ready for boot camp!

ryan got his summer buzz just in time for our hottest month!


bye-bye long hair



samantha thought he was going to send it to locks of love



enjoying the oreo that he got for being a good boy!

any african wild game for sale?

today at lunch samantha was asking if we could have an elephant. i thought our conversation was over after about 20 minutes of explaining the many reasons why an elephant couldn't stay at our house.

but then she said, "mom, can we talk about zebras now?"



i guess it's time for another trip to the zoo!

samantha desperately wants to be a model.....

......ryan just wants to look cool!

three busy weeks... part 3

time to go back in time again...

the week that mom and dad were here flew by it seemed. we got home at 12:30 the morning of wednesday, july 9th. ben was getting off early from work most days so it was nice that we got to spend time with him during the day. we enjoyed shopping, playing games, and just spending time together. thursday night ben took mom and dad to the auction in the caves, but there was no live auction, just a silent one. i think mom enjoyed seeing the cave that it was in though.


on friday we went to liberty memorial in dowtown kansas city. it is the national world war one memorial. my parents and i had been there a couple years ago but they have a brand new museum now so we decided to go again. it was so neat. if you're ever in kc and have a free day you should check it out. for someone not liking museums or history, i was very impressed. it gave me a whole new appreciation for the men and women who are serving and have served our country. thank you!
the kids were so good. we got there at 11:00 and left after 4:00! it was fun going up in the tower. it's two hundred some feet in the air so it gives you a great view of the city. that night we had smokehouse bbq for dinner. yum! thanks for cooking, dad! :-)

liberty memorial

view from the top of the tower

mom & dad and the kids

saturday we did a lot of shopping while the men stayed home and watched a movie. we ran all around getting food and stuff for ryan's birthday party. sunday we went to church, came home, had lunch, then took mom and dad to the kc northern railroad. ryan was so tired he fell asleep on the train this time. after that we picked up ryan's nemo cake, went home, and got ready for his party.

riding the train

see, i think they enjoyed it because i got a smile out of dad!

did it make you feel like a kid again??

ryan had fun opening his presents. he got lots of nice presents, although he probably liked playing with the tissue paper the most! he didn't really care about his cake. he was trying to pick up the frosting and drop it on the floor, but that didn't work very well. he liked the ice cream way better!

he loves our fishies so much, so we got him a nemo cake

ryan on his new tonka truck

samantha was so excited that she found a frog!

ben had the day off on monday, so we all went to loose park in the morning. it would've been great if i would've thought of bringing a picnic lunch. it was a beautiful day. all the roses were blooming and it wasn't too hot! after we got home the kids had a nap, mom and i went shopping, and then ben grilled steaks for dinner.

loose park

i love this pic of my parents

samantha in front of a sycamore tree

the flowers were beautiful...

...so were the trees!

mom and dad left early tuesday morning. ben had tuesday off too so it was fun to spend time together with him and the kids.

well now we're up to date! hopefully no more time travel for a while!

kids fest, collective soul, and kickin it with the fam

we had another busy weekend. i can't wait for them to end! it was fun though. ben's niece, ricci, came over on friday afternoon to spend the weekend with us. we didn't do a whole lot on friday besides play guitar hero, our newest addition to the family. i'm not very good at it, but it's fun and way more addicting than i thought it would be! too bad they didn't have piano hero with a keyboard...!

saturday morning ben had a softball game and the kids and i went to "kid's fest" at a church down the road. they had two fire trucks, an ambulance, the kansas city bomb squad, an armored police truck, two police cars, and a seatbelt convincer. there were also a lot of games and other activities for the kids to do and a free bag of school supplies. the emergency vehicles were pretty cool. the kids got to go in them and look around. the bomb squad had their robot out and were demonstrating it, and samantha got to try on a 50 lb bullet proof vest. ricci and i both tried out the seat belt convincer. it crashes you at 5mph which you wouldn't think it too bad, but it gives you quite a jolt! we were both convinced (although we wear our seatbelts anyway)!! we spent about two hours there. the kids played games, got tattoos, got their faces painted, and a bunch of other stuff!

fire trucks and ambulance

samantha wearing the 50lb bullet proof vest and helment.

ricci was making sure she wasn't going to fall over!

ricci riding the seat belt convincer. i love the look on her face.

cutie!

patiently waiting for the tattoo to be done.

it was so hot that day... it would've been nice to run through the water!

saturday afternoon we dropped all of the kids off with ben's sister, di, who was going to babysit at our house that night and we headed to a collective soul concert in downtown kansas city. when we got there and parked it started raining. so we waited in the car for a while because we were early and couldn't get in until ben's friend norbert got there. then it started hailing.....ice cube sized hail. the wind was so bad it blew garbage cans over and even popped up a flat truck bed topper. all the while we were thinking "THIS IS AN OUTDOOR CONCERT!!!!!!" luckily the rain and hail stopped by the time we needed to meet norbert.

we had to walk down a couple streets to get to the entrance gate so we walked on the sidewalk right by all the tour busses because it wasn't gated off. then we saw this guy that looked just like the lead singer and ben and i were both like oh my goodness that's ed roland.... i said a couple things to him, but we weren't like, "hey you're ed roland" because i guess neither of us wanted to risk being wrong! unfortunately i didn't bring my camera because they said no professional cameras, only small ones. and i didn't think i'd be able to sneak mine in. it's a good thing that i didn't bring it though, because it rained some during the concert!

anyway, the concert was great!! at least the collective soul part. the downside was that we had to stand the whole time on uneven ground, but it was worth it! hana pestil sang first, then CS, then live. CS played for a little over hour. we were bummed that they didn't get to be on longer. we didn't stay for all of live since we don't really know any of their songs, and it was already midnight and di had a 30 minute drive home.

by the time we got home and got in bed it was 2am. i had told the girls that i'd wake them at 9am for church. well i didn't wake up till 9:30 so we missed it this morning. we spent the morning at home, went out for lunch, then went to the kc northern railroad. that seems to be our choice of entertainment this summer because we went there with heather, then with my mom and dad (i'm still working on that post) and then today. and we'll be there again because we have extra tickets! after that we went to di's and hung around there for a while. di and i picked up my nephew, ethan, from work, we had dinner, then i took pictures of my nephew, cameron, tonight with his car. after that we headed home. both of the kids were so tired tonight from this weekend so they went to bed right away.


well today has turned into tomorrow and by the time i get in bed it's gonna be 2am again! goodnight . . .

deep fried waffles???

this morning i woke up to ben making waffles. they were sooooo good. what a treat to have real waffles instead of the frozen eggo ones. (which i have to say are good when you want a waffle without the mess!)

we were sitting there enjoying our waffles and getting full by the bite. ben said that we could put the leftover ones in the fridge and samantha asked why. so ben told her that we could have some tomorrow. then she said, "yeah, we could put them in the deep fryer!"

i don't know about you, but eewwwwwww.........!

the brains of the family

this morning we were all being a little silly so daddy asked samantha who was the silliest and she said "mom." then i asked who was the prettiest and she said "mom." i asked who was the most handsome and she said "dad." then i asked her who is the smartest? and without hesitation she said "ME!!!!!..............because i was smarter than daddy one time!"

three busy weeks.... part 2

the week after heather was here, the kids and i went back to minnesota with her and stayed at my parent's house for a week. we left tuesday morning, july 1st. it was a nice LONG trip, but thankfully we can drive it in a day. the day after we got there was COLD! i never know how to pack for MN in the summer because what is nice to them is now cold to me! but other than that the weather was beautiful while i was there.

yea.... almost to gramma's!

tired from a long trip

a day or two into our stay ryan got sick. i thought he might be teething, but i think it was just a cold because he hasn't gotten any new teeth lately. he wasn't feeling well, so we didn't go do a whole lot during the week besides shopping, of course.

ryan hanging out under the couch

the strawberries in my parents' garden were ripe so we got in on the action. samantha enjoyed picking them and then eating them! YUM! they were good!

picking the strawberries..... mmmmmmmmmm they were good!

two days later we got over twice this many -- strawberries galore!

on saturday morning becky and her family came. we had a tea party lunch for samantha's birthday, so the girl's got to eat inside with all of gramma's nice dishes, and the boys had to go outside on the porch with papa. then that night we had a pre family reunion at the dam, then came home and samantha & ryan opened birthday presents and we enjoyed cake and ice cream. one of the most fitting presents samantha got was a hat from auntie becky that said "little miss chatterbox" on it. if you know samantha, you know that it suits her well!

sunday we went to church, then came home to get ready for the family reunion. it was a little crazy because a lot of stuff was miscommunicated and not planned the greatest. but it was a gorgeous day and it was nice to see family, even some that i haven't seen in 20 years!

monday we went to see my friend's new baby, then it was a packing day! we all had to get everything ready for the trip back to kc and heather had to pack for her trip to alaska.

tuesday morning we left for minneapolis/st. paul. it was nice that we could take our time and didn't have to get up super early. we didn't have to drop heather off at the airport until evening, so when we got to the cities we stopped at subway for lunch, then went to the como zoo. it's a great little zoo. it's not too overwhelming to kids and you can see everything in a couple hours. it's cheap too....! :-) it was fun. samantha enjoyed seeing all the animals, especially the baby orangutan.

lilly pads at the como zoo. they were incredibly huge.

mama orangutan and baby

i love how the giraffe's are all lined up..... like the kids waiting to get measured at gramma's!

after the zoo we dropped heather off at the airport and continued south. we stopped just inside of iowa for dinner and gas. when we were about 10 miles from the exit dad said he didn't think we'd make it because the gas light had come on. i asked him if it had just come on and he said "no, it came on over 30 miles ago!!" i don't know why he hadn't stopped before, but at least we made it there! we got home to kansas city at 12:30am. the kids were so excited to see daddy, as was i. ryan didn't go back to sleep until 2 - 2:30. then we crashed!

homemade strawberry wine

sunday after church we invited ben's step dad over for lunch because ben was gonna grill. so we stopped at the store and got a few necessities and we found this strawberry angel food cake. i had some strawberries at home that needed to be thrown away or else mashed for shortcake, so i figured we could have that for dessert. after lunch i got all the strawberries hulled and mashed and we enjoyed our shortcake. well after our dessert i couldn't find the lid for the bowl that held the mashed strawberries, so i just decided to leave it out on the counter and deal with it later.

then last night for dinner ben grilled hamburgers (they were gooooooood!). so i had all the stuff on the counter for them, including onions. an hour or so after dinner i was putting everything away and there was this awful stench by the onions. i figured they were really strong! so i threw them away knowing we wouldn't use them anymore and got the rest of the stuff put away. about an hour after that i could still smell what i though was the onions when i walked by the counter. i couldn't figure out how they could get that bad that fast since they were fine for dinner. so i was cleaning up the rest of the counter, making sure the sink was rinsed out and so on. then i saw the bowl...... 30 hour old strawberries..... they still looked okay, but then i smelled them.... WHEWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!! they were BAD!!!!!!! i didn't know strawberries fermented that fast! so i poured them right down the drain, ran the disposal, and soaked the bowl in detergent, thinking that would take care of the problem. about two hours after that i could STILL smell it! the smell was now trapped in my drain. so i ran the disposal some more but that still didn't help. i looked for an orange or a lemon wedge to throw down there, but i didn't have any. i had to do something about it because you could smell it in the whole kitchen now. so i grabbed the bleach and started pouring it down the sink. i think i used about half of it. so now the stench is replaced with an overpowering bleach smell. i guess it's better that fermented strawberries!

loose park

here's some pictures from loose park