Surprise!!!

I love surprises. In my almost 33 years of life, no one has every really been able to surprise me. I've always figured things out or heard it through the grapevine. Not this time. Thanks to my baby sister and my amazing husband, the surprise went off without a hitch. I did not know anything as my sister stalled and lied through her teeth so we wouldn't arrive to early at the restaurant. I defnintely had no idea that when I walked in I would be greeted by my girlfriends and my mom! I was in total shock. What an incredible surprise. The laughs and stories are still carrying me through this weekend. Thank you to my mom for patiently waiting at the restaurant to make sure that we would be able to get right in on a busy friday night. Thank you to my sister for your effort in getting everyone together to celebrate. Thank you to Karen, Denise, Michelle, Amie, Johanna, and Christina for giving me an evening I'll never forget. And thank you to my awesome husband for working so hard to make it all happen without me knowing. You are all priceless!!

Poor Jordan

Well, we started out the day with a fun filled trip to Bradley Park to meet up with some of our friends. It was so much fun for about an hour. Then we decided to go for a walk around the lake and get the kids nice and hungry for our picnic lunch. About 1/2 way around the lake, tragedy struck. Jordan was headed down a hill on a long board when his body decided to go it alone. He came off the board to the slight left of the board and slid for about another 5 feet down the paved path. NOT GOOD. He immediately got up SCREAMING when he finally came to a stop, and started running towards me. I was already running towards him. My poor baby was just panicked. (That would not be the last time panic hit him before all was said and done!) He was pretty scraped up from his elbow to his fingers. Unfortunately his ring and pinky finger took a hard hit. His hip was also ripped up a bit but that didn't matter since the hand was much worse. We quickly figured out that we were not going to be able to continue our wonderful playdate and picnic.

We headed home and the real panic began. I'm going to spare you all the gorey details and just let you know that it took about an hour from the time we got home to get to a normal state. There was a lot of crying, screaming, running from mom, hyperventalating, and more. It was a doozy! We are all wrapped up now and we are praying that the antiseptic ointment will be enough to ward off infection as there is no way anyone is getting close enough to that boy's hand without knocking him out first.

My brave boy is tuckered out now. So is his momma. To top it all off, I find out that Karen had brought birthday plates and a present and maybe cupcakes (I told her not to tell me if she did cause that would be so sad) to celebrate my birthday with the kids today. But we didn't get that far. Oh well, it gives us the excuse to do it again really soon.

SIGH!!!

Watching them grow...

Mikayla has had the priviledge of growing with one of her good friends, Abby. They were born 2 months apart and have shared life for the last nine years. It has been so much fun to watch these two grow up side by side. Even when we were all the way in Indiana Abby got to come out and make some memories over there with Mikayla. I watch when they are together and it is such a blessing. They truely love to see each other every single time they are together. On Tuesday, Abby celebrated her 9th birthday and Mikayla had a blast at "her grandmother's HUGE house. It's like a maze mom!" exclaimed Mikayla when we left. Who knows what life will bring for these two precious girls but what a blessing to be sharing some of that life together.



Speaking of growing, here are some new pics of our garden. It is doing great. No pumpkins yet, but it looks like there might be a couple coming soon. We're starting to get those curly cues off the vine in a couple of places. We'll see!! And for those of you that know about me and Matt's competition of the biggest pumpkin, the playing field is still even! Yes, Matt does have pumpkins but those are his cheater cheater pumpkin eater ones. He got starters (which I wish I would have too!) so those don't count. He has to grow them from scratch! And last checked on Saturday, no pumpkins for him either from the seed. So we'll see. It might be who ends up with the longest vine or something!!

Frogs, Bread fights, and Grandma on Jordan's Bike

Well, as you can see from the title, our nature walk today turned out to be quite an eventful trip! We were greeted at the onset by a bunch of frogs in the pond. These are all the tadpoles that Aunt Chrissy would catch with the kids just a couple of months ago.






Then it was on to find and feed the ducks. Unfortunately, they were all gone today. Not one duck around. BUMMER. So what to do, what to do....well, have a bread fight of course!! (Grandma's and Chrissy's idea) So there they were three laughing kids and two crazy adults hurling bread and old blueberry muffins at each other. I wish the pictures could talk. It was HILLARIOUS!! We were all starting to walk away when it was over, when Mikayla (kind of shocked) mumbles under her breath to Chrissy and me, "Grandma threw a whole muffin at my head!" I could not stop laughing.







Then it was on to the park for some good ol' fashion playtime. Isabella would call out, "Hoist the anchor!". Then we would hear, "The anchor is in, set sail". It was refreshing to see them playing together nicely. BUT....that didn't last too long before there was new pushing and yelling at the water fountain. So it was obvious that it was time to head back when all of a sudden I hear, "Stephanie turn around...LOOK!" So I turn around and look to find my mother riding Jordan's bike to the fountain. Words can not express. She even decided to do it again on the trail but this time Mikayla reminded her that she needed to wear the helmet!







Good times today. I love the lazy days of summer when you can just relax and be. Hope you are all finding ways to enjoy the day today.