Uncle Robert and Aunt Deena's Awesome Pool

We started our vacation today by heading to St. Louis to spend the night at Brent's uncle and aunt's house. We were flying out of St. Louis and had to be at the airport at 6:30 a.m.so it made sense to spend the night. A few years ago Robert and Deena added this gorgeous pool/waterfall/fish pond and marvelously landscaped scene in their backyard. Every time we visit it just keeps getting prettier and prettier.

Deena said that a friend told her the color of your hydrangea is determined by the PH in your soil, and she has multi-colored bushes. They are so pretty and very unique!

I was just playing with a different setting on my camera for some of these flower shots.

Ella has become somewhat famous for her winking abilities. It's always cute to see a child learn this trick, but for some reason she has a whole facial "thing" that happens when she is winking, and it is hysterical. I tried to capture it in this photo, but you just can't fully appreciate it here.

What a little cutie! Ella loves to swim and really enjoyed all of Uncle Robert and Aunt Deena's fun toys.

Gracie got very brave and started swimming with only floaties on her arms, and then she started diving off the side of the pool. She is turning into an excellent swimmer considering she has never had lessons.

Uncle Robert must have been giving Gracie some pointers!

Swim Ella, swim!

Deena fixed us an awesome supper: steak, roasted vegetables, salad with homemade dressing and for dessert...Creme Brulee. We were swimming and Robert told Gracie, "Aunt Deena made Creme Brulee for dessert." Gracie got excited and replied with, "Yea!!!!" Uncle Robert asked, "Have you ever had Creme Brulee?" And Gracie said, "Nooooooo." It was pretty funny. She knew it must be special, and she was right. It was delicious! She ate every bite. Thank you Robert and Deena!!!!

Oh My Goodness...500!!!!

"500 what?", you might be asking yourself. Well a few weeks ago I noticed that I was rapidly approaching my 500th post. It seems impossible that I have had 500 things to blog about during the last 3 years. Some of the posts were about nothing of any great importance, but this blog has started to become something of a memory book for our family. We will always be able to look back at it and remember when we did this or that. I'm not sure who even reads it anymore, and it doesn't matter. I do it mostly for our extended family since none of them live in Macon and also for myself. I may not have time to ever complete fancy scrapbooks for my kids, but we will have at least the last 3 years documented. So for now I am caught up, but not for long. Stay tuned for an obscene number of pictures from our trip to Disney World!

Fourth of July 2010

Gracie was totally thrilled to be celebrating the 4th of July. Not because she has a good grasp on what it's all about, but because it meant we would be seeing some great fireworks.

Silly goof! I guess I can't complain since she usually behaves nicely for the camera. Now her sister on the other hand...

Dad decided to kick back and relax during dessert. Mom's yummy strawberry pie is sooo good in the summer.

Our littlest firecracker! Ella has a very explosive temperament from time to time.

Who taught Ella to behave this poorly for the camera? All I wanted was one nice smiley picture.

She was looking at everyone like, "Are you guys getting a kick out of this?"

Everyone got to use one of Gracie's sparklers. Nana liked hers!

Ella did not like hers. We couldn't ever get her to light it. She's quite timid around fireworks of any kind!

Nana Kaser is always a good sport and she enjoyed her sparkler, too!

Poor Ella was exhausted from being terrified of fireworks. This was taken after we got back from Moberly's display at the park. I ended up going to the van with her because they were disturbing her so greatly. After they ended we headed back to my parent's house to pick up our things and their neighbors were doing some very big and loud fireworks that got her worked up again. Nana was good at calming her down in the rocking chair.

Ella's not asleep, she just squeezed her eyes shut when the fireworks got too loud.

Cherish the Moment

This morning the girls pulled the couch cushions onto the floor and sat as close as possible to each other to watch cartoons. These moments are wonderful, and we are fortunate to see our girls loving on each other a lot throughout the day. However, when they turn on each other, it is so ugly it scares me! So therefore, I try to cherish each sweet little moment they have with each other and now I am documenting it so that when Gracie is 16 and Ella is 12 they will remember they did used to like each other! (Hopefully they never reach the stage where they totally dislike each other, but just in case I'll keep posting random acts of kindness!)

While the Parents Were Away...

While we were at Kansas City for the Cardinal's fiasco against the Royals the kiddos were at Papa and Nana's house. Mom bought a pool that was just the right size for her patio and the girls (and even Papa) had fun swimming. (Well, except for that moment when Dad realized he had left his hearing aids in and was thoroughly soaked from splashing! Never fear...they worked the next day!) As you can see, Gracie still has a sizable hole in her mouth where are teeth are still missing. It takes a while for them to show up, huh?!

Our dark little Indian girl, Ella, loves to be in the water. She browned right up this summer, with minimal exposure and lots of sunscreen. She's a Doolin!

It's Goggle-Girl! What a ham!

Yep, Gracie still likes to pose!

Believe it or not, this pool looks nicer than the pool at that "fine motel" Brent and I were staying at! :-)

It looks like somebody is asking for trouble!

All dolled up for church the next day. I'm guessing it was raining since they are donning umbrellas!

Thanks for watching the girls, Dad and Mom. Thanks also for taking some pictures so we could see what you guys did while we were gone! They had a lot of fun and will eagerly await their next overnighter.

Fishing and a Picnic

The girls wanted to go fishing tonight, so we decided to pack a picnic for supper and just make an evening of it. Gracie spied some geese and decided to chase them for a while. She claimed she wanted to give them crackers, but she was approaching them at a dead run!

Notice the geese are not running toward Gracie to eat her crackers. It's probably a good thing one of them didn't turn around and attack or she may have been a victim of a goose stampede.

I tried to give the advice of approaching the geese slowly and quietly and it worked much better. They even let Ella get pretty close, but strangely enough, they weren't hungry. I think they had been hanging out at the nearby ball field and probably had been well fed during the games that were going on.

Some day Ella will learn to at least make a pleasant face for the camera! Since the fish weren't biting I walked the girls up to a small park near the lake so they could play. This allowed Brent to fish in peace and quiet, but it didn't really help him catch any fish.

Is that a monkey I see??? Oh, no...it's just Gracie.

Ella is a little too brave at playgrounds. No wonder she has already had a broken bone in her short life!

We finally went home without any fish. It was still a beautiful evening to be out as a family. We are really enjoying having Brent home more often now that school is out. In July he will be home all day! Hooray!!!

Cards vs. Royals

Brent and I headed to Kansas City yesterday ALONE! Ahh...it was wonderful. It didn't even matter that we ended up in a dive of a hotel where we were scared to even exit our room until the sun came up again! :-) Those are the experiences memories are made of! We have almost forgotten how to drive anywhere without reaching into the backseat to get a coloring book out, hand someone a drink/snack, pick up a dropped toy, etc. It was also nice to listen to the radio and talk without having a Disney DVD blaring from the rear of the van. Now don't get me wrong, we missed our kids and were more than happy to pick them up from Grandpa and Nana, but it was enjoyable to have a little "down time."

The Royals really do a have a beautiful stadium. Even though we were there to root for the Cardinals it was impossible to overlook all the awesome things the Royals have going for them.

We had great seats. This is a picture from our seats without any kind of zoom lens. That's just how close we were!

The tickets and this weekend away was part of Brent's Father's Day present. He enjoyed it even though the Cardinals lost "Royal-y!"