Behind on Some Posts

I haven't been keeping up on all my posts because I've been waiting to download some pics. Last Thursday my college roomie Gretchen, or "Gilligan" as most of you know her, came over for a play date with us. She has two kids now, Marina or "Rina" who's about 6 months older than Riley, and Eddie who is just about 6 months...I think "Rina" actually goes by Mari, but Riley kept calling her Rina over and over...They had fun playing outside for a little bit between storms...We don't get to see them enough so we had a great time just catching up!

Note: Here would also be a good time to mention that Riley has her own term for what the kids are eating here: Po-piss-cles!

Prayers for Baby Frankie

Hey y'all. It looks like Baby Frankie will have his surgery today after some delay. If you want to keep checking his progress, his mom, Meg or "Fred" as I know her, is updating a caringbridge site.

Extra prayers please for a successful surgery and fast recovery so they can go home to their new house soon! Take care and hug your kids please!

Duck Soup Softball!

As many of you know, I'm the volunteer co-coordinator for the Duck Soup Softball Fiasco along with my friend Mandy. We are in recruiting mode for the tournament in August. If any of you have some time the weekend of the 23-24 we would love help with selling T-Shirts, concessions, face painting and burger running. Have you been to Duck Soup before? You really should! It's a crazy softball tourney where we play in costume and trophies are awarded for things like "First Bee Sting of the Tourney" or "Cutest Pet"...rules are wacky, people watching is AWESOME and we'd love to have you there to be part of the fun. Volunteers get discounts and free food!!! It's a great family-friendly event and proceeds go towards college scholarships for local high school kids and we do a Toys for Tots drive too!

Note: Here's what you might see at the soup! don't know what happened to that last picture. Sorry, Allison is a Full boxed present and Stina is a Pumpkin. That was from our "holiday" year. We have great things in mind for this year!

TIGF

With temps forecasted in the mid 90's and heat index temps in the 100+ range, I'm so glad our AC is working today! We were having some issues with it earlier in the week, but Josh seems to have fixed it! Yeah Handy Man Hubby!

Misc. Stuff

I wanted to post this picture yesterday, but I didn't get any good one's so I had to wait till my family sent out their pics from yesterday. This is the new moms and their kids. We should have had Annie with Dan on her lap and Mom with all three of us, but the couch isn't big enough;)

Also, here's a pic of my parents new deck. I know it's not that exciting for most of you, but I love how it turned out and they even had a baby gate put on it so the kids can play out there without worrying about them going down the stairs! You should see it with all my mom's flowers, it's a "happy place" for her and it looks awesome in the summer! and it's one of my favorite "bird nerd" hang-outs;)

Yeah for Cousins!

My cousin Dan and his wife Sharis were in town again with their little guy, Ryan and we had a little pizza party so the kids could play together yesterday. Tim and Kerry and the boys had to work, but we had fun with Great Grandma, Uncle "Duck" and Auntie Annie at my parents house along with my sisters and their kiddos. I grew up spending a lot of time with my cousins and I miss that now that Dan is in Chicago, but maybe soon everyone will be back here and we can have more playdates with everyone! I love our get-togethers!

Dark Video

Ok, there is no visual on this video, but it's priceless anyway so I had to post it. This is Riley watching fireworks in our bedroom on the 4th. Our neighborhood is filled with big booms all summer, but it was a 2 hour, non-stop show on Friday.