Happy Father's Day!

Brent had a great day today! Ricky and Ashley surprised EVERYONE and showed up in Ft. Wayne on Thursday night. We had a really fast, but fantastic weekend.

Ricky and Brent took off at 6am this morning to go fishing with Scott and Joey Foltz for a father~son outing.

Brent caught none, Ricky did, but didn't reel any in, Scott and Joey both caught some.

Here's one of Scott's......................

Here's Joey's......................................

After fishing, they all took turns tubing. They said it was fantastic.

Here's Brent.......................

Here's Ricky.....................

When they got home, we had a cookout. My mom provided the Omaha steaks...they were delicious.

The kids played a game of cornhole.

Here's Laurel and her friend Lydia................

Laurel taking her best shot...................

Ahsley taking her best shot....................

And Ricky........................

And here we all are: Ringo, Laurel, Brent, me, Ashley and Ricky.

Here's a video of Ricky getting thrown...............

Busy week

This past week flew by. After taking off the previous Friday, work was almost overwhelming. Thank goodness for the other things in my life.

Maddison and Mackenzee stopped by my office to say "Hi". It felt like I haven't seen them in eons. I got a phone call one afternoon from Maddison. She had just lost her second tooth at swim lessons while in the pool and the darn tooth was sucked down the drain! The tooth fairy came anyway!

Here's Kenzee and her beautiful smile..............
And Maddi with her still beautiful smile....teeth missing and all!

I am so fortunate to have yard like I do. I absolutely love this time of year and so look forward to chilling out after work out there. I discovered this nest of robins in my FRONT yard in the Bradford Pear...right at the bottom....here's the babies looking at me after I accidentally scared the mama off..............

Here's Ringo meeting a new neighbor.......Michelle and the boys picked up a new kitten this weekend.........looks like Baloo wants Ringo to be his new play toy!

This video is very bumpy, but this is one of the baby robins from the nest in the front yard. While we were all out there checking out the new kitty, this little guy got scared a flew the coop. I can't believe three of these fit in that nest. I sure hope he got back in his nest!




Here's Ringo and Baloo playing............

Great Weekend!

This is my mom's new BFF in Minneapolis! She works at Christopher & Banks and helped her for two days find some really good stuff.



This morning (Sunday) at breakfast....

more at breakfast.....

out in themall.......

Karen took a bunch of pictures too...

Lego Land....

The girls taking a break...

Lego Land again.....

From the second level looking down....there are four levels in the mall.

The end! We left early for the airport becuase we all took off at different times. We were also worried about our luggage being overweight. We were all good, though.

Thanks so much mom. Yes, it would be fantastic to make this an annual trip!

Girl's Weekend

We all took off from our homes in the wee hours of the morning this morning and met at the Minneapolis airport. By 10:00 a.m. we were checking into our hotel room at the Raddison right across the street from the Mall of America.


The room is beautiful. We freshened up and hopped the shuttle over to the mall.

Seven hours later, we stopped into Kokomo's for dinner. We had a few drinks (even though we didn't need a DD -designated driver- my mom stuck to ice water!).

Karen had her Blue Moon............

Linda had her Cosmopolitan and of course, I couldn't go without my date with the Captain!

I ordered oven baked, coconut crusted tilapia in a banana leaf with black beans. The meal was fantastic and the customer service at this establishment was the best.

We got back to the room and before Karen, Linda and I headed down to the bar in the hotel for a few, we had a show-n-tell of what we got today. Karen and Linda had me laughing SO hard!

So, they bought the same sweater. Here are the "twins" talking to each other. So funny!

What a fun day! I'm sure the rest of the weekend is going to be just as fun.

Thank you, Mom, for getting the four of us together like this and for the fantastic weekend ahead of us. We all really needed this!

Class of 2021

Really? Class of 2021??? That sounds like the name of a sci-fi movie, doesn't it?

Maddison graduated from kindergaten this morning. Mackenzee kept telling me that Maddison is graduating today, but when I asked her what that meant, she said she wasn't sure, but it's pretty exciting!












Here's Mackenzee looking for her sister............
Oh, there she is!

Each child was called up to the podium to shake hands (that was fun watching them trying to remember which hand to shake with!!!) and receive their certificates.

Maddison got flowers too!

Here's Maddison and her principal.

Happy Fifth Birthday Mackenzee!!

So....the conversation this morning went like this (G=Grandma, M=Mackenzee):


G: Mornin' Sweetie! Happy Birthday!



M: Thank you!




G: So, you're finally five now! Does it feel any different?

M: I am? I'm really five right now, like today?

G: Yes, baby, you are really five now. How does it feel?


M: Well, Grandma that's really strange. When I went to bed last night, I was four. You know, really four. So then I wake up this morning and now I'm FIVE. I just can't figure out how that happened.












Out of the mouths of babes!!