Amy's first soccer game

Amy had a lot of fun playing soccer for the first time, well she probably had more fun talking, skipping and boy chasing.

Secret Sister Swap

Thank you Secret Sister!

First home game and summer catch-up

Melissa's first home game marching in the band, she plays the flute and is in the back somewhere. I've spent quite a few nights working KC Sporting games so we can go to Washington,DC in May of 2012.

Summer Catch-up



Amy at the pool.


Jim put the girls to work painting the front porch with Restore, it has helped cut down on the slick floor when it rains.





We participated in an attempt to make the longest ice cream sundae at the Turner Rec Center and the KCKPL. A hot but fun day, you couldn't tell by that face.


Eco Elvis at the wrap up for summer reading.

Winter in August and Secret Sister Swap

With all the craziness of August, I still had three swaps I had to do, all swap were mailed late. (Boo me)!


First up are these fall ornies I made for the swap on Prim Pals forum.

Than I received this wonderful "Winter in August" Swap package from Ginny.

I realized I left out one of the ornaments when I took the picture. Look at all these snowmen, thanks Ginny.


I received my secret sister swap in the mail today. Look at these wonderful goodies.
Thank you, Secret sister!!


This is the Winter in August swap I sent to my partner Lindee.





This little snowman I made from Debbie's free pattern, isn't he cute!! You can find that pattern here and check out Debbie's blog and store too.

First day of school

Jaime's started 5th grade on the 15th, she was excited to get back to school. She loves her teacher which was also Melissa's 4th grade teacher. In 5th grade they go between two classrooms for all the different subjects and the other teacher was Kaitlyn and Melissa's 5th grade teacher (who we also love). This year she only has 16 kids in her class.


Melissa first day at the high school as a freshman (How'd that happen?) was the 16th, she also was excited to get back to school. She is going to keep busy this year, she's on the golf team and in the marching band.

An exciting week, not

This week was going to be busy getting Kaitlyn ready to head back to K-State, we had lists made and stuff to do. We came home Sunday from a day spent with Jim's parents to find our house filled with smoke. We couldn't see a fire anywhere so Jim went downstairs to see what he could find, he was coughing like crazy. I looked out the patio door and noticed the power lines down and a Board of Public Utilities worker in the neighbors back yard. We talked to him and he said he thought it smelled like wood, not electrical which we thought it smelled like. We called the fire dept and they came out and found the fire with infared googles. It was our ground wire on fire and a wooden joist. So they only had to use our water hose to put it out. BPU pulled our electrical meter and the next day was filled with calls to the insurance agent, restoration company and a electrician. We stayed at Jim's parents and left the windows open one night to air out some of the smoke. The day we needed to get Kaitlyn back to K-State we were already running late but needed to stop by our house to see if we had power, we found two of our screens slit and someone had broke in. As far as we could tell the only things stolen were dvd's from my oldest daughters room. We could also tell they went through drawers because they were all left open, they might have found some of my state quarters and dollar coins. It could have been a lot worse so we're thankful it wasn't. Most of the kids electronic toys, lap tops, I-Pods, and Jaime's DSI were with us.
Luckily most of our damage was do to smoke and I'm glad we didn't have to deal with a major fire like we did in 2003.
We did get Kaitlyn to school for move in day at her sorority house and she had almost everything she needed. So not exactly the send-off we wanted but I'm glad things weren't as bad as they could have been.


Since every post needs a picture (in my opinion) here is a picture of one of the kittens, who needs a home. None of our cats were harmed in the fire and they apparently didn't make good watch cats. :-)

Busy busy

I'd like to say I've been busy crafting but all I've worked on were my secret sister swap lately. It's been pretty hot here in KC. Over 100 for too many days and than it cooled off to a nice 90 degrees the other day. Kaitlyn's car was in the shop for almost two weeks and one of those weeks was the last week of summer college at the community college. So we had to leave the house at 7:30am and
and than back to pick up Melissa and get her to weights at 8:45 than back home for a hour, than back to get Melissa and than out to get Kaitlyn, back home for 45 minutes than take Kaitlyn to work. Four days of that made me crazy. Today we drove to Manhattan for parent's work day at the Kappa Delta house 2 hours to get there, 2 hours of work, 2 hours drive back and than we headed to the back to school bash.







I received this beautiful penny rug mat form my secret sister. I love it, thanks secret sister. I'm not sure why the picture looks like water is on it but it's not.