Father’s Day 2011

Sammie, Tyler and I went to Springfield on the Saturday before Father’s day so I could spend some time with my mom at the hospital and so we could take my dad out for Father’s day. 

Thomas’ brother’s family lives in Springfield and it happened to be my nephew’s birthday weekend so the kids got to go hang with him for his birthday party too which was wonderful! 

The only bad part of the trip was the flooding.  Jacksonville exits out of town were all blocked but one and it took us through Beardstown which was about an hour out of our way to get to Springfield. 

This was after traveling 2 hours to get to Jacksonville that morning with the kids.  Needless to say they were pretty maxed out by the time we got to the dinner for my dad, but I got some good pictures of them anyway. 

Actually- Jacksonville is on a boil order for their water and a possible water shortage because of the damage to the water plant during the flooding.  It was so sad to drive by farmers on the side of the road just staring at their flooded fields. 

 

My dad and 1/2 of his grandkids.  This was taken earlier in the day at my aunt and uncles house.

Tyler and Parker causing mischief.

Three out of four Burnett grandchildren.  Spencer stayed home with Dad.  It’s hard to get a clear picture of “Parker Man” because he never stops moving!

Tyler has gotten into the habit of making this face when I take his picture.  Parker had had enough!

We celebrated with Thomas before we left. Sammie had a great time picking out his presents.

 

Sammie couldn’t resist the batman undies.

We also found this fun t-shirt at Target.  Who knew they had such cool stuff?

We got him a bowl of his fav. junk food too, but didn’t show Spencer.  He still found it later and ate most of the chocolate.  All well.

Pretty cute one of Thomas and the kids.  Gizmo is trying to eat Spencer’s cereal bar I think!  They love their dad so much. 

Man there’s nothing like a picture of your family room to make you realize how cluttered it looks!  We’ll just call it lived in. 

Summer of Service update- Delivering Father’s day decorations

Spencer wasn’t doing so well the night we decided to deliver these to the assisted living home so Sammie and I had a girls night rather than a family night. 

 

no one ended up being around so we had to make due with this fuzzy hair (for me) and well, Sammie always looks beautiful.  Extreme close ups are much less flattering for us moms than it is for the kids.  Sigh.

Isn’t this dining room elegant?  We hope to do more with this place for our summer of service. 

We skipped last weeks teddy bear donation to the fire house, but maybe we’ll do some teddy bear shopping at yard sales and goodwill this Saturday because the main issue with it Monday night was trying to part with stuffed animals.  I think Sammie was ok with giving away a very old bear (that wasn’t even hers- I think it was Spencer’s) and a pink flamingo beanie baby. 

Maybe they can earn money to pay for the ones we buy or something…

Spencer’s photo shoot

Whenever I get it in my head that Spencer needs to be documented in photos for this time in his life I have to take about a million pictures for a few to work out ok. He’s either running away or crying. Although, he’s been doing a lot of crying lately so I guess this does document what’s going on in his life right now!

thought this one turned out kinda cool with him being the only thing in focus as he runs from me.

turned his head at the last moment on this one.

He has finally gotten his appetite back- you usually only see the back of his head while he’s poking into the pantry or the fridge now! Feeding a teenage boy should be interesting. We are just grateful he is back to a normal weight.

Love you Spencer!

We don’t live in the country

but this beauty was outside our back door one day.  She had a baby a few doors down and hopped the fence to eat some of our yummy bushes.  We have a deck with wrap around seating that is right outside our back door- that’s how close she was!

these were taken through the window so it’s not great quality.

I love this picture of Sammie looking out her window tracking the deer.  Love the colors.

Tyler was looking out the top bunk of Sammie’s bed.

 

I have not updated much on this blog in the month of June because I’ve been traveling so much to see my mom.  She had another surgery this week- the 4th in 2 months- and I’ve been trying to be there as much as possible.  When I’m home I’m soaking up the kids and family time and quiet reading time and not blogging. 

Her last surgery went really well and we hope this is the end of it and she can just heal.  We’ll still go back now and then to check up on her at home when she gets there, but hopefully we are done with hospitals!

Summer of Service

 

This summer I’m doing a summer of service with the kids.  Each week we will do some kind of service in our home, for our friends, for each other, or in the community.

We kicked it off last night for family home evening by making center pieces for the father’s day dinner at an assisted living home near our house. 

Next week we will deliver these beauties so they can enjoy them all week. 

A big thank you to Aunt Lex and Shannon for the huge supply of scrapbooking supplies that we use on scrapbooks and also for fun paper crafts like this!  You guys were so nice to think of us!

We made 54 of these shirt and tie pop ups.  I got the idea off family fun magazine online. 

We had a good system going by the end- Tyler was the “glue man” Sammie drew and cut out the ties and I assembled the shirts and glued everything down.

Please ignore the wall desperately in need of paint.

Tyler had just gotten out of the bath for this picture and was so cold he had to wrap up in a quilt.  He fills his own bath now and had way too much cold water last night! 

We had a great time with our kick off.  I’ll update each week what we did for our Summer of Service project. 

A new use for the waffle maker

 

The kids wanted grilled cheese sandwiches and I went searching for my old sandwich maker- you know those plug in thingies that you can make 2 sandwiches at a time and it even cuts them?  Well, I never use it so I figured I’d get it out and dust it off. 

Well, apparently I “cleaned it” meaning in our house that I threw it out or donated it and forgot.  But the kids did find the waffle maker and we decided to make waffle cheese sandwiches.  They loved them and they looked kinda cool.

 

Yes, Tyler is wearing 2 sets of sunglasses and Sammie thinks he’s crazy. 

It made them a bit healthier too- which is why I liked that sandwich maker even though I never used it.  You just use cooking spray rather than butter. 

I guess it doesn’t matter that I “cleaned” the sandwich maker though because now we know a waffle maker works too!

A whole lot of green

When I started looking through our pictures of our paradise vacation last week I realized how green every picture was! With the exception of the few taken inside our trailer we were surrounded by beautiful, lush, green. It was such a fabulous time. Here’s a quick recap:

Tyler excited at McDonald’s Monday. We stopped for lunch at 10:15 because we were running out of lunch options before we hit the country. We had to wait around until 10:30 for them to start serving chicken nuggets.

Now for the green:

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I love these next two shots.

This one of the bridge is just so beautiful. It was so pretty there.

I didn’t get a lot of pictures of our water activities for fear of getting the camera wet, but I did get some great ones of the kids and Thomas playing in the creek.

ACTION SHOTS!

Spencer always turns his head away when I take a picture, but this time it worked out. I love the background of the sun and the trees.

Baby ducks:

There were a ton of ducks and geese around. It was funny though because when we went to feed them we had to chase them down.

It must have looked pretty funny to see me and the kids running after ducks pelting them with bread yelling “Hey, wait up! We just want to feed you!”

We only got a handful of girl ducks to even trust us enough to come to our soggy bread in the water. All well. Spencer loved chasing them and I’m sure he was not the only one or they wouldn’t have been so skittish.

I took SO many pictures there is no way I could post them all. It was a great getaway vacation to paradise with the bonus of actually enjoying paradise because there was air conditioning close by to get a break from the heat!

We also went to a beach lake, swam in this lake, took a boat out a few times on the lake- one motor, one paddle. The paddle was a complete disaster, but the motor boat was really fun.

We ate out a few times, but the trailer had a full kitchen so we cooked a lot of meals.

Spencer took a number of breaks but enjoyed throwing rocks into the lake, chasing ducks (as previously mentioned), swimming, laying out in the sun, the hammock, 4 wheeler rides, the swings at the playground and the free Wi-Fi so he could watch Netflix when he needed a break.

Sammie and Tyler loved exploring the lake and trails and didn’t need many breaks from the outdoor fun. The particularly loved being independent in a way you can’t be when you are a kid in the city.

Thomas’ favorite part was probably the 4 wheeler. So cool!

I rode it a smidge- just from the front of the yard to the back to park it and stayed in 1st gear the whole time, but it was enough for me!

The best part of the whole week was going all day without knowing the time and not having to know the time or worrying about the time or worrying about how much time was left before we had to do XYZ… heaven!

I read 4 books, slept in the sun, walked with my kids a bit and enjoyed watching everyone enjoy.