Before/After.....

Haylie and Micah's room before......

Still need to get decorations up, but here's the after.......

Haylie's hair before.....

and after......

This one is just flat out embarrassing. I can't believe my back yard looks like this. Well part of it anyways. We just haven't got around to landscaping since we built the garage. Before.......

and after Steve spent all night with the weed whipper....

My sweet little thumb sucker before........

and after....

Steve: "All we need to do is keep this sock on his hand for about 3 weeks and he'll get the idea. I'm not going to have a thumb sucker. You might have to take it off to wash it but other than that, it stays on."

Echo Lake....

We had a blast this year at Echo like always. I love being down there so much and could of stayed another couple weeks. Just our family went and it was so nice just being on our own time table and doing whatever we wanted whenever. The kids had most of their fun just playing in the water and swimming. I felt like even if we didn't have a boat there they would of still been completely entertained.

Well here are some highlights from our trip....

Summer was so scared of the water. Well I guess I should say the deep water. As long as she could touch the bottom she had a blast but as soon as you tried to get her to swim in the deep water she would freak out and cling to you like her life depended on it.

It never fails, every year at least one of our kids gets sick while we are at Echo. This year it was Kash. We hadn't even made it to the lake yet and he started puking. All over his carseat. There is nothing worse. At least we were only about 20 minutes away. This continued every night pretty much the whole trip. The only up side is he was up all night so he slept alot during the day and I could relax all day and not have to worry about him eating rocks or falling down the stairs.

One of the our last days there we got a surprise visit from our good friends Tim and Sarra and their kids. We could not have been happier. The kids had a blast playing with them, Steve had a blast snorkeling with Tim, and I had a blast kayaking and visiting with Sarra. Love this picture. All the kids did this the whole way back to the cabin.

Of course we had to go turtle hunting and Scuba Steve was not going to give up until he found a turtle.

Sarra and I after our kayak trip around the island.

Pretty sure these two will get married.

Micah's victory this trip was crossing the wake on the kneeboard.

After some tears were shed and many attempts made, Briggs made it up on the wakeboard. He didn't give up and I was so proud of him for trying so hard.

Haylie loved wakeboarding this year. She loved getting air off the wake until she got a little too much air once and had a major wipeout. Hopefully she forgets about that little incident by next summer and will step in a wakeboard again. She did an awsome job this year.

My little spectators. Love how they are sitting so close together when the whole rest of the bench was empty. Such good little friends.

Here I am attempting to do a 360 on the kneeboard. Steve was trying to get Briggs to do it, so I told him that I would try it first and then he had to. I don't think that he thought I would really do it so he agreed.

Here's Briggs holding up to his end of the deal. He actually did it and thought it was fun.

Skylie water skiing for the first time. Some tears were shed here also but she tried (Steve forced her) and she did it. I love Haylie cheering in the background!

Anyone that knows Steve well knows he likes trying to get (forcing) our kids to try stuff. He made all the kids jump off the tower of the boat. No one wanted to but in the end they all liked it.

Family Pictures....

There's lots I should be blogging about. Like Kash's b-day, Echo, bridge jumping, and all the other stuff we've been doing lately. But I just have to post a couple of our family pictures that we had done the other day. I'll post some others of the kids later cause I don't feel like down loading tonight. And in case your wondering if it was fun getting everyone dressed and ready and hair done by 9:30 that morning....it wasn't.

I think that I like this second one better.

I wish I had a picture that showed it better but when we got to the river I looked at Summer and noticed that she had two different flip flops on and this flower elastic on her ankle which you can see in this picture. It wasn't worth the fight to get her to take the flower off so she just left it on. Luckily you can't see it in the family picture.

Camping....

Steve's dream of camping every weekend this summer sure didn't happen but we were able to get out at least one time. When Joe and Karen were here we did a little planning and got Steve's whole family out. We went to St. Mary's which was nice cause it was so close and is actually a nice little campground.


There was a nice little swimming hole the kids had fun swimming in. Way too cold for me but the kids didn't mind.

Cute little Kage. I swear he is always smiling.

Here's Joe and Karen posing for the camera. Such a cute little couple!! Can't wait till these guys are done school so they can move a little closer.

And here's their cute boys Mikey and Max.

I think it's funny that these girls are all posing. I swear I didn't ask them too. Kenny brought his boat and took everyone boating. Karen and I gladly volunteered to stay back with the sleeping babies and had a nice quiet afternoon chatting and trying to scare the pesky gophers.

Here's all the cousins except two of them.

Cute little Brayker.

Here's where Kash spent a lot of time. Trapped in his playpen. He is at a hard age for camping. Not walking yet so he crawls all over the ground eating rocks and whatever else he can find.

The kids had so much fun playing horseshoe. So did the competitive brothers.