New Look...to be continued

I have spent several hours today trying to give the blog a facelift...but it's not turning out like it's supposed to! I was hoping that it would be easy and I could surprise everyone with the new look...but I guess you will have to bear with me for a few days until I can get back to it as I'm sure I won't have much time during the week to figure out what I am doing wrong...I think I need a "Blog for Dummies" book to consult! LOL!

KR is sick today so we (the girls and I) missed church. It's looking doubtful she will be well enough to go to school tomorrow unless miracles happen overnight. KL was sick last Monday and missed school. What is it about the first of the school year and my kids getting sick? It happens almost every year that someone becomes ill right around when school starts. I hate to see them miss school so early on. Sigh....

More summer pics...

So July was a lot busier month for us. We left on the 2nd to travel to MN to spend a few days with Greg's brother and his family. Our niece, Amy, was the only cousin KJ had not met last summer so they were excited to be meeting for the first time (at least Amy was...KJ is a bit young to care too much). We left very early in the a.m. and arrived at their house around 11:30 p.m. local time. It was a VERY long day, but with our new van the trip wasn't bad at all! I got to drive it for the first time at length and I adjusted quickly :-) It was nice having cruise control that works again! lol! While in MN Greg and his brother got a chance to go golfing, we went to a fun park for the kids to play, went to Valley Fair, and attended a Twins game, as well as just spent time visiting and catching up. It was a nice few days with them and we are thankful we had the opportunity to see them, even if it was too short. It seems there is never enough time for KR and her cousin, Heidi, to spend together...we keep thinking about how we can remedy that some summer.

The kids had a blast having slip-n-slide races in the front yard.
KJ, on the other hand did NOT think it was fun at all so she sat on the step and pouted.
Here she is with her Uncle Tim at Valley Fair. I should have cropped out the guy in the background out...oh well. I really didn't get many other good pictures that day. Sorry.

KR and Heidi enjoying the twins game...or at least the food!

Amy, Heidi, Aunt Leslie and the girls on our last morning there.

After we left MN we drove to my mom's house in SD. The plan was to visit with her and my sister (and her family) f0r a few days while Greg put a new roof on my mom's house. It had suffered hail damage from the year before and had been leaking so it desperately needed done before there was even more damage to repair. I neglected to get any photos of Greg fixing the roof or the finished product, but suffice it to say he did a good job and the roof looked great when he was done. And even better, my mom reported no more leaks the next time it rained hard. Yay!

Here is my mom and my sis's little guy, Reece, snoozing away together. Too cute.

I guess he had a hard time staying awake because here he fell asleep in the middle of his meal..and KJ thought she had to get in the picture too! Yes, it was "hair day" that day.

Here he is showing off his two new teeth...so cute:-) I got to spend a lot of time with him so I really missed him the first few days after our visit was over.

My sister and her husband have spent more than a year redoing their house after it suffered from tornado strength winds in the spring of 2007. They just moved back in a few days before we came, even though it's not totally complete yet. Here is one of the views. It's much nicer than it used to be and I know my sis is enjoying it immensely.

I just had to share these pics of her little guy's room. I think she did a fantastic job on the decorating...it's SO cute.

KR and her my Sis's daughter, Keegan.

Once our time in SD was finished we all packed up and headed to WY to spend a few days with my brothers. They both live within an hour drive of each other so that's nice.

My Mom and her two littlest grandsons. They were born just over a month apart.

KR is the oldest of this trio, with my sister's daughter(middle) being the youngest. She had just turned 6 in May while KR will be 8 next month and Jessica (my younger brother's daughter) just turned 7 earlier in August. As you can see Keegan is very tall for her age...and Jessica is probably petite! The three girls played very well together this year. It's nice they are getting more mature and are able to do so well together now. There are a lot less hurt feelings that way.

On the weekend we were in Hulett there was an airshow at the dinky airport. Here are the kids and my grandma waiting for the action to begin. It was a pretty warm day so finding shade was important.There was a Jelly Belly plane at the show, which was kind of funny.

They handed out jelly beans to the kids and here is my nephew, Rilee, sharing with KJ. He would take a bite of half of it and then give her the other half. She seemed to be okay with that! LOL!

Here are Greg and KJ leaving the airshow. It was surprisingly green there for July so I had to take a picture of the scenery.

Well, I was hoping to get through all my pictures and news this post, but so far I am over two hours into this process and I just don't have time to do more. I hope to finish it up soon! In the meantime, thanks for checking and have a great day!

Finally summer pics....June

Click on the pictures to make them bigger...
KL goofing around in the Tokyo aiport.
KR following suit... They both thought this was so funny.
The house on the left in the picture is Greg's parents. It is where we stay the most while we are in the U.S. The greenish van is our old one...that we have now given to my mom. It was trustworthy for us and I hope she is able to get some good out of it. Notice the snow-covered mountains in the background...they were so beautiful.

It was SO cold the first week we were back. The snow level was very low and several mornings we woke up to new snow on the hills and mountains. The building on the left is Yellowstone Regional airport...it's just huge, isn't it! LOL!
From the same road, just different view
...from farther away...

The boys fishing with their friends. We bought the boys fishing licenses this year and they made pretty good use of them.

Look at the size of this baby!! LOL!
KR with her friend (sister of the boys who are fishing with my boys) who is only two days older than her. They really do have a great time playing together. Unfortunately we were not able to spend as much time with this family as we usually do. Our schedules just didn't mesh very well this year. Hopefully next summer will be better.

KJ and KL riding a horse. KJ LOVES horses and is not scared of them at all. I wish she had just a little more fear of them...

KB celebrating his 15th birthday. Obviously I didn't have enough candles on here!

Overall June was a pretty quiet month for us. We did quite a bit more in July. I will post about that, and the pictures next time :-)

First Day of School

On Tuesday school started for us. I find it hard to believe that summer is "over" and we have started another school year. KJ and KR were pretty excited about the day, but the boys would have loved a few more days/weeks of vacation to hang out with their friends and enjoy the "good" life. They know once school starts, homework will take over. I can't say I blame them for not looking forward to that...as a mom of five I'm not looking forward to it either!

KJ did better this year with the traditional "first day" picture we take. Last year she would do nothing but pout and cry. This year she actually had a smiley face on. And it didn't RAIN this year! I was happy about that!

I had a TERRIBLE time getting the pictures to load so consequently some of them are not in the order I originally intended them to be. If I move them around they will not longer be "clickable" so I have decided to leave them in the order they are currently even though they are not chronologically correct! I hope you don't mind.

Locks of Love...

...this has been something KR has been thinking about doing for a few months. She finally decided she was ready do go through with it so my good friend, Jacki, helped with the cut... She and I both love her new "do".... She keeps looking at herself in the mirror and saying "I love to look at myself in the mirror now...I love my new hairdo!" So cute :-)

Other summer pictures still to come... :-)

We're Back!!

We arrived back home on Saturday a.m. So far the jetlag thing is going pretty well...it always seems easier coming this way. We started our teacher's meeting yesterday, going from 9-4, which will continue today and then Thursday and Friday are work days getting ready for classes to begin on Tuesday, August 12th. It's hard to believe our summer is already over! Waaa!!

I am hoping to get back to regular updates now that I am home and able to post some pictures etc. However, the next few days are going to be busy so it might be a while before I can get back into the routine. If I can find a chunk of time here and there I will try to get started on the "summer news", posting it in several updates if I have to. In the meantime it's good to be back and I look forward to catching up soon! :-)

I'll leave you with our annual good-bye photo of grandma and grandpa with the kids. Have a great day!

Finally an update!!

Just a quick note to say we are currently in the States visiting family and friends. It's hard to believe it's already July 1st! I tried to post a quick note about our departure the day we left (June 6th) but I lost my post and didn't have time to redo it since I was too busy packing and getting ready to go (plus I was having a lot of internet problems at the time).

Our big news of the summer is that we bought a "new" van...off ebay! It's a 2006 Dodge Grand Caravan and Greg and KB used FF miles to go to Alabama last week to drive it home. According to Greg it was a LONG drive...one that he's not sure he would do again. The highlight for them was being able to spend some time with some of our good friends (and former Dalat colleagues) in the Atlanta area before heading home. They were also able to spend one night in SD at my mom's as well. It's fun having a new van, but it doesn't yet seem like it is mine...not sure how long that will take. Here is a photo that I was able to take off ebay so you all can see it. So far we are really enjoying it!

KB celebrated his 15th birthday last week (June 26) while on his way back from Alabama...so we had a belated family celebration last night here with grandma and grandpa. It's hard to believe he's 15! He has started studying for his learner's permit, which he was hoping to take yesterday. Unfortunately we don't have his birth certificate in hand since it's with his passport which is in the process of being renewed so he will have to wait until we get it back in the mail with his new passport before he can take the test. He was quite bummed and disappointed that he won't be driving soon as we was really looking forward to it.

We have very much been enjoying some downtime at my in-laws and are now hoping to head to MN to visit Greg's brother and his family for the 4th of July weekend. From there we are planning to spend a week with my mom and sister in SD where Greg will be reroofing my mom's house. Following that we plan to spend another week with my younger brother and his family, where we will also be seeing my older brother and his family, my grandma, cousin and her family as well as other family members and friends. We will be back here in Cody for one final week before heading back home on July 31st. Just writing it all out makes the time see like it's already gone! I'm sorry for the lack of pictures, but I have no way of getting them from my camera to this computer so they will have to wait for now. If I do get it figured out I will be sure and post some of them here...otherwise they will have to wait until we get back home.

I guess that's all for now....if anyone is still checking in hope you have a great 4th of July holiday!!