Forever Glades

Cruisin

2012-02-01T21:26:00.000-06:00

Here is a picture of our boat we shared with 4000 souls parked in Mexico. It looks like it is parked on a hill, but that is just the curve of the equator. The other boat on the other side was sloped in the opposite direction. Nice ship, beautiful ports, and lots of fun.

I never thought I would like a cruise, but now I can't wait to go again. Since we've been back we still have our sea legs, so we feel like we are rocking back and forth on land. I personally feel it is our soul telling us we need to return to the sea sooner rather than later.

Our favorite activity we did was four wheeling through the jungle to see some Mayan ruins. Our guide was Mayan and had a lot of neat information for us about his culture and beliefs. I know Grandpa Glade was involved/interested in FARMS, and I can now better understand his fascination.

For the ATV tour we signed waivers that we wouldn't fishtail, jump, or abuse the machines...then our guide told us to do everything he did. I was delighted to follow him off jumps and ride just as crazy as he was riding. Then our guide denied any horseplay, so I did everything he did and denied it as well. Mayans are fun people and this was our favorite place to visit.

This is a waterfall over 900 feet tall. We hiked up it, which would have been awesome if there weren't another 1000 people in line. We felt like little ants in a line going up a mound. The people around us were fun at this part so we didn't mind too much. The natives were recording our ascent and yelled at us all the time to "get excited" and yell "ja man" at the camera. I thought we were having fun until the camera man wanted us to pretend to have even more fun.

This was in Jamaica, which was pretty, but the locals are loud and obnoxious. This is an island we wouldn't fly to just to visit. After the hike up the falls we rode horses. I'll put pictures up of that later.

This is a beach in Jamaica that we got to sit at for a while.

Here is a sunset on the water. It was prettier than the camera makes it, but most of life is usually that way. I got Heather's old camera wet, so we had to buy a new one...for mega bucks. Too bad the quality of the pictures isn't mega good.

We had to dress up a few nights on the ship. Here is us in our "fancy" clothes. We shared a dinner table with 2 awesome couples. One were newly weds that reminded us of some old friends we had here in Bryan (Ben and Cindy) and the other couple was married for 12 years and have a young family like us. We had a lot of fun and laughed a lot.

Us young people had to stick together a bit to fend off the old people. The reason Heather and I scheduled our trip when we did was to get away from kids, but that meant we shared the boat with lots and lots of old people. I forget old people tent to revert back to childhood when they get older, so we didn't completely succeed getting away from kids. 90% of the oldies were awesome and fun to be around; the other 10 percent made me want to break some hips. The worst thing about old people are the smells they emit. Some of them decided not to take a shower the entire trip and others had potent old people farts. Uhg. Talk about room clearers. I think some of them take broccoli pills to make themselves extra repulsive.

We had a little extra time while going to the ship, so we visited Ramada. They put a gate up in front of the porch, so we couldn't bust in to check out the inside.

All in all we had a very relaxing time. Although we could have stayed gone for another 3 or 4 weeks, it was good to come home and see the kids. Mom did an awesome job taking care of our kids and I'm sure she was glad to get back to Dad. When we got back home we were greeted with a ton of balloons and home made signs. Most of them were made from mom with notes that expressed her excitement that we were home to take care of our own kids.

Christmas Update

2011-12-31T21:49:00.147-06:00

Madison's class had a PJ party for their Christmas party and her siblings got to party in their PJ's too. Although it wasn't proper, the camera woman also wore her french PJ's too....thanks Matt. Notice the confused children who just want to eat their cookies in peace.

Christmas was great for our kids. We luckily got them to bed early, but it took 2/3 of them forever to wake up....more on the 1/3 later. Ashlyn got a Barbie Jeep from Santa and loved it. It came with a California Ken and Barbie so she should have at least 2 dolls with heads, arms, and legs attached for a few weeks. She is tough on toys.

Cameron scored a 50 cc Honda motorcycle from Santa. Of all the good kids in the world, this was one slight mix up. Unlike bank errors, this was one in his favor. He was excited for his bike, but just as excited for Madison's and Ashlyn's new toys too. For some reason, Madison and Cameron were happy for their siblings getting good gifts too, which was a nice thing to watch. Ashlyn is still in the unwrapping phase.

Madison couldn't fall asleep on Christmas eve because she was so excited. She wanted this ez bake oven so bad and was so excited for Christmas to come that she couldn't hold still for very long. She finally dozed off 3 hours after her bed time. At 2:30 am, she came into our room and asked Heather to button the back of her Sunday dress. She was dressed, had her teeth brushed and hair combed...and had already peaked in the living room. Heather had to sleep with Madison to get her back down and she kept babbling about how excited Cameron is going to be about his motorcycle. We hoped she would have slept in more, but 6:30 she was back up, ready to tear into the presents.

Here is excited, camera aware, Madison with all of her presents. She got spoiled; loves her scooter, ez bake oven, bracelet maker, and a lot of other things that stimulate her ever growing creative abilities.

Here are all of Cameron's gifts. He has played and played with all of his toys like crazy. He has a great imagination and creates huge scenes all over the house with his trucks, army men, super hero toys, and even some of Ashlyn's barbies.

Ashlyn had a ball opening gifts this year. She was equally excited for each one of them. Like most kids her age, more than one present is overwhelming, so she just focused on opening them. She got 6 or 10 figures from toy story, so we like to move them around the house with Cameron's superhero toys making it look like they are trying to escape. Cameron is convinced they do wake up and move around when they are not playing with them. Victory!

Bug got more ties than Dad has is his closet for Christmas. Great minds think alike. That or we've all seen pictures of his old wardrobe. He was excited and it was great spending Christmas Eve and Christmas day with him.

Heather got more than you can see in the picture. Her big gift from Santa was a membership to our local gym with babysitting included. She is excited and luckily the kids like going there too.

I got surprised with gifts I knew nothing about...except for Santa's gift for me (from me). I guess the gunsmith was slammed this year and it is still in the mail. I was surprised with not 1, but 2 ice cream scoopers. I guess complaining about the chrome flakes in my blue bell did not land on deaf ears! I also got a cool Thor chest protector to save my internal organs from severe wrecks when I'm riding alone through the forest.

Needless to say, we've been riding our motorcycles quite a bit the last few days. Madison tried Cameron's bike and rode 18 inches before falling off. Nothing but pride and tear ducts got injured, and she is obviously done with trying to ride...ever. She did get back on my big bike, but only lets me drive her around in 1st gear.

Ashlyn on the other hand is our speed demon. She loves to accelerate and ride fast. The 50 is big enough for me and her to ride on it, so I let her control the throttle. She understands how to make it go fast and slow down...she just chooses to go fast most of the time. Yesterday we were at the dinner table and she got big crocodile tears in her eyes and exclaimed, "Me have no mocycle!" We discussed that subject as a family and she can get a pink one when she is bigger...hopefully a lot bigger.

Cameron acts like he was born on a bike...most of the time. He loves it and was standing up on the foot pegs as he lapped the yard 20 minutes after he started riding. He has only been on a bike once before, but has a knack for balance. With the exception of riding around while standing on his pegs, he rides very conservative...until Heather comes outside to watch him ride. He needs to show off for her, which was the cause of his introduction to barbed wire and motorcycles. The wreck was not that bad (if he survives the tetanus infection), but he jumped off his bike, (screaming the whole time) ripped of his helmet, threw it on the ground, ran a few feet toward us (we too were running towards him), and collapsed on the ground. His wounds included a bleeding rusty barbwire stab on his palm. I know it had to hurt, but his reactions were funny enough it was impossible not to laugh.

Once we got him doctored up and ready for a bath, we noticed 2 more battle wounds on his shoulder and knee that he didn't know about. Everything healed 2 days later (except the lockjaw), and he loves to show the wounds off to everyone. We are appreciating the lockjaw thing while it lasts.

Later in the week, he was back in the saddle again and a little more conservative. Bug was watching him ride through a mud puddle in the yard, and after a few passes it got really soupy. He gassed it in the puddle to make a big splash and splashed in the mud himself. Bug helped him up, no tears were shed, and he was just fine after a change of clothes. He is tired of riding in the yard and wants to go in the forest...where I've dropped my bike in the loose corners, and despite me describing how dangerous it is, he is determined to go on a bike trip soon. His birthday is coming up and although he is asking for brazillian cars toys from cars 2, me thinks he is getting Thor chest protection!

Video of Cameron was here, but could not upload. I'll try later.

PS I got a Christmas card from Betty, so despite rumors she is still alive (it was very much her writing). Just seeing her handwriting brought back a flood of memories. I've got a telephone call to her on my to do list. Weingartens also wrote me after 10 to 12 months of no correspondence. They too are doing well and despite it being a short letter, sound like things are well in Deutschland.

Winter updates

2011-12-11T20:34:00.000-06:00

A few weeks ago I got to go to a range day near Austin to check out my new Christmas present. While standing in line for BBQ, this guy walks by. If you watch discovery channel, you may see ads or even watch a show called Top Shot. I like it, and this is the winner of the third season. His name is Dustin and he is a christian camp directer and foster parent in east Texas. When Benjamin saw his name on the show, he asked me if his wife was named blah blah blah. Even if they told me that on the show, I would not have remembered it, but 10 minutes later they bring his wife on the show (Bug must have seen it first). He knew them from working adoptions in east Texas. Long story short, when I saw him walking by, I ran up to him and accidentally almost tackled him because I was so excited. If you watch the show, you know he would have taken it in good stride...but secretly I think he stayed away from me the rest of the day. Cool guy, beat people who hold all sorts of shooting titles and is a humble nice guy. Once it comes in the mail (unless Heather opens it and hides it first), we will also both own the same gun.

We got some rain again. It is nice, but the kids are so intrigued, they do not know how not to get dirty when it rains. Mud puddles, mud pies, mud masks, and muddy clothes are in style at the Glade house. I guess it is good clean fun, so we don't stop them from enjoying being outside.

Last weekend we had our annual Christmas party. Here are most the workers at Boonville Animal Hospital. We had a great time, and only wished it was a touch cooler.

Madison and Cameron are into games, games, and more games. They have a lot of fun playing together, and Madison has a lot of fun playing games like Battleship, Monopoly, and other long, long, long games. She is a thinker and likes to win.

Cameron is experiencing more breathing difficulties like he did during our family reunion trip. Maybe cold air has something to do with him not being able to breathe at night. He as a few minutes away from being in the hospital last week, but his drugs finally kicked in and worked enough to get his color back to not blue. He actually never turns blue, but it sounds like he should be. During the day he is 100% normal, but when 6:00 rolls around, he starts having major breathing problems. Prednisone seems to be the only thing that resolves the problem right now. Sounds like more doctor visits in the future.

Ashlyn is talking more and more. She makes sense now and says pretty cute things. It amazes me the things she notices and cares about.

Heather and I are about to celebrate our 10th anniversary. It is hard to believe it has been 10 years already. We are planning on celebrating with a cruise in January. It will be nice to get away for a while and visit some warmer places. I'm nervous about being too close to too many people. Not that I don't like people, but I've learned that I don't like a lot of people with me in small areas...especially lines. Heather wants me to put on my big boy pants and have fun, which I am sure will happen.

4 more days until our anniversary, 14 more days until Christmas, 19 days until Pam's birthday, 20 days until new years, and a hop, skip, and a jump until my 31st birthday.

October Update

2011-11-08T19:14:00.000-06:00

Some time last month it rained once. The kids were so excited they played in the mud for a few hours before they got too cold. It was exciting to see mud, and I had to hide Heather's keys to keep her from mudding in the front yard.

Madison is still our star scholar. She is doing well in school, loves her teachers, and is doing good with making friends this year. The thinks she likes some one who may also like her, but they haven't either yet said anything yet, so she currently does not have a boyfriend. I just found this out today and am shocked and saddened that this garbage is starting so early. The also has a "best friend" on the bus, but she does not know her name. Her best bus friend (a 3rd grader) loans her toys to play with for a day, and Madison takes them back to her. Odd?? Her best bus friend also has a best class friend (not Madison) who thinks she (the best class friend) is a vampire. Confused? Yup, so am I. I though vampires only came out at night, but I guess this is a new breed. Eric fan here. We hate Jacob. Ha ha - only kidding. Haven't seen those movies yet.

Cameron is following Madison around a lot trying to keep up with her, but he also does a lot on his own these days. He is using his imagination a lot and loves playing with super hero toys. He asks questions about who is who and who does what, and since super heros are fake, I decided it is ok to make fake answers since I don't always know the real answers. I do not know is not acceptable for Cameron, but the fake answers satisfy him.

Cameron has developed a fear of going to primary, mother's day out, and pre-school. He cries a lot and is hard headed enough to continue crying just because. His record is 45 minutes. Now he fake cries and smirks at the same time when Heather leaves. He loves the game. We've made reward charts for him with a bunch of different opportunities to earn stickers, which lead to points, which lead to dollars, which lead to super hero toys. After 3 weeks of stickers and points, he has 1 dollar. One of the stickers he can earn each day is if he does not cry at all during the day. He has earned stickers in this category once. Once! How can such a tough kid be so stinking sensitive?

Some time last week it almost warmed up enough for the kids to miss the swimming pool. With out asking, they put on their swim suits and jumped on the tramp with water. It was chilly, but we let them have their fun. Needless to say, lips were purple. Since then it has been warmer, but they had enough fun on the wet tramp already.

Ashlyn does a good job keeping up with the other two, and only gets left behind every now and then. We do remind them that no child gets left behind, but that only works sometimes. She loves mother's day out, nursery, and gymnastics. She is staying pretty happy on only gets fussy when she is tired. She is starting to get demanding and will emphasize the NOW when she really wants something. It was cute the first time, but now NOW is annoying and we are trying to break her of that habit.

Here are their Halloween costumes. Ashlyn was a ballerina, Cameron was Captain America, and Madison was the short haired tangled. She even had a magical tear on her cheek. They got a lot of candy, and did a great job of sharing it with every one. Sugar rush is over and the candy is mostly gone. What is still around will be here next year too (we give that out to other kids next Halloween).

I got to take a day off and fish in San Antonio bay with a guide. He put us on some awesome speckled trout and red fish. We limited out in the morning and caught some awesome fish. Some of the red fish took about 10 minutes to get into the boat. They were real rod benders. These fish are so fun to catch as they fight and fight. Even after we boated our limit, we kept accidentally catching them. The guide was looking for 2 more trout and upset we kept catching reds. I was not upset. It was a great time and I can't wait to get back for more fishing. Because of the drought we didn't get to fish much this summer (not enough water in the lakes) and I didn't realize how much I missed it. Still praying for rain down here.

faceless children

2011-10-27T22:37:00.000-05:00

http://ww2.kbtx.com/global/video/flash/popupplayer.asp?clipId1=6388845&flvUri=&partnerclipid=&at1=News&vt1=v&h1=Some%20Famous%20Faces%20Help%20Raise%20Awareness&d1=132500&redirUrl=www.kbtx.com&activePane=info&LaunchPageAdTag=homepage&clipFormat=flv&rnd=92833250

Check out these faceless children who bounce from home to home.

Poor kids.

Join CASA and adopt one of them..

PS they come with a free dog too.

October

2011-10-09T20:59:00.000-05:00

It rained again for the second time this year. The kids were so excited they couldn't wait to get out of their church clothes to splash in the puddles. They were hoping for rain puddles, but found nothing but mud puddles and were dirty, wet, and a cold from the 65 degree temps. Looks like we get to do a batch of sunday wash.

Madison's bike had a flat tire, so for our bike outing, she opted to ride Ashlyn's bike. Super small, not super cute. She still doesn't want to learn to ride with no training wheels; guess she inherited that trait from her aunt.

Here is Ashlyn post mud puddles. She was newest to cold and wet, but not new to loving being dirty and messy.

She is still in gymnastics and leanring more and more. This is called a bridge. Heather is mad she can't do cartwheels, roundoffs, or the iron cross yet. Maybe next year we'll get our money's worth.

All the kids love riding the bike. We took a bike to a school parking lot to get some practice highspeed turns, wheelies, and let the kids ride with us a few times. Heather is getting more comfortable and hopefully might be ready to ride on the road after a few more training sessions.

Cameron is a natural on the bike, loves to go fast, and never wants his turn to end. Atta boy!

I tried to sneek out of the house early Friday morning for a dove hunt, but even before I got up, Cameron was waiting for me. He had no idea I was going hunting (his plans were to play the Wii at 5 am as he has done for the past 2 mornings), and when he realized I was hunting, he got super excited. He begged to go and turned off the Wii faster than I have ever seen before. How could I say no?

During the hunt, he was pretty happy most of the time. He got to bring his BB gun and shot at birds miles away. It was a great time together. He slept on the way home (yea!), and had lots of stories to tell mom at home. The above picture is his cool/happy face. The pulls the upside down frown/smile, squints his eyes, and nods his head. Pretty cool dude in his small mind.

September update

2011-09-12T19:20:00.000-05:00

Friday was dollar bowling days, so since the kids were not allowed in school, yet healthy, we took them to the alley to throw a few strikes. I bowled a remarkable 166, but couldn't touch Heather's consistent strikes and her 231 score. The kids had fun and Heather didn't stop dancing all afternoon long.

We have had cooler temperatures last week and it dipped into the upper 60's. Madison was cold enough to find a jacket she wore two years ago and persisted on wearing it outside. So cold, so cool. We have enjoyed the weather and done quite a bit of work outside. Since there is not grass to mow or water to wet the plants, we decided to clean up Bug's new place.

We spent most of the day yesterday working at the pink house. We all cleared tons of trash off the property, removed decades worth of leaves and drought stricken ground cover. Then the kids got restless and left. Bug attacked the pink paint with a powerwasher and found a lot of siding that needed to be replace. We spent the remainder of the afternoon replacing a significant amount of siding on the back of the house. Luckily we found enough good studs to hammer the boards into and the house looks a little better already.

This weeks plans are to finish powerwashing the pink paint off, caulk the outside, and prep it for pain. I hope to borrow my friend's paint gun and wipe out the whole house in a few hours. Bug is working hard on this place and really enjoying the carpentry work. I assumed he did as much building as a kid as I did, but he claims that dad took a sabbatical from wood working when he was growing up, dad refused to show him how to work, and why did he need to build anything when he had all the hand me downs from the older, much more spoiled boys.

The girls are still doing gymnastics once a week. Cameron quit (smiley face inserted here) and wants to play basketball in the spring. He is pretty good at on the wii, and thinks there is a direct translation to real world skills. He gets this assumption from an uncle who feels he is a good sniper on 360 (where I get wasted) yet can't hit the broad side of a coke can at 10 yards. He he.

Madison is doing good at school. She loves both her teachers and is doing well. She didn't want to go to school for a few days, which had us concerned....turns out she had strep throat and didn't feel well. Now that she is getting better, she loves going to school again.

Cameron has started a weekly prekindergarten program and has 8 or 9 kids in his class. Poor girls who volunteered to teach that class! Good thing it is only weekly.

Slowly but surely we are getting back to our normal health and regular routine, and hope to stay that way for a while.

Motorcycle school

2011-08-22T21:00:00.000-05:00

This weekend we met Bug in Plano to attend our very first motorcycle school. We chose a school in Plano because we got free babysitters for two days and the course was priced a lot more reasonable than local schools. The reason it was so nicely priced is because we rode 249cc Hyosung Aquila motorcycles as pictured above (of course you have never heard of them...and I never want to hear of them again). They looked nice...until you actually got close to them. Imagine the above bike (gently laying on its side) being beaten with pipes and chains by 7 or 8 burly Hell's Angels. After a 15 minute iron lashing for trying to imitate a motorcycle, they drug the bikes off the pavement and let us students learn how to ride.

The controls on the bikes were super loose, so rolling the throttle not only gave it a little gas, but also rolled the controls counterclockwise around the handlebars. My bike liked to stall in second gear every 2 or 3 minutes, which eventually resulted in a girl behind me locking up her front brake and crashing her bike (she got kicked out of the course). Bug's bike didn't get out of the starting blocks when slightly releasing the clutch as directed. He needed 3,000 rpm to keep from stalling out in first gear. I thought the instructor kept calling him the Star, but he was really calling (yelling) him the Staller. Heather's bike was so well built that the left foot peg spontaneously fell off preventing her from shifting. She had to ride a moped to finish the course. Good times!

It was great learning with people we knew, otherwise it would have been pretty miserable on the 106 degree asphalt. I honestly thought the class would be a little mickey mouse, and hoped to learn a thing or two. I was wrong in so many ways. It was a very intense course, and we were lucky to pass it. In the end we qualified to go to the DMV to take another written test for our...motorcycle endorsement. Yeah!!! Points were bad during the last test; if you got 20 points, you didn't pass. Benjamin and myself collected 13 points to brag about. Heather scootered by us with flying colors with a mere 8 points, earning her the Motorcycle School Prom Queen title.

2011-08-15T21:19:00.000-05:00

Recently we celebrated Bug's birthday with a few surprises. Look at the surprised expression on his young (yet mature) happy face. If you count the candles from his position he is 27, but from the camerawoman's angle he is a young 72. Happy birthday!

The big kid in our family (me) thought it would be fun to break a pinata to celebrate. Since it was as hot as the Mexican deserts, we tried breaking it inside the house....so some kids were slightly afraid to give it a full swing. Excalibur was a little too big for Ashlyn to swing.

Cameron had no fear of breaking anything in the house...but still couldn't break the pinata despite giving it all he had. He is still young in the force and would have got zapped a lot by the zapping jedi training ball.

Madison also put forth a valiant effort, but struggled to dent the VW donkey.

It took a real man to hack the poor donkey's leg off. Happy birthday bug.

One of Bug's presents was this Tex-Mex potato. Yum, Legit, and best ever.

This was actually an AWESOME weekend for me and Heather and the kids. I'm sure Bug had fun too judging by the silly grin on his face when we mention the weekend. Keep watching his blog for details of the awesomeness of his weekend. Loved the surprises.

The kids have been a lot of fun to watch lately. They are getting along great most of the time and moments like this make me smile on the inside and outside.

This weekend all the remaining peach-fuzz hair on my chest started trembling and were about to fall out. Right before it fell out, the rage of testosterone flowed though my hands, up my arms and the fuzz spontaneously combusted into a blue-grey ring of smoke as I started my.....Stihl chainsaw for the first time. That is right, I've been baptized into manhood with the bold orange (not burnt orange) and white rip roaring, wood gnashing, tree trembling MS 362 Stihl lightsaber. During the rest of Saturday afternoon that I spent cutting the old fallen oak tree, I grew a full lumberjack beard thicker, darker, and longer than Bug and Dad can ever dream of owning. (I'm still beating my chest, warning all the nearby silverbacks of my dominance). Aarrhhh!

It actually started when I pulled a neck muscle/nerve while starting my Poulan saw (aka butterknife)...no chest beating there...and could not get the sorry thing to start back up with out severe pain. One quick trip to Mecca (our local John Deere store), and I came home a new man. What would have taken me a few days, got finished in a short, hot, painfully dehydrated afternoon. With the help of 3 "are we done yet" children, a tough wife, Bug's muscular frame, and Barbie's Kubota, we loaded the truck several times with lots and lots of firewood.

A few weeks ago, Heather, Bug, and Myself decided to be cool, so we bought this fresh breath of adrenaline. The owner's manual didn't show us how to drive it, so we learned by trial and error. Here Bug is asking me, "What does this button do?"
Me: "I don't know.... push it."
Bug: "It didn't do anything."
Me: "I still don't know. Drive it fast, and then push it."
Bug: "What if it is the emergency eject button?"
Me: "HEATHER...GO GET MY PARACHUTE PLEASE."
Bug: "You have a parachute??"

Madison loves the bike...but only when the rides are slow, leisurely, rides with no bumps, ramps, sharp turns, or hot wheelies.

Cameron is as wild as Bug's clutch fingers. He loves to go fast, not hold on, and jump his bike ramp. Today we got some protective equipment in and since they came with instructions we actually read them. My favorite helmet instruction is: Just because you are wearing a helmet, doesn't mean you can't get hurt. Please ride safely. After all these years of helmet wearing, I found out they can't make you invincible?? What a load~! I can't believe I've been lied to all these years.

Weekend

2011-07-25T08:06:00.000-05:00

This weekend went by too fast, and I need a few more days to relax. On Friday night, Cameron, Bug and I loaded up and went to Lufkin to help Bug move. Since he "didn't have that much stuff", we only brought the small flatbed and left the 18 wheeler at home. Once we got there we realized we should have brought the big truck. It took a long time to get everything loaded, and it was humid and hot. We bugged out of Lufkin as soon as we could and enjoyed the ride in the cool AC. Luckily when we got to his place in Bryan, the unload went a lot quicker, it was not as humid, and we were able to work in the shade most of the time. We got him unloaded and helped him unpack some, and are super excited to have him in Bryan...unless he decides to move again.

Family reunion trip

2011-07-15T21:28:00.001-05:00

Here are a few pictures of the family reunion we took. This was supposed to be the "happy" picture we took at the very beginning of our trip and I was going to another picture of us all at the end of the trip that would be "not so happy". It turned out that our trip/vacation was really fun and there was no "not so happy" moments*.

*Hospital trips not included.

This is an awesome picture of the kids on their great-great grandparent's headstone. The colorful flowers stayed behind, but I hope they see this picture in the future and recognize the significance of their ancestry, the sacrifices made, and blessings we have in our lives because of so many wonderful brave ancestors.

Here is our family shot at Uncle Stan's cabin. It was just as awesome as I remembered, and I'm sure our kids will have similar memories of playing with cousins at the same cabin where we played with our cousins.

Here is a close up of our happy family.

Here is our crazy picture. I can send out these and other pictures if anyone is interested, but only if you send pictures to me in return. Tit for tat.

Ashlyn is getting old enough that she follows her cousins around and copies them some. It is fun to watch her start to develop relationships with other kids. Afton thought playing with Ashlyn was fun...until Ashlyn started to chew on her arm.

Gwendolyn and Ashlyn...didn't play together much. Mostly because Gwendolyn thought Ashlyn was going to eat her.

We all had a lot of fun playing outside. The weather was perfect, and the mountains were very pretty.

Cameron and Madison would have deemed our trip a failure if they didn't get snow. To accomplish this task (in July) we drove up to 10,570 feet to find the tops of the mountains covered in snow. We drove by Mt. Baldie to get there and enjoyed the mountains. Carter and Landon came along with us, but did a lot of staring in disbelief, wondering why the crazy kids even wanted to think of snow in July. In the end, we all had a snow/ice ball fight, ate snow, got wet and cold. yea.

2 minutes after dad said, "no throwing snow balls at people because they will hurt", a snowball randomly fell out of the sky and clobbered Madison...who was just "pretending" to make a snowball to throw up in the air in my general direction.

Before the reunion started, we met mom and dad in Montpelier KOA and had a picnic with them. I took this picture, so I was not there, but where on earth are Bug and Madison??

...they were a mile away on top of a mountain. They scaled this shear cliff only wearing flip flops, just because they could. Madison is still talking about how awesome it was.

This is the reason we rented a RV for the trip. Madison is staring at the TV. Ashlyn is clinging to Bug. Bug is fast asleep. Cameron is in the bathroom. Heather is looking at maps, but keeping the information to herself. Dad was driving, cooking, cleaning, and fixing everything all at the same time. This is my summary of driving in the RV. Bug's version - He and Heather were keeping the kids from driving me crazy while I was griping at everyone and patting myself on the back the whole time. Heather's version - She never slept, but waited on the driver's beck and call while keeping the kids happy. Kid's version - they were perfect, never asked when we would get there, and want to keep the RV to drive every day.

Thanks everyone for the wonderful time!

June events

2011-06-18T21:21:00.000-05:00

Madison celebrated her 7th birthday, and was very excited, in her own humble way, to celebrate herself. She got spoiled with lots of presents and had a permanent smile on her face most of the day. All the kids get excited for birthdays because I let them pick out presents for their siblings (with probably too little guidance, and they tend to buy presents for the birthday kid that they too look forward to playing with).

At the beginning of summer the two older kids had swim lessons, and are learning how to swim again. We enjoy playing in the water a lot. Many nights, the kids slept in their swimsuits so they don't have to waste time in the morning getting dressed to go swimming.

Madison started going to gymnastics twice a week and Heather enrolled Ashlyn and Cameron in gymnastics once a week. I had mixed feelings about this, but since I'm not there to help babysit, my concerns were omitted.

Cameron thinks gymnastics is training for fighting, and continues to practice his karate, judo, spiderman web throws, and hi-yahs on imaginary bad (and sometimes good) guys.

Cameron has perfected his front rolls, and will do them off the steps into the pool. It almost qualifies as
a dive, and he thinks he is pretty cool for being able to pull it off.

Luckily to this date, he hasn't yet caught his head on the ladder. I'm sure it is just a matter of time.

Madison can do a lot of gymnastic tricks, but can't do them while on the ladder. One step lower than Cameron, she still has height issues. This causes her to tighten up, freeze, not follow directions, and...

belly flop every time. Despite the, "I can't breath" and "it stings so bad", she continues to climb the ladder (half way) and flop into the pool again and again. She gets the glutton for punishment gene from myself.

Goofy kids

2011-05-06T23:22:00.000-05:00

This past week, Heather has been squeezing gobs and gobs of blue cheese out of a staph infection on Ashlyn's leg. Yum. It makes Ashlyn cry, which makes me cry. It makes me feel all the better when she isn't crying and we get to see the funny side of her. I'm saving the cheese for dad's salad when we see him in July. Any one else like blue cheese? I'm sure it will be nice and ripe by then.

Cameron has also been sick and cannot breath due to his possible epiglottitis. He hates to take medicine, so we've bribed him; now he just takes advantage of the situation. This is 6:30 am as he and Madison enjoy the bounties of his bargaining power. Notice all the goodies on the counter for breakfast; Koolade in his cup, ice cream on his spoon, corn dog on his plate, and money on the counter. Greedy little bugger.

Lucky for us the horse medicine is working, but there are a few side effects we may encounter in the future.

April update

2011-05-01T22:23:00.000-05:00

April came and went. Here are a few updates on what happened to our family during this month.

We had a wonderful windy Easter. The kids hunted a lot of eggs and had a lot of fun doing it.

Ashlyn waddled around the yard and squealed when she found an egg. She couldn't keep up with her older siblings speed, but was just as happy to collect her eggs.

Madison was just as excited to hunt her basket and eggs as any one, and was proud that she found the eggs that were hardest to find.

This picture makes me laugh. Either Cameron is running very very fast, or the winds are blowing 20 to 30 mph.

We took the kids camping on a cool weekend to Fairfield state park. They had a blast. Cameron got to ride his bike off road on dirt trails and didn't crash too bad. We took to boat, but the wind was blowing again and the lake was down. So the kids just played in the boat at the camp site.

It was so windy it blew the curls out of Ashlyn's hair.

It gave Madison and Cameron a chance to practice casting. Madison caught a lot of trees and destroyed a few bobbers while practicing.

The Bransons came down for a visit, and we took them to see the Aggie baseball team beat up OSU. It was a lot of fun, and the kids did good for 80% of the time. It is always good to get back to campus to watch a game or special event, but I'm sure glad I'm done with school and don't have to be on campus every day.

Because the kids begged and begged, we set up the pool two weeks ago. We probably set it up 4 weeks too early as it is very cold still. This does not keep the kids from wanting to swim; they just come out of the pool with purple lips.

Last Saturday the kids helped wash both cars. The kids love to use the hose and climb on the roof. Other than that it was fun to watch them play in the suds.

Ashlyn continues to make us smile. She is not a diva, but does enjoy the occasional dress up and loves subtle jewelry such as small bracelets or bows.

We have been playing a lot of softball with the kids. They can hit a ball off the tee better than they can catch, but with practice they all are improving .

Madison is still a joy. She tries to make every one smile all the time, and is a breath of fresh air. We are blessed to have a great example in our home.

Cameron is Cameron. The definition of Cameron's attitude = see my self explaining shirt. His face is no camera pose; he is regularly PO'ed most of the day. This has been his attitude for a while, and we've been frantically analyzing our parenting strategy hoping to make correct adjustments. So far we've had no luck.

For a talent show at church he showed off his bike riding skills. Heather made him this awesome cape, and he practiced riding over our home made jump for a few weeks.

Despite a lot of wipe outs, he continued to practice jumping until the day of the talent show. At the show he choked and refused to go over the ramp.

He started jumping the ramp as soon as we got home, and promised to do it next year for his talent. He also enjoys running off the ramp as well.

Here is a video of our first ramp. It was too big and his wipe outs were bigger and more painful than we wanted. True Knievel style!

Spring Break

2011-03-21T22:18:00.000-05:00

We worked the first half of spring break and then took a few days off to enjoy a few things as a family. The highlight of the week was hanging out with Uncle Bug for both the kids and parents. Our kids love Bug so much, so it is always a huge event to be around him, and he provides another set of hands to spank, smack, and kick our kids into doing right. This, of course, is my favorite part about hanging out with Bug.

We spent quite a bit of time lounging around in downtown Nac (the oldest town in Texas), seeing a little history, and having a lot of fun. The fire department and fire museum (one and the same) was really neat. The boys were out rescuing kittens from tall pine trees, but the fire captain, with his fancy uniform and coffee, showed us some awesome things in the basement of the firehouse. The kids got to climb all over Big Bertha, a 1923 original, running, V-12 antique firetruck the department uses in parades. We spent a lot of time looking at lots of neat old school fire equipment and had a lot of fun. I'm sure Bug is going to visit again on his day off and play on the truck some when the kids are not hogging the driver's seat.

We also took the family to the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. Most of our day time was spent at the carnival. Above is Ashlyn and my yee haw screams as we raced around in circles on her favorite ride. I took each kid on a ride or two, and then turned them over to Bug and Heather while I did some window shopping/tire kicking for the clinic. If anyone gets to test drive my future truck, the SVT Raptor, let me know how awesome it is.

We got to see a fun rodeo and had a blast. Zack Brown and his band put on a great show; they are fantastic performers, and I'll pay to see them again any time. They have a lot of talent and even more energy. Our kids got spoiled, tired, and then had to be carried all the way home. It was an advil night.

Cameron finally got a hair cut. It is becoming normal for us to abort 5 or 6 attempts to get his hair cut before we actually do it. He is having a difficult time with life right now and fights and argues with everything. It is bad enough that Heather is starting to read book on raising difficult children and refraining from screaming. We sure hope this is a short lived phase and can't wait for our happy boy to come back home.

Happy Birthday Ashlyn

2011-03-06T20:44:00.000-06:00

We took a few days to celebrate Ashlyn's birthday. She was excited to turn two, but her parents are a little less than thrilled. We noted that she (the third child....) is a little more hard headed than our previous two. I thought no one would be more difficult and hard headed than Cameron, but little sweet Ashlyn took that statement as a challenge and is doing everything she can to top Cameron. Although our first two kids did not experience the terrible twos, Ashlyn came into her second year in full swing. The theme of her party was, "it's my party, and I can cry if I want to".

Here is a brief moment when she wasn't crying on her birthday....when she was eating. Loving to eat is something she inherited from me, and both of us can do some damage to a cupcake. One slight difference is a cupcake can do some serious damage to Ashlyn too. It appears she didn't taste much since she, her shirt, and the counter wore most of the frosting.

Here is Ashlyn with her booty (pirate for treasure). She got spoiled and loved the attention. We do love having her in our family and accept the challenge that she is a challenge. She is still daddy's girl and that makes my heart melt.

Here is a collage of action shots of Ashlyn on the tramp. She does well to keep her balance while jumping, but looks like an astronaut experiencing G forces when landing. Gravity is a beast for her as it pulls her curls out, her budda belly down, and her grin into a grimace.

I warned Madison I would post this picture if she didn't change, but she didn't care. She was determined to wear her PJ's all day long, but only managed to keep her PJ pants on. She wanted to go in public places, but no one was brave enough to escort her outside our yard.

She did get free tickets to the Aggie basketball game, so she had some one on one time with her favorite mom. They had a lot of fun, and Madison has a lot of stories to tell about Aggie basketball.

Just found a few pictures of our last Chuck E Cheese trip for Cameron's birthday. Last year he cried when he saw the big mouse, but this year he ran up to him. Ashlyn was not so impressed and kept her distance. Madison was allowed to wear these boots out in public, but only because they are her rain and snow boots. This was the day school was canceled due to ice and snow, and we were TIRED of the kids being inside too much. I don't think this Glade family could survive a winter where we had to stay inside all the time.

Madison loves to shoot baskets, and has learned on her own to do pretty good. If she can only grow to be a 7 foot amazon woman, we may have a chance watching her play ball for the Aggies.

Heather has been bugging me for the past 9 years to paint her kitchen, so last weekend we bit the bullet and tackled half of the job. I talked her out of painting it brick red since I feel it would clash with the floor. She is still sad about not having a red kitchen. Instead of red, I talked her into painting it green, or Jungle Chameleon Green as she picked out. It is just like a chameleon because it changes colors with the sun and turns pea green, puke green, guacamole green, and army green from sun up to sun down. Now we have a color that not only clashes with our floor, but everything and everyone else in the house too.

Madison wanted to help and painted until her shoulder hurt. Some time in the future, I get to tackle the trim to finish the job. I was supposed to do it this weekend, but got sidetracked on silly continuing education classes. I will be happy once it is done, and even like the color as much as we joke about it. Fresh paint goes a long way and looks nice.

My tool buddy, Jake, who thinks like I do (the more tools you have, the better chance you have at getting into heaven) loaned me his paint sprayer. In my mind I was thinking of a Wagner sprayer like dad had at one time, but he loaned me his professional sprayer, which got the job done real quick...once we taped off everything we didn't want guacamole sauce on. I put Cameron in charge of cleaning the sprayer since he took a 15 minute nap and missed all the paint spraying. Thanks Jake...you are always a stud in my eyes! If we ever have another kid, his name will be Jake T. Glade.

Cameron's third ride on two wheels

2011-02-25T22:40:00.000-06:00

Monday Heather took Cameron's training wheels off. Today I took him for a trial ride to see what he could do, and the kid took off the first time and has not crashed yet...except for his dismounts. He can barely pick his bike up, but once he is going, he doesn't want to stop. Before this movie, he rode half way down our street and back, and then all the way down our street and back. This was his first navigation off pavement with no training wheels.

Winter update

2011-02-08T22:18:00.001-06:00

Quesion: Where does Ashlyn get her curls from? We get asked this question all the time. Understandably so, since both Heather and I have straight, thin, boring hair...according to the hair judges.

Answer: The same side of the family where she inherits her cute, ~~little~~, prominent plumbers crack (my side for those who couldn't read my sarcasm). I've been telling Heather that Ashlyn's pants are way too small, but Heather thinks her muffin top is adorable. I'm sure Ashlyn will think it is adorable when we show all these pictures to her future friends that happen to be boys.

Madison is taking a weekly gymnastics class. It is something else to watch her. Despite being able to do infinite amounts of pull ups, she needs to improve on her core strength. Her teacher has her doing lots of calisthenics and pushes her hard. She loves it and is improving, so we do wheelbarrows and other fun things at home to help some. Give her a few more years and she might be able to do a cartwheel and the spits. Until then she needs to get somersaults down. One afternoon, Heather took me to watch, and I spent most of the time encouraging Cameron to become interested in football, hockey, baseball and any other activity besides gymnastics. I didn't know it was possible for young boys to be a little light in the loafers, but I saw plenty of them that day.

Ashlyn has to do everything that her siblings do, and blew us away with her coordination and core strength. She is a wheelbarrow machine!

We got 23 mm of snow last week. School was canceled, everyone drove their cars off the roads, it got cold (maybe in the upper teens), pipes froze, wind blew 50 mph from the north, and we had fun outside for 2.43 minutes. It took the kids longer to get dressed than it did for them to want to come in. Yea snow.

February = cold, so I haven't been much of a fan; despite having so many wonderful birthdays in that month. I also dislike Hallmark's day or Valentine's day. What a waste of energy and feeling like crap since I never get caught up in falling for all the marketing hog wash. "If you love me, you'll buy me chocolate, flowers, diamonds, and mushy cards, blah, blah, blah." Never been a fan. Hopefully this year will be a bit different since we are buying a new mattress, as our current one is old and wore out. 'Rode hard and put up wet', as dad would say. We have been looking at the space age foam mattresses for a long time and may get one. Any recommendations? Please do not recommend select comfort, because we've been there, done that, and selected uncomfortable every time. Heather is slightly afraid that because the foam mattress don't have any springs, they won't bounce back, and she'll have to adjust to the lack of bounce. Mattress stores frown on such mattress testing, so she'll never know until we buy one.

Cameron celebrated his birthday. He helped daddy make his birthday cake and was excited to have such tall candles. Madison begged him to make a wish, but since it was his day, he could do what he wanted, and refused to make a wish before he blew out the candles. Telling Madison off made him smile.

After the song he half heartily blew at the candles, but the flames never flickered.

So, he took a bigger, more determined breath, upset that he failed the first attempt, and...

Blew again. Still not even a flicker of the candles. His little face said it all...."I'm 4 now. These things should be out by now, but instead I'm just getting pissed off. Being 4 sucks. I wish there was only three to blow out, then again, I'd still be 0 for 3. I hate candles." Good thing he didn't make a wish because it would not have come true anyway. Determined he took a third breath...

...he sucked most the air out of our kitchen, almost passing out due to the oxygen high...

...blew as hard as he could and made blowing noises, hoping to possible spit the candles out. Nope, no luck.

Again he concentrated as hard as he could, sucked in all the air his 4 year old, non-smoking lungs could hold, aimed a little lower, and snuffed the life out of two candles. Ruffled, upset, confused, but still determined he took a sixth and seventh breath...

...puckered up, and blew out the last two candles. Being four is tough sometimes. Once it was done he was more relieved than excited, and only ate half of his piece of cake due to shear exhaustion. Happy Birthday Cameron. We love you.

2010 end

2011-01-14T21:11:00.001-06:00

Just a quazi quick update on how 2010 ended for us. Last year was a good year to us, and we realize that we have been very blessed with so much. Grandma and Grandpa came down over Thanksgiving and got to eat Thanksgiving lunch with Madison. Best quote of the day came from dad when he exclaimed (while eating mushy green beans) "Schools may have changed quite a bit since I was a kid, but school lunches and cafeteria ladies are still the same!" Madison was proud to show her grandparents off.

While wrapping presents one night, Ashlyn marked on her face. This gave me a great idea to color our faces, and then go surprise mom. We had a few Crayola markers and had a lot of fun...until Heather told me that not all Crayola markers are washable. The kids got 75% of their color off, but poor daddy had to scrub, rub, and peel skin off his face to look half way normal. I used make-up remover, soap, Dawn, Sea Breeze astringent, Noxima, Acetone, and hydroxymask and it still didn't come off. Finally I discovered Goo Gone was the antidote to Crayola stained faces. Much to my dismay and surprise I had a new zit on my chin the next morning when I woke up. Ugh.

I continue to have good help in the workshop. I've got all this extra wood that needs sawing and drilling, and have 2 good helpers and 1 excellent supervisor that love to help. They have a lot of fun, but clean up my workshop about as well as they clean their own room.

Late hour wrestling is still a favorite thing our kids do to wind down before bedtime. It usually starts off cute and innocent, and then....

Cameron dares Madison to punch him in the face as hard as she can. She obliges with a huge grin on her face. No more wrestling.

Ashlyn and Cameron did their part in their mother's day out Christmas program. They did really well and had fun practicing their songs (mostly 1 or 2 line songs) at home. I was tired of the song practice at home, but enjoyed them during the program.

This was our Christmas morning picture. Despite Ashlyn crying for the picture, we had a magical year. All three kids not only enjoyed opening gifts, but got really excited for their siblings when they opened their presents.

Heather spoiled me with an air compressor for Christmas. My workshop has NASCAR pit stop sounds coming from it every time I'm in it, as I look for opportunities to use air tools, even when it is quicker to use regular tools. Lucky me.

Heather got a grill. ha ha

The year ended well for us and the new year has been just as great. All three kids were excited for the break to be over with and they are once again happy to be at school. Heather is the happiest that school is back in session.

Bryan Christmas Parade

2010-12-09T23:00:00.000-06:00

As soon as Thanksgiving was over (within minutes) Heather was ready to get ready for Christmas. She begged and begged to get the decorations up and wouldn't sleep until we got a tree put up. 72 hours of no sleep makes momma not very happy, and when momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy! Once we got a tree up, her mood changed and we got our happy momma back.

This is the kid's highlight of the year. They love getting on the roof even more than they love Christmas itself. Thanks Bug for helping get the lights set up on our house. Just like Robert Earl Keene's Christmas song, our lights went out since some one had her trailer plugged into the same circuit that the lights were on. We'd trip the breaker every time we turned the lights on. We've finally got electricity to the shop and trailer, so now we can turn on our lights at night time. Happy Heather just got happier!

Here we are trying to stay warm while watching the Christmas parade. We huddled behind this cruiser because he didn't turn his car off and his motor was very warm. It also blocked the wind well, so we watched the parade in comfort.

This is the Sam Houston parade float. Look close for our little daughter.

Didn't matter how hard you looked, she was on the other side. I had to jog down the street, cross it with out getting tackled by the parade police, to take the above picture.

The theme was Rockin' something something and something, so Heather sewed a pink poodle skirt for Madison. It looked cute, but itches according to our uber tired Madison.

Other awesome pictures of the parade include the internationally famous Fighting Texas Aggie Marching Band.

Parson's Mounted Calvary

The Aggie Cannon. Boom! Farmers Fight!!

Who is he?? Heather thinks he is trying to compensate for something.

More Cav with scatter guns.

Kids who wished they had guns.

Then we saw the tractors, and Cameron about wet his pants (dad too).

Whoop! The most awesome tractor was also supporting the ags! Whoop!

This guy kept pretending to scoop people up. Cameron was sad he didn't get scooped.

John Deere Poor Papa Train.

Mrs. Cronin and her Peruvian Passo side saddle drill team.

Cameron's second favorite float.

There was a lot more fun stuff, but I got tired of taking pictures.

Other stuff that has happened in the past few weeks.

Madison lost another tooth
Had a successful EQ chili bowl (football and chili cookoff)
Heather orchestrated an awesome Thanksgiving dinner
We enjoyed Mom, Dad, and Bug with their visit over Thanksgiving
Had a Boonville Animal Hospital work party and came home with Rumicube and awesome McCoy's hats and t-shirts as gifts (best gifts we ever took home)
Started having fires nightly in our stove
Still trying to get ready for Christmas and all the scary excitement the new year is supposed to bring.

2010-11-14T20:25:00.000-06:00

Bug came over for a weekend visit and we had a lot of fun. Our original plan was to go camping, but the rain and cold front scared us enough to stay home. As grumpy and the kids (and Michael) were, it was probably a good idea to pass on cold, wet camping. Maybe next time. Instead we took Bug fishing at Somerville, but unfortunately we got skunked. I was glad we didn't sink the boat or get too wet as the seas were pretty rough. Bug suggested we draw straws to see who the lot fell upon to be tossed overboard, but managed to keep the big rollers from swamping the boat.

We needed to find something to do Saturday, so we went to the entertainment center to play black light mini golf. It was a lot of fun and the kids were excited since they had been practicing golfing with the Bransons a few months back. Madison golfed at a birthday party and remembered how fun it was, and that was all it took to convince Cameron that he would like it too. All of the pictures are taken in the dark, but with black lights and lots of fluorescent paint on the course we could see where we were supposed to go. It was fun.

Cameron is a better hockey player than golfer, so his score was calculated in seconds instead of putts.

He tried hard the entire 18 holes, and concentrated so much that his tongue dried out. Guess he has the "hold your mouth just right" Glade gene.

Madison was the best putter of the kids, so she though she was going to show Cameron her mad bowling skills. That wasn't the case, as Cameron almost doubled her score in one and one half games. She still had a lot of fun.

Ashlyn was content while we were golfing by carrying a putter and ball around. Every now and then she would poke at a prop, but was very content just chasing her siblings around the blacks. (they were not green).

When it came time to bowling, we had to get her a lunch snack to keep her busy. This was about the only thing that kept her from sticking her head and arm down the ball return. Why is that so neat for little kids to play with?

My favorite part of Bug being here was having a substitute reader. He got the joy of listening to Madison read long, long, books about mice playing baseball. She loved it too.

We had a lot of fun and can't wait for our next visit in a few weeks.

2010-11-07T17:02:00.000-06:00

Heather had a birthday this week and is half way to 60. She got spoiled on her birthday, and we all think she deserves it. We got her some cool camping supplies and a cool new phone that she has been drooling over for many many months. She calls it a smart phone, but like all computers, it is only as smart as the person holding it. I can't get it to do as many cool things as she can, but did suggest a few cool apps to download that I like. My favorite is using her phone as a level, which is pretty cool. If you care to find out more, you'll have to visit with her, as she knows all the terms and details of her phone/camera/computer/whiz kid (she does treat it like her 4th baby).

I got a bunch of free materials from a guy from church who is moving. Cameron helped me pick them up, and loves to use the PVC and wood for his projects. He has spent hours arranging and playing with them, and has a great imagination.

Here are the kids on their new swings. Now that they are build, we can't wait for Cameron and Ashlyn to learn to pump themselves.

We printed off Grandpa's picture and called him the boogie (aka cookie) monster. The kids are not too afraid of him....until this is what shows up at Thanksgiving. All three kids have been battling pink eye to one extent or another. Cameron has the stink eye that does not want to get better. Instead of getting better, it gets more swollen.

We don't know if he is allergic to the medicine, but his eye didn't get better until we stopped the drops. Both eyes got drops, but only the right eye swelled up. He looks normal now, but help me realize that I have chronic pink eye, which causes droopy eyes.

Heather put both girls in pigtails on Saturday and they thought they were pretty cool matching. Ashlyn can resemble Madison's features enough that they sometimes look like sisters. She has learned "cheese" and pulls all sorts of faces when taking pictures (like her siblings and dad), making her look less like Madison.

Ashlyn found Madison's old boots today and wore them for 15 minutes. She didn't like the heal, but was excited to have boots like Cameron and dad. She'll probably wear them longer once she grows into them a little more.

Halloween

2010-10-31T23:45:00.000-05:00

This year Cameron wanted to be Spiderman (just like Parker), Madison wanted to be...surprise....a princess, and Ashlyn didn't want to dress up at all.

Here our little Cinderella is. Heather sewed the costume and got a huge complement from a detail oriented, very judgemental seamstress at church. After that comment, I had to help Heather carry her head around since it grew so quickly. Kidding aside, the dress looks great. Madison's favorite part was putting on make up. She can be a true princess and loved the costume.

Ashlyn wore her red riding hood costume for 3 minutes, and Heather was lucky enough to snap a picture. As expected they got loads of candy at our church halloween party last Wednesday, so we decided they were done for the year.

We had a fun family night carving pumpkins. Looking at the guts is always fun/gross for the kids. They were all big helpers and all wanted to wield the knives.

Cameron designed the winking pumpkin and Madison designed the fang pumpkin. They were proud, but today the pumpkins are shriveled and look like a few people I know from the old folks home.

Last weekend we went camping at Somerville State Park. All of the kids had fun. As Ashlyn gets older, she explores more and is fun to watch when exploring outside. She had a blast at the camp and was probably the dirtiest kid when it was time to go home. Although she has her own chair, she chose to sit on a log...just like her dad. The past few weeks she has been dad hungry and favoring him a lot. This hurts mom's feelings a little, until mom gets to hold her when she wants to cuddle, as Ashlyn prefers to cuddle with mom over dad.

20 minutes of rain forced us to play games inside the tent. 4 big kids, 1 little kid, and 4 adults in one tent is about as fun as it sounds.

Cameron loved the head lamp, but I wanted to post a picture of his current favorite shirt. This kid LOVES this shirt and will wear it 24/7 if we let him. No matter how deep we bury it in the dirty clothes basket, he'll find it and put it on...even if it is stinky and dirty. He wore camping for 2 days, and then changed into it after church. The family we camped with came over Sunday evening and laughed at Cameron still wearing the same (unwashed) shirt.

I've been doing a lot of projects in the shed since the weather has been perfect, and am often joined by my mini me. Cameron decided his tools were worthless when in his closet in the house, so he now keeps them next to mine in the shed. His favorite question to ask when "working" is, "Dad, do you have one of these?" as he holds up one of his toy tools. Then I get to get my tool out and show him that I indeed to have the same tools he has. He thinks his box is better than my box because I do not have a jig saw.

Cameron does a lot of the same projects I do, but he loves to practice welding wood together. He has his own pieces of wood that I don't use and he makes me close my eyes when he is welding them together with his toy hammer. He loves wearing my welding helmet any time he is working, and keeps it down a lot of the time. Lucky for him, I have a pin head and he has a huge noggin, so we can wear the same helmet. He has learned to let his eyes adjust when wearing the helmet in the sun (you can see outlines of objects if you are not in the shade) and practices walking around the yard with the helmet down.

Here are the two shop supervisors. Super 1 watches over me and tells me what to do, and Super 2 always tattles on Cameron or Ashlyn if she thinks they are doing something she thinks they shouldn't. With out them we would be lost and forget to eat, so we love having them around.

First 6 weeks of school

2010-10-26T22:22:00.000-05:00

Madison finished her first six weeks of school and we were invited to visit the award ceremony. Again she got the Raven award for the first six weeks, which is given to one member of each class for demonstrating excellent qualities of a Sam Houston student. We are so proud of her and are glad that she does so well even when she is away from the watchful eye of her parents.

Here she is getting the award from her principal. She still loves school and has a lot of fun with her friends. Every now and then she gripes about things she "hates" at school, which is mostly running laps in PE. I think she got the anti-running gene from both me and Heather. Last night we were supposed to meet with her teacher, but I had our only vehicle (one is currently broke) in Iola, which is 30 minutes from home. My cell phone is not working well, so I missed the first call from Heather. I did get the second call, which was 5 minutes before our meeting. Heather left the kids with our sitter and went to the meeting alone. Instead of jogging to the meeting, she borrowed Old Grey, a '87 GMC single cab long bed truck. Grey is still a great truck, but people used to driving "modern" vehicles typically do not like being seen in Grey. Heather was greeted as she pulled into the parking lot by Madison's teacher and student teacher. She was so embarrassed that she was late and really didn't want to be seen pulling up in grey. Most of the students at this school are from nice neighborhoods; Madison generally gets assigned to tables sitting next to kids from not so nice neighborhoods, which never has bothered her nor us. Heather, driving Old Grey, affirmed any suspicion by Madison's teachers that she is sitting at the correct table.

Friday Madison came home from school informing us that she is the new PE queen. Every Friday they have a pull up competition in PE. According to Madison most kids do 1 pull up, but a few can do 6 to 8. She claims she typically does either 1 or 5, depending on what she feels like doing. This particular Friday, she had it in her mind that she wanted to be the queen, so she shattered the first grade record by doing 12 pull ups. I have not idea where she got this goal and strength, but she is humbly excited that she can do so many. Her new goal is 200, and she asked me to build her a pull up bar. Before I wasted too much time on building something that does not get used, I set up a temporary bar and watched her do 12 pull ups to prove that she is the true queen. After she was done, she dropped down, dusted off her hands, and told me to "get welding."

Grandma and Grandpa Branson came down for a long visit. They wanted to get some quality time on the boat, so Heather guided them on a trip to Somerville. This was the first time Heather was the guide, and she proved to be the best. She put them on a school of whites and they started catching fish like crazy. Then she took them to our favorite spot and they continued to hook lots of whites and bass the entire morning. I spent the time replacing the bunk boards on the trailer while the boat was off, and got a chance to fish for an hour before we left. My ugly lures scared all the fish and we didn't have the success that Heather had when she was the guide.

While here, we got out the golf clubs, and the kids got a lesson from the pros. We all had a lot of fun and enjoyed the beautiful weather outside.

Although Ashlyn wasn't big enough to swing a club, she was a perfect target to aim at while she collected the nerf and wiffle golf balls. As big as she is, she wasn't big enough for any of us to hit and was oblivious to the balls raining around her.

She and Cameron are having a lot of fun together. They really are good friends and care for each other a lot. Cameron started to cry one day (normal), but I couldn't understand why. Once I got him to stop, he explained he was crying because he was sad that Ashlyn was crying (she got hurt). Oh boy! We discovered our trio of kids is very dynamic, yet very compatible. They rotate who the third wheel is often. Sometimes the older two play together and Ashlyn is odd kid out. Other times the younger two play together and Madison gets shunned. Recently we've seen the girls playing together, and Cameron is now becoming the outsider every now and then. We are fine with this rotation as long as it continues to rotate. The three will play together some times, but more often than not, there are two main players and one observer trying to get in on the action.

Cameron is confusing us all. He is sneaking into Ashlyn's crib at night to play and then eventually fall asleep. We thought this was a one time deal, but he continues to beg to sleep in the crib. We always tell him no, but I end up putting him in the big bed when I go to bed, only to find him back in the crib when we wake up in the morning. Tonight we put Ashlyn in a twin bed by herself in one room and Madison and Cameron were supposed to be sleeping in the queen bed. Madison (our Angel) is where we left her, but Cameron, who has yet to win a Raven award, found his way into the crib. If he starts stealing Ashlyn's binkis, we'll need to get him some professional help.

Despite fall being here, our kids are getting and staying tan. They tend to spend more time outside in the cooler weather than they did during the summer. Cameron and Ashlyn don't let the heat bother them, but Madison has turned into an A/C lover. This cooler weather has lured her outside and she is having a lot of fun playing.

All in all, we've enjoyed the fall and had a lot of good times the past few weeks. We love our kids and appreciate the differences each one brings to our growing family. Heather and I feel like we've been blessed more than we deserve and are very thankful for the joys in our home.

Fall update

2010-10-03T16:50:00.000-05:00

September was such a busy month for us, and we had some great times as a family. One Tuesday after Madison's school, we loaded up and drove near Cameron to where I hunt dove. My sidekick, Cameron, already had been here, so he knew everything and was our personal guide. Hunting was fun, but birds didn't fly like they do in the morning time. We had fun none the less and the kids got to explore.

This place holds tons of rattle snakes, but we were lucky enough not to see any this trip. Madison loved the dove we harvested and didn't want to share the birds with her siblings. The kids also chased and tried catching grass hoppers, play with ants, and pick up rocks.

Heather, whose skewed memory makes her think she hit 2 out of 2 clay pigeons last time we shot clays, wanted to shoot too. She actually enjoyed shooting the .22 and hit a bottle or two. Letting her shoot was a stark reminder that she needs to practice more.

This is the neighbor's elk. He grazes by the fence, but isn't always around. He looks cool, but is definitely out of place in Texas. The other neighbors have a large herd of buffalo. It is fun to see all the animals out there. So far we have seen, jack rabbits, dove, hawk, vulchers, coyote, snakes, and hogs. It is a great place to hang out if you want to see wildlife.
This Friday, I took Cameron to hunt again. I was hoping to get a good hunt in before sitting for conference all weekend. The night before I was getting ready and Cody was so excited that I decided he could come along. It was a poor decision. He was excited to get out and run around when we first got there, but came back every time I called him. I let him wander farther away, and then he disappeared and never returned. Cameron and I ended our hunt to look for him; after our fruitless initial search I decided to teach Cameron about the power of prayer. Cameron and I knelt down and he asked God to help us find his dog, and we continued to look. Unfortunately we didn't find him; but my searching attitude changed and I was optimistically looking for him instead of searching for him thinking of what I wanted to do to him when we found him. After hours of looking for him, we gave up and drove home. Heather didn't believe me when I told her on the phone that he was gone, but was sad when just me and Cameron climbed out of the truck. We asked Madison and Cameron if they miss him. Madison says, while shrugging her shoulders, "no, not really, but can we go to the pet store and find another Dimey?" Cameron says with enthusiasm, "no, not at all." Heather does miss him and cried over his loss.

We have 2 twin beds, 1 queen bed, and 1 crib for the kids to sleep in. This is how they enjoy sleeping, and end up kicking each other all night long. Most of the time Ashlyn is in the crib, but she sure love being able to sleep with her siblings.

This weekend, early Saturday morning, Heather drug me to Lowes to look for a storm door. I love Lowes, but I realized that I don't like it as much when she is leading the way. I gave up my not so busy weekend to hang the door. Instillation was only $98, and I figured over half of that was to cover the house call. I calculated that $48 per instillation equaled about an hours worth of work to hang it. If that is the case I worked for less than $6 per hour most of the day long and still have a few things to do before it is finished. That being said, it is not going to fall off as I always use longer, bigger, and stronger hardware to install things. Why use a 6 penny nail, when you have a 10 penny nail in your pocket?

I also reached back into my high school memory and used some skills from my floral design class to beautify our porch. We've had hanging baskets on our porch, but have failed to find anything that thrives in them. We went to hobby lobby, bought the toughest looking fake flowers we could find, and planted them in foam in the baskets. They look pretty, and hope they last longer than real flowers.

This week has been a great week at the clinic. We got cement poured in the front of the clinic as our old parking lot was getting messy and annoying. It failed to drain water, so any time it rained, our clients parked in puddles and their feed and the dogs feed got wet and dirty. Other than training wheels, no tires have been on it yet, but is sure looks good.

Madison has grown into her bike and is enjoying riding it again. Now the weather is perfect, she has been spending most of her free time outside.

Cameron, who loves his bike in all weather, loves riding on and off the concrete. He does well on it but is about to out grow his bike. It is a good thing too, because his back tire is wearing down to nothing.

Here is Cameron testing out the off roading capabilities of his bike. He never rode down it alone, but did it time and time again with a little assistance from his dad.

The Rest of the Story: After leaving the dove lease, we ate lunch at Madison's school as promised, and then I returned home to pack a few things for an overnight stay. Having seen a pack of coyote while looking for Cody, I decided he wasn't tough enough to rough it alone, and decided to look for him one more time. When I pulled up to the lease, the owner was there, and guess who was in the back of his truck. He lives in the neighborhood down the street from us, but runs cattle on the land where we hunt. He pulled up after we left to plant winter oats. He noticed Cody hanging out near his bunk feeder, but didn't get close to the rabid dog that acted like he wanted to eat him. He told me ever time he tried to pet Cody, he would try and eat him, but if he turned his back and walked away, Cody would follow him and be at his side like a good dog. He needed to go to town for seed, and Cody jumped in the back of his truck and guarded it for him while he picked up things in town. As he returned to plant his oats, some sorry pet owner pulled in behind him planning on spending the night looking for his dog. Cody was hungry and thirsty, had a few cacti leaves in him, and was tired. As big as a pain as he is, it was good to get him home.

2010-09-19T21:07:00.004-05:00

The past few weeks have been filled with lots of family fun and good times. All of our kids are enjoying the weather outside and having fun with their new activities. Of all our kids, Ashlyn has made the most progress and is growing up fast. We recognize we can do nothing to stop this and see the competition/determination she has wired in her to keep up with her siblings. She knows there is nothing they can do that she can't try to do. This is scary for us at times (especially on the tramp and playground), but she manages herself well and is determined to follow their footprints. This week she decided she wants to sit on the potty like the older two do, and will go to the bathroom every 3rd time or so. I am especially excited today because she "signed" to me that she needed to go (her "sign" for the bathroom is lifting up her shirt and tugging at her diaper), and all three times she went to the bathroom. She did this for both number 1 and number 2. Maybe it is a little premature to get excited, but I think it is awesome. I also find it ironic that she can only say one word clearly (mama), but she can let us know that she needs to go potty. Cameron is growing and learning more and more at his mother's day out class. He and Heather also have their own school at home where he is learning the sounds of the alphabet. We never sang the ABC song with him like we did with Madison (second kid always gets the short end of the stick). Madison could sing the song when she was 2; Cameron could have cared less at that age, but a month ago he was in the tub and started singing the song perfectly, well almost perfectly. Since the he has shown a stronger desire to learn school stuff. He still loves to go outside and play on the porch or do what dad is doing outside. He is a good bike rider and tries to keep up with Heather when she goes on her long walks in the mornings. He is still concerned or worried about the cookie monster, which is the main reason he stays in bed in the evenings. He could care less about spankings, groundings, or threats, but one hint about the cookie monster and the kid will be in bed and fall asleep faster than any other kid.

Madison is liking 1st grade, but not as much as kindergarten. She is starting to hate PE, hate certain subjects, and say things are boring. I think it is the cool thing to say because when we ask her about specific things she did she gets very excited. Hopefully it is just a phase.

She will go outside an play some, but not as much as the other two kids. She is at the stage in life when cartoons and movies are awesome. She'd rather stay inside to watch a movie while coloring or doing puzzles instead of play outside. Yesterday the weather was great and she wanted to spend the whole afternoon outside, so maybe it is just a heat thing.

All three kids are playing great 80% of the time. We like it when they do play together, but they also make big messes together. I guess that is part of having young kids. It seems like once we get everything cleaned up, there is a mess in the opposite end of the house.

Last weekend we went to Huntsville State Park to camp for a night. It was nice and the water was perfect for swimming. As much as I dislike camping further south and east due to the humidity, it is always nice to go to Huntsville and bring back lots of memories of camping there as a family. We always bring extra spoons and forks in case we need to make a family vote. September was the beginning of dove season here and I've made some hunting trips already. I met in Waco with Jered and his family for one of the better hunts and had a lot of fun. It is great getting to visit with him, especially when we are visiting while hunting. I'd like to report that I out shot all of them, but they were spoiled growing up in south Texas and have been shooting since they were crawling.

I also have a place near Cameron where I can go hunting and have spent a few early mornings there chasing the birds around. My first trip there was embarrassing because I got stuck in 2 inches of slick mud while driving in on the pasture road. I was able to get out, but not with out the help of two good ol' boys who were laughing at me on the inside. My next truck (in 5 or 10 years) will be four wheel drive...hopefully. I also was able to take Cameron on a trip and he loved it. He had his wooden gun and shot at more birds than I did. He thinks he is a better hunter than I am, and got upset the next time I went hunting with out him.

Last week I got to go hunting with a good client from the clinic. He took me duck hunting last year and we froze; this year we went early for teal season and fought of a few mosquitoes. We went to Lake Somerville and walked in before sunrise, which is scary with my navigationally challenged friend. Last year he got lost bad enough he had to call the cops to locate him via his cell phone signal. We did find the water in enough time to set everything up and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait. It was a fun hunt because this guy has great stories and is fun to visit with, but the teal never flew near us. We had a few wood ducks fly over us and got to watch tens of thousands of cattle egret fly during their migration, but didn't come home with any ducks. Maybe next time!

This coming weekend is our CE meeting in Ft. Worth, and we've been looking forward to that get away for a while. The kids are staying in Plano and Heather and I'll get to be childless for 3 days. Nice! We'll report on some of the events that took place next time. We'll learn from the Los Vegas Glades and try to avoid any unplanned events!

2010-09-07T15:33:00.002-05:00

We have had a few weeks filled with fun activities for the family. We attended an emergency preparedness fair where the kids got to meet with fire and police people. They saw McGruff the crime dog and were more scared than excited. Why did they decide to put him in a trench coat? Isn't that what bad people and flashers wear? Luckily we didn't get flashed, but the kids didn't get too close to him either.

They got to climb in two different fire trucks, an ambulance, police car, and even a trailer that would filled with smoke. They learned to duck down and crawl outside when there is a fire. We have taught the kids about fire safety before (usually as soon as I buy my firework stash), but we need to continue with fire drills as they continue to get older.

Cameron helped me change the brakes on the truck and had a lot of fun getting dirty. He was a big helper and got pretty good at taking lug nuts off.

Since Madison has been gone to school Cameron and Ashlyn have the chance to play together and really enjoy it. They seem to have a lot of fun, but Cameron sure gets excited when Madison comes home. They both miss her and get excited to play with her.

Madison continues to get excited about school. She is learning about new colors like orchid, turquoise, maroon (whoop!), magenta, goldenrod, and violet. She is a good student and is learning a lot.

One of Dad's sister's pasted this picture of him on facebook. I didn't know if every one got to see it, so I wanted to share it with the family. I think Bug looks like him when they were both this size, but Heather says she sees a lot of Brandon in the picture.

September 1 was the beginning of dove season here, so Cameron packed up our toys and went hunting Friday morning. We drove near the city Cameron, which had over 2 inches of rain the night before. I didn't realize it and got the stuck in a few inches of slick mud. Wish I had a tough truck (read diesel Blazer) to take hunting, but Heather is keeping a tight grip on the check book. It was fun to watch Cameron hunt with his rifle he made at the family reunion. He could shoot birds a lot better the I did. I brought home half my limit, but was excited just to go hunting and get the truck unstuck with the help of a few nice guys. I also got the chance to go again in Waco with Jered and his family. We had a lot of fun, saw a lot more birds, and brought home tons of dove breasts to eat. Hopefully we can go a few more times before the short season ends.

2010-08-25T19:38:00.002-05:00

Madison started the 1st grade on Monday and can't stop talking about all the fun time she is having. She says that when she sees all her old friends, she runs up and gives them hugs. She still insists on riding the bus home from school. Good news, the bus didn't miss our stop this time.

This is her teacher. Madison was hoping to get her all summer and we were surprised and amazed that she actually got her. She is the mother of one of the girls from Madison's kindergarten class. I think getting the teacher she really wanted is going to make a world of difference this year. I see another good year ahead of us. Of course, Madison still has her enthusiasm and love of learning to help her out, too.

So one morning I go in to wake up Ashlyn and this is what I saw! I felt around and the sheets were still dry so I don't think she had it off all night. I heard her moving around a little earlier in the morning so I think she just took it off and dozed back to sleep. No more nightgowns for her for awhile! In fact, everytime I change her diaper, before I get her pants back on, she will undo the tabs and just give me one of those looks that say "Yeah, and what are you going to do about that!" She is such a quick, little, busy body and I have to laugh sometimes when her personality shines.

So I told Diana already that her framed Thomas Kinkade puzzles downstairs got me excited about completing mine. It turns out that I was not missing a piece. I had a piece that fit in two different spots perfectly. This one is complete and a second one will probably be done tonight or tomorrow. Madison gets excited for the puzzle because she loves puzzles. She, however, does not have the patience to put these 1000 piece ones together. She and Cameron are excited that they get hung up in their room, though. I might have to take a break after this last puzzle. Michael just rolls his eyes everytime I start to work on it and rolls them even harder when I want to hang them up on HIS walls. But, that is not stopping him from working on the puzzle right now as I type this blog. Of course he always jumps in when there are only about 25 pieces left to go.

2010-08-15T15:57:00.003-05:00

Cameron and I had a father and son event this weekend and spent some quality time at a small time monster truck show. The monster truck part of the show was what we expected but the motorcycle races and quad races only had 1 bike in each race, with grand total of 3 bikes. Wow. We did have a lot of fun and Cameron thought he was big staying up until after 10 pm.

This is my favorite truck. Outlaw Clydesdale. 1250 HP Chevy z-71, who won the wheelie contest, the drag races, and came in second in the free style. Awesome truck.

There were 4 total trucks; Outlaw Clydesdale, Evolution, American Thunder, and Reptoid. The trucks had 1250 hp, 1200 hp, 1100, hp and 1300 hp respectively. How they get that much HP is beyond me, but when they give it gas we not only heard it, but felt our guts and chest rumble. Awesome.

I was amazed at how nimble these big trucks were and how little room they drove in. It would have been bigger and better if they had more room to open up the throttle, but we don't expect too much here in Bryan.

Dr. Lipsey told me to order my own calf puller, and I was excited to get a new one. I was not however, too excited to use it, but got the opportunity to use it with in 12 hours of opening it up.

Meet Star. Star is the mother, who was a bottle baby at our clinic 3 years ago. She accidentally got bred 9 months ago, and needed help delivering her bull calf. Star looks small in this picture, but that is because she is small. She is only 3 and 1/2 to 4 feet tall at the shoulder and pretty small framed. It was a huge challenge to wiggle this calf out of her, but with the help of my Hercules fetal extractor, now dubbed the star puller, we were able get him out with out a c-section. As of Friday both cow and calf were doing great.

Ashlyn came in today from playing outside and then got lost somewhere inside our house. It wasn't too tough finding her; we just had to look in her normal hiding place or follow her dirt tracks. This shows how bad we need some rain down here.

These weird dirt tubed grow from the rocks in my shed. I guess they like the dark. I can't figure if they are some fungus or mites that make homes from the dirt. but they are very fragile and bend in all sorts of funny angles. They look pretty crazy and are amazing to look at. This is the smaller of the growths I found as the larger ones got destroyed during my investigation.

We got the film developed of the kids cameras. We got a few pictures that are worthy of being shared, but a lot of trash too. It was fun to let the kids have them. We'll find a way to share the pictures that came out ok.

2010 Minnesota Reunion

2010-08-08T20:56:00.007-05:00

Thanks Diana for the great overview of the reunion. Just wanted to share a few pictures and thoughts on how much fun we had. I've got a zillion other pictures (thanks Bug) that were funny, but google ran out of memory and couldn't post them all. Here are just a few.

My favorite picture of Grandma and Grandpa with all the grandkids. This is right after they all started to scream and cry to make Ashlyn feel like one of the group, and then every one started laughing. A lot of personalities are shown in this image that make me laugh.

Me a like a chow chow, me a like a bow wow, me a like ukulele, ukelele like a me aaaa. We forgot that song too.

Raw talent.

The kids still love their bags and are even more excited than grandma is while explaining everything inside. Great idea the kids love them.

Can't get enough riding on grandpa's motorcycle. Please add a hitch to your bike so you can bring it instead of your truck when picking up your lumber. Cameron wants more rides and it worked so well threatening to take the rides away from him if he didn't act right.

Madison couldn't get enough of ramming into people in the bumper cars. She left a warm puddle for the next kid to sit in because she was laughing so hard.

Ashlyn left a warm puddle on this man's (who so reminded me of my great uncle Larry) leg, but for different reasons. My favorite new part of this picture is the death grip the wife has on her purse. Before her arms were folded across her belly, but she sensed I was up to something and figured I was about to rob her. Not too happy for a great grandmother.

This is the best picture I could get of Crazy Hair #1 and Crazy Hair #2. I don't remember if they liked each other, or if they both just liked the swing and got caught playing near each other. If anyone has any better pictures, send them my way.

Here is a Kodak moment proving how much the cousins loved each other. I love Carter's expression on his face, "oooh ooooh that is going to hurt." For the record and to keep Spencer out of time out, he only bit her pants...but look at that medevil jugular vein popping out. Wow. Great timing with the camera!

This is my favorite water slide picture. I can still hear Landon laughing when I see it.

Here is my favorite slide sequence. There were a lot to choose from, but this one takes the cake!

Team Minnesota - Gold winners

specialities included: amazing paper airplane building and throwing, funniest shot put pictures

Team Texas - Bronze winners

specialties include: best tug o war team, best 3rd place finishers

Team Utah - Silver winners

specialties: strong man competition winners; deadliest aim with rocket balloon launcher

Olympians pose - minus a few party poopers (Cameron, Ashlyn, Spencer, Parker, Afton, Sarah, Gwendolyn, and camera man Matt)

Diana has a list of our favorites, so I won't post them here. We'll let her reveal when and where we had fun.

4th weekend

2010-07-06T15:21:00.002-05:00

This weekend we met Bug, aka Bugs if your name is Andy (because plural is cool?), in Plano to celebrate Independence day. Tysen, Kelly, and their kids were over from California, so we had most of the family get together. Poor Bryan had to stay in Canada to work, and since he doesn't work for an american company, they didn't give him the holiday off. We went to the 4th parade, which was a walking political campaign. Every other float was some politician campaigning for some office. They gave out candy, we cheered, and has some fun. Because it was overcast, it was not too hot and we enjoyed it.

Later that night we watched the city fireworks with all the kids. We had an hour wait until they started, so the kids piled in the truck to watch a movie. All the kids managed to stay up close to 10:30, and Ashlyn didn't sleep until even later.

While in Plano we stayed at Andy's and Amy's house. Ashlyn got to sleep in a cradle and still fit. She was so wiped out every night that we didn't worry about her standing up and flipping onto the floor. This cradle is about the same size as the one she slept in that dad made for her, and it is dramastic how much she has grown (babies tend to do that).

They youngest of the cousins weren't at the same play level as the older 4, and we thought they might like each other. Unfortunately both of them were so concerned about their own wants that they didn't play too much together. This was the rare moment and luckily we got a picture of it.

While up there we got to celebrate Amy's 13th birthday.

All in all we had a lot of fun. As always it is good to get back home in a normal schedule, which we are trying to get back into.

Mustang Island

2010-06-30T20:06:00.005-05:00

Kids were ready to hit the beach with their shades on...but they had to wait a very long 4 hours until we got there. Are we there yet, is a question forbidden in our trips, but our kids can't help but asking it a few times.

While there we visited the USS Lexington in Corpus. We didn't have the energy or money to take the kids into the aircraft carrier, but we took an hour to visit it and look at all the cool Navy toys on the beach.

The USS Lexington is huge. It is amazing how small helo's and planes look on the deck. Maybe next time we'll be braver to take the kids around the ship. I loved the battleships at San Jacinto and hope one day our kids too may appreciate being on one of these huge steel marvels.

The kids got to see two tug boats guide this huge ship through the channel. They got the crew to wave at them, but they refused to blow their horns at the kids. Maybe the typical fist pump big rig air horn has a different meaning on a ship.

We had to enter the shark's mouth to go into this store, and it took Cameron some convincing it wasn't real. Even before we got here, he really didn't want to swim in the ocean because he was afraid of the sharks biting him. Who knows where he got that idea, but he was pretty worked up.

We visited the Texas State Aquarium and got to see real sharks. We were standing very near to the sharks here in this picture. All the fish eyes behind my legs were a family of sharks that just hung out at the feet level. The kids laughed and pointed at them, but you could hear the fear in their laughs.

They aquarium has a decent dolphin show and a basement where you can watch the show from the underwater. It is pretty cool and fun watching these athletes perform. We all loved the beach. Besides the small seaweed crop, it was a wonderful beach. The sand was nice sugar sand that was fun to play in. Madison was afraid to hold her arm high when feeding the gulls, and was surprised how brave they were to snatch the alkazelser out of her fingers. Cameron wasn't too afraid of the birds and would have fed them all day. I called it off in fear of getting pooped on. Ashlyn loved the sand, water, sun, and freedom to get as dirty as she could. Of all the kids, she probably loved the beach the most. That says a lot because the other two begged time and time again to return to the beach. Besides the salty water splashing in their eyes and mouth, the kids loved the water. It thrilled them to go out as far as we could reach and play around in the waves. They each rode the boogie boards a few times. They always wanted to ride them...until they wiped out. Then they wanted to put them back on the beach for a few more minutes. After a while with no boards, they wanted to try again, and so it went for two afternoons. By the end each kid probably rode 3 or 4 waves and wiped out every time. It was fun to watch.

At the end of each day we were all exhausted and wanted to sleep well. Our hotel was poor enough that it was tough to get a good rest, but we managed as best as we could. By the end of the vacation, we were ready go head home and get out of the sun. The 4 hour drive home gave the kids enough time to recharge their batteries, and as soon as we pulled into our drive they started screaming, "We can't wait to go swimming!"

Summer fun

2010-06-22T21:17:00.005-05:00

Madison turned 6 on June 13th. Crazy how quick she is growing. I know I'm not the only person who notices and comments on how quick kids grow, but when birthdays come around it makes me realize it. This year wasn't any harder than the last, but my mind got wrapped around time, speed, and eternity and it got stuck there for a few days. I don't think I'm any closer to understanding it all and still wish I could slow it down a little bit.

It didn't help anything at all when my barber told me I needed to let her trim the grey hairs out of my eyebrows. I argued that I didn't have any, and then she showed them to me. I didn't want to let her cut them out, but fight much when she came that close to my eyes with sharp scissors. Time, time time. Heather took Cheyenne, Madison, and Cameron to see the newest Shrek movie. I got to stay home with Ashlyn and have some one on one time with her. She loved it, and I don't think I missed too much by passing on that movie. If she had picked the A-Team to watch for her birthday party, I would have found a baby sitter for her.

Heather made a ballerina cake, and Madison loved it. Cameron was probably more excited for Madison's birthday than she was. He loves celebrating other people's birthday. He wished her a happy birthday so many times that day that Madison started to go a little crazy.

Ashlyn is turning into a toddler now. She is starting to communicate a lot more, so her personality is coming out. We are still trying to decide if she is a big helper or a bossy little girl. She tries so hard to keep up with the other two and isn't afraid of trying anything she sees them doing. This includes; climbing and jumping off tall objects (she hasn't been successful at a decent landing yet), playing games with them (she hasn't been successful at that either), climbing up ladders, playhouses, and bunk beds, jumping on the tramp, and pushing and hitting back. It is quite a site to see her bulldoze Cameron and watch him fall like a tree. The girl has some good skills backed with brute force when it comes to pushing.

Cameron graduated from mother's day out. I don't know what that means, but they had a ceremony for it. Andy and Heather went to it. We've got all three kids going this summer on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Ashlyn moved up a class to be with toddlers instead of yearlings and she loves it. The best part is she gets to be on the playground the same time Cameron is. The first couple of playground times, Cameron refused to leave Ashlyn's side and was her personal bodyguard. They both enjoyed it and we smile inside and out when we hear of Cameron showing a little love.

Cameron is a frustrating kid since he isn't afraid to talk back or tell you how he thinks things should be. We have to use a lot of patience and love when dealing with tired and irrational Cameron, but when I am tired and irrational it makes things all the more difficult.

When he is not tired, he shows a lot of potential and even has patience with Ashlyn. They don't always get along well, but when they do, it is fun to watch them play together.

This is a typical picture of irrational Cameron. He got a sticker stuck on his eye, that he put there, and is laughing and panicking at the same time. I help him remove the sticker, he gets mad at me for hurting him, and then he puts it right back on. I laugh at his panicky laugh, get the camera to take a picture, and of course he gets mad that I took so long to take the sticker off. If only we could open here and see what makes this kid tick.

We've been searching for talents for the reunion. Our family doesn't have talents we can share on a stage, so we asked for help and ideas at the clinic. The unanimous decision is our side of the family is boring when it comes to sharing stage talents. Madison want to juggle, balance a ball on her nose, and do magic. We practiced and she decided not to share that talent. Heather want to sing, but I've only got one good ear left and I don't want to break it either. The best idea so far comes from Dr. B, who thinks Cameron should stand up and just tell a story. This is a true talent he has since when telling a story he uses great body language, dances all over the place, gets very excited, and turns every small story into a tall tale. We'll see what we come up with, but for now just enter us down and TBA on the program. The kids finished a swim lesson this summer. They loved it and are swimming well now. Cameron swims underwater with his eyes open and will do a lot of things that Madison does. Madison refuses to open her eyes, but can swim around in the dark pretty well. She is great at getting things off the bottom of the pool and is practicing her dives.

We went to Mustang Island/Port Aransas this past weekend and had a blast. I'm working on the pictures now and will have the blog up to date here soon. Here is a preview of our trip. Our beach neighbor didn't bring her boogie board, and apparently didn't want to spend much money on an adult board. So...she bought the smallest board she could find (smaller than every kid's board out there), which didn't work out too well for her. None the less, she had a fun time trying and we all got a good laugh. Two people watching events (we love to people watch) that topped this boogie board were, 1) the same lady trying to skim board, and 2) Cameron obviously drooling over the volleyball girls time and time again. This kid couldn't keep his eyes in his sockets and didn't care when he got busted staring. More to come!

Vacation weekend

2010-05-25T20:10:00.005-05:00

This weekend we had a great get away from regular life. Dr. Lipsey scheduled get away for the doctors and their families. We went to the Texas Ski Ranch for wakeboarding lessons behind a real wakeboard boat. It made a wake big enough to be scared of, and was a lot of fun. Heather learned how to board and is good at it. Now she should be as excited as I get for a trip to the lake.

After two days at the ski ranch we drove to Concan, Texas and relaxed on the Frio river. It is so beautiful and laid back there. We relaxed a lot, checked out Garner state park, and had fun at the wedding.

Madison and Cameron loved exploring, climbing, swimming, and chunking rocks. Besides our driveway, we don't have many rocks here so they are amazed at all the rocks just laying around waiting for them to throw. Luckily we didn't need to go to the hospital for any stitches.

The Frio was frio and felt good to swim in once the sun came out. We swam for a while and enjoyed having nothing to do.

Here we are as a family at the wedding. The kids have proven to be problematic during weddings, so we were prepared for the worst. For whatever reason, all three kids were perfect for the wedding and reception. They stayed up late into the night, and we didn't get them back to the cabin until close to 10:00. That is super late for our kids since they 1) hate weddings, 2) normally go to bed at 7:00, 3) didn't take a nap for 4 days straight, and 4) were out in the sun for 3 days in a row.

Here is Meghan and Matt. Really nice guy who is perfect for Meghan.

Madison loved the attention she got from all the girls. She turns into a different person when around older girls and tries so hard to be one of them. Since we were the only idiots to bring our kids, all our friends helped out loving on them.

Like most boys, men, and rodeo clowns, Cameron was afraid of Shannon. He eventually warmed up a little more, but only after shaking his bum at her a time or two.

Ashlyn took the best to Shayla and spent the majority of the reception with her. It was kind of nice having lots of babysitters at our table.

After dinner Madison and Cameron ran around together. I snuck up on them to take this picture. Like most Glades, they would rather watch people dance than to try and dance themselves. They make great people watchers.

Ashlyn did so well all night long. We were so proud of our kids we bought them a toy at the store once we got back to civilization.

Back at home, Madison and Cameron started swim lessons. They swim every morning at 8 for the next two weeks. Cameron only has 1 other girl in his class, so he gets lots of attention. Hopefully he'll learn a lot this year and start swimming some.

Because they need practice and summer is finally here, we decided to set up grandpa and grandma's pool again. The kids were so excited they played in the shallow pool for hours this afternoon.

Mother's day

2010-05-18T19:57:00.004-05:00

Look at this stylish mother! This year I let the kids pick out Heather's presents and tried not to influence them too much. Cameron originally wanted to get her a small white thing that goes over her boobs, as he is currently obsessed with boobs right now. I haven't noticed it too much, but Heather says he constantly points them out and talks about them. Wow. How do you deal with a kid this young with boob obsession. I've been doing a bunch of reading, and research says it is a genetic problem with a direct link to grandfather's who like GLOW.

Back to Mother's day.....Each kid ended up picking mom out a pair of sunglasses, and since Heather likes green...this is what she got. She also scored an apron, pink sunglasses, nail polish, and the beautiful ear rings and necklace. What a lucky mom. I thought it was a good idea; until I realized father's day is right after mother's day. Hope I don't get a small white thing that goes over my boobs! Now that the water has warmed up some, the kids want to go wakeboarding and get in the water. They want to practice their stunts, forgetting all they really want to do once they get behind the boat is hold on for dear life.

This summer Madison is tall enough to hold on to the rope herself. She likes to wakeboard nice and slow, while crazy Cameron wants to go faster and faster. He loves the bumps. He also thought it was funny to unzip his life jacket to show off his little bumps he calls boobs. Oh boy.

He can't reach the handle, so he holds tight to my legs, which now have permanent imprints of his chubby arms on them. Heather's brother, Andy, and his wife Amy, visited us over the weekend and he was our camera man. After looking at the pictures, I thought he gave the camera to either Madison or Ashlyn to take the pictures, but he promises he did the job himself. Next time I'll skip his offer and pass it on to one of the kids. The other pictures include only one leg, the sky, and the tip of my ear. We didn't get a picture of Andy, but he got up on the wakeboard and improved. This was his second time to try and he did awesome. Amy wasn't on the boat, she wanted to run for an hour. Wakeboarding vs running??? Not too tough of a choice, but not everyone realizes that wakeboarding is a requirement to pass through the pearly gates. Here is Heather wakeboarding; she got up for the first time. Despite the look on her face, she was enjoying it. She did good and can't wait to go all summer long.

This weekend we are going to a ski ranch and get to play behind a real boat. We have been looking forward to it for such a long time and hope the weather stays good for us. Here is why Amy and Andy were down for the weekend. Madison, our little Madison, who we just recently shed a few tears over as she went to Kindergarten for the first time, graduated from Kindergarten. For some reason, they have a cap and gown ceremony for the kiddo's and it was kind of fun. It would have been a whole lot more fun if it was 3 hours shorter. Took forever, and no one really cared about who the suma kum latte kids were. Madison sure was proud, and it was fun to watch here. Andy didn't take this picture, but a close sibling of his did. Not to mention names, but her name starts with an H and rhymes with schleather. Back in the room I got a picture of her with the boy that she kay-i-ess-ess-e-dee, but only once. He soon told her they were not allowed to do that at school anymore. Once again, genetic programming, linked to GLOW lovers. Here is a picture of our family watching the graduation, and I discovered we are no longer able to make fun of our kids goofy looks when we take their pictures. Here the little kids are with their school pictures and their funny faces. Looking back at all my school pictures, should I have expected anything else?

Plano weekend

2010-04-26T19:32:00.003-05:00

We took this weekend to spend some time with the Branson's in Plano, and had a fun time. Madison and Cameron's highlight of the weekend was visiting Amy and Andy's house for "the punching man". Here is their highlight reel. Madison's standing hammer fist in the half mau tai clinch. Knees followed as well as an attempted flying triangle choke. Gravity defeated her flying attempt.

Solar plex jab.

Elbows. She also pulled several moves unknown to MMA; it was a wolf in sheep's clothing move. She would hug and kiss him, and then with praying mantis quickness smash her fists into his head. Don't ask me where it came from....we are still scratching our heads. Cameron was afraid of "the punching man" and kept a pretty nice distance. He doesn't know how to punch, but his screaming and slapping kept the man almost as confused as Madison's kiss and smash. Here is Cameron's attempt for an overhand left. Not quite Chuck Liddell, but maybe one of these days he'll over come his fear of fighting fake people.

The rest of the weekend we played a few games, watched basketball, played volleyball, and maybe did a little man shopping.

It was good to get away and see family. We can always use more of that in our lives.

Weekend off!

2010-04-18T20:26:00.002-05:00

I got a weekend off, after a very stressful two weeks of work. I needed a break so bad, but actually ended up having a packed weekend. It turned out to be very nice as we got to spend a lot of time together as a family. Last night we went to a co-worker's wedding, so the kids got cleaned up for that. It was outside at a really neat place, so we got a picture or two on the way out. We left the reception early since the kids were about to lose control of their emotions, but decided we were hungry on the way home. We chose to eat at Casa Ole, and soon realized we made a huge mistake. Two minutes after we sat down, Cameron chunked his silverware/paper towel missile across the table and hit an old lady in her leg. It happened so fast, there was nothing we could do to stop it. We were so embarrassed, apologized a million times to the lady, who was already using a walker, and had to take Cameron outside for a while to let him (and me) cool off. Needless to say, he didn't get any ice cream for dessert.

Madison got another award at school on Friday, and we got to be there. She kept peeking back at us to make sure we were paying attention when she got her name called. It was supposed to be a surprise, but she knew something was going to happen since the whole family was there. She got an award for enthusiasm to take her reading advancement tests. It fits perfectly since she is trying to take an advanced reading test every other day. She is doing great and loves to read. We are proud of her and love her desire to grow and learn.

Our project this weekend has been to build a play ground for the kids. With the help of Bug, we ripped down the old, broken, tetanus filled, decaying, dangerous, playground and took it to the scrap yard. Cameron still asks when we are going back to pick it back up, so this project moved to the top of the list.

We drew plans for a hexagon type fort and played with it until it worked. We've still a lot of work to do, but we've got it set up. The kids wanted it painted blue, and youth conference leaders needed service projects for the youth...so we got a bunch of help with the painting. Yea! Cameron and Madison helped with the painting quite a bit and loved every moment. Madison thought she was something else getting all this attention from the big girls, as they paid special attention to her.

Here is the end result of the painting. We got more paint on the kids than on the playground, but they really had fun and learned a little bit about work.

I've got next week end off too, so we'll work on getting a roof put onto the playground and then start figuring about the swing set, monkey bars, ladder, rock wall, and cargo net. The kid's list went on and on, (basement, trap door, tire swing, petting zoo, wet bar) but we stopped the list for now.

Easter weekend

2010-04-05T20:13:00.003-05:00

We had a wonderful Easter weekend, and got to enjoy having Uncle Bug celebrate with us. We got to do a few fun things while he was here, and hope he wasn't too bored with the inactivity. We tried to show him how to fish, but nothing was biting and the wind was blowing too much to really have fun on the water, so we quit a little earlier than expected. Once we got home, we did all sorts of busy stuff. We colored eggs that we would later forget to hide.

Here they are ooohhhing over the marvelous colors.

Only to be followed by an appropriate aaahhh.

When it was time to find the Easter eggs, Ashlyn knew exactly what to do. It was so funny to see her waddle to the first egg she saw, pick it up, plop it in her basket, and look for the next egg. She would have done this all day long, but her second egg she tried plopping into her basket fell out. It was at that moment she discovered there was chocolate in the eggs, and she spent the remainder of the time chewing her way through wrappers to get the candy. There wasn't anything we could have done to convince her to pick up more eggs. She found what she loves, and was perfect to have her two eggs (until she ran out of candy).

Madison loved collecting the eggs, and despite her best efforts to "leave the easy eggs for Cameron and Ashlyn to find" she couldn't resist picking up eggs that were in plain sight. She usually prefaced the easy finds, with, "oh, this one was kind of hard to find." Her basket was overflowing with eggs, but no one else seemed to mind. Notice the two eggs in Ashlyn's basket and the face covered with chocolate. She really didn't move an inch once she found the candy inside the eggs.

Madison had a big day on Saturday. She has been talking about getting her ears pierced for a few weeks now. Once we talk to her about it, she usually changes her mind, but not this weekend. She was determined to get them done, so we took her to the mall and got some blue daisy studs punched through her ears. If she looks nervous in this picture, it is because she was. She tried so hard to be brave, but her nerves took over and all she could do with force this nervous grin. Before we went to the mall, Heather dressed her ears up with some numbing cream that we got from Cameron's previous problem. She didn't flinch, blink, or even think about crying, which surprised us all. Cleaning and twisting them is a different story, as now she acts like we are going to rip her ear off when we clean/twist them. Oh, the pains of beauty!

A few weeks ago I helped the ranch across the street work some cows. They still push cows up with horses, and this kid helps/hinders the work too. He loves working and thinks he is the real deal, so he had no problem showing Madison and Cameron how to ride his horse. All his horse really wanted to do was eat the green grass, but it was fun for the kids to sit up there for a while. They also had a cowboy birthday party for two of Cameron's friends from mother's day out, and got to be cowboys for the afternoon. This is their toughest looking cowboy face they could pull off. Their boots have also gotten too small, so we went boot shopping last week too. Their rain boots had to do, but didn't help with their tough cowboy looks too much. Here they are rinding Mercedes at the party. One of these days, when Bug is rich enough, we'll let him buy a horse and feed to keep at our place. Then the kids can ride when they want...and Bug too.

Happy Easter

2010-03-29T21:03:00.002-05:00

Ashlyn's new thing for the past few weeks is to see how high she can climb and then holler so everyone knows where she is. She gets very proud of herself. She amazes us at how strong she is, as she will pull herself up onto things with her massive guns more than she uses her legs. She does this especially a lot at the playground and goes places she shouldn't.

A local doctor in town donated these ultrasound machines to the clinic. They are named RtwoDtwo and C3Poh. They do look like little robots when they are together. I took them apart thinking I was smart enough to fix them. I was actually only able to switch the keyboards. Too many computer boards were in there and I got scared and put everything back. One machine is working, so I use it on obvious things at the clinic..or just to goof around with. Heather too jumped the gun on Easter clothes. Cameron loves his new tie; he gets so excited that he gets to wear two ties at the same time. He only ownes the one tie, but since there is a tail, he has two. He is liking nursery again and now looks forward to going to church. That makes it a lot easier on us (Heather) and a little more enjoyable. Ashlyn, on the other hand, hates it and is our new Sunday challenge.

Spring break

2010-03-19T19:46:00.002-05:00

This week was our spring break. I had the prior weekend off and then Monday and Tuesday off, so we spent some fun time together as a family. Andy came down on Saturday and we spent time working cows and calves with our neighbors in exchange for letting us shoot on their place. We need to do a lot more shooting to even up because the cow/calf work lasted quite a long time. Andy and I learned how to head throw calves instead of flanking them, and we had fun attempting that. I applied my jujitsu moved to a few of them, but also had a few throw a few moves of their own right back at me. One huge calf wiggled a back leg away from me and used it to spit Andy's jeans clean open. Lucky for Andy and his wife, his pants were the only thing that got ripped. Heather got a bunch of flowers from Lowes and made our beds look pretty again. The kids had fun helping for a little while, and our front looks great. This has been Cameron's looks for a few moments during the break, but for the most part he and Madison have been great friends. He will miss her a lot once she starts back at school. Here are the buddies the Friday before spring break. Madison and her school had a hoedown and she did her best to cowgirl up. Cameron had to dress the part as well to keep up with big sister.

Ashlyn has discovered toys and loves playing...especially outside. If any door gets opened and she doesn't get to sneak outside, she gets sad/mad/upset. She has started throwing fits when she doesn't get what she wants, but luckily she has a short term memory and quickly forgets why she is supposed to be crying.

Part of our break was spent nursing kids back to health. Ashlyn had a 105.7 fever one night, so I ate a bowl of ice cream for her and it went down. Heather took her back to the doctor (she just got her 12 month vaccinations and was diagnosed with allergies/secondary sinus infection) and this time they found ear infections in both her ears. She took some time to recover, but is feeling good now. Cameron came down with something a few days ago, and he too should be back to normal in a day or two. Cameron and I went to the metal scrap yard and picked up lots of scrap to make a workbench. We spent some time working together on it, but only after he put on his apron. Cameron makes me laugh so much when he talks as he can't remember the word for everything but will describe them until we figure out what he wants. His apron is "you know..the white thing that grandpa gave me a long time ago that he can't wear because it won't tie for him". He has an elephant memory for certain things and gets excited when he describes what he remembers from his 3 year old perspective.

In the sun she melted

2010-02-28T21:09:00.003-06:00

Here is the fate of Eileen after she fell. Cameron wanted to kick her the entire time we were building her, so today I let him at her. He had fun. Madison has been teasing her loose tooth out for a week now. Today after church I accidentally bumped it out. Luckily no tears were shed and she was super proud. As soon as it got loose we started questioning her what her friends were selling their teeth to the toof fairy. The drive for spare body parts must be astronomical as these kids are getting the same amount for their teeth as I would donating a kidney. I'm pretty sure the poor fairy is in charge of collecting teeth from our kids. What is the fairy supposed to do with the tooth? Heather wants to keep it (to clone them later), and I think it would fit nice in the trash can. Her favorite part about missing her tooth is she can stick a Capri sun straw there. Awesome!

Today was Ashlyn's Birthday and she had fun being the center of attention. Cameron and Madison love celebrating birthdays. I think we should make one up for every month of the year just to watch these kids light up. Ashlyn got a "the cow says" toy, shoes, and a Jack in the box. It was great and she loves her toys almost as much as her siblings do. Here she is with her cupcakes. She had a big cake, but Cody got on the counter and ate most of it. I came home from working on a goat that been chewed up by something wild to find Heather trying to load my revolver. I thought she was mad at me even though I had no idea what I did wrong. When I found out what she was about to do, I wrestled the gun away from her and put her in time out. Who knows what has gotten into Cody (besides cake), but he has been stealing food from the kids and counter tops like crazy. Anyone know of a good vet to figure stuff like this out?

This is our second most hungry animal in the house. She loves to eat. Heather looked up her growth chart to see where she is at 12 months, and the chart doesn't go that high. She goes in Friday for her check up so we will find out where she is for her height. She got pink eye last week and is getting drops for her eyes, which she finds funny. She smiles at the anticipation of the drops hitting her, and then laughs at the surprise of it happening. Here is the birthday girl posing for her post cake picture. She is a mess. Now that she is one, she decided she likes to kiss. Her kisses unfortunately for mom and dad are as messy as she is. It would be more appropriate to state that she likes to drool on your lips when you ask for a kiss. Cameron is much overdue for a haircut again. We've been talking about getting it done for the last two weeks. He hates to get it cut, and we are having to bribe him with bigger and better things. First it was M&M's, last time it was a doughnut, and this time he wants a big blazer for his dad before he gets it cut. Since we don't want him turning into a hippy, I guess we'll have to try and meet his needs. Madison and Cameron steal our old camera, take a zillion pictures, and neatly put it back as if it was never touched. Later we find what the little monkeys were up to. Both the older kids have gotten pretty good at taking pictures and it is always funny to see what subjects they find important to them.

Bryan Snow

2010-02-23T21:21:00.005-06:00

This morning we woke up to blue skies, at ten it was sleeting, noon, snowing large Texas flakes, and then it started melting around dark thirty. Now all we need is a tornado to complete the Texas weather cycle in 24 hours. The snow was thick and wet, and lots of fun to play in. Heather took a picture of us walking home from the bus stop. I laugh at how prepared we are for snow. I own my snow jacket and snow gloves, but Cameron and Madison get stuck with light weight hoodies. Heather says it makes them tough.

This is Cameron sporting his snow gear. He stayed outside for quite a long time despite is 102 fever he has been fighting. After an hour he curled up on the couch closest to the stove and unthawed. Cody remembered the snow and liked it.

Madison had a thick jacket from last year, but it only covered slightly past her elbows. She lasted a little longer than Cameron did, but froze her hands as all she wanted to do is pelt me with snow balls. Here is here surprise for me while I was busy making our snow girl named Eileen. See below for more about her. I thought the kids would enjoy making a snowman/woman, but they didn't want to put in the effort I did. Our snow person, Eileen, turned out to be an average sized snow woman, 5'5", hour glass figure, big head, nice winter tan, and a big head. One hour after we started we had her finished. We took pictures and then went inside. 5 minutes later Eileen (aka I lean) leaned too far and got her name changed to Laya Down.

To finish our snow filled day we created our own Olympic event. I carried Madison and Heather (one at a time) out to our street with no shoes or socks on. They had to run back to the house as fast as they could for the best time. Cameron had difficulty operating the camera, so we didn't get their footage gold and silver finish. Here is my bronze metal run back to the house to warm my little piggies back up.

2010-02-21T19:29:00.002-06:00

Madison celebrated H-day at school. Another reason for a party. They were supposed to have crazy hair day and bring something that started with H.....she brought a hat, or a highly illegal hat. It got put in her bag and she was H-less all day long. Very similar to bringing hashish according to her teacher. She was afraid people were going to laugh at her crazy hair, but found relief in the other crazy hairdos at school.

Madison and Cameron have been playing well together. After Bug told me my wood stack looked trashy, we've been working on it. I'm 1/2 way done with splitting and stacking the stuff that was stacked on the grass. Thanks Bug for the kick in the pants and the blistered hands. Next time, try to mention work related things before you leave so you can help with the projects! Actually, I asked him his opinion and his opinion happened to correlate with Heather's....so I had to get it done.

Here is another picture of the two playing together. It is a wonderful feeling to have in the home when they are happy and loving each other compared to the other days when every other word is "mom" or "dad" yelled at the top of their lungs...just so they can rat out what the other did.

Ashlyn is still growing. She knows where the pantry is and knocks on that door regularly. Heather describes her as rat like as she can chew through any packaging to get to her treats.

She has been throwing up large volumes for the past few days. Despite that she feels pretty good (slightly clingy), but doesn't have a big fever. We fed her again tonight, so we are hoping she keeps it down. It is not pretty when she can't keep it down!

Here we are celebrating me and my 31 hard years. The kids ran out of german chocolate icing, so they added cream cheese to finish it off. Yum. The only reason I posted this picture is to show how excited Cameron was for my birthday. He was bubbling over with enthusiasm and his excitement for his own birthday didn't match that as it did this night. We are lucky to have such fun kids and try to remind ourselves that when we feel not so lucky.

Feb

2010-02-12T20:00:00.004-06:00

Cameron turned 3 years old, but is closer to 4 or 5 than 3. He has a great birthday and loved the attention. He was spoiled by everyone and probably only deserved a quarter of it. I hope I get as lucky next week. We celebrated at Chuck E. Cheese and has some fun. It was almost as much fun for the adults as it was the kids. The kids were excited to have Uncle Bug down and they tortured him the entire time with their demanding gaming schedule. Twister was fun when we were kids at Grandma and Grandpa Glades home, but now it is almost a work out with all the yoga positions. Bug won the most; his yoga classes are paying off. Madison spent her 100th day at school. Honestly she was only there for 90 percent of the time, but the class as a whole was there 100 days. They had a party. It seems Kindergarten is a party all the time. They celebrate everything. I never remember having a super bowl pre and post game party when I was in Mrs. Giles class. Madison continues to enjoy school and has fun. I ate lunch with her one day and had so much fun laughing with/at her friends. I met the boy she kissed, and hope she never kisses him again. She claims she doesn't want to kiss him, but I'm pretty sure she has a secret crush on him still. I guess I am ok with that; he wants to be a millionaire when he grows up. Nice for the whole family!

Madison is trying to grow up on her own, but is still very much in love with me and Heather. We love it and hope it stays that way forever with all our kids.

She went to the dentist for the first time and they found a very very very small cavity. As small as it was they wanted to drill it, so she got it filled. I asked her how the shot was and she told me that I was silly because dentists don't give shots. Her face was numb, so we've got a sneaky dentist. She had "fun", and Heather has each of us signed up to visit him. I'm turning into dad and not looking to that visit at all. Last time I went was the week before I got married...and I still feel great. Maybe Heather's to do list will disappear soon. Ashlyn is cruising around a lot and loves her new freedom. She will fall every few minutes, but does a great job catching herself with her face. If she doesn't have 3 or 5 bruises on her face, it is only because she replaced them with cuts and scrapes. She gets her birthday this month too, and she is looking forward to that day the exact same as she does every other day. It is fun picking her out of her crib every morning because she gets so excited to see some one rescue her. It makes you feel like a hero every morning.

Newest family member?

2010-01-29T20:27:00.004-06:00

Look at my new toy and proudest member of our family! This would be so awesome...if it were only true. I don't want a monster this big, but I found this '87 diesel blazer below on craigs list for cheap. Once I got in contact with the owner, he said he needed to check with a family member to see if they wanted it first....and I haven't heard from them since. We all, even Heather, have been crying ourselves to sleep at night ever since. There is another option, but we need to pay more money and go to Tennessee to pick it up. It has only 67,000 miles on it (diesel) and would be fun to work on. Heather isn't on board with this one since it doesn't have AC. Darn. Maybe one of these days something will come by and work out, but for now we'll be happy with the toys we don't have. If anyone does see a diesel K-5 blazer on their craigs list...just let me know!

Sunny days

2010-01-23T19:59:00.005-06:00

I don't know where our crazy winter went, but it disappeared for a day this Friday. Luckily I had that day off and spent a lot of it outside working/playing with Cameron. My shade/shed/shop/project needed a little tweaking before the door people can hang my doors on it, so I worked and worked on that. Cameron was my main helper and he did a good job, since his main job was not to get hurt and have fun. He played like crazy and then took a rest for a while. I about died laughing when I found him sunning like a reptile; worn out from all the manly shopping, garden planting (I know...it was early but I had the time and help), impact wrenching (his favorite job), hatchet practicing, question asking, and imaginating. His nap was short lived and then he went right back to full steam ahead. Here is a picture of Ashlyn after a long day of not napping. Since she started her one day of mother's day out, she will only take 1 nap a day instead of 2...not matter how tired she gets. A few nights ago Heather found her all tangled up in her crib, and still sleeping soundly. She is using a lot of energy walking when she can, so it baffles me that she isn't sleeping more. If everything works out as planned, we may have another addition to our family to announce soon. Not getting our hopes up, that is all I can say for now. I don't want to jinx our luck. Stay tuned and don't ask us to spoil our announcement. Don't worry Diana, there is no way we can compete with your announcements so we aren't even going to try. Wish us luck!

Happy MLK day

2010-01-17T19:02:00.003-06:00

Our kids are growing so fast; it seems each day is something new for one of them. Most days the three of them are doing well together and play well. Today was an exceptionally wonderful day filled with minimal whining and screaming. Although Madison and Cameron play together the most, Ashlyn has shown an excellent attitude of "i can too", and just squeezes her way in the playing. The only time this doesn't work is when the older two are playing Zingo, Go Fishing, Guess Who?, Operation, or Twister. She wants to play too, but just isn't at the right stage and this upsets the big kids tremendously. I get to hear (at the top of their lungs in unison, "Dad! Ashwin is eating owr gaaammee.) Joy! This is the third child with the "i can" trophies on her face. We don't know how she gets so banged up, but gets another addition every few days. She is learning to walk and takes quite a few spills.

One evening I was working outside and I let the kids stay/play in the truck since it was colder. I thought it was going to keep them out of trouble and safe. They were safe, but the inside of my truck sure wasn't. They decorated the inside by hanging wet wipes all over the place, turned all sorts of knobs, and opened my uberlarge large map. They tried folding it back up, anyone who has tried doing that knows it is difficult. It got stuffed under a seat...as I wouldn't have ever noticed anything sticking out. My favorite is when they try and play dumb when I "found" it; "oh, hey dad, what's that your are playing with?" I'm just glad I never tried to pull anything like that on my parents when I was a kid!?!

More sharing

They even share clothes sometimes. The BYU-Idaho shirt doesn't look to bad in this picture, but it is a girly cut shirt. Uncle Benjermin got it for Madison and now Cameron wears it sometimes. He claims Uncle Benjermin got it for him, and it is very difficult/impossible to convince him otherwise. I taught Madison how to pose like a BYU-Idaho student. All the BYU-I elders in Germany always threw the hang loose sign in every picture, so I figured it stood for something...maybe even gangster. Only Bug knows; we'll see if he lets the cat out of the bag.

Here is a typical video of our 'play until some one cries'. We were trying to get Ashlyn walking, but the other two couldn't resist not getting in the spotlight too. After a few attempts we gave up and then started wrestling. This is typical, Madison pick on dad, Cameron pick on Madison, and then usually some one gets hurt...mostly mild injuries. No children were actually harmed, injured permanently, or killed in the making of this film.

Heather's Happenings

2010-01-09T20:33:00.003-06:00

One of my resolutions this year is to write ONE blog. CHECK! Now I can move on to the next resolution on my list. This new year is already starting off full force. I have the opportunity to start doing the bookkeeping for the vet clinic and have just finished my first week of "training". I have reserved Tuesdays and Thursdays to get a big chunk of the work done and then I can go in other times when I need to. This is in addition to babysitting twice a week and doing the shopping for the clinic. With taking on a new job, comes finding something to do with the kids. We have found a Mother's Day Out program for Cameron and Ashlyn. Cameron is able to go on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9-3. We luckily were able to get Ashlyn in for Tuesdays only. We are on the waiting list to get her on Thursdays, too. Meanwhile, Nina from the clinic will watch her. Cameron is still apprehensive about MDO but by the end of the day says that he had fun. He likes to call it "His school". Different from Madison's school (Everything is competition with those two). The best part for him about MDO was buying a Spiderman lunch box for his lunch. So, backtracking a little... After Mom and Dad left the day after Christmas, we decided to take the kids ice skating. I think we thought the kids would be more coordinated than they were. What were we thinking!!! We had a hard enough time staying steady. Cameron had the best time. He held on to Michael and Benjamin most of the time.

Ashlyn enjoyed sitting in the doorway watching the skaters go by. Thank goodness no one stepped on her coming off the rink. Michael took her around a couple of times. She enjoyed getting to go fast and having the wind blow through her little curls.

This is the way Cameron skated most of the time. We found these cones sitting by the entrance to the rink. The idea was to have him hold on while he pushed and skated. He decided he liked it better just standing on it while Michael did the skating.

Now, the one who we thought would enjoy skating the most (and was the most excited), Madison, was not so impressed. One step on the ice and she was pretty much through. She finally decided to go around the rink once with the cone by the time we were ready to go. After everything was said and done, no one fell, except Michael who wanted to slide like Superman. We had a lot of fun and enjoyed a skating rink that had like 10 people max in the rink at one time. Nothing like how the Galleria gets at Christmas time.

We celebrated the last day of the year by taking the kids to the park while Michael was at work. I managed to get this picture of all three sitting at the top. However, I wish I could have gotten one of Ashlyn going down. It was hilarious. It was her first time to go down a slide.

Poor Ashlyn is always looking up to her brother and sister. This is her watching them at the top wishing she could be up there, too.

Either, she is trying to show me that she can stand with no hands or she is excited about the water. This girl loves water. I pick up spilled doggy water at least twice a day.

Here are the girls. They have a lot of fun together. Madison loves to pull Ashlyn out of her crib after her nap and bring her into her room to play with toys. Madison is a good big sister. She even changed a diaper today on her own. Ashlyn is a good little sister, too. She is trying her hardest to keep up with the other two. She is taking 5-6 steps on her own already. She is only 10 months but she will be walking soon! Today she started to do the elephant walk on all fours. It was so funny. She sure has more speed when she moves that way. She is finally sleeping through the night which is such a relief to me.

Here is a picture of Cameron on his bike. This is pretty much all he does at the park. He just rides around the track and around each playground. He doesn't like his picture taken so I had to sneak this one in. Cameron cracks me up. He is starting to talk a lot more clearly and therefore is developing into quite a character with the things he says. He is my big helper at home. He loves to clean things. He is also a protective brother. He is always watching out for Ashlyn.

So Michael got his first duck hunt opportunity on Friday. He suited up in his duck hunting gidup and headed out into the frigid 20 degree Texas morning. He was able to successfully shoot one duck and brought it home to show everyone. Cameron was amazed. He just kept petting it and saying how soft it was as he examined the head, beak, wings, feet and the little bit of blood on it. Cody just sniffed and tried to make friends with it. Some bird dog he would be!!!

Merry Christmas

2009-12-28T21:27:00.007-06:00

A few days before Christmas we took the kids to walk through our lighted park for FHE. The kids had a lot of fun and after 2 laps around a large park, they decided they were tired. Both kids were so excited for Bug and Grandma and Grandpa to come that they decided to sit by the window and wait. They stayed there for 30 minutes before deciding playing would be more fun. Ashlyn was excited to do what infants do....chew on the wrapping pater.Cameron got what he had been asking for...a car movie garage. Madison got Barbie and the Three Musketeers movie and toys. Santa knew Grandpa and Grandma were down here and even dropped off a few presents for them. Everyone was excited when I opened my present. Heather loved what she got. What goes up must come down, and for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction. The kids loved playing with Uncle Bug/Benjamin. Cameron says his name isn't Uncle Bug...it's Benjermin. We were glad he was here for a while and it was wonderful to spend Christmas with him. Dad showed me how to weld and we had fun trying to learn about the new welder. Heather is also learning how to weld and wants to make home made Christmas presents for everyone next year.

Beauty rest

2009-12-19T23:25:00.002-06:00

Our kids have been amped from the cooler weather, anticipation of Christmas, or something else, but we've noticed they go until they crash...usually with a fit somewhere in between. Madison and Cameron still share a room since Ashlyn is such a light sleeper. Cameron wants the night light on (so he can sneak in some play time), but tired Madison can't fall asleep quick enough with the light on. Our solution: Heather's blinders....she wanted these in case she ever woke up at night and was frightened by my funny looks, but never really used them. Madison has taken them over and is lights out a few minutes after she slips them on.

Cameron will still take afternoon naps, but it usually happens after a hard afternoon of playing. Heather left him alone on his bar stool for a few minutes and found him and his half eaten pop tart KO'ed. Once asleep his body focuses on producing as much sweat as possible. We need to use paper towels to mop up his sweat after some naps on our couch.

This is his average sleep position. If there was volume to this picture, you would here Ocho squealing his little bug tires in some race. We now have two Herbie movies and he loves them both. Madison is going to get a cool Jeep when she starts driving, and this kid is going to have a dorky '63 bug.

These two will take naps during the day, but are our regular alarm clocks. Ashlyn cries enough to wake Cameron up, who then will come wake me up to turn on his Herbie movie. On cold mornings he forgoes his movie to crawl in bod with us. Sounds good, but the kid wiggles the entire time and keeps me from falling back asleep.

Hopefully these clowns will fall asleep quick on Christmas eve so Santa and his tired little elves can get ready for the big day.

East texas hunting

2009-12-14T23:16:00.002-06:00

So this past weekend was Jered and my annual hunting trip to east Texas. Like the past few years we came home with empty coolers. Unlike last year I had a chance at two doe, got cocky, and missed because instead of aiming for a big target (chest), I tried to pull off a head shot. It was early on in the weekend and I thought I'd get another chance to pull the trigger, but I was wrong. Despite that we had a blast. One of the guys at the lease has a lot of toys, and he was happy to share them for exchange for minimal work. I forgot my camera at home and didn't get any pictures of us at the range, but this is what we got to shoot.This is a 42 pound .50 caliber. I shot it once. Each bullet costs $5.60, and is huge. You don't want to be on the business end when this thing goes off. If you stand behind the shooter when it goes off, the concussive force will knock you hat off. Pretty cool. That being said, it didn't have much kick at all...probably because it is 42 pounds. I also got to shoot a M-16 for the first time and emptied a clip at a few innocent pumpkins. It is amazing how much these jump around when on automatic. Even short bursts are more difficult to control than "in the movies". When I got home, the kids were ready to play and Heather was ready for a break. I was ready to go hunting for another few weeks and see how many more head shots I could make. It was good to hang out and laugh with Jered and other east Texas characters, but as always good to get home. 8 years ago was the night before our wedding and Heather and I were brave enough to go through with the deal. A lot has happened since then and it is sometimes difficult to remember life with out her and our family. I remember images and memories, but my mind makes me want to think she has always been there, even before I met her. I guess I was lucky to steal her away and make her a special part of my life and begin our own special family. As our family continues to grow and develop, my appreciation and love for her grow even more, and I am thankful and blessed for having such a fine wife to experience this beautiful life with.

Christmas is near!

2009-12-06T21:38:00.004-06:00

Here are our Christmas decorations at night. We love it from this angle, but you have to drive down Coyote Run to appreciate our home. From the busy road, our house looks kind of boring. Here we are on the roof for a quick picture. The entire time I was hanging lights, Madison was begging to get up on the roof. The older I get, the more danger I see in kids playing on steep roofs, so her roof time was minimal this year. She was sad.As soon as we got back from Thanksgiving, we bought our tree and decorated it with the family. Madison and Cameron love the ornaments and seem to play with them more than they should. Thanks to Dr. B from work, we get awesome ornaments every year for Christmas, and the kids love identifying who "owns" that ornament, where it came from, and how much they love it. The older kids have been playing very well with Ashlyn as she gets older. It is so much fun to watch them grow together. These two peas in a pod now sit next to each other during lunch and do more playing than eating. Although they have different personalities, they sure do look alike at times. No one can say they aren't siblings!

These two have also been playing very well the past few weeks. It is funny/odd how the kids cycle through times of constant bicker to constant play. Luckily, with only a few threats that Santa won't come, our home has been filled with sounds of laughter instead of crying and name calling (ie "you a baby bum" or "I not wike you anymore")

Both the older kids also like to join Ashlyn in her crib right after she wakes up. Heather found Madison reading her a book after her nap, and then Cameron had to join in on the fun. Moments like these make you a proud parent that your kids love each other. That being said....I'll never say we don't have our moments where we want to join in on the kicking, screaming, and crying.Saturday was our annual Boonville Animal Hospital Christmas barn party. Despite the closed barn and heaters running, it was still pretty cold. We ate till we were full and fat, and then had a gift steal. Lots of fun again. Here is a picture of our co-workers. Heather was feeding Ashlyn, so she wasn't in the picture. What a jolly bunch!

Aggie Bonfire

2009-11-24T23:56:00.002-06:00

Tonight we lit another bonfire in Aggieland (or just north of it in Robertson county), and I got the brilliant idea to take Madison and Cameron to their first bonfire. It was going to be awesome, but right before we left we had to go cut a dead calf out of a heifer. The kids were good and as instructed, didn't mention too many times that the calf was dead. Repeating the loss of a calf to a rancher over and over again, as my kids tend to do, is never good for the rancher's late farm call mood. With a lot of help and aggie engineering we got the calf out and headed to Bonfire. This is the 10th anniversary of the collapse and death of 12 fallen aggies, so they had the main stack and 12 other mini bonfires. It would have been awesome. This is what we saw of bonfire. The flash went off accidentally, but look to the right and you see a construction sign in orange?? saying, "Bonfire site closed". We got there too late, along with thousands of others and didn't get to see the bonfire burn. So sad, but I did see the smoke from the highway. We had a good time laughing and talking in the truck and sat in traffic for over an hour and a half before we came across our burnt orange construction sign. Madison reminded us that it "was like driving to Idaho", referring to our 3 hour nap in the highway waiting for the road to open back up.

So at 9 pm instead of watching the stack burn, we helped unload the hay. Cameron's job was to point to where the hay was supposed to be stacked, and he did a fine job. He didn't get to bed till very late and I'm sure we will pay for it tomorrow. Here is another picture taken in the wee hours of the morning. Ashlyn has for the past month started crying all hours of the night. When I get her out of bed to rock her, this is the look on her face. Sure it makes me melt, but looking past that tired grin, I see a smart girl who knows how to get her way....and gloat about it afterwards. She sure tugs on my heart strings and is developing a lovable personality.She is also very proud of her accomplishments and loves to be acknowledged when she is doing what her bigger siblings do. She is starting to shimmy around holding on to things and very proud of her new found skill.

We hope everyone has a great thanksgiving. It is wonderful to be part of a loving family, and have so many people to be thankful for. Whoop!

2009-11-15T21:02:00.002-06:00

We had a relaxing week followed by a fun family weekend. The last past weeks I've had two cow clients that I've worked with regularly. It has been a lot of fun to work and work with cows and a lot different than my "normal" farm calls. One cow that has been ill belongs to an 83 year old. I had to take care of it through the weekend, so I took the family out for a Sunday drive last week. Two shots for the cow and I was done, but the kids liked going out there. This Friday, the gentleman called up and told me that cow was calving and he needed help. Heather was shopping with Ashlyn, so I had to take Cameron out there as my hand to help. Instead of being my hand, he took that 83 year old hand in his and started walking around the place like he owned it. He was pointing all the cows and tractors out to this guy, who owns it all, and acting like he knew everything. Like most 83 year olds, they don't hear well and sure don't understand 2 year old gibberish. He was talking just as much as Cameron was, but neither of them were on the same page. Friday night I actually took Heather out on a date. Wow! It was really nice. We started our Christmas shopping for the kids and then went to an amazing italian restaurant and got fat there. Dr. B watched the kids and they had so much fun with her. When we got home Dr. B was playing sorry with Madison, who was counting slower and slower by the second. She was fighting sleep with everything she had. Saturday we took the kids to the town carnival. It was a lot of fun to see the kids get so excited about the rides. Madison wanted to ride one similar to the Sky Screamer....she just didn't know what it was. I was too low on tickets to ride with her, so she went by herself. The seats, arranged in a circle, went up, up, up, and up. She was the only one on the ride and didn't know what to expect. Heather and I were watching from the ground laughing as her grin got bigger and bigger as she went higher. When she reached the top, there was the beep followed by a very quick drop back to the ground. Madison had no idea it was coming and her grin was gone when she climbed out of her seat. She said she had a lot of fun, but didn't want to ride it again. Sunday evening we hosted a small dinner for some families from church. We invited my entire class, which we always do. Some days 4 families show up and other times more. This time we had 79 people (including kids) show up. We weren't expecting that many, but we had a great time. Luckily it wasn't raining and the weather was nice, so we were able to send some of them outside to eat. Now we are back to another week of school and work. Yea!

On the blog again...

2009-11-08T21:32:00.005-06:00

Happy Birthday Heather! 32 years old, but who is counting? She said she had a good birthday, and got some neat toys. She loves her laptop; thanks everyone for all the advise. I hope it lasts for hundreds of years and never catches a virus. As for the hair pulling soccer chicks....the BYU girl started the fight with an elbow to the boob. I don't know the rumors in Utah, but down here we know that if you are going to fight a New Mexican; it isn't going to be pretty (neither the fight nor the fighter). Here are two cool things we passed on the way to Utah on our first trip. A regular joe was towing this half track behind his truck. What an awesome toy! Add it to the Christmas list!This was the kids favorite thing driving down the road; a wingless airplane. Cool too, but not as cool as the half track. Here is Heather's attempt to update our pictures on the wall. It was a miracle we got all three kids attention for 2 seconds.

This is Ashlyn's first pose for her picture on the wall. To me she looks happy, but like all of Heather's offspring, she looks different in every picture.

Madison has been bugging me off and on to finish our coon skin hats. I finished two of them this week. She wore them for 2 minutes and then was done with them. They have been dried for almost 6 months, but after I cut and sewed them, the leather shrank even more. (Shrank sounds more cooler than shrunk). Now that I know that, I need to make a even bigger hat for myself. I'd love to make a mad bomber's cap, so if anyone ever finds a pattern..... This is Ashlyn's new thing; throw everything on the floor. Our other two did it, so she thinks it must be a right of passage once she can pull herself up. My collection of Texas Parks and Wildlife magazines are also destroyed. They were going to be worth a lot of money one of these days. This is why we can't ever have anything nice around the house. Sounds familiar? Heather was trying to capture a moment of Madison and Cameron having fun together on the tramp, and this is the best picture out of 978. I love how Cameron has to have all the buttons done up: it is part of his disguise, making him fool people into believing he is a sweet, innocent, little angel. He also leaves his hair long to hide the horns!Here is a kite flying stud. I've got three pictures of him flying the kite and he looks awesome in all three. He was taking his flying serious this day. Big knots in the string didn't stop him at all. Notice he still has on his dress/work/play/church/rain/casual boots on. Thanks again Nicole for the awesome boots. Most kids get their baby shoes bronzed; Cameron will have his first boots bronzed...if there is anything left when he is done.

Parting shot: the drouth stopped a few weeks ago and we caught up on our yearly rainfall in a few days. After a stead rain all night, our yard and drive was flooded until noon. It sure has been nice to get some rain!

We all had fun seeing everyone in Idaho and were glad we got to make the trips. Thank you Bug one million times for riding with us and keeping our heathans at bay! They loved the trip and still ask if we can go to Bug's house.

Rainy days

2009-10-12T21:46:00.006-05:00

Cameron's grumpiness is a perfect reflection of the luck we've had with the weather around here. Madison, Cameron, and I scheduled a hunt for this morning and we got a foggy, misty morning with no birds flying. Two minutes after getting to the place, Cameron fell in a puddle and got wet. Because it was only 60 and not colder, he was able to huddle close to our heating buddy and keep comfortable for 90 minutes. No luck with the birds, so we stopped at Green's Sausage House in Zabcikville for awesome koloches and some bacon and sausage for home. The meat made the trip worth it! Cech communities sure know how to make meat right.Heather told me Cameron needed new blue jeans for cooler weather, and this is what he got. I hope he likes them as much as I do, cause he looks like a big helper in them!Big Helper helped me move this water and keep it from floating away all my mulch around the garden. His boots are too small, so he has to wear Madison's pink boots when she is at school. Lots of rain fell, which we are thankful for. It seems we stopped our 3 year drought or "drouth" all in a few weeks. This week end we went camping in Somerville with the Bransons. It was cold, wet, and fun. Fish didn't bite at all, I fell in the lake, Madison befriended a 7 year old and wanted to play with her more than us, and Cameron loved the RB (rv) the Bransons rented. Those are the high points, and we had a lot of fun hanging out as a family. With temperatures in the 40's, the kids slept in their jackets and Ashlyn made herself at home between her bigger siblings. Their regular biological clocks woke them up before the sun came up, and they were excited and ready to play at 6 am. Sorry neighbors for the early wake up!

Ashlyn is crawling around and showing a lot of interest in playing with Cameron and Madison. The interest is sometimes reciprocated. All 3 thought it was fun to hop on pop today multiple times today. We were all home celebrating Columbus day (why? he didn't discover America until after the vikings and others) and I couldn't close my eyes a bit with out having to wrestle one, two, or three WWF wannabe's off me.This afternoon we found Ashlyn in the train box. Madison stuck here in there because she wanted to. Ashlyn didn't seem to mind and actually stayed there for a while. Looking forward to our trip this weekend. Wish us well while underway! Our best luck is to have an awake driver and very sleepy kids.

Magical moments

2009-10-02T20:24:00.002-05:00

Ashlyn is pseudo crawling. She is really good at army crawling now and loves to leave the carpet. Although she can't pull herself up yet, she'll grab all the drawers she can reach to open them up. Now that she can move the direction she is looking (instead of backwards), she will go after Cameron's toys. The first few times it happened he was shocked and didn't know what to do. Now he has figured it out and will hold onto his toys when quick crawling Ashlyn is in his proximity. Cameron and Madison are doing a good job picking her up and bear hugging her as they drag her around too, which is funny to watch. When Cameron carries her he puts a squeeze on her hard enough that her face should turn purple. Don't ask me why, but she loves it too. She is very aware of who is around her and begs for attention with her huge smile. If I forget to give her a hug and kiss (like I do everyone else) when I first get home she starts crying until I do. It is easy to fall in love with such a cute little girl and I'm lucky I get to see her as she grows and develops her own little personality.

Madison just finished celebrating "talk like a pirate" day and her school celebrated "fairy tale" day today. She chose to be....shock...a princess (a tennis shoe wearing princess). The kindergarten had a parade in front of parents and the whole school, and Madison was on cloud nine. She thought she was something special. I happened to meet a 1st grader from her school later this afternoon, and I asked her how she liked the fairytale parade. I told her about Madison and said she was walking 4 or 5 people behind Pinocchio, and the girl described Madison's dress perfectly. She also said she was beautiful, which I have to agree with. What a pretty princess!

For every princess there is a stud on a white horse or sometimes green bike. After a weekend of being together too much, Cameron was glad to see Madison go back to school. When they are home together, they really play well. Cameron has grown a lot these past few weeks and we are loving him all the more. I gave him a haircut and cut off his blonde waves; now he has short brown plain hair and looks like he lost his personality. Hopefully it grows back.

He is now a pro at riding bikes and earned his own blue bike, which he rides for 35 minutes every morning after Madison gets dropped off at school. He is very coordinated at riding, but it sure does tire him out. After the long rides he usually falls asleep because he is so tuckered out. Our princess chasing stud is also wearing big boy pants and has been going potty like a big boy for the last two weeks. We are proud of our little big boy and love to see him grow.

Boonville Vacation

2009-09-27T20:16:00.006-05:00

9 months ago we started counting down the months, weeks, and days until this trip, and the time came for our vacation pretty quick this year. Time flies the older you get is the oldest, but truest saying I know. Above is our highlight of the trip; eating dinner with Shamu. It was awesome!Before it got awesome, this is how our trip at Seaworld started. Cameron the grump showed his sour side most of the morning and into our day at Seaworld. It took him a while to warm up to life, but he really enjoyed the shows and loved being grump in between them.The first night of the trip was exciting; we got to sleep in a hotel, and the kids couldn't have asked for anything more. We were on the 23rd floor and the kids couldn't get enough looking out our window at everything below and getting really excited when they saw some one else in their room. While I went to my continuing education meetings (the other reason we were in San Antonio), the Bransons and everyone but me jumped in the car to go on an African Safari in Texas. They saw lots of cool animals and got to feed some of them food from the car. These Watusi cows couldn't fit their heads in the windows to eat the feed, but sure are cool to look out. Texas long horn don't have much bragging rights with these monsters around!This Zebra was cool, until it bit Pam. Ouch! A week ago a petting zoo got closed down because one of these pretty little "ponies" bit a girl's finger clean off. I guess I was the only one in our family that heard about that story this week. Saturday after we finished all our meetings the whole clinic and their families went to Seaworld. We had a lot of fun looking at all the sea animals and............Budweiser Clydesdales because if you donate enough money any beer company can be part of something wholesome. Clydesdales are big, but nothing compared to Shamu. Part of the shows at Seaworld include Clyde the seal investigating this HUGE walrus. This beast can't do too many tricks, but they did train him to do sit ups, which is so funny. The show was very funny, as I remembered when I was a kid. No water ski show; I was bummed not to see that small bathtub boat with a huge motor on the back of it. Another show we went to was a 4-D pirate show. The 4th dimension includes vibrating seats, and water and air effects to scare the unsuspecting. They said several times it is too scary for little kids, but our kids are tough right?? Ashlyn wasn't too scared, but the other two were shaking like leaves. This picture was taken before the show, as Madison took off her glasses during the show and refused to put them back on.

Here is our close encounter with Ki. As we learned Shamu is the "last name" and they all have first names. Ki is a 8 million pound whale. His dad lives in Florida and weighs 12,000 pounds. Actually Ki is only 8 thousand pounds, but this is a picture of him coming out of the water to greet us. Cameron didn't care how he much he weighted when this happened. I was squatting on the ground holding Cameron and taking this picture when I felt a little splash on my leg and a huge tug on my arm as Cameron tried running away from Ki's friendly greeting. He wanted nothing to do with getting close to this Cameron eater. I was going to post a bunch of false information about killer whales just to see Diana's reaction, but this is a long enough post already.

If you have questions, post them and either Diana (more informed) or myself will answer any of them. A nickle says you can't stump the two of us.This is our adrenaline junkie. Madison was very, very upset she didn't get to ride the adult roller coasters. She was really excited to ride the type where your legs hang down and you make sharp twists, turns, and loops. I can't believe how much she wants to ride them. Here are a few rides she was tall enough to ride, and she loved every minute of them.We got to ride the log ride as an almost family and had a lot of fun. Heather was more scared than Madison or Cameron.

I don't know why, but watching these animals and humans interact is something special. I don't like crying when I'm around and don't know how to deal with it very well. I don't know what happened to my emotions while watching the Shamu show and dolphin show, but I felt something stirring around inside me. I don't know why these shows touched me like they did, but I haven't been that close to crying since I watched Where the Redfern Grows in 5th grade. After yesterday I vowed never again to eat killer whale or use their by products again.Here we are at the end of a long day and longer post and believe it or not, Cameron is still a grump. Today wasn't much different; he was just grumpy in the car instead of at Seaworld. Hopefully tomorrow will bring a happier Cameron and more patient parents!

Beaumont weekend

2009-09-02T21:44:00.002-05:00

We spent a wonderful weekend down in Beaumont with Mom and Dad. We all had fun, but the kids seemed to enjoy it the most. Ashlyn loves the carpet and enjoyed being able to navigate all over the place with out getting on concrete. She is getting close to getting up on all fours, but for now she manages to scoot backwards and roll, hoping luck will get her close to something she wants to drool on.

Here is Grandma and Ashlyn. I've got about 40 shots of this picture, but zero of them are of both Grandma and Ashlyn looking at the camera. I need to get me a squeaky toy to get mom's and Ashlyn's attention at the same time.

Another tough shot; Ashlyn wanted to chew on dad's tank bag. By the time we got her looking at the camera, both she and papa were slightly disgruntled...not the "take the picture already grin/snarl" both of them are wearing.

Here is what all three of our kids loved playing/fighting with. 7 months to 5 years all content playing with blocks during the weekend. Even when Cameron winds up and chunks them as hard as he can, no one gets physically hurt.

Ashlyn went to the doctor today for some shots. She is in the 95th percentile for weight and 90th for length. We grow em big down here! Despite her record numbers, Cameron was still over a pound heavier than she was at this age. Madison, our stunted child, was a pound less.

First day of school

2009-08-24T12:45:00.002-05:00

Madison's first day at school went well per Madison. Heather and Cameron took her to school, and she was all smiles. Once she sat down, the nerves hit and Heather said she wouldn't smile after that. I guess all went well once Heather left because she told us all the fun things she did at school. Like any girl, she got new shoes for school. And like all new cute shoes, they blistered her feet. Stupid girl shoes. When are cute shoes ever going to be comfortable. No more stilettos for Madison for a while. Where did this smile come from? First time for her to smile like that. Like Heather she looks like a different person in every picture she takes.

Here she is on the first day, and very happy. We let her ride the bus home from school, and the bus is supposed to drop Madison off in front of the clinic. Two buses pass the clinic; first bus stops, which is not Madison's bus, and of course no one gets off. Second bus blows right by the clinic without stopping. Madison said, "da bus driber was just going too fast to stowp, and just kebt going." After watching the bus blow right by her, Heather called the bus barn and school to find out that Madison was indeed on the second bus. 30 minutes later the bus came by, stopped and let the last kid off the bus. Despite the 1 hour and 15 minute bus ride home (it would take a fit jogger 20 minutes to jog from my house to the school (me 1 hour and 10 minutes), Madison was happy and didn't get too upset about the long bus ride. The driver was very sorry and hopefully won't forget that stop again.

Sunday night I got out my baby book to show Madison pictures of my first day at school. I found this picture of me when I was 2 years old. I can tell that Cameron and me are related, but I don't think we look alike much. People sometimes call Cameron mini me when we are together and say we are spitting images of each other. I just don't see it. I do, however, see us being a lot a like at the same age. What ever happened to that cute kid? Once I hit 2.5 years I must have turned ugly. Growing up was tough on my face....sure got rid of all my cuteness.

Wanted: Lost kitten.

Last Saturday I helped the kids feed the cat and then drove all over town on a few errands. When I got back the kids were looking for the cat. After what seemed like hours, and was only a few minutes, we decided to look under the hood of the truck. This cute little kitten loves to climb in the engine compartment of the truck, so I half expected to see a cute little kitten body stuck in the serpentine belt/dead. No luck finding the cat there, but there were tons of cute little kitten paw prints on the cold air intake hose. After deciding she went for a ride in the big city, we told Madison and Cameron that she was forever gone and won't be coming home. Hopefully she finds a good home with a family that won't leave her outside.

Madison of course was sad, but I didn't expect a melt down from Heather. Once the tears dried we got on with our day and put all the kitty toys away. Madison had the brilliant idea to call all her friends (both of them) and ask them to look in their backyard for her cat. I vetoed that idea and gave her a stuffed animal to play with.

Sunday morning I got the notion to look outside on our porch and as soon as I opened the door our cat ran inside. I snatched her up and took her to Heather, who again started crying. I thought it would make her happy to see her again, but I guess it had the opposite effect.

Needless to say, this silly little fur ball has grown on most of our family members. Even Cody wants a taste! Hopefully she stays around for a long time.

Tonight Cameron was talking to us and like always we couldn't understand what he wanted. Madison, because of school, has an early bed time and was supposed to be asleep already. Cameron kept repeating himself slower and louder, like it was actually going to make us understand him better. He kept saying, "Ah (I) ahnt (want) ahi (my) chochon (chochon)" What the heck is chochon? After 5 minutes, Heather laughed and admitted that all day long she couldn't understand what he wanted and his personal translator, Madison, was at school. He had spent a good portion of his day talking slow and loud to Heather repeating the same lines over and over. Poor kid.

PS chochon actually means clothes on. At the time he was naked from the bath and wanted to put his clothes on; not his pajamas on. This is his new thing; it is cool to wear regular clothes to bed now???

2009-08-11T14:00:00.004-05:00

Ashlyn is eating solid food now and loves it. What Glade doesn't like food? She does really well. It is fun to see Madison help her out. Finally we've got a kid old enough to help out around here. Pretty soon we'll get her scrubbing floors and cleaning windows, and then we'll get her a night job to give us a little extra money for our toys.

She is showing a lot of personality too. Most of the time she is very happy and is fun to hold.

Meet Dimey. The kids love her and play with her a lot. She stays outside and is fun to watch as she explores all the fun things outside such as leaves and insects. We've trained her to race back to the porch. She can't beat the kids yet, but she'll be faster than them in a few months. It cracks me up to see them all running around together.

Another fun weekend

2009-08-04T21:08:00.003-05:00

This blog has been in drafts waiting to be posted; therefore, it is from a few weeks ago and not this week. This week has been work, work, and more work. Exciting events from work include a steer came out of our squeeze chute, made a U turn and jumped on me like a fat woman on a french fry. I didn't need to go to the hospital, but I sure felt like it. Hind sight, it sure would be nice laying around in a hospital bed right now sipping on shakes, watching tv, and having people wait on me 24/7 (minus the pain of course). After getting stomped by the steer, I was getting ready for my next appointment and took a huge drink of my much needed Dr Pepper to quench my thirst, to find out it was sabotaged with a pound of salt. Barf! Insult to injury - that is how I get treated by my oh so nice co-workers. (They did remind me that payback is misery) Here is our lake front campsite last week when Andy, Amy, Michelle, Kevin, Kelly, Tyson (and family), and Bug came to visit. It was a lot of fun and we tried to eat at the Lakeside grill. I think we were all too hot and tired to even enjoy the food. Two of the girl cousins sharing a seat and ketchup. They really had a lot of fun together. Madison loves learning from and copying other girls. Amazing what little ones learn from their peers. Cameron learned too, and still has a hard time deciding if he wants to play with dolls or trucks. We bought him a cool firetruck to help make that decision for him a little easier.

I'm a dork and bought a mask and snorkel to see when I vacuum the bottom of the pool. Unfortunately, I don't get to use it much since Madison wears it most of the time. Now she can dive to the bottom to retrieve objects, do somersaults underwater, and is learning to swim underwater. The kids (dad included) really love the pool. Madison and Cameron both are growing a set of gills behind their ears.

Here are some cool pictures of us wakeboarding. This is a new trick I learned where I do a one handed cartwheel/cookie on the water and then keep boarding. Something everyone has to try.

Tyson and his nice gloves getting some air. He went from being able to get up to jumping wake to wake in two days of boarding. I wish I has some of that skill. That being said, his one handed cartwheel/cookie is non-existent. Kelly got up, rode for a few hundred yards, went over the wake and wiped out. She did this 3 or 4 times before quitting for the day. Face plants aren't always fun. Ashlyn (aka Curious George in the above picture) is getting stronger and stronger. She can roll over and scoot a few inches. Give her 10 minutes on the ground and she will move 3 or 4 feet. Her only problem is she moves in the opposite direction she wants to go. She tries so hard to move towards her toys, but ends up scooting backwards. This flusterates her, so she cries. We let her cry; tough love. She'll never learn if we give her anything/everything...right?!?

We got a cat from the clinic to live on our porch. She is small, weighing in at 2 pounds (her litter mates are above 4 pounds). Who knows what is wrong with her or how long she'll live, but I thought the kids would enjoy her while she lasts. They love her and spend a lot of time outside with her. We are teaching Madison that she doesn't like to be picked up all the time, carried everywhere, and held by her tail. It is a learning process. So far Cameron calls her Kitty Cat, Madison calls her Happy Day Flower Lilly, Dimey, Flower, and a bunch of other names that are just gibberish, and Heather calls her a new name every other hour (all good names of course). It is fun to see the kids and kitten play, and hope it lasts for years and years. Come visit her before she grows up and is 3 pounds!

2009-07-22T22:25:00.003-05:00

We had this past weekend off, so we loaded up the kids and met dad our side of Sour Lake. Heather jumped on the bike and rode home with dad the last 20 or so minutes, and loved every minute of it. She started holding on to his belt loops, but by the time dad hit 70 mph she had an iron clad grip on him. If she was coming off the bike, he was going to come right off with her. She really had a good time and I'm a little jealous it was her and not me. Her recommendations for our future bike is a sissy bar and louder pipes. (I made the pipe part up).Madison and Cameron were in heaven playing with grandma all weekend long. They had a lot of fun, and I accidentally got a funny picture of Madison giving grandma a little Texas twister. This is her first one ever given, and I have no idea where she learned it from. The worst part is Cameron was paying very close attention and is not too far behind her. Like at our grandma's house, these kids love playing Cooties and other games. They love these games. PS Grandma, Cameron broke your pink hippo...forgot to tell you. I'm sure you and dad got it out to play and couldn't figure out who broke it. When we got home from our Beaumont trip, we saw very dark clouds over our house. At Target we got a sprinkle or two on our windshield; behind the private school it was raining hard, and when we were at the golf course it was hailing dime sized chunks at us. We slowed real quick, but it was still so loud. I was ready at any moment for our windshield to break. We ran into our house, which was leaking again to dry off. It was a wild storm with 60 mph winds. The next day Heather discovered that mother nature was teaching me a lesson not to procrastinate. I've been putting off putting a face on my shed waiting for cooler weather. Now I've got two sides to work on as the winds blew out one of my side walls. What a bummer! I set the wall back, but instead of using the bricks/pavers, I set some boards and poured quickcrete. I know I've still got a lot of work to do on it, but it should be stable for now....until our next big storm blows. in. This is the rainbow at the end of the storm Sunday afternoon.Tuesday on my day off, I fixed some of the shed with Cameron's help. 5 minutes before I took this picture, he asked be to stop banging my hammer so loud. I couldn't stop laughing when I discovered he was trying to sleep on the mower. He did take a 30 minute nap on the JD mower with his favorite JD boots on.

Ashlyn is becoming one of the kids and really loves when her siblings play with her. She adores both of them and would follow them everywhere if she could only move around by herself. The wonderful flip side to this is that bolth (that is for you D) of them really love their baby sister too. Just don't call Ashlyn a big girl because right now only Cameron is allowed to be called big; it hurts his feelings. Here is our big girl eating rice. She loves it despite this Popeye face she is pulling. She is going to be a big eater and loves sitting in her high chair. Again, she loves being one of the family and thinks she should be with everyone else at all times. We started filling the pool, and the kids didn't have the patience to go swimming. This was taken at 7:30pm after a long day of working outside and the kids had to go swimming before we ate dinner. Cameron had been carrying his swim trunks around for an hour, so I put them on him and told him to take a quick swim. As soon as his toes were wet, Madison was stripping off her clothes to go swimming; I tried stopping her before I knew the whole story. She told be it was ok to take her clothes off because she had her swim suite underneath her clothes. Sure enough, she had been wearing them under her clothes for the better half of the afternoon just waiting for the OK to jump in the pool. We finished swimming after 10 minutes, and then jumped in the car for some T-jin's food. Yum.

4th of July

2009-07-06T23:00:00.003-05:00

We had the best 4th of July ever this year since so many family showed up. We sure missed all those who weren't here, and even fired off a fire cracker or two for you. The above picture is the best one taken, stolen from Lacey's page (the copyrite check is in the mail). I've decided that the 4th is one of my favorite holidays, right up there with Christmas, father's day, and my birthday! Seriously, it is a time I always look forward to and am thankful to live in such a wonderful country. We are truly blessed.

The cousins had a blast playing with each other and don't stop playing. Fights (knock on wood) have been kept to a minimum so far. The girls are in heaven, and even Cameron is having a lot of fun. I don't have many pictures of the lake, but it was a lot of fun to watch Madison and Spencer swim around and show each other their water tricks ie floating and splashing. (Those who took pictures at lake Bryan.....please send me some)

Saturday afternoon, Brian drove down with Grandma and David. It was good to see them for a short while. Here is proud great grandma with all her little pedal pushers, who are mostly happy.

Grandpa sharing his drink with Cameron. I think he was teaching him the difference between a sip and a gulp. Glades gulp (and then pat each other on the back). Cameron gulps....and backwashes. Grandpa didn't know because the bottle was tinted too dark, but I'm sure he drank lots of Cameron's teeth goo.Bug (Benjamin Glade) had a great time. He had never touched a wakeboard before, and picked it up pretty quick. He makes it look so easy. I know I'm not supposed to covet, but I've given myself permission to covet two things: Bug's sick athletic skills and $60K wakeboard boats. Everything else like internet capable phones are a waste of time.Here are all a few pictures of the family having fun. Bransons took a picture off just the Bransons; no in-laws/out-laws invited....except Bug.It was a great time. Like Bug, the time was short, and everyone left as quick as they came. We can't wait to get together and hope to see everyone in a little time.

Happy 4th of July week!

2009-06-29T22:52:00.002-05:00

We picked up the load today and celebrated on the way home by eating at Chipolte. Yum! Sure can't wait for the weekend!

Fireworks get the kids all crazy too; hopefully they will both stay awake this year to enjoy the show.

Most people don't get to see the pictures on the outside of the fireworks because it is too dark and they are too far away. Here is what we light on fire. Awesome!