gingerbread houses

What's christmas time without a gingerbread house.  

Christmas dresses

Grandma and Grandpa Smith sent the girls a Christmas dress.  They love that it is pink and sparkly.  What can I say, I love girls.  Thanks, grandma and grandpa!

Polar Express

This year to start off our Christmas time we went on a train ride in the mountains.  We sang christmas carols and ate hot chocolate and santa joined us for the ride.  We had a great time.  The girls especially loved singing the christmas carols.  

What happens when the girls have the camera

Apparently the girls got a hold of the camera.  Budding photographers?  :)

turtles

About a month ago the girls had each found a turtle in the road. and of course, we stopped so they could bring them home and take care of them. We had them for about a week and those turtles were almost loved to death. I did a little research to find out what they eat and discovered that they were pretty finicky and would die if kept in captivity, at least with the girls and all their attention on the poor turtles. So the decision was made to return them to the wild, in our woods back behind the house. The picture of Phoebe with the turtle is after the decision was made to release the poor things. You can tell she thought I was pretty mean at the time. So we all set out, kids, turtles, ryan and I, and the dog. We found a good spot and released the turtles and were walking back home when, unknown to us, the dog found a wasp nest in the trunk of a decayed tree, that she decided to put her nose into. The wasps were not well pleased with their visitor and stung her and then went on the offensive. Phoebe ended up with a sting on her nose, and I got one on my arm. They were nasty wasps, Phoebe was ok by the next day, but my are swelled and ached for about 3 days more. I should have taken an after picture. Maybe next time we will keep the turtles and release the dog into the wild.

Halloween

The girls had a great halloween. Phoebe was a black widow and Chloe a jellyfish. They got a lot of compliments. They were the last trick or treaters in our neighborhood. They were pretty tired by the end of the night.

Lake trip

We did do one fun thing this weekend other than put in hardwood floors, we went to the lake. The girls love the tube. I did a little wake boarding and am not sore and I drank a lot of water, but I am getting better, maybe at the end of lake season here I will be doing a trick.

Hardwood floors

So we have done 1/2 of the floors, it was a lot more time consuming than I thought. But it looks really nice. They are engineered hardwood with a cherry finish. You can see that Chloe was a big help, Phoebe not so much.

kitchen is almost done

We finished the other side of the kitchen. The sink is in and the faucet. The last thing is to touch up the paint from the remodeling, the bar countertop and the backsplash behind the sink.

4th of July

We had a great fourth. We did our own fireworks in the backyard on the fourth. The girls said it was the best day ever. They really like the sparklers. The next day we went up to a lake up north and sat out on the boat watching fireworks.

Girls 6th birthday

The girls had a luau party for their sixth birthday. They invited all their friends and a lot of them came. We had it at our pool in the neighborhood. The girls each had a surfboard cake and really enjoyed themselves. But next year it will be a much smaller party. I was exhausted.

new kitchen

Ryan and I have been working on the kitchen. ryan designed the backsplash. now we just have the other half of the kitchen to do.

Trip to Roatan

Ryan and I went on a trip to Roatan in June. We stayed at a little resort there that had individual cabanas. We had a great time scuba diving. We did 2 dives a day and a night dive. We did our dives in the morning and had the afternoons for sight seeing. We rented a scooter a couple times and rode around the island, then we went to the mangroves also. It was nice to get away for a bit. We had a great time diving, we saws lots of turtles and eels and big fish. We wished for a shark but it just didn't happen this time. The girls stayed in ohio with my parents.