23 years STRONG!

On this day 23 years ago my sweet sister at the young age of 28 was diagnosed with breast cancer.  She had a battle ahead of her but she fought hard!  She had the inspiration of raising two young children to keep her going.

It was not an easy battle, as she endured surgery and chemo, but she was victorious!  

She is a fighter and an inspiration to me!

Love you Ronda!

The Birthday Girl!!!!

Our precious Abby turned 12!

After a day of apple picking we came home and celebrated Abby.  She choose Chinese for dinner, even though she says American Chinese food is not as good as China's Chinese food (some of us in the family don't agree with that though:)).

She had looked forward to her pinata.  We had two to break open~ the one they made and the store bought one.  We did not get the homemade one painted because it took soooo long to dry, but they enjoyed busting it open anyway!

I love this picture of the candy falling as the pinata was busted!

Pinata number 2:

Taylor is quite serious about busting this pinata!

After all the candy was claimed Abby opened her presents,

and then enjoyed cake and ice cream!

We thank God that He placed Abby in our family!

We love you Abby!

Apple Picking

We enjoyed a trip to the mountains with a group from church to pick some yummy apples.

Nothing better than an apple right from the tree!

H.O. was the official quality control officer making sure there were no bad apples in our bunch!

Time for a little break, apple picking is such hard work! :)

The teens from church hung out and picked apples together, one time we did spot them through the trees...

..and Andrew came up behind Seth and grabbed him,

and tickled him.

We had a great time and are looking forward 

to eating lots of yummy apples!

The Great Gatsby

Andrew and Carrie Anne went to a birthday party and 
The Great Gatsby was the theme.  

How beautiful!

How handsome!

It was held at a local bed breakfast and everyone looked great!

My sweet children. 

Andrew and Carrie Anne with friends.

What fun to see everyone dressed up!  They had a great time!

Birthday Preparations

We will soon have a birthday girl in our house!

She wants to have a pinata and Andrew has been wanting to make a pinata.  So... there you go two happy people.

Preparations are under way, candy is bought and 

one birthday-girl-to-be is getting excited!

(We do have a back up plan if it doesn't get hard 
enough in time for the birthday.)

Turtle Tuesday!

The day finally arrived!

Carrie Anne has been wanting a pet turtle.  She has researched, researched, researched information about turtles.

Over the weekend we got the new home set up and ordered three turtles.  They were overnight shipped to us.  We were all waiting for the UPS man to arrive on Tuesday morning.  Finally we heard the truck and sure enough it backed down our driveway.  We carefully opened the box and met the newest family members.

I do have to say they are quite cute and even seem to have a bit of a personality :) for a turtle that is.

Here they are!

Meet Gilligan, Ginger and MaryAnne (yes, Gilligan's Island is my kids favorite TV show!)

I love that you can see Seth's reflection as he watches the turtles.

It also coincides with T week for the little boys in school.  They learn a letter a week and this is T week.  We have done lots of T activities, each day they looked in the empty aquarium and asked where the turtles were.  Now they are in there.  We also had tacos for dinner in honor of T week. So, it was Taco, Turtle, Tuesday.  Not to be confused with Turtle taco Tuesday.  Carrie Anne didn't think that was funny!