We're Home!

Home Sweet Home! Vacations are nice, but it feels so good to be home...

I'll be making the vacation post hopefully tomorrow, or if not, then Monday. I'm tired as all get out. Without putting a jinks on anything, the house did get shown today to a family moving to Kokomo from Arizona. He is a carpenter, so perhaps the thrill of fixing a place up sounds good to him. The realtor said he showed the husband three houses. The insurance company has yet to fix the drywall that got damaged from the leaky roof, but at least the roof is fixed. There is signs of work though, as they are removing ALL of the wallpaper from each room that they are working in. Blessing to me, I hated taking that stuff down... okay maybe it was a little fun at first....for about two minutes. Then I was over it. We're not getting too excited because we looked at like 30 houses, and then ended up just renting this place, from our realtor here in MC, haha!

You'll notice...

You'll notice that we have added an "Isabela Arrival" counter. I don't know the exact time she is getting in yet, but ye, close enough.

You also will probably be noticing that we're out of the house...that's because we're on vacation! We'll be living it up down south in Arkansas. We'll be Diamond Hunting and Arrowhead hunting, then we're going to go Gemstone hunting, Chris wants to see the Presidential Library there and I want to stop at the Mid-America Museum. I don't think any one else in the family found anything they really wanted to do other than those things... except maybe Austin, I think he wants to putt-putt on Pirates Cove.... should be a fun week.

Egg-Zer-O-Knee-Us anyone?

Thursday morning when Chris went to leave for work, he was greeted by a great surprise... Breakfast-to-go! How nice of someone to offer him eggs for breakfast. We really appreciated spending $6 on a car wash before going into work.





Yeah, see all those little black hills? Those are piles of flies that had decided to feast on the eggs. I noticed eggs in random places when I left for work, thankfully they only had a thing for Chris' car, I hate driving though those car wash things, always afraid I'll miss the clicker for the wheels.


Amateur's, all but two eggs were just piled on the top of the car. :)

The Weekend in Pictures

Lara with a frontal shot of the Jet-Ski.



Chris hooking up the trailer, so we can go ride.



Chris walking up Washington Park, we had to park way in back it was so packed.



There he turns around for a picture.



I wanted my picture with the beach!



Chris in front of the lifeguard stand, though I had the camera zoomed!






A Pretty creek we discovered while looking for good firework watching spots.


The rest of the pretty creek.


Chris knows how to pick 'em. The fireworks were right in front of us.


Pretty View.



Chris and his scanner.






We saw Mike and his kids walking by and stopped them for a quick chatter. McKayla loves to play with Chris' binoculars. She knew they would be in the bag!


Chris and our neighbor upstairs Mike are deep in conversation.



Just the sail boats in this bin.


Because Chris had his scanner, we knew that the person being worked on this ambulance was a drowning victim. He was alive when the life guards pulled him out, but breaths were shallow.

That Ain't No Lake Vermillion!

Holy Crapazoid Batman! Chris and I took the Jetski out on Lake Michigan for the first time this season on Sunday and NEVER AGAIN! LOL! It was nice and smooth at the Marina where we docked, then we putted our way around the bigger boats, yachts and sails. And as soon as we got out to the lake, it was choppy, choppy, choppy! There were like 5 foot swells, not even exaggerating! They were actually collapsing over us! We made it about five minutes then beached it in no-man's land to get our energy back up after fighting the choppy water. Then we headed right back in because we value our lives, and I didn't feel like dieing. Today I learned that there were warnings with the high winds out later that afternoon, and New Buffalo even closed the beach because of the dangerous conditions.

It took so much energy trying to stay afloat on that thing that we came home, said we'll watch a movie, then go to Washington Park for the weekend festivities...Yeah we both fell asleep. Chris' was laying down with his head on my lap and I fell asleep with my head on his back. We even said we didn't want to take a nap because we wanted to be able to sleep that night. Which BTW, we were still sound asleep by 10:30 with the nap.


In better news, Saturday was a crazy work out day for Chris and I. I worked till 1:30, and ate lunch. Then we went to work out. I did a Cardio workout for 30 minutes, Chris did a cardio workout for a full hour! I also did 100 more crunches on the machines that I normally do, and I am feeling it! We also spent about two hours out on the tennis courts. We're getting pretty good. I think it may be time to even trade in my racquetball racket, for a real tennis racket. :)

We did the jet ski in the morning on Sunday. When we got up from our naps, we headed down to Washington Park. They had some flea-markety tents set up and a small carnival for the kids. We saw the kids division of the Sand-Castle building contest and walked down to the water. Then we came home, ate dinner, and then went back to the park for the Fireworks that night. They were pretty cool, pictures and videos are in a separate post.

Hip, Hip, Hooray!

Chris is home!

Chris arrived home Friday just a few hours before I got off of work. He had dinner ready when I walked in the door. It was grrrreat! Above is a picture of Chris in the Coal Mine area. He has some videos that I have to ask if I can post, but he is still sleeping. He had a good time from what I can tell of his stories. He'll have to post those later for you all.

Aunt Dianna's Fundraiser

Aunt Dianna is Racing to Save Lives, and she needs all of our help.

Aunt Dianna is training to participate in an endurance event as a member of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's (LLS) Team In Training.

She is raising funds to help stop leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin lymphoma and myeloma from taking more lives. This event is in honor of all individuals who are battling blood cancers. These people are the real heroes on the team, and they need your support to cross the ultimate finish line - a cure!

Please make a donation to support her participation in Team In Training and help advance LLS's mission.

Please visit her site at http://pages.teamintraining.org/sun/nikesf08/dhaines, and make your donation today.

Introducing Isabela!

As we have told most of you, we did decide to host an exchange student this year. And Here she is:::

These are the pictures that she e-mailed me to us a few nights ago. We have exchanged several e-mails already and she even called last night to talk on the phone. Chris is on the road, but I am having soooo much fun chatting with her.


(With her mom and Brother)

She is 16, and is very excited to be staying with us. She likes movies, music and junk food...I don't think she'll have any problems with that here!


(With her boyfriend)

She will be arriving mid-August, actually she will be here the day before my birthday! You'll be seeing more of her then!

Want some Watermelon?

Too Bad, I ate it all.

That's right! I ate what was left of the watermelon...a small scoop of Brent's homemade Ice Cream has managed to survive. But it's just a small scoop, that stuff was GOOOOOOOOD. All of the leftovers (with the exception of the hot dogs) are gone. I had to go buy some Chinese food for dinner last night. (Yep, I had no other option, drats.) But I did go grocery shopping this morning. So there is more food now.

Chris should be home from his trip around 3:15 on Friday he says. I'm glad, I miss him! Chris did send me our, "free movie Mondays" code for the red box. I rented "definitely, maybe." It was not exactly what I expected from the previews...and the ending was just... odd. It did not flow too well.

Only one more week and two days till vacation! We can't wait. It is going to be mom, dad, Casi, Austin, Kristina, Rachel, Ashley, Chris and myself all going to the diamond mines in Arkansas. Brother, Robbie and Jenny are meeting us down there I believe. I went last year, forgot my camera at home, but had a blast. So much fun, that I insisted Chris goes this year and experiences it for himself.

Happy 4th Everyone!

Hope everyone had a great FOURTH!! ...We sure did.

Chris and Mom got here first from their flights in from Texas on Thursday night. Brent and Amanda got here just a few minutes afterwards, and then Dad got here the next day.

We did a lot of hanging out at the house, but we also went to the beach, the movies, and a parade. We also had a blast trying to get Makenna to Karaoke. She liked seeing herself (or the baby) on the TV.

To watch fireworks Chris and myself, with Brent and Amanda went up to the Dunes to watch Chicago's fireworks- Which started way late and it was cold. We turned around and watched all the ones on our side of the island. :) We had like four or five different shows going on at once that we were watching. I was too worried about the car getting towed to enjoy them, because the park closed at dusk, and it was rather cold! So we left earlier than we planned, but they were still really good.

We also had some easy dinner and lunches prepared. For the last meal we went to Galveston's Steak House. It was REALLY good, in fact I'm eating what little leftovers mom had for lunch today.