Cheer!

Katie had her first chance to cheer on the SQHS football team today! They had a scrimmage and the cheerleaders were there to cheer them on and to practice their cheers before the big game on Friday night! It was also picture day so I sent McKenzie along with the camera to capture these great moments! It is going to be a fun football season, this is something our whole family enjoys doing every Friday night!

Out of the Boat!

We live right by a lake so of course we have to have a boat! I enjoy going out in the boat riding around, watching other people go tubing or wake boarding, but I prefer to stay in the boat! I can work the orange flag with the best of them. My niece and her family came for a visit and since our boat has not been working all summer we finally got it running enough to take it out for an afternoon. Part of my hesitation on getting out of the boat is that it is not 100 degrees here and the water is pretty cold so why get wet when I am perfectly comfortable not getting wet, and the other part of me is chicken! Well, I decided to be brave and I went out on the tube with my niece! I know looking at the picture I look as young as she does but in reality I am 12 years older than her! We had fun screaming and dangling our feet into the water as we were pulled behind the boat holding on for dear life. So now I can mark that off my list of things I should have fun doing but have been too chicken to try!

Pretending that we are tough and that our arms wont hurt the next day!

Going really super fast behind the boat! Hanging on for dear life, thus the reason for the sore arms! It was a fun 10 minutes I didn't even get my hair wet!

Summer Time

We only have one more week of summer and then it is back to the grind! We had a family party for Jayden for his birthday he got just what he wanted video games and a really cool remote control flying dragonfly! He was the envy at the park all the little kids were following him around wanting to fly his bug. Too bad I didn't take my camera that day! Ryan was also pretty happy that he got the video games too!


We spent an afternoon out at Larabee State Park climbing on rocks and playing in the sand!

Ryan and Jay had fun digging in the sand at Larabee State Park, if there is dirt around they can be entertained for hours!


Grandma and Grandpa just left today after spending a couple of rainy days with us! Grandma was helping Jayden with his summer time math! Yes, I make my kids do school work during the summer! We had a fun week visiting with them!

Next up my niece, and her hubby and 2 kids will be here tomorrow! We are very excited to see them it has been a long time, hopefully the weather will cooperate with us and we can head to the beach! We have a lot of outdoor activities planned sooo I hope you bring a rain coat! We have had the most perfect weather this summer until this week! Last week we had record breaking temps, in the high 80's this week it is in the high 60's, and major rain! You know it is bad when the kids are at the park and it is 83 degrees out and they are complaining that it is too hot!

Pleasant Surprises

We received news today that the Medika Momba is working on the little kids at the orphanage that means that Gracie is doing better and hopefully will start gaining some weight! The orphanage director has hired an English speaking teacher that will come into the orphanage and teach all the school age children, this is great news they will have learned a few things before we get there in Oct. I know that just the week we spent with Destina she was picking up new words so fast and just eager to learn that this will be so much fun for them to have something to do, and hopefully their little minds will be like sponges and they will soak it up!

On our adoption front we also heard that our file is now at the presidential palace waiting for approval from the president himself before it goes into the court system. This is good news, not excellent, but good! The old way was that it would get submitted to the courts and while in the courts it would have to wait for presidential approval then go back, so by getting this step done first it should speed up the court process once we actually get there. Everything changes there so it is always something new! I am just glad to hear some news that someone is actually looking at our file and that it is going in the right direction, not just sitting in a pile somewhere getting ignored. Anyway it was a good day for information and I'll take as many of those as I can get!

Oh, one more thing, since I posted pictures of Merilee's children on my blog she as returned the favor! If you would like to see a couple of cute pictures of Destina that were taken in Jan. check out her blog it is listed on the left. (Merilee I hope you don't mind and if you do tell me!) They were taken when Destina was missing a front tooth and these are probably some of the earliest pictures we will have of her, no baby pictures of her exist that I know of!

Merilee These Are For You!!

I just met , through email, another mom that is adopting from our Orphanage. When I realized who her children were I looked through my photos and realized I have a bunch of pictures with her kids in them, so here they are enjoy!

Destina and her posse!

How fun it will be to be able to get these 3 together after they come home!

Turning 40 and Still Tacky as Ever!

I will be turning 40 in a little over a month! Go ahead with the over the hill comments I welcome them! I have no hesitation about getting older other than the gray hair, more wrinkles, and expanding waistline, it is great! My 30's were better than my 20's and so I expect great things to happen in my 40's, and they say the 40's are now the new 30's so what could be better!

There is a long standing joke on my side of the family that we (all the kids) inherited our sense of tact from both of our parents! My mom had some classic moments of complete tacky things that she did and said that make me laugh still today! My dad was by far the worst offender, if he thought your hair looked bad he would be the first to point out the "ugly hairdo", if you cooked or baked something he would be the first to tell you it needed more salt or it tasted bad. I really could go on and on about the tacky things that came out of his mouth on a daily basis. We kids learned from the best at how to be completely tacky and offend, not on purpose, anyone around us. We also learned at an early age that if we didn't open our mouths we wouldn't say anything that sounded stupid, or that we might regret, or that didn't come out quite right. People close to me know that I really have good intentions I just don't verbally come across very well. That is why I love blogging and email I get to read and reread and have Scott read to make sure that I am saying what I want to say in the least offending way possible. I really could go on and on but I do have a point to all of this rambling!

As stated above my birthday is just around the corner and there is something that I want for my birthday and I thought this would be a good way to put it out there so there is no confusion about what to get Michelle for her birthday! So I know this is quite tacky but again I have perfected this skill for almost 40 years so what the heck! It is kind of expensive so maybe you all could start a collection and it could be a group gift from all of those out there that love me or mildly sorta like me!
Follow the link below and you will see: Oh P.S. I want the expensive one but those of you who truly know me would have figured that out!

Rocks in the Sun!

Gracie's Up Date!

I just got Gracie's up date and glad to see that she wasn't forgotten! She is smiling and looking happy but look how skinny her ankles are! She is on the Medika Momba and should start to put on a little weight. It says she lost weight she was only 14 lbs when we left in June so hopefully she will benefit from the nutritional supplement and have a few more pounds on her when we get there in Oct! Now if we could just get some good news on our file!!

Up Date on Destina

We got an up-date on Destina today! We are still waiting for Gracie's up-date. I sit anxiously awaiting any news so I was pleasantly surprised this morning when I found the picture up-date in my email this morning. For me getting the up-dates are both exciting and sad. I love seeing that she is smiling and showing a little attitude, she looks happy and healthy, but I miss her and it just brings back the fact that we are still waiting to get into the system and still have a long road ahead. One plus is that she is not wearing the dreaded blue velvet dress! She looks very cute in long sleeves in the middle of the hot Haitian summer! (scroll down for pictures of the dreaded blue dress!)

Kenzie Up Date!

Well since McKenzie has not posted in a while I thought I would do an up date for her! I can't even begin to list all of the places she has been and seen, some of them have been small Podunk places other places have been destination vacation spots! This last week she went to New York City, they rode the train into the city and then took the subway around to hit all of the sites. She had a great day and had so much fun seeing places like the Empire State Building, Times Square, Ground Zero etc. I can't think of a better way to spend the summer than traveling to different places every week working for 2 or 3 days and getting paid.
We are very excited that she will be coming home next Saturday! We got the email confirming her flight details Yeah! I have missed her but have been enjoying hearing about her adventures and living as a young care-free teenager again through her eyes! I am sure she will come home a changed person more responsible, hopefully a little more grateful, and have a new sense of adventure and knowledge that she can tackle the road ahead and succeed! We all love you and can't wait until 6'oclock next Sat!

Random Thoughts

Kelsie is thinking "I'll pick it as long as I don't have to eat it!"

Ditto for Katie as well!
Too bad they don't realize what they are missing out on!

We took the kids out to the Raspberry farm a couple of weeks ago, the berries were so big and juicy they just popped right off of the plant. We went with another family and between the 2 families we picked 40 lbs of raspberries in about a 1/2 hour. That was a lot of raspberries! Needless to say our freezers are stocked with plenty of yummy raspberry jam! The kids had fun too they ate (those that actually like fruit) as many as they could, and had a few berry fights, Ryan took one right in the face it looked like a serious gun shot wound!

We have had the best summer so far since we have lived here. We have had only about 4 rainy days since school got out and the rest of the days have been in the 70's and sunny! Did I ever tell you this was the perfect place to live?

Quoteable Quotes

I don't have these very often or maybe I just forget, But today we had a funny one! After church we were talking with the boys (all of our girls are out of town) and we were asking them what they learned at church today. Ryan started talking about the 2000 Stripling Warriors from the Book of Mormon and how when they went to battle not one of them died. So I thought I could tie this in so I said "See how exciting it is to read the Book of Mormon there are lots of wars and fighting!" Jayden chimes in about this time and as he is shaking his head he says "That is just too much violence for me!" Jayden is the kid who whenever he gets a chance is off to his friends house to play "Halo" since we don't have that game at our house!