Oddessey, watermelon anniversary

Our 13th anniversary date night out to see "Date Night" with Steve Carrell and Tina Fey...soo funny! It was even in theater #13.


Found a shirt that looks alot like Mom's old "watermelon dress".




Our new van with lots of extra room and doors that open all by themselves and a DVD player. There are so many in this town, when we come out of a store or church to the parking lot, we have a hard time telling which one is ours.

Introducing ...Jewel

Welcome to our family little one.

Georgia Aquarium

Looking for Nemo and Dory

In front of the piranha tank...yes, that's a nervous smile on Jake

Yeah for Grandpa!

Jake, Capt'n of the shrimp boat

Albino Aligator....looked like it was carved out of ivory.

This week we were lucky enough to see my Dad. He was visiting Atlanta for a conference. So, we headed down and played for a day at the Georgia Aquarium.

It was a much better choice than staying out in the heat 93 degrees with a much higher heat index. We loved this aquarium!

The whole thing was divided into River animals, cold water creatures, ocean life, tropical fish and a few others. We got to touch sting rays, sea anenomes, starfish and shrimp. Yikes! We saw beluga wales and shark whales and sharks...it was a huge place. My favorite was the Barrier Reef tropical fish. We found Dory and Nemo and Nemo's dad and Scar and all the other characters from the disney movie Nemo. There were brilliant and bold colored fish everywhere.

The kids liked it but, Emily asked me after the first display "I'm done looking at fish, can we find something else to look at?"

There were very funny otters fighting over toys, very stiff penguins, and some sea creatures I'd never seen or even heard of before.

It was great to see you Dad! Thanks for feeding us and letting us share a few hours with you.

Happy Father's Day!

A room with a view and one without

Tara's tape bunny she made after ripping off the paint tape.

The first coat of primer

putting on the fresh pear

Emily's cupboard

Tara and Emily have shared a room ever since Jacob arrived in our family. But, it seems there has come THE time to make a permanent evening separation. So, in order for both to have their own space, we made a few adjustments.

We moved out all the things in our storage room....yes, quite comparable to the cupboard under the stairs (but, a happy place for one little 8 year old.) There is enough room for the bed, 3 shelf bookshelf and dresser and trunk.

We have to still share the closet...but, seems to be less of an issue now.

Tara's room is now repainted (she does not prefer pink).....she chose "fresh pear". It was quite the ordeal.....they are all old enough to 'help' paint...so, I followed and directed and caught the paint as it dripped and tried to show my support and enthusiasm. Emily's comment the second day was "this is a much better day Mom, you haven't yelled at us."

The tricky part of the move was moving the desk from upstairs into Tara's room. We had to take the door off entirely, take the front drawer off the desk, then take the edging off the door and then shove really hard. It got stuck twice after that....but, we wiggled alot. Good thing we don't care about that end of the house.

Now at night, there many hugs and "I love you"s shouted across the hall rather than repeated shouts of "leave me alone!"

Our "firsts" from the garden

The first sign that our garden is ready with vegetables???......regular rabbit visitors.

Well, we finally have them.....dinner items from our garden. The corn is taller than all of us.

Gene let the first cucumber chill in the fridge for an hour and then promptly ate it.

We had a spagetti squash, 3 zucchinis and beans are ready to pick (but who wants to spend that much time outside working? Not me.

Our first tomato came in..

.but, it disappeared too. Here's photos of the first few of 2010