Envelope Please

Last night, I watched the Primetime Emmys. I DVR'd it so I could fast forward through the speeches of people I have never heard of, the lifetime achievement award, commercials, etc. I really think that's the way to watch the Emmys and the Oscars. I love when the nominees have been announced and the presenters are opening that little envelope ready to reveal who will get the coveted award. You can almost see the nominees holding their collective breaths just waiting. I wonder what it would feel like to have your name read out loud, being acknowledged for something that you put your heart and soul into.

When I was younger, I would watch the Oscars and then practice my own little acceptance speech. "I would like to thank my mom and dad who always knew I could do it, my brother and sisters, my husband (Kirk Cameron), my orthodontist..." Guess that my 4 years of high school drama didn't bring me to any award shows, oh well. A girl can dream.

But since we are speaking of envelopes, I have a white, unassuming little envelope sitting right in front of me. The envelope is sealed AND stapled shut. This envelope will not be opened for at least another 20 weeks. What is in this envelope? A little glimpse of our future is in this envelope. This envelope contains an ultrasound picture that will tell us whether we will be having a boy or a girl. Eeeh! The suspense!!

All we know right now is that this little bambino or bambina is growing on target (21 weeks on Wednesday) and is nice and healthy.

In the meantime, well, we'll just have to hold our collective breaths until this little baby presents itself in January.

To answer some of your questions-the envelope will remain sealed until after the baby is born. We have a picture because we hadn't decided whether or not we were going to find out-plus Dan wasn't there, so if we did find out I would want to find out together. The technician had me turn my head while she checked "it" out. She printed out the picture and double sealed the envelope so we could find out if we wanted to. I was tempted to just shred the envelope, but I know that I would want the picture for the scrapbook that I will never do someday.

I think there's a garden in there somewhere

This is what happens when you leave a garden untended for 5 weeks...

Then after about 1 1/2 hours later on a sunny KS morning...

It's still a pathetic little garden, but now at least you can see it. I knew there were tomatoes in there somewhere!

A "hug" from daddy

This morning Landon woke up on the wrong side of the bed, er, I mean, crib. He wasn't what you would call a happy camper. It seemed that everything was wrong from his shorts to his cereal. All through breakfast, bringing Annika to school and back he was just being a stinker. He was crying and wailing for "daddy" the whole time. Of course, the one thing I can't give him, he wants. He was continuing his fit while I was starting the laundry. Even the appeal of helping with the laundry couldn't appease his little soul. And since one of his favorite things is helping with the laundry I knew he was truly upset. While sorting we came across one of Dan's t-shirts that I had slept in the night before...my T's aren't fitting too well these days. Anyway, once he saw that shirt, he stopped mid-wail and said, "Daddy's shirt?"

Light bulb above head moment! "Yes," I said. "Do you want to wear it?"

I think if he could have said "Heck YEAH!" He would have.

The tears stopped and Landon got a little hug from daddy by the way of a t-shirt.

(Note the red eyes from crying)

Here's my happy guy

Big day for a big girl!

Today Annika is turning six and it's the first day of school! Right now, she is loving it. But, I can foresee in the future, like around junior high, it won't be as exciting to have your birthday the same day that school starts. We made cupcakes and brought them for her treat. It's also a way we like to make friends...bribe them with sugar. ;)

The big 6 year old!!

Special surprise lunch at Applebee's. The other day she was telling me how much she missed Applebee's (even though we have only been there once in her life). I thought it would be a fun lunch for her birthday and the first day of school...99cent kids meals on Mondays are an added bonus! (Even though she is going full-day, it's half days for the first week).

Happy Birthday sweetie! We love your sweet spirit and kind heart. You are a big girl who loves to read, color pictures, and make lists (we can thank your daddy for that). We pray that you will love Jesus even more and seek to glorify Him always.

Happy Birthday and Happy Back to School!!

So much for updates!

Sorry that I didn't post any updates as promised. Instead of dragging it out, here are some snippets of our 5 week stay in Southern California.

What's a visit to SoCal without eating some sand?

We were able to see some ocean wonders at Sea World (however, one of the highlights of our trip was seeing dolphins in the wild at the beach in Coronado. Very cool!).

Got to spend some time with Minnie and her friends at Disneyland.

Monkeyed around with the wildlife at the San Diego Zoo.

My mom's dog Lucy was a hit. She is an incredibly patient and tolerant Black Lab.

There was A LOT of pool time, just hanging out, and being together as a family.

We are now home (after another grueling 26 hour road trip) and getting ready for school to start on Monday!

Leave of Absense?

Thank you for your patience while I took a little haitus from blogging. It's not that we haven't had anything going on that's for sure. I just needed some time before I felt up to posting. But, sabbitical is over and now for some catch up. Soon after I posted the previous post we were off to California. This post and the posts to come will be about our adventures.

I knew we were going to be spending some weeks in California this summer, we just thought it would be under different circumstances and for a much shorter time. God is good and we were able to get all the nitty gritty details thrown together so Dan, the kids and I could all drive out to California. A mere 27 hour drive. Piece of cake!! It actually went extremely well. Dan drove through the night and we checked into a hotel during the day. We got a hotel in Albuquerque, NM at 7 a.m. on Saturday after driving all night. Thankfully they had a great suite ready for us so Dan could sleep. We were even able to take advantage of the free breakfast at the hotel. While Dan was sleeping, the kids and I explored a children's museum in ABQ.

Just outside of Albuquerque, Landon thought Dan had done enough driving and it was his turn. (No worries we were stopped at a gas station).


The kids could have watched the marbles in the maze at the Children's museum all day long.


The museum blew Taryn away (har har).


After some hours of sleep and naps by all we checked out on Saturday night at 8 p.m. The desk clerk did look at us a bit funny. After an uneventful drive through New Mexico and Arizona we arrived at my mom's place at 7 a.m. on Sunday. The kids were star travelers. Annika and Taryn slept in their seats great. Landon was done with it by 2:30 a.m. on Sunday morning. Can't blame him really...he's a tummy sleeper like his daddy. Not going to happen in a carseat.

More on our adventure to come...