Notice

Hear ye hear ye, I'm 99% sure I'm not going to update this blog anymore. It was fun while it lasted. I will still post about the family, but when I do it will be HERE, on my personal blog. Feel free to come on over there and catch up.

Sue's Blog

Summer pt 1

The school year ended. Here are Eli and Nate in the obligatory last day of school picture.

Here's Ivy, 6th grade graduate.

Then she had a birthday......

...now she's 12, which means....GIRLS CAMP!!! 

She was so excited,

until they made her wash dishes.

Just kidding. She loved every minute of it and wished it could have lasted longer.

Ivy was our only competitor this summer. 

She swam her little heart out.

She loves swim team. 

Nate has been working at SunSplash, our local water park, this summer. 

And, I don't have a picture, but Eli volunteered as a Jr. Life Guard. He really enjoyed it and plans to do it again next summer.

I do have a picture of the lunch he packed for Scout Camp.

Don't worry. I didn't touch it.

Mother's Day

We skipped church and went to the arboretum like always.

It was a lovely day.

Edge and Jessica came with us.

My Mother's Day gift from Wesley was this sweet portrait.

Ivy and Nate thought it would be funny to take pictures next to every plaque. So there are about 300 pictures similar to this one.

Isn't it sweet the way they always cooperate when I want to take a picture?

I am currently accepting applications...

...for someone to be responsible for updating the family blog monthly. Ivy has been bugging me to get something new up here......now that I think of it, maybe she's the girl for the job......then again....family secrets.....hmmmm...maybe not.

Either way, here's what we've got.

Nate turned 17. OH MY GOSH!! Can we quit with the getting older already? Per family tradition he skipped school that day and we went out to lunch.

We went to Freddy's where I ate my weight in french fries. Natch.

Then it was Easter. Ivy talked me into making these little cake bite chicks. Mmmmmm. Sugar.

We took them to Fountain Hills for the annual Easter Egg Hunt/Picnic,

 with our cousins,

 our grown up married children,

 and our crazy pants uncles.

 A week or so later, after we'd had a chance to work off the consequences of the cake bites Sylvan and I had a Rice Krispy Treat Off. I made batch of the original recipe and Sylvan made a batch using chocolate marshmallows and Cocoa Krispies.

 Turns out not everything needs to be improved upon. 

Original Recipe was declared the winner by a landslide. 

More tomorrow.......

Always running behind...

......would be my theme song, if there were such a song, and I were the kind of person who had a theme song. 

Until then, here's what I have evidence of for March.

Ivy decided that she could not live another minute without a sequined tank top. Everyone at church agreed that it was the perfect thing for Sundays.

Nate really loves it when I take his picture, can you tell?

During Spring Break Ivy & Eli spent a lot of time together. 

They played racquetball.

And had bake offs. Several bake offs.

Which explains why I had to buy so many donuts. (There are ALWAYS pictures of donuts on my phone. Some people like kittens, I like donuts. It's fine. Right?)

The most important thing we did in March was introduce poor Jessica to our version of March Madness.

I'm pretty sure she has renamed it "March My Mother in Law is WAYYY Crazier Than I Ever Suspected." 

There was, of course, the filling out of brackets.

Which is a 3 day event to be sure.

Followed by a few weeks of trash talking and obsessive game following and point tallying.

I may have even gone overboard and created a KY shirt that could be worn to church when games happened to fall on Sundays.

Finally, we end our March recap with a shot of Eli using science to attach balloons to his head. 

My goodness we are exciting. 

We went on a hike.

It's true. All of us AND our dog.

Is it just me, or do Ivy and Wesley look a little confused about being out of doors?

Eli, on the other hand, looks, um, strong?

Loooook!! All of our little kiddies.

I am unable to explain how a person such as myself who HATES being photographed ended up being in so many pictures.

When we got home the boys gathered around and read a classic novel.....I mean, watched dumb videos on the internet. Heartwarming, isn't it?