Happy Birthday, Landon!

God has blessed me with a pretty incredible set of kids, the oldest of which turned 15 Thursday. 15? How did this happen? I have no idea, but it has happened nevertheless.

Birthdays are school holidays at our house, so everyone celebrated by sleeping in until 8:30. Unfortunately, I had to wake them up so we could go have Landon's pictures taken. We usually eat out on birthdays also, but Landon had to give a speech about Civil Air Patrol to the Citrus County Aviation Club that evening, so we just didn't have time. Instead we ate out on Friday night at Chili's per Landon's request.

Landon waited until the afternoon to open his gifts, so he could take his time with them.

He got the DVD set of the complete season of Dogfights (History Channel) from Uncle Jeff and Aunt Kay.


This remote control airplane was a gift from us...


as was this nifty Air Force print.


Chase and Gerren bought him this book, Military Aircraft of the Cold War.


Gran (Greg's mom) sent him $10 in a card and my parents gave him the usual $500 contribution to the college fund.

Our final gift was given only by the grace and extraordinary effort of my loopy friend, DeEtta, who hunted it down at the Air Force base where her husband is stationed. It is a regulation jacket to wear with his dress blues. Landon was shocked and thrilled!


Here he is after giving his speech. He said he was posing to look like someone in a jacket commercial! Too funny! It fit him perfectly, DeEtta! Good thing you couldn't find the smaller one.




Although we have dinner out, the birthday boy/girl always gets to pick a dessert for mom to make. Landon picks homemade strawberry shortcake almost every year. It's the right time of year for it, too!


Landon, I am so proud of all that you have accomplished in your 15 years. But I am more excited about the person you are becoming. I love to see the way you take what you learn at church so seriously and try to apply it to your own life. I love to see the way you love your little sister. This family is blessed by you! I can't wait to see what God has in store for you in the years to come!

Sorry!

I just had to record the latest episode in the "funny things that Carys says or does" chapter of our lives. When Carys goes to bed for a nap or at night, everyone has to kiss her goodnight. A few weeks ago when Landon kissed her, he popped her with static electricity. She said, "Ouch!" He said, "Sorry." This happened a couple times in a row.

Now, every time Carys kisses Landon or Gerren or Greg goodnight (why is it only the boys?), she says "Sorry!" It is too funny!



On a sadder note, Greg brought home some sort of bronchial crud. He got sick last weekend, and the kids all had it by Wednesday or Thursday. They all ran fevers until today and still have those awful congested coughs. I managed only to get a head cold, so far. I hope it stays that way. I went to church by myself all weekend. They were all too sick!

Trip Planning

It's been almost a week since a blog post. Nothing much new but so many hectic little details to take care of which are keeping me busy. Every year I do testing for our homeschool group. Today is the deadline for registration forms and checks to be in my hot little hand. So far, I've had 3 people come to my house, and I don't think it's over yet. Sigh!

Well, I am in the midst of planning an 18-day road trip along the southern border of the US for the kids and me in April. Alas, Greg cannot get that kind of time off of work. He will be flying out to meet us in Phoenix and visiting the Grand Canyon with us, but that's about it. We are going to be visiting tons of friends and family along the way and hitting many historical sites as well. I am really feeling the pressure of time with Landon. He has 3 more years of high school left after this year, and there's so much we haven't done yet! To my friends with little ones, TIME FLIES!

Some of the places we plan to visit are:

The Naval Aviation Museum (Pensacola, FL)


The Alamo (San Antonio, TX)


The Voyage Church (Gilbert, AZ)

The Grand Canyon (AZ)


Frontiers of Flight Museum (as well as lots of other places and family and friends in Dallas, TX)



Vicksburg National Military Park (Vicksburg, MS)


These are our main interests and stops. We'll be stopping several other places coming and going and seeing whatever there is to see in those places as long as our energy holds up. We're so excited!

Book Tag

Dorothy tagged me for this and I decided I'd better hurry up and post something or everyone whose blog I read will have already been tagged!

Here are the rules:

~Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more
~Open the book to page 123 and find sentence number 5.
~Post the next 3 sentences
~Tag 5 people.

The nearest book to me is one I've actually read just for myself (GASP!) and is entitled Playing for Pizza by one of my favorite authors, John Grisham.

Here's the required quote:

...On Sunday night she gets booed by the beasts at Teatro Regio, and tonight she's having an ugly spat with her man.
Rick couldn't keep his eyes away from her.

...

He was learning.

Doesn't that make you want to read this book? LOL!

And now I tag:

Kathy

Emily

Lisa

Michelle

Cynthia

Huh?

I went looking on my camera to see if anyone had taken any good pictures that I could use on my blog, but this is the only picture I found! I don't know what Carys was doing under this chair, but you can see how wet her outfit is. She was playing in the mop sink in the utility room. She can't turn the water on, but it wasn't completely dried out in there!



What really amazes me about this picture is how long her hair looks!

Who Is This?

Exactly what is this child's name?

When she first began talking, she would look at a picture of the family and name everyone: Daddy, Mama, Nana (Landon), Grere (Gerren), Yasey (Chase), and Baby. She always called herself Baby, whether she was looking at a picture or in the mirror.

Finally, several months ago, she began to say her name, sort of--Cair-sa (phonetic spelling). It was so cute!

Well, just a few days ago, she began saying her name correctly--Carys (rhymes with Paris). It's almost sad!

On a side note, you can't believe how difficult it was to get this one picture! Every time I said, "Smile," Carys would put her hands in front of her mouth. ??? The older kids tried to "help" except she kept looking at them and away from the camera. It seriously took 6-7 tries to get this one simple picture!

Scenes From Last Week

In order to encourage and develop Chase's writing skills, I let her start a blog. Her blog is private, so you must receive an invitation to read her blog. It is called Bird Chaser and contains many posts on her favorite subject, birds.

Last week, she asked to borrow my camera to take pictures of her many bird feeders to put on her blog. Apparently, that wasn't all she took pictures of. How about these close-ups?





Carys, on the other hand, came to me with the Swivel Sweeper "asking" me to turn it on for her. She proceeded to sweep the floor, as much as she could cover until the battery died. Now this is the kind of help I need!