Joe and Linda's 40th Anniversary Weekend

This weekend, Molly and all of her siblings planned a 40th anniversary surprise for Linda, which included lots of fun things like a spa treatment, Saturday night party, night at the horse tracks, and flying in Joe and Liz. It was a great weekend... but we were EXHAUSTED by the end of Sunday. :)

Great time hanging out with everybody and props to the main party planners (you know who you are Katie). Enjoy the pics below. I'll post a few more in the near future.

Life Group Pool Party

We are blessed to be part of our life group (i.e. friends from church who get together, study God's word, and "do life"). God has a way of always bringing the right people into our lives at the right times (both people we love and people who "challenge" us). Anyway, we are blessed.... truly.

Below are pictures of our recent cookout at Emily and Aaron's house.














Pool craziness.




















Love this picture.




















Kennedy is slowly warming up to pools.




















Doesn't Emily look happy with Posey? :)

Welcome to America

In catching this early morning snapshot, our little Ansley has all the essentials: food, her blanky, and her hat for shade. Does anybody else think she looks like she just crossed the border?

Hilarious...

Last Injury Update

I promise, this is my last injury update (I know you really would rather see pictures of Ansley and Kennedy).

To recap, for everybody I will see at my 10-year reunion at DePauw, I injured myself in an ultimate fighting tournament cage match. You all know that I'm a triple black belt.... anyway, I went "Karate Kid" on my last opponent, both "painting the fence,"
"sweeping the leg," "waxing on and off," and ultimately putting my opponent in a body bag (if you've never seen Karate Kid, I'm sure your eyes are glossed over).

Okay, I'm a bad liar. I hurt myself shoveling. That's right, S-H-O-V-E-L-I-N-G. Really, no good stories besides hurting myself doing some "gardening."

It turns out I have a severe ankle sprain, so they put me in a cast and boot (by the way, this is the most expensive shoe I have ever owned) for the next week. Hopefully, it will improve. If not, he told me I might have Dwight Freeney's injury and asked me if I followed sports (he has no idea...). Anyway, let's hope it improves.

Again, I promise this will be the last blog about my ankle issues. Again, thank you to everyone who has helped watch the kids the week (and especially Molly who is doing "double time"): my parents, Cass, Em, and Linda.




















Here is me in my full ensemble of boot, cast, crutches, and man bag (it's not a purse... it's actually a diaper bag) filled with various essentials like my favorite book, water, etc...



















Had to squeeze Kennedy into this post. She's been a great helper. Don't ask about the hat. It embarrasses Molly to no ends (and for good reason).













Nice neon green cast.



















My $250.00 shoe. (It actually comes with a "pump," similar to the Reebok pump of the '90's).

Injured

Today's blog describes another self-inflicted injury that I can add to my growing life-long list (also included are hitting myself in the face with a hammer, punching a hole through a window while sleepwalking, hitting myself in the foot with an ax, getting several stitches in my forehead from a rock fight, and burning all of the skin off my nose in the quest to remove a pimple, etc...) Embarassingly enough, these items are only the beginning of this list... but they all have great stories behind them. If you know me well, you know I don't mind making fun of myself....

So last Friday I was creating a new landscaping bed and using a spade shovel to peel back sod. In one moment of bad judgement, I jammed my foot down on the shovel to dig deeper down (mind you, I was wearing crocs). In this moment, I "busted up" some capillaries in my foot and gave myself a severe bruise (I keep thinking I need a better word that bruise to elicit more sympathy). Anyway, by Sunday night, my foot had swollen to an unbearable degree and I could not put any pressure on it. I went to the doctor's office first thing Monday morning, go X-rays, and was relieved to hear it was not broken. However, because of the pain and type of injury, I was ordered to lay on the couch and keep my foot elevated and iced for a few days.

So.... thankfully my parents and sister Cassie have been watching the girls from Monday through tonight. THANK YOU. On the flip side, while recovering I have had the chance to catch up on several important things like: 1) signing up for goodreads.com (amazing web site if you like to read); 2) blogging; 3) editing many pictures I never find time to "play with," and 4) watch several movies that Molly would never watch if she was with me (i.e. Rise of the Lycans, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Rocker, etc... I admit, I'm bad at picking out movies but I like to watch them nonetheless.

The pictures below give you a "snapshot" of my day today....




















Crutches are actually kind of a pain if you've never used them before. They have been my best friends since yesterday.














My foot wrapped in ice... I'm sure Molly is embarrassed that I put a picture of my foot on our blog.














Yours truly... on the computer and watching movies. Luckily my ears are cleaned out. :)

Happy Birthday Kennedy

It's official (as of May 29th) that Kennedy is 3 years old. This weekend, we had a small (and mostly family) birthday party to celebrate this occasion. Kennedy is obsessed with birthday parties in general and not just her own. She loves the candles, cake, singing happy birthday, and did I say cake?

Of course we had to have a Hello Kitty theme and of course Kennedy wanted to wear her Cinderalla dress (who wouldn't?).

It was a great day and good start to the summer!