Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Free at last! And a new toy.

Baseball is completely over for both boys and now Dana and I don't know what to do with ourselves in the evenings. Ah! We'd better enjoy it now before soccer starts up again...

About 2-1/2 weeks ago, Dana and I dropped the boys off with my mom and dad and headed off to Phoenix to celebrate our 13th anniversary (June 3). We drove for hours on end, had no free time, baked under the Phoenix sun all day and drove for hours and hours again to get home. Why did we do it, you ask? Dana wanted to go shopping for this - more or less.



What evil thing is this lurking in our garage? And what did it do to our beloved Expedition?
Ok, I'll turn up the lights. We went looking for a Nissan Altima and came back with a 2006 Ford Fusion. That's the first time I bought a car without knowing exactly what I was getting beforehand. I had to go back to the hotel to look it up. (How embarrassing!) But after driving it back to back with an Altima we decided we liked it just as much as the Nissan - some things better, some not quite as much but very comparable overall. Add in the fact that it was $1000 cheaper, 1 year newer and had 20k fewer miles than all the other Altimas we saw, and we had ourselves a winner. This one has a 4 cylinder and a very rare 5 speed. We're having a blast rowing the gears again after driving nothing but automatics for so long. This is exciting stuff, people!

Oh, and we still have the Expedition. It's been relegated to taking up space beside the house. We'll still use it for longer trips and for off-roady type stuff. Just for grins we asked what the trade-in would be and had to try very hard not to laugh in the salesman's face when they made their offer. Of course, they called all over town and gave us the best deal that they possibly could and they would probably be losing money on it and blah blah blah.

Alright. Fine. No one else seems to share my excitement about all things motorized. Just wait until I finish my V8 powered Igloo cooler though. You'll be wanting to take it for a ride.
And on to family (people) news.

The Father's Day conversation at our house went something like this.
Dana (real gruff like): "If you want something for Father's Day, then go pick it out yourself, you big oaf. Just don't spend much of my money."
Me (in my angelic voice): "But, my dearest, sweetheart wife. I don't want anything for Father's Day because I have everything I need right here at home. You and our three wonderful boys."
I might have paraphrased a little but you get the idea. So there I was at Harbor Freight and I stumbled across a cool, portable hammock. I've wanted a hammock for years but I'm too cheap to pay for one. This one was on sale for $35! Happy Father's Day to me, indeed. I set it up as soon as I got home to try it out. Little did I realize I won't ever get to use it. Every time I turned around one of the kids was on it. Here's proof.



Kevin drug it around in front of the TV and made himself comfortable for the evening. But that's MY hammock! I can't wait to take it camping.



And finally, I had to include a cute picture of #3 with his bathtub letters stuck to him. It was his idea, I just helped put them on.

Monday, June 16, 2008

1 year - more or less

It has now been (almost) 1 year since our first post on this blog so I'd like to thank the two of you who have followed along on our journey even if you did skip over my ramblings and go straight to the pictures.

Baseball season is over for Kevin. His team ended the year on a high note by winning their double header this last weekend. Actually, the team has one more game tomorrow but Kevin is at church camp this week so he will miss it. Kevin also ended the season well by coming out of his batting slump to finish the season strong.


Kevin at bat. He clubbed the next pitch but it went straight to the darn short stop. He made a good throw to first that just barely beat Kevin for an out.


Cameron has one more game on Wednesday. His team has been improving all year; however, I'm still counting the small victories such as all the basemen covering their base after a hit or the outfielders backing each other up when the hits go deep. This team has been a joy to coach.


That right there is the look of determination. Too bad he struck out this time. He looked good doing it though...

This weekend I bought a triple slide slip-n-slide for the boys. With the temperature reaching, oh about 253 degrees, they spent a few hours straight playing on it. We had to make them quit to come in for dinner.


Action shot of Cameron


Now Kevin


And finally Cade. Cade would only slide about 2 feet on his own. I took a few turns throwing him down the slide and he loved it.


Break time