Allison 18th Birthday

Sweet young pre-teen!!

still my little girl

Today is my sweet Allison's birthday!! She turns eighteen today and I can hardly believe it!! Where has all the time gone??? She will leave for college in August and I have a hard wrapping my mind around it. The other day someone called her about an single adult activity... surely they had the wrong number..??? My baby is not a single adult!! She is still about 8 or 9 in my mind. You can tell she is getting older, she didn't want us throw her a party at chuck E. cheese anymore...sigh oh, well I don't miss that place, but who gave her permission to grow up and become this beautiful young woman??? I certainly did not. I had to help her get tires today..... yeah!!! She still needs me!!!

Swimming Lessons

Relaxing in the pool... learning the back float

We are sooooo excited about our first day of swim lessons!!!

learning to use the kick board

putting our face in the water!!! This is a major accomplishment!!

pushing of from the side and doing the superman float

Monday Parker began swimming lessons for the first time. Yeah, I know he should of started years ago, but if you know Parker and his fear of water it wasn't worth the tears that would of been shed. We started out Monday very excited about the prospect of swim lessons. I did not tell him in advance, because he cannot process the waiting very well. Well the teacher called the names and only one other boy showed up. He is three and about the size of Parker's thigh. He is adorable! We were very excited, but also very afraid of huge pool and he doesn't know this man whom he is to trust with his life. We had a lot of tears on monday so when we left Parker was telling me that he did not want to go back, but I maintained that he would be coming back to learn to swim or no more pool time!! Well tuesday afternoon he was excited to go again all of his fears forgotten, but they called and cancelled class. Yikes!! What to do?? Well we call his BFF Ashley and went to her grandma's house for more "practice" swimming. Ashley swims very well and has no fear of the water. He did great, by the end of the night he was jumping in with floaties. This was a major accomplishment! We never were able to get floaties on him in the past. We have been doing great in class. Tonight we went to the 4/5 ft deep water. Parker was very tenative, but he still is doing much better than I had ever hoped!!! I am so glad they gave him a large man as his teacher because if he would have gotten one of those skinny teenage girls I'm afraid she wouldn't made it. LOL!!!

Primary Swimming Party

Everyone swimming and having a good time!!

Tanner Marvets playing b ball in the pool.

Evelyn and Aubrie loved to swim!

Today we had a swim party for all the children in our primary. It was a total blast! At first Kathy was very concerned because it was raining at her house this morning, but the sun prevailed and it turned out to be a beautiful day. About 17 children showed up with parents in tow. We gorged ourselves on grilled hot dogs, chips, and watermelon. Then we had icee pops for dessert. It was great fun! It seemed to me that everyone had a great time. It was cute, Parker started the day on the steps very tenantive, but before long he was having a blast in the middle of the pool. We are going to sign up for swim lesson this week. I cannot have a 80 lbs of little man meat hanging of me any more. You would think I would lots of weight with that sack of boy hanging on to me with the grasp of the incredible hulk.

Home Sweet Home

Well we are home from our Disney vacation. It is nice to vacation, but it is great to get home and sleep in your own bed even if it is smaller than at the hotel. Now going back to work it not real fun, but as I explained to Parker we cannot vacation all the time because it cost to much money, but he tell me he needs to go back on vacation...LOL! Six years old what does he need a vacation from??? Getting back to swing things is hard. Since it is summer vacation we don't have a real schedule and since Tara is here the house looks like a bomb exploded in it. Little hands can make a mess so quickly. You can never get mad at that sweet little angel. She is so darn cute! I hope that Jeremy and Tara move closer soon. I would love to see that sweet little face all the time and only if I could get her to say "grandma".

Disney Vacation

The Magic Castle

The dumbo ride is always very popular!!

Parker tries to lift the sword from the stone

Reese loves the characters! She got shy and around them.


Well we are at the greatest place on earth..... ok that might be over the top, but Parker thinks it is. We are spending the week in Orlando and have a very busy schedule of sight seeing and going and going and going........ We are going to need another vacation after this vacation. It is well worth it. This might be the last time the whole family is able to vacation together. Allison is off to college this fall and Tara has another little one in the oven so this might be the last time we are able to come together as a family. The little ones are doing really good for all the things we are doing and no naps and did I mention it is 800 degrees here? We have been to the Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, Disney Hollywood Studios and we went to the new Aquatica theme park today. So far my favorite park is the Hollywood studios and Aquatica was awesome!! Aquatica is the new water park by Sea World. We went here because Ansueher Busch owns it (thanks daddy) and it was FREE!!!!! It was cool you went through clear tubes and dolphins swim by you. You can also see them on the lazy river. They have two lazy rivers. One is slow and the second is a fast lazy river. It was real fun!!!

Sweet Baby has arrived!

Hello? Is anybody listening???

Ok, turn here Parker and pick up my pizza!


Well as most of you know my daughter, Tara is here for a much anticipated visit and of course she brought my sweet little angel, Reese with her. She is very very smart and very active now. She loves to go riding with Parker in his truck. Parker doesn't use the truck much anymore, but he gets in it and rides his little princess around until the battery doesn't go anymore.

Super Grandma Pt. 2

well about a month ago Tara and I were talking about thier wanting to have more children soon. I remarked to her that she better keep her man away from her in the next month so she can ride all the rides at Disney........well my daughter aka "hot pants I" did not take my advice so guess what .... I pleased to announce that I will be a grandma again... YIPEE!!! More baby love for meeeeee. Now if they would only move back so I could spoil my grandbabies on a full time basis. I love the smell of a freshly bathed baby.... so sweet. This is the best part of putting up with Tara as a teenager (no, mom she wasn't an angel) is my sweet little grandbabies!!