We Are Outta Here!! (Again)

We are once again going out of town. This time we are heading to California to visit my mom and dad. We will be gone for about 2 weeks so we can spend a week with each of them. I am hoping we actually get out of here on time so I will end this post now so we have a chance of making our flight.
TTFN!!


OH...I am supposed to mention how it's just the girls and I going since my husband used up all of his leave on our last trip. So we are abandoning him (his words not mine) and leaving him to fend for himself for the whole time. Poor thing...

(of course I have spent a TON of money stocking up on everything he should need so that he won't go to the store and pay way too much for what ever he is in the mood for)

What's Happening Now...

I know I have been a very sporadic blogger of late but life in the summer seems to fly by at amazing speeds. Here are a few things we have been up to recently...

Teresa has been wanting to dye her hair and we finally relented when she found a NON-permanent dye at Hot Topic. Why was is at Hot Topic you ask?? Because her color of choice was blue!! Unfortunately, since we were unwilling to let her strip her hair first, it didn't really come out very well. Then it completely came out when we went swimming. Oh well, live and learn.

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Taylor has also been nagging to dye her hair but she wanted something a bit more permanent. My friend Pam and I finally talked her into trying out a longer non-permanent type that will last for about 30 days. Especially since we were unsure of how it would look in her hair. THANK GOODNESS. She was looking for a brown with red tints...it did NOT come out like that. I now have Ariel living with me and I cannot wait for it to wash out.


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Wordless Wednesday

Work Bites, Let's Go Skiing!!

Here are some videos of us having fun on the river. We love getting to spend some time skiing while we are visiting family.


Here is Taylor skiing.


Teresa Skiing.


Here is Jaquelyn attempting to ski but she hasn't quite gotten the hang of it yet.


Here I am succeeding to get up after several tries with snap starting (standing on one leg then jumping on the ski when the boat starts going). I am not great at it but I usually get it eventually.

Vote For Porter

Updated: It was pointed out to me that once you get to his picture, it is not clear how to vote for him. When you find his picture, there is a spot in the right corner above the picture that says "rate this" and you can give him however many stars you want.


My mom has the cutest dog named Porter. He is a mixed breed rescue dog. Even though he is four years old, he still looks and acts like such a puppy.
She has him entered in a contest for the top pet in San Francisco. If you have a few extra minutes it would be so cool if you could vote for him! You don't have to be from the area to vote.
Here is the link...The Bay Area's Top Pet. Once you get to the pages, you can search for "Porter the 4 year old puppy" or "Porter Posing".
I could only find some pictures from last year on my computer to show you how cute he is so here they are.

Here is Rebecca teaching Porter how to roll over.

















He is very patient with Rebecca pretty much no matter what she does, he just tolerates it.

I Am So Proud Of Rebecca!!!

You will never guess what my awesome little girl did today!! It was so totally cool! Since this is my blog, I get to brag about it all I want! I will tell the whole story and I am sure you will guess before I'm finished.
We have a pool pass for our local pool, which is about 2-3 blocks away. The pass also works for the other community pool that is in a different town about 15-20 from here. although we have gotten the pass before, we have never ventured down the road to try the other pool. After all, why bother when this one is so close. Yesterday, we got to our pool a bit later than planned upon only to find out that they were closing in 20 minutes for a swim meet. What a bummer. They suggested we try the St. Michael's pool since it would still be open. So we loaded up and drove on down.

























It is actually a very nice pool that is very kid oriented and has a good sized shallow end with zero entry which I really like. The part that made it terrific in the kids eyes was the slide they had. It's not a very big slide, maybe 4 ft tall or slightly less, but quite the draw nonetheless. That is until you read the sign located next to the slide. You must be taller than this sign (roughly 5ft) or pass the deep end test to use the slide. Well, Jaquelyn went right over and took the test, which is the same as our pool but for some reason you have to take it for each pool separately. The deep end test consists of swimming from one side of the pool to the other and back and then treading water for 1 minute.
Rebecca was very upset that she couldn't go on the slide so I took her into the water with me and tried to get her to work on her swimming. She was not very enthusiastic about it and it didn't last too long. She ended the day just playing in the shallow end and giving the slide longing looks.
We went back to that pool this afternoon because our neighbors were heading down there to try it out. The weather was not terrific so the pool was not very crowded at all. Lots of fun was had by all but Rebecca still wanted to go down that slide. After we had been there for a few hours, almost everyone else had left, to include our neighbors. Rebecca decided she wanted to go down that slide so she was going to try to take the test.
So off we went to let the lifeguard know what she wanted to do. I swam beside her the whole way and encouraged her loudly. She made it all the way there and back with no problems. The treading water was a little harder but she made it through that too. My FOUR year old passed the deep end test!!! I was totally amazed. She swam the whole way on her back because that is the easiest for her but they don't care how you get through it as long as it's on your own.
Needless to say, she was very excited and spent the rest of our time at the pool going down the slide over and over and over again.

And Still More Vacation Pictures

Ok, I will only bore you a little more with pictures from our vacation. I have a few more pictures to share and then a post with some skiing videos. since I just got a new camera for my birthday, I went a little overboard trying it out while we were away.

Each year we do a few pictures with the same idea. One is all of us jumping off the dock backwards.


















In past years this shot was on the tube but it has been getting harder to fit everyone on or around at the same time so we changed it this year to on "Darling Island"

And More Vacation Pictures

We are very lucky in our vacation choice. Since my parents were both raised in the same home town, there are relatives from both families still living in the same area. Here are a few pictures from our visit with my Mom and her sister, my Aunt Kathy. She lives in the same county in Wisconsin as my Aunt Nancy, who is my Dad's sister. My Aunt Nancy lives right on the river and the other pictures were taken at her house.
Here we are playing croquet in Kathy's yard. It was so much fun.





























My Aunt Kathy made some lemonade Margarita's for the girls while we were there. They really got a kick out of it!




























We always make sure to visit my Grandmother while we are there. She has Alzheimers and lives in a nursing home in a nearby town.

It's Vacation Picture Time!

I am now going to bore the few readers who haven't deserted me...since I've been such a horrible blogger...with more pictures from our fun vacay. We didn't have a lot of good weather but we managed to get out on the river twice. The first time we were only able to tube because it was just too busy and bumpy. But we had lots of fun with the tubing. This is Rebecca's first year tubing and she loved it! Jaquelyn has tried it a few times under pressure and still does not like it. (she's kinda weird)




























Two of my cousins were visiting at the same time we were there. They each have one year olds who are soooo cute! One afternoon we spent some time playing with the babies and blowing bubbles. We had so much fun!