Just For Missy...

... and thanks Erika for taking such beautiful pictures!

A Monumental Day...

..so I should have written this blog on Tuesday as THAT was the monumental day of firsts for us...not today...but I had procrastinator writers syndrome...so here it is...

On Tuesday Sam came running in from the waterslide shouting "mommy, mommy, I have lost my tooth". It turns out that indeed Sam's very first tooth had come out and boy was he proud...it was kind of a sad moment for me though as I remember that exact tooth was the first tooth he ever got when he was a baby...another realization that my kids are growing up fast... so he put it under the bed in a ziplock bag and waited for the tooth fairy to come. "I think I will get $10 for this tooth mommy," Sam said.. I had to gently let him know that times are hard for the tooth fairy and that she only gives $1 per tooth! So Dave and I scrummage 4 quarters together as we had no cash on us at the time (typical - why couldn't he have lost the tooth on payday), and Dave crept upstairs late at night to do the "switch"... the next morning, Sam came down and was jumping for glee saying that the tooth fairy had left him $0.75 cents! I told him to go upstairs and look again as the tooth fairy always leaves $1, but alas, no last quarter was ever found... we still don't know what happened to it...maybe the tooth fairy really did come and took the money instead of the tooth! Sam was happy though...

To top off our monumental day of firsts, Abby started to read 2 letter words all by herself... a very proud moment for me as a mom to see my 4 yr old reading with no help at all...on to the 3 letter words now...good job Abby!

4th July 08

So the 4th July is a funny celebration for me... If I had a dollar for every person that asks "so do you celebrate the 4th July?", I would be rich... I want to say 'listen, the yanks beat the Brits in the war...but it was a looong time ago ya know'... but most of the time I just hold my tongue and say a polite "of course I do" type of comment... seriously though, like I would be harboring a grudge that America gained independence from Britain... the U.S. wouldn't be the magnificant country that it is today if it was under Biritsh rule.

Anyway, we had a lot of laughs and giggles at Jarretts parents house with the Lassens and Golds, playing a Pirates of the Carribean dice game and playing tricks on Erika... All 10 (plus 2 babies) of the kids played really well together, apart from Sam getting 'shanked' (by accident) by Colby. I have never heard him scream quite so much, I thought he was dying and when I ran over to the clubhouse to see what was wrong and expected to see blood gushing from somewhere, it turns out that Sam was screaming with embarrassment as he had just had his swim shorts pulled down! Kids....

So after eating way too much, we roped Erika to take some family pics of us (which she did quite obligingly as she loves to take pics... especially of us as we are so photogenic, lol ;-), see below. After leaving the Golds, we headed home for smores (a Graham cracker, chocolate and roasted marshmellow sandwich for all you Brits out there) on our firepit and watched our neighbors fireworks which was cool... so we had a very mellow day really, just as I think 4th July should be...