Mickayla's Birthday party
Mickayla had an art birthday party. We were redoing the down stairs bedroom so I threw down some tarps on the floor and set up the tables for the kids to paint. They had a great time. Only half of the kids came that Mickayla invited(thank goodness). It turned out just fine, even if it was very noisy. The kids painted for an hour and then we went up stairs to make pizza and decorate cup cakes. Dad (Kim) and Candice were a great help with giving the kids the bread dough to flatten out and then the supplies to make their pizzas. I know it was a challenge for both of them to put up with the energy level of these kids. But they sure made the party go great!

Candice helped light everyone's candles on their cupcakes before we sang happy birthday to Mickayla.

All in all Mickayla seemed to have a great birthday party. I am glad I am done with parties for 2 years!

Sunday after noon Croquet game
Erin, Rod, Reed, Blake, Ari, and Mickayla played an inventive game of Croquet one Sunday. They had very unusual traps and obsticles. We had a trench dug from the porch to the shed that was about a foot and a half deep at least. When they would knock someone's ball out of play they would try to hit over that trench. They seemed to have a great time.

Will enjoyed being out side with everyone. He loves being outside!!!!!!

Blake is giving his great wisdom on the game to those playing. The wisdom I kept hearing was "hey, you skipped my turn. Reed you are messing us up."

Blake's girl friend Ari hitting her ball through a branch bridge.

Erin hitting her ball through a branch bridge.

Erin's boyfriend Rod getting ready for a great shot.

Erin is giving Reed advise how to hit his ball. But you may notice she doesn't have the head on her stick. I think my advise would be put a head on your stick before you hit the ball.

Bad Grandma

Grandma was running late with lunch one day. William goes down for a nap at 1:00. I usually give him lunch at 11:30. Well I didn't get him his lunch until 1:00 this day. You can see what happened.

William just couldn't wait any longer for his nap. Poor thing!

Day at the Zoo with William and Mickayla

Mickayla and Will loved the Monkeys. The gorillas were not Will's favorite. He was standing by a window like the one they are standing by in this picture, there were gorillas out in the distance. He was very interested in them. There where a lot of kids standing by the window so William did not see the gorilla right in front of him. When the other kids moved he saw he was standing at the foot of a gorilla which was right up next to the glass. His eyes got huge and then he turned and ran to me. He became a gorilla himself, he climbed up me as fast as he could. He was scared to death. He would not get down from my arms for anything. I had to carry him until we left the gorilla display. Mickalya on the other hand loved the gorilla display, but for Keith's sake I won't say what interested her the most. I'll just say that she told her brothers all about it at dinner. At which point Blake said, "if Keith was here I would say, this is not my fault."

Mickayla and Will loved the bird display. We went in a room that the birds would fly around your head. At certain times of the day you can hold a stick of seeds up to feed the birds. They will land on your arm and eat out of your hand. We were there at the right time to do that. But it was fun any how. By the way, no bird did their business on our heads!

By the end of the day Will was pushing the back pack in the stroller.

Trees being taken out
This is the large crane that the tree company brought in for removing 5 of our trees. This picture was taken after it had broken down and they moved it over infront of Vickie's house to work on it while they brought a different crane in to finish the job.

This is the crane lifting a chunk of tree from the side of the house.

The large crane broke down after removing 4 of the 5 trees. They had to bring in a smaller crane to take out the last tree, which was the biggest tree. They had to pull the crane up on the lawn. You can imagine what that did to our lawn! Needless to say we will have to replant our yard. Oh well. No matter where the crane was parked one problem did exsist, all of the logs went over our neighbors house, not ours. We hadn't talked to the neighbors about this because we thought the logs would be going over our house. Janie and the two little girls were home sick with the flu. I am sure it was a little scary to have these huge logs going over their house. Thank goodness nothing went wrong.

After all the trees were cut down the logs were left in the road in front of our house. They were not picked up by the logging truck until 9 a.m. the next morning. I am sure the neighbors loved us for that. This picture shows the first half of the load of logs. He had to extend the bars on the bed to hold all the logs. It was really interesting to see him load the logs. One of my neighbors mentions that this guy would do really well with the grabbing claw at Chuck E. Cheese.