Some Old and Some New

The other day I was browsing pictures on the computer and I found some that I never posted.  So here they are.  Some are from a month or so ago and some are more recent. 

1.  This is a student wife whose husband just graduated and she looks exactly like my sister, Becky.  I had to get a picture with her at one of our functions. 

2.  More brotherly snuggly love.

3.  I love a baby in a camo hat and pajamas.  :)

4.  One of about 20 attempts at a Mother's Day picture.  Oh, I love my boys!

5.  Last-minute camping at a posh RV park in Bend.  It was Memorial Day weekend and by the time we made the decision to go it was too late to make reservations at an actual campground.  But the RV park wasn't so bad.  Only bad thing was no fires at each site (there was one big community bonfire kind of far away) so we did s'mores on the Coleman stove.

6.  Emmett loves to not have pants on.  He does have undies on, though!

7.  I ran a 5K (only my second since Reid... I know... I'm slow at gearing back up) at 5,000 feet elevation with hills in the 50 degree drizzling rain and actually improved my time by 3 minutes! I was very proud of myself, seeing as how when I started my goal was to improve my time and then halfway through I changed my goal to "just finish without walking!"  Haha!  Then when I finished I saw that my good friend Alexis's almost whole family pretty much dominated the whole 5K!  They were in the paper and everything.  Her 11-year-old got first place, her 9-year-old got third, her husband got 4th, and Alexis got 9th and was the first woman to finish (and she just had her fourth baby three months ago)!!  Wow!! They are amazing!  I was 36th, for the record, and the 11th woman to finish.  Haha! Alexis pointed this out the next day to make me feel better.  :)  Just kidding... I felt really great about my time and was in awe of my very fit friends!  It was really fun! 

In the second picture I was almost to the finish line and trying hard not to bust my bum coming down a slippery hill.  It was a very pretty run through the woods, even with the rain.

8.  Playing with Daddy on the couch on a lazy weekend morning.

 

Daddy can fix anything!

9.  I tried to take some posed shots of the boys outside.  Many, many outtakes and then the one good one has Emmett with a creepy look!  :) And I was just praying that J would keep hold of Reid so he didn't fall off the table!

 10.  More posed picture attempts on the couch the other day when the boys were all wearing the matching shirts Aunt Becky bought for them.  I wasn't able to get any with all three boys looking and all eyes open.  These were the best.  And I seriously had like 10 pictures just like #2 with J and E's eyes closed!  Grrr!

11.  I guess that little balance bike was really good for Emmett... We bought him this new bike for his birthday a few weeks ago and after maybe 4 days of riding with training wheels Phil took them off and E has been a bike-riding maniac just like J ever since.  It was kind of amazing to see how great his balance was right off the bat from that little bike that he cruised around on forever.

IMG 0789 from Heather G on Vimeo.

Sorry about the frustration with Reid at the end.  Reid had unknowingly pushed his 4-wheeler into Emmett's path when E wasn't paying attention.  Sigh.  Emmett's daily frustration with Reid is so frustrating for me, too!

12.  And speaking of Reid... he is so, so fearless.  When we went camping in Bend the other weekend we visited the awesome public pool there.  Reid kept climbing in and out of the pool and was completely walking/diving off the edge of the step whenever he would get back in.  Luckily Phil was there to save him in the water and I was on the shore keeping track of him.  It was crazy!  He actually loved going underneath the water. You can see J and E having an absolute blast in the background of this video.  That pool is so great!

MVI 3436 from Heather G on Vimeo.

Big News

I don't know if anyone reads this blog who doesn't already know this, but I wanted to share anyway.  We are MOVING!  Back to...

Well, we don't know if we are going to live at the beach or in town yet, but we are just so excited to be going "home" to Florida... as much as we never thought we would think of Florida as "home," it really has become that for us.  

And while we will really miss our friends out here and the gorgeous summers (and pretty good autumns), we can't wait for the beach, that amazing water, being within driving distance of both of our families and our alma mater (FSU), warmer weather and more things to do for the boys, and lots of other things.  

Phil has taken a staff (desk) job at Tyndall Air Force Base, but will go to another base (maybe back to KF) every 6 weeks or so to fly for a week.  So he still gets to fly the F-15 a little bit, which he's happy about.  We feel really good about this decision, but it's still a little scary to make such a big change in our lives, especially when things are pretty good out here.  We just agreed that we would do what we thought was best for our family right now and not worry about the future or look back and obsess about what we should have done differently.

We haven't gotten official orders yet, but have heard that we will probably be leaving here around the beginning of August.  As of right now we are going to keep our camper and camp on the drive down, which we hope will be easier than lugging all of our stuff into a different hotel each night.  I'm a little nervous about this drive across the country with three young boys, but I'm sure it will be fine, right??  :)  Hooray for a new adventure!

Fishing

A few weekends ago it was free fishing day at the fish hatcheries in Oregon.  Basically you can take your kiddos under 12 to the hatchery and let them drop a pole into the water and catch a fish without having to have a license or anything.  I can't believe we haven't done this before... it was really fun!  We drove up fairly early in the morning with my friend Michelle and her girls.  The hatchery workers gave each kiddo a pole and some worms and then Phil loaded up the hooks and we plunked the line into the water and literally within a few seconds each kiddo was reeling in a fish!  A few times it took a couple casts to get a bite, but there were so many fish in the stream that a bite usually happened pretty quickly.  Here are some pictures from the day...

This is a picture of all of the fish in the stream.  Not sure if you can see them that well, but there were TONS!

Reid wanted to get in that water so badly...

Here's a hatchery worker holding Jackson's fish... when they saw that a kiddo had a fish on the workers would run over with a net to help them bring it to shore.

Jackson did not want to touch the fish... you can see him trying to be brave in this picture!

Watching the fish get whacked in the head...

Jackson got to go twice to catch "Reid's" fish...

MVI_3491.AVI from Heather G on Vimeo.

Aaaggghh!  Reid escaped!  Here he's headed for the water before I cut him off.  I was official picture-taker and Reid-protector....

One of the rules of this day was that you had to take your fish home with you.  So we ended up with five rainbow trout in our group...

Happy baby!

Everyone checking out the fishies again...

When we got home Phil went behind our fence to clean the fish.  The kiddos really liked watching that!

Aren't they pretty?  Phil marinated them with something and then put them on our grill to smoke a bit and they actually came out really yummy.  I thought they would be super fishy tasting but they weren't.

Last Days of School

Here are some pictures from Jackson's last few days of preschool.  Although as of right now we are going to have him go to kindergarten at this preschool next year and hold off on public school kindergarten for another year, so it really doesn't feel like the end of preschool yet.  :)

Emmett and I went to J's school a few weeks ago to celebrate Jackson's summer birthday.  Phil was able to take the morning off of work to take Reid to the doctor for his well-visit and it was nice for me to spend time with just J and E.  Here are the three summer birthday kiddos in his class...

Emmett was SO excited to be able to go to school with Jackson...

They celebrated with chili dogs and chips...

...and cupcakes.  :)

Emmett loved wearing the birthday hat, whereas J tried his on really quickly and then wanted it off right away.  :)

Then a few days later it was the last day of school...

Such a big boy!  He's so sweet... I just want to eat him up!

 Just to compare... here he is on the first day of school this year.  ;)

And then a few days after that it was "graduation" time.  His class sang a few songs and did hand motions, but of course our little J just stood there the whole time and didn't sing a bit!  Phil and I were cracking up.  He is so much like Phil in that respect... Phil never, ever sings at church.  :)

When they announced each kiddo's name they said what he/she wanted to be when they grew up.  Jackson said "a pilot".  :)  One little girl said she wanted to be a Mommy and that made me almost want to cry! So sweet!  Here is J with his teachers...

Notice all of the grandparents and extended family in the background?  We were the only ones there with just our little family.  Kinda sad.  :(

But then this brightens me up....

Oh, how I love my wonderful firstborn son!

The ceremony was at 7:00, which is Reid's bedtime, so he was a little crazy-pants the whole time.  He sat for a little bit at the beginning while we bribed him with food, but then Phil and I were taking turns chasing him around outside most of the time.

Can't believe my boys are getting so big so fast!