoon boat that had all the fixin's. Here's a picture of us before we headed out:

Anton took the role of boat captain:

Though he did give each of us a chance to try our skills. But most of the time the rest of us just chilled and enjoyed the beautiful weather. Here's Tonia and her daughter Isabella doing just that:

Isabella wasn't too keen on all the love bugs flying around, but she enjoyed the ride:

Ella pretty much played the role of super-model/Baywatch babe the whole time:

What a goof. She even managed the whole windblown hair look:

She would just stand up in the front of the boat and stare out at the water. She loved it.

However, when the Oreo cookies came out Ella shed all pretenses of being a boat babe and gave into the sugar:

But she still manages to make it look good.

Alex could hardly move in his life vest. He spent the first little while just laying prone on one of the benches since there was nothing else he could do. But he sure was cute:


We found a little strip of sandy beach to stop at and he was so much happier once we took that vest off of him:

Alex really loves when Anton does this:

I don't mind, as long as he's not doing over cement like he is prone to do.

We all enjoyed playing in the water and the sand. That is until a bumble bee had to come and ruin everything. He made sure to chase every single one of us. But Andre came to the rescue and swatted it into the water with his shirt. We captured it and made sure it wouldn't bother us any more:

After all that fun and sun Isabella decided a nap was in order:

This child only takes a 30-40 minute nap each day. I feel so sorry for Tonia and Andre. I love my well-sleeping children. It's the only reason I am sane today.

Anyways, while cruising down the river we saw this odd structure:

It was right down at water level. We came to a unanimous consensus that it must be an alligator house. I want a pet alligator. You wouldn't have to worry about trespassers.

But we all got tired and one can only take so much sun before you've got to call it quits. We headed back to the dock and bade farewell to our marvelous boat. It was so much fun and something we all would love to do again.

Because of all the fun we had on Monday, we just sat around the house yesterday. Though I did get up the energy to make and decorate a cake, but more on that later! Have a good one!

Another Week

I've been a bad blogger. Going a whole week without writing a thing. Oh well. I can always catch up on it all now. Having Anton home means we don't follow our typical schedule. Actually, we don't follow much of a schedule at all. We've spent a lot of time this week on the computer. We made the mistake to pick up my 3-pack of Myst games and we've been playing those into the wee hours of the night for a few nights. But we did manage to get out of the house a few times.

On Wednesday night we went and had dinner with our friends. We only have one set of friends so there is no need to specify which friends. It's the one thing I'm sad about with Anton dropping out of the program, we'll have to move away from our first real friends.

On Thursday we took the kids to a park to play. The weather has finally cooled down enough that we are able to do outside activities. It makes for a nice change of pace. This particular park is quite large. The kids love it.

There was sliding fun:

There was swinging fun:

There was airplane flying fun:

(Note Anton on his cell phone, that's how he was the whole time.)

There was also some bridge fun:

It was lightly sprinkling the whole time, but since it was so nice and cool out we didn't care.

On the way home we stopped by Wal-mart for a few things we needed, when what did I behold?

Cobalt blue dishes. I already have a set I got while I was in college but it only has 4 place settings. And since then the ones I have are no longer made. So I've been keeping my eyes out for them ever since because whenever we have guests over we don't have enough plates for everyone. These are not the same as the ones I have, but they are close enough. It came with 4 dinner plates, 4 salad plates, and 4 wonderfully deep bowls. All for under $10!!! Love it! I'd like to someday round out the set with some white plates, maybe with a blue stripe. Then my dishes will be purposefully mismatched! Ah the little joys in life. I love my cobalt blue dishes.

Yesterday Anton was out watering the lawn and the kids wandered out and decided it looked like fun!

They were soaking wet in seconds. What's life without a little spontaneous water play?

Alex liked to pick the sprinkler up and swing it around and wound of getting everyone wet:

Isn't he cute?

Ella really likes to drink from the sprinkler:

The closer she could get her face the better:

Wouldn't it be nice to be a kid again and have such simple pleasures?

(The only photo of the set I bothered to edit. She's such a silly cutie.)

Today Anton decided he needed to throw a BBQ. He invited all of his pilot buddies as kindof a last hoorah together. We had it at a park near here that's right on the river with a little beach. Ella swam the whole time, Alex played in the pack-n-play, and us adults socialized. It was a lot of fun and went well. I hate hosting large events like this. I left everything up to Anton since it was his idea. It was much less stressful for me that way. It was lots of fun.

This evening we went for a short bike ride. It would have been longer, but we left a little late and it was getting dark.

Then tonight I spent playing with frosting. I'm contemplating perhaps doing cake decorating as a side job when we move so I figured I'd better see if I still had any of my previously learned skills. It all came back pretty quick, but the frosting recipe I used was an all butter one and it swiftly turned from smooth nice frosting to runny melty frosting from the heat of my hands. I ended up with it all on the waxed paper I was using for practice and finger painted with it instead. Lots of fun. It's quite satisfying to squish piled of frosting through your fingers. Try it sometime. I couldn't convince Anton to play with me. He sure did miss out.

And that catches us up to today. This next week doesn't promise to be much more than this last one. We'll just have to see what we can make of it! Have a great day!

Changes

Last week during Anton's week off he finally made the decision to drop out of the flying program. He had been sick on every flight he'd gone on, and even after completing the "never-fail" get over motion sickness spin chair, he still got sick. Well, he just got sick of being sick. So he has pretty much officially quit the program. This means pretty big stuff for us. Normally when someone drops out of the program they just get reassigned to another job. But since Anton is a Warrant Officer and this is a new program, they don't have any where else to put him. So after everything is done, we will be separating from the military. It scares me to death. The military is so comfy to me. They take care of you really well. I don't like the idea of "the outside."

But our plan as of now is for Anton to go back to school and get a double major in Russian and International Studies. He'll work part time and I'll work part time, and hopefully that will keep us from starving in the meantime. We don't know when any of this will happen since the military likes to take its time, but Anton would like to start school in January.

So that's our big news. Other than that we've just been hanging out and enjoying having Anton home. I felt like pampering myself the other day so I painted my toenails. Of course, as soon as Ella saw it she wanted hers done too. So I obliged:

You can also see where I ran over her foot with the door at Wal-mart. Oops.

Yesterday we went to the beach with our friends. It was nice to just float out in the water. I found all sorts of big sea shells. Our friends' little girl had the same swimsuit as Ella and her name is Bella, so they were little twins:

Alex was keeping up his usual occupation of eating sand:

He had a whole mouth-full here.

We got a surprise package in the mail yesterday from Anton's brother Kyle and his family. It was late birthday presents for Ella and Alex. So today we had a little birthday party. Ella wasted no time ripping open her present:

It was a big bucket of Lego's! She was so excited:

She busted them out and started playing right away:

She likes building towers as tall as she possibly can.

Alex had 2 presents. He's a bit slower on the gift opening than Ella. He needed a bit of help from Dad:

The first was a fun little ambulance that makes all sorts of noise. (Thanks Kyle! :o) )

He's been playing with it all day. The next was one of those door flipper upper things (I'm sure they have a technical name, but...)

He loves these toys! Then of course the kids had to try out each other's toys:


What good sharers.

So that's been life for the last little while. All sorts of fun and adventure! I just want to leave you all with this fabulously adorable picture of Alex. I don't know what it is about pictures of kids crying, but I think they are so cute!!

Have a great night!

New Templates!!

I've got a new set up templates up at the Scraphead store. Here's a peek at them:

You can find them here.

It's my second set of 12x12's.

Also Scraphead is doing an awesome promotion.

You buy the 1GB flash drive and get all the scrapping stuff for free! How cool is that? You can check it out here.

I'm so sad because Sara Carling has decided to quit designing digital scrapbook stuff. I've been on her CT for a long time. She's put everything in her shoppe on sale at 60% off!!

You can shop your hearts out here.

Also Digital Freebies has had a change up in leadership and they are having a celebration this weekend only with everything 50% off through tomorrow (Sunday). You can head here for more shopping fun!

I think that's it in scrapping news from me. Tomorrow I'll blog a bit of a family update. We've made a huge decision that will affect the rest of our lives. So you'll want to come back for that! Have a great night!

Impromptu Vacation

Anton and I were feeling all stressed out and tired of the boring scene here at home so we decided to take a mini impromptu vacation. And since Andrea is about ready to have her baby and we've been meaning to visit them again it was decided on as the destination of choice. So on Wednesday we headed off.

We have a strange obsession when on roadtrips. We always have to stop and eat at Cracker Barrel. We even have the map that shows all the locations of all the Cracker Barrels across the whole country. Well, we just so happened to plan our departure time so that dinner time would fall at the exact same time we were passing a Cracker Barrel. How convenient!!

I don't know what I love so much about this place since the food is kindof greasy and not good for you at all, but it has served us well on many a trip. I think it's because they serve huge breakfasts all day long. Ella loves it because I let her eat pancakes for dinner, see:

Alex loved it because they had chairs just his size!!

We made it to Andrea's just in time to put the kids to bed and soon afterwards head that way ourselves.

Thursday was a hang around the house day, completely planned of course. They have a pool in the backyard and that was where we spent a good bit of our afternoon. While we were cleaning out the pool prior to our swim I met this little guy:

He lives in the pool lining. He posed and smiled and let me take all sorts of pictures of him. Andrea hates these guys. At night they climb up onto her windows and doors waiting for bugs to eat. Frogs to her are like spiders to me. Yuck.

Alex loved being at Andrea's house because he had so much space to run around in.

Anytime we made him come inside he cried. Poor guy. He's an outdoor boy for sure.

Friday was the day I was looking forward to since the planning of this trip. See I have another obsession besides Cracker Barrel, one much bigger, and that would be IKEA. Almost my entire house is furnished and decorated with things from IKEA. When we moved down here to the swamp the closest IKEA is 6 hours away. I've been going through serious withdrawal. Well, Andrea only lives 3 hours away from an IKEA and that's close enough for me!! So we tossed the kids in the car and headed off.

I don't know what it is about this big blue and yellow building that just sends pitter-patters through my heart but I love this place. When we lived in MD we'd go just for fun. This trip was all business, though. Alex was in desperate need of a dresser and I wanted some kids sized stuff for our play area and a chair for the living room. We were quite successful. Here is some of the haul in action:

The new chair and lamp with the existing IKEA furnishings.

Kid sized fun.

This is the dresser we got Alex:


It's much redder in real life. I love it.

After this exhausting but fully satisfying shopping experience we headed back towards Andrea's. We met up with them at a restaurant called Buffalo Wild Wings. Alex was being such a cutie while we waited forever for our food.

He has recently discovered his ears and nose and is constantly sticking his fingers in them. It was the highlight of our terrible dining experience.

But we made up for it when we got home by playing with the horses. Andrea has lots of horses.

This is me with my boyfriend Ozzie. He's the sissiest boy horse you will ever meet. He's always getting beat up and picked on, but I love him. He will let me pet him for hours. He's very sweet and if I were really brave maybe I'd ride him. But for now we are just friends on the ground.


Ella got to go for a ride. She loves riding the horses at Aunt Andrea's house.

Alex hopped on for a ride too.

Ella was giving all kinds of love to BoBo the pony. (I think this is so GROSS!!!!)

A cute one of Alex trying to get in the barn because we had the fence shut.

Our final day of vacation found us heading to a local water park. This was another reason we went to visit Andrea. Their water park is $5 per day while ours here is $20 a day. Big difference. We had so much fun and the kiddie play area was absolutely perfect for Ella. She loved it!

Look at the excitement!!

Anton had Alex duty most of the time. That entailed keeping Alex from drowning since he thinks he can swim. It's a tough job.

He's laughing here, I promise.

And here is our gracious hostess. She is due any day now and has more energy than I do not pregnant!! The 2 boys behind her are hers. The older one was in time out and the younger one was taunting him. I love how sweet and happy Andrea looks while her boys fight away in the background!! So funny!

We had lunch at the park and Alex ate an entire foot long hotdog by himself!! I've never seen him pack away food like that before. I'm in for trouble. Better start stocking the cupboards now!

Speaking of hotdogs, here is a funny story about my nephew.

This is Lane. (He wasn't too happy just then.) And on this particular day we had hot dogs for lunch also. Well, Lane is famous for eating food without swallowing. He just takes bites, chews and spits it out. Interesting nourishment methods. Probably not the most effective. But hey, he's 2. So on this day his hot dog was eaten in the usual manner. However, today he was having lunch with a pick-up truck too. Now what does one do with half eaten hot dogs? Well, this of course:

He packed them all up and let the truck driver take them away. (The dogs ate well that afternoon.) Too funny!!

Back to our vacation, after the water park we said our fairwells and headed back home. Ella commandeered my camera in the car. She took all sorts of pictures, but her best were her self-portraits:

She's getting good.

We got home to a broken air conditioner. It didn't get really bad until last night. It was a long hot night in our 90 degree home. Ugg. Luckily the repairman was able to come first thing this morning. Now we are basking in our 79 degree home. It has been running all day long to get it back down. I love AC.

So now that you've spent hours reading about my vacation I'd better stop. Have a great day!