09.08.09 That's my boy...

Grant is still the Water King! He loves anything to do with water...including spraying his unsuspecting brother with the frigid water hose!

Labor Day

We had a nice labor day this year - nothing too eventful, but we did have a few friends over for a cookout. All the kids were wild, and I think all the parents were ready to get them to bed, but overall we had a great time! And this was the view I had outside our sliding glass doors right after I put my kids to bed. Isn't it beautiful!!!

09.04.09 Studio 77 Disco Party!

At our church here in Jacksonville, the choir sings all year round. Obviously during the summer, lots of people go on vacation, etc, so attendance in the choir is lower than normal. As part of the attendance campaign over the summer, if you maintained 80% attendance or above, you were invited to Studio 77 in our Family Life Center. You were encouraged to dress the part, and the best dressed male and female would each win a prize! If you know me, you know I really get in to this kind of stuff! My family would have had a ball doing this...perhaps we'll have to keep that in mind for a family gathering in the future! :-)

Chris actually surprised me and really got into it, as well, even insisting that I buy him the platform shoes with the goldfish in the heel. He was quite the ham, and people in choir now know me by my husband. I've been in choir for over a year and people know me as Chris' wife. Go figure!

Chris actually won the best dressed male, and I was surprisingly in the top 4 of the women! Yeah! We fared pretty well, considering that we'd not even been born in the 70's! Ha!

We went with Scott and Amanda Hult, good friends of ours from church, and we had a ball! They're definitely the kind of people to go to something like this with. They're hilarious! Amanda giggled pretty much all night, and Scott was cracking jokes right and left.

Chris' wig wasn't laying right, so I put my hot rollers in it to see what we could do with it. Chris was thrilled! Ha!

Dan Mullis, Chris and Scott Hult, two of our great friends down here.

Me, Amanda Hult and Carrie Mullis, dear friends of mine down here.

Chris and Violet, the two "Best Dressed"

Afterwards, we went to Chili's for dinner. Of course we were still in our costumes. As we were walking in, there was a lady standing outside smoking a cigarette. Scott, Amanda and I all got through the door, and as Chris was coming in, she said in a husky voice, "Where ya'll been tonight?" Chris just smiled sweetly at her and said quite matter-of-factly, "Church!" She was silent for a moment and then sarcastically mumbled, "Whatever!" I don't think she believed us. We all got quite the giggle out of it, though. In fact, I laughed about it for days! What a fun night!

09.03.09 Backyard Fun!

Chris was home early this night, so we had an early dinner, resulting in some fun family time in the back yard! We tossed balls around, blew bubbles, and just sat down by the water watching for fish! Chris even taught the boys how to spit sunflower seeds. Nice, huh! ;-) We had a lovely evening enjoying each other, and I think I got a few good pictures out of it, too!

09.03.09 Disco Fever

So Chris and I had a 70's Disco party approaching. I had been working on costumes for us and Grant thought that daddy's was pretty cool. He wanted to put it on, too, so he tried it on one night. Didn't he look cool! Don't you just love the chest hair on a 3 year old!!

08.29.09 Helfrich Family Gathering

We have some dear friends down here that have adopted us into their family. I can't tell you how much it means to me that we are even invited to their family gatherings! While we try not to go to EVERYTHING and allow them their own family time, we always enjoy getting together with them and being a part of a family while we are so far away from our own. They have definitely been a blessing to us over and over again! This time we went to a local lake and played in the water. Mr. Hult brought his sea-doo and we all took turns riding it! So fun!

It was naptime, so I layed down in the van with Mason. He finally fell asleep, and took a good 2 hour nap in the trunk of the van with the trunk up and windows down. He was out!

Grant and his little friend, Victoria...they're like two peas in a pod!

On our way home after a lovely day at the lake, we were just driving along, minding our business when we saw a cop pulled off along side the road. Chris slowed down a little bit and asked me if I knew what the speed limit was because he didn't have a clue. Nope, I didn't know, either. Sure enough, the blue flashing lights came on, and we pulled off the side of the road. The Officer came up to the car and said, "I pulled you over today because you were going 20 over!" Whoa! We had no idea that the speed limit had dropped down to 35 mph! Oops! So he asked for our license, insurance and registration. I had just put our new registration on that morning. Whew! He asked if Chris' license was correct - nope. We hadn't changed the address on it since we moved. Oops. Then he asked for our insurance. We had just gotten new insurance cards and they were sitting on the kitchen counter. Same policy, but expired cards. Oops! We could really get in trouble for multiple different reasons! This could be one hefty bill! So the officer walked back to his car, and Chris is sitting there sweating bullets while I'm trying to explain to Grant that we have police officers who keep us safe and part of their job is correcting us when we do something wrong. So if we speed, sometimes we get in trouble, but it's good because they're doing their job and keeping us safe. I really wanted Grant to have a positive image of police officers. Well, it seemed that all he got out of the conversation was that "Daddy was in trouble!" So even when the officer came back up to our car, that's all Grant could talk about. How embarrassing! It turned out that he merely gave us a warning. I don't know how we got so lucky! But we definitely drove slower the rest of the way home while we listened to Grant saying, "Daddy's in trouble." And to this day, if Grant sees a police car, he says, "Uh-Oh...Someone's in trouble, Mommy!!" So much for a positive police image!

08.24.09 Temporary Tatoos

Who needs to buy them when you have crayola washable markers? Grant was coloring today while I was doing the dishes. Obviously I wasn't paying good enough attention because this is what we ended up with:

Mason now says "Cheese!" It's really not a good picture, but I think Grant sneaking around in the background is pretty funny. They definitely keep me on my toes these days!

08.23.09 Myrtle Beach Ripley's Aquarium

We had to get on the road fairly early today since we had such a long drive ahead of us. But we did manage to get to go to Ripley's Aquarium! Ripley's has a great military discount - 75% off! So our entire family went through the aquarium for about $10!! Wow! If you've never been to a Ripley's Aquarium, you definitely need to go. My favorite one so far is the one in Gatlinburg, but this one was quite nice, as well. Definitely worth a trip! We were loading up the car this morning before heading over to the aquarium. Our second story window faced the parking lot and did not have a screen in it, so Chris went and stood below while I tossed all the "soft" items out of the window to him below! It was fun! Afterwards, I closed the window and the kids watched their daddy load up the car below. There were giggles galore! I love it when the boys get along!

Grant is in this shark phase right now - he pretends to be a shark all the time! So he was very impressed to see this actual shark jaw. It was huge!

Mason was so intrigued by this huge fish tank! They were having a feeding show, but I couldn't keep Mason away from the glass. He wanted to be right up there with those fishies! He even started saying the word "fish" today. He's quite the explorer!

08.22.09 Happy Birthday to Chris....SURPRISE!!

I was so excited about Chris' birthday this year. I had called the wife of one of his best friends from Medical School and asked if we could get together in Myrtle Beach to surprise him! Chase, Lindsey, Parker and Samantha live in Fayetteville, NC, and I had been told Myrtle Beach was only a 3 1/2 hour drive from here, so we figured it was a good meeting place. I didn't have a working computer at the time, so I couldn't research anything, so I depended on Lindsey to secure our hotel, etc. I appreciated her help immensely, and was so glad they could come! So Friday I picked Chris up from work and plugged the address of our hotel into the GPS which Chris had had in his car because he'd been working at a different hospital all month. Uh-oh! Boy, was I surprised! The GPS said instead of 3 1/2 hours, it was going to be about 6 hours! Yikes! So we didn't get to our hotel until 11:30 PM. When we went up to our room, I told Chris I couldn't remember our room number and wasn't sure which one it was, so I knocked on a door. This really irritated Chris because it was so late and he was sure whoever answered the door was going to be really mad that we woke them up. He couldn't understand why I wouldn't just try our key! Boy, was he surprised when his friend Chase came to the door! The poor guy just looked so confused! Happy birthday, Chris! Glad we were able to surprise you!

We spent about 4 hours at the beach the next morning, then came back for naps. That evening we went to Broadway at the Beach which was a fun little boardwalk that had all sorts of little shops, restaurants, etc. We had a great time just hanging out with the Grames family and celebrating Chris' birthday!

We got ice cream to celebrate since we didn't have any cake. While we were singing Happy Birthday to Chris, Mason just couldn't take his eyes off of that nice big ice cream cone! Before the song was finished, Mason had already dug in!