A Sneak Peek

Tonight Malia makes her dancing debut!
Here is a sneak peek of what's to come....

The top outfit is for her Tap performance

and the bottom one is for Ballet

Spring-Take 2

A much brighter second day of Spring!

What a difference 24 hours can make

What did I tell you, Heather? Save the clothes shopping for when you get here. We have a great outdoor mall right here in town (in village?).

First Day of Spring

Hi all and sorry I haven't blogged in so long. I did want to take a minute to wish everyone a happy first day of Spring!

The tree in our front yard

Anyone want to come over for a BBQ?

We can eat on the deck and enjoy the view!

Gotta run so I can go unpack our Summer clothes......

A Reason to Celebrate

I only have a minute to do a quick post as I'm packing for my girls' weekend in Colorado, but I have exciting news to share....

Our newest niece, Sophia Grace Takenaga, was born on Monday. She weighed 7 lbs., 2 oz. and was 19 3/4" long.

Congratulations to Ryan, Nancy and Dylan. We can't wait to see you, Sophie!

New Beginings

There are no words to describe how I'm feeling right now on this first day of school. I'll update in a few days. Right now it's time for Momma to regroup and rest up after a Summer with very little sleep. I'll leave you with a few pictures in the meantime.....

Seriously???

On Saturday, Aug. 16th, we had some family over for dinner and to visit with Kiki. After our guests left, I started the dishwasher, listened to the water fill and then......nothing. So I called my good friends over at Home Warranty (HAH! If you don't know why I said that, take a look at this post). No one was able to come out until Friday the 21st! To make it worse, we had more family come over on Saturday for dinner and despite using paper goods wherever possible, there was still a ton of dishes to hand wash. I couldn't even use the dishwasher as a drying rack because the inside was dirty from the dishes I had loaded in the night before.

The very nice repair guy came out and said he had to order a new motor. At least he was kind enough to schedule my follow-up appointment right away so I wouldn't have to wait even longer. So I went out and bought a dish tub and settled in to hand washing the dishes.

Then.....the metal that wraps around the goose-neck faucet started to separate. This actually started before the dishwasher incident but it got much worse after. I knew what was coming next and guess what happened tonight??? You got it.....the metal punctured a hole in the rubber hose and it sprang a water leak! So now I have no dishwasher and no faucet! Really, this is a true story. I could never make something like this up.

Off to figure out a way to patch the faucet together until we can get that replaced. Looks like we'll be eating out for the next few days.

Wish me luck.......

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that Phil found a snake tonight while mowing the lawn. Good thing he found it before the lawn mower did! He had a ton of fun trying to pick it up and toss it in the garden while the snake was striking at him. Seriously, if you know Phil, you know he was having fun! Too bad I didn't get any pictures. Yet another adventure in the land of cornfields........

A Day For Fun

Today is going to be a cool day. It's not even supposed to hit 70 degrees. There's a bit of a breeze...just enough to keep things fresh. It occurred to me that Summer is half over. The kids start swim lessons next week. They're signed up for two sessions but if they take a third session like they did last year, then school will start the day after they finish swim.

Today we're just going to have fun. No worrying about laundry, sorting through papers or other chores. Malia has been wanting to go on a picnic in the worst way. We even got a beautiful picnic basket at a yard sale a few weeks ago. I think we'll make a picnic lunch and go to a park....or two....or three. Maybe we'll practice T-ball....or frisbee....or riding bikes. Maybe we'll read books or lie on the ground and look at the clouds. We'll just have to see where the day takes us.

Guess we better start by going to the store....we don't have any bread to make sandwiches for our picnic!

I'll leave you with a few fun pictures I took of the kids the night Malia found the toad. I was just lying in the grass taking random pictures of them running around. Hope you enjoy them!