Take time to smell the roses...

A visit with Grandma Gralnik

Grandma had a layover in Atlanta for four hours, so we were able to have a short visit with her. She was on her way to Colorado to visit her brother and his family. It is fun being near a large city to have the opportunity to see family and friends on their layovers!!

Well next week is our last week of summer vacation. Kylie and I are starting school on the 28th. I am a little nervous to start first grade with her, mainly just trying to figure out how to occupy the other two! But I know the Lord wants me to homeschool, I need to pray each day for His help because there is no way I would ever be able to do this on my own. I am also going to do some preschool with Emme.:) We are excited!! I am thankful I have the opportunity to homeschool my kids!

Pictures from Virginia...

I love this picture because everyone was congregated at one corner of the pool playing! It was very hot that week, so the pool was a great way to cool off!
All worn out- we were making dinner the one night and went to call the kids and found Kylie asleep in Aunt Heather's laundry basket!
Little Gordy asleep at the pool with his dede (sp?) the little octopus he sleeps with!:)
Papa holding three kids- having a great time at the pool! Love the expression on Papa's face!!
All the big kids-taking time out from swimming so the mom's could get a picture!
Emme and her "bef friend" Katie swimming at my mom's house.


Ally and Elise! What a great help she was-thank you Elise for lovin on and playing with my sweet little Ally!

while you were out...

For some reason I am not able to post pictures- now I wish I would have posted this one first. Well while I was away my dear sweet husband was busy remodeling our bedroom. He put down wood floor in our room and the sitting room outside our room, new doors,(we had doors with glass so you could see right into our room), new curtains, new sheets, a nightstand, new lamp, new fan, he did this canopy thing over our bed, painted our walls a light grey color, bought decorative pillows- it looks amazing!!!!! I was so excited and speechless. He was telling me all week he was working on the kitchen- so I had no idea. Oh and the rest of the upstairs he had recarpeted! Looks awesome! He did a wonderful job, lastnight I was just trying to take everything in. What a great surprise to come home to. I will post pictures as soon as this crazy computer will let me!! I am so bummed I can't.
Ok well I was able to get one on the post- before and after.... ok here are some more! I am so happy it is so pretty!!!!

Emme turns 4!

We celebrated the August birthday's on Emme's birthday. These are some shots at my mom's house. We had a day of swimming and as you can see eating cake. I couldn't resist putting the picture of Emme in her new goggles. She looked too cute!!

Off to Virginina

We are going to Virginia for the week- just the girls and I. We are staying at my sister Heather's house, so I may try and blog our activities for the week if not, I will post when I get home. Please pray for my long drive tomorrow!! Thankfully I will have company, Brandie and her daughter are travelling with us. Her husband Eric just started training at Integrity in Va to be a tech here in Atlanta. So I thought she may want to tag along so she can see her hubby. So I won't be bored on the trip singing Barney songs and trying to hand back snacks etc! Well maybe I still will be doing some of that, but will have adult conversation as well!
My girls are so excited a week long sleepover with Elise and Claire!!!!! Yeah. Virginia here we come!

The dogs...

Here is a recent picture of the dogs. They are getting so big- Copper (the brown one) tends to listen better, but Shaft is learning as well. He just likes to jump up on ya- and pee- He gets so excited. After being peed on we realized while letting them out of their fenced in dog area, we have to make him sit, otherwise he stands up and gets ya all wet! Yucky! Also when you are petting him you have to watch out. They are good dogs- funny to watch when the play together. They are always wrestling and fighting in a playful way with each other. They still don't like the water, the girls and Todd were out in the rain the other day and let them out. He said they ran around but don't really like the rain. They don't like the lake yet either- Todd had to throw them in the one day. But they both swam real well. Dogs are fun!

Swimming! Skydiving! Shopping!

On Tuesday we went swimming at the Rogers neighborhood pool. The girls had a great time. This is the first time they have been swimming this year - aside from the lake near our house. Kylie said on the way there, I am scared I won't remember how to swim- she did great. Then Emme didn't think should could touch and that the floaties would not hold her up- and once she realized after an hour of insisting not to leave the steps I finally got her to put her feet down and she could touch and not sink with the floaties on. Silly girl! And then Ally loved to splash and of course found Hannah's flip flops and walked around with them on her hands. Cute girl!

Well we came home and later that night Emme says I scratched my back on something and it hurts. I lift up her shirt to see and sure enough there is a line on her back- she was sunburned. When I put sunscreen on her (and I lather a ton on- they are so fair) Her top was touching the bottom part of her suit. But it slowly rode up while swimming- poor Emme. So we stayed indoors they next couple of days.

Well this week Todd says "hey a bunch of people are going skydiving this weekend- I think I am going to go." I thought ok that's cool- I was flipping through tv stations the other day and that extreme video show where they like capture crazy things on video was on. Well there is this one on skydiving, of course with my husband planning on doing this the next day I was intersted to watch. It was a battle in my mind of don't watch, watch- so I watched it. This professional jumper got all tangled up in his ropes while falling in the air- and it was a tandem jump which is what Todd was going to do, it was basically strangling him, he got out ok but of course I am a nervous wreck for him. He was so excited and not nervous at all. So he goes the next morning to meet up with the others and I couldnt stay home so I went back to Old Navy (I had been there the night before they were having huge sales!! Some clothes were like 75% off )anyways- shopping with three kids keeps my mind from worrying about Todd or anything. Then he calls and says I am alive- did the jump it was awesome. Ah sigh of relief. There is no way I could do that- Para-sailing is as close as I will get- that was one of the best things I have done- it was so much fun, but I was nervous!

Blueberry Picking

We went blueberry picking this morning- the girls picked two pounds of blueberries at Berry Patch Farms. We went early in the morning- it was much cooler this morning (suppose to reach 100 degrees today!) Ally enjoyed eating them! Now we get to make blueberry muffins, pancakes etc!!! Kylie asked if I could make blueberry juice?! Never tried that!! That would take a lot of blueberries to make an 8 oz glass of blueberry juice.

The Bouchers were here visiting and the "kids" did a lot of fourwheeling! They made a little jump- Kylie and Elias were both doing awesome at riding. I used the mulit burst picture option, so we had some progression shots of her jumping. She was a dirty mess when she was done-major helmet head!! We had a great visit with them!

Storytime in the bathroom? I sent the girls up earlier to clean their room because they had their stuffed animals out all over the bedroom. Well, I came up to empty the trash cans upstairs and interrupted storytime going on! They took all the stuffed animals and placed them all over the bathroom with a pile of library books on the hamper! I was just telling someone how we went through all of their stuffed animals and got rid of alot because we had too many- I think we might need to go through them again!!!

Happy Fourth of July! Well we went to a parade in the morning in a town called Woodstock. We were thrown so much candy and the boy scout troops were passing out freezy pops. They were given necklaces and american flags, which Ally really enjoyed waving. It was fun but the festival afterwards was very hot!

Then that night in a big shopping plaza in Canton some fireworks were set off, so the girls enjoyed those- except for Ally- she was a little scared by the noise, but kept turning around to see them. We had a great day!

Ally is walking!!! She took a ton of steps last night and today she stood up and walked toward me! What a big girl!

Kylie finally got her PINK four wheeler!(thanks to the insurance company) Oh and her feet are big enough to wear "riding" boots! Here are Kylie and Emme riding together!

What a great dad- Todd has made a track in our back yard. We have a somewhat flat area in the back on the other side of the creek that they ride on- and then our neighbor told us we could ride on the back part of his yard (he doesn't want to mow it) so now the track is even larger! They have such fun riding!

Ally's new way of crawling. She always finds a flip flop or two and puts them on her hands and crawls around- up on her feet. (i think the hard wood might hurt her knees) She is so cute when she does this!

Morgan, Kylie, Amanda and Emme hanging out this weekend. We took them for many rides on the four wheeler- I think they may have enjoyed riding with Todd- he drives a little bit faster than I do. We had a great time visiting with them. The girls were so excited to have their good friends come and visit!

Look! No training wheels!!!! Todd taught Kylie how to ride her bike without training wheels two nights ago. I was watching the Roger's kids in the apartment and kept hearing someone crying- it was Kylie-she was so scared, but she is doing great! She is now learning how to turn and keep going instead of putting her foot down to keep her balance. She is doing really well!

We are sitting here tonight about 7:15 and all of the sudden our power goes out. We wait a little while- Todd ventures down the street (on his new four wheeler) to see if any one else on the street has lost power. We are it! Not use to the power lines in Virginia I think everything was underground. So we call the electric company-they send someone out. He proceeds to fix it and looks down and sees a poor little squirrel who was up in the transformer box and is now dead. He knocked out the connecter. So we had about an hour with out power thanks to a little squirrel! Crazy stuff!! You never realize how much we use it until it is gone- especially for getting kids ready for bed, giving baths, cooling the house, etc. Thank you Lord for electricity!