Lake Mead

After Hoover Dam, we drove over to Lake Mead to swim and hang out for a while. It was hot, hot, hot and very windy. The shade tent blew over and hit a wave runner and some guys Escalade (oops!). But we all had a great time.



The cherry red Hummer. Its' novelty wore off after about 2 days. It was a pain to park, not very aerodynamic, and one of the tires had a slow leak so we had to fill it up every few days. We can now take the Hummer off of our list of luxury cars we'd want to rent.

Playin' in the dirt.


I love this picture of Kendyl. There's a rock she's standing on that makes her look like she could walk on water. Then Steve told her to strike the Karate kid pose. Awesome!

Tanner and Ryder's favorite part was throwing rocks in the water. The hardest part was getting them to throw rocks away from other people instead of at them.

Hoover Dam

Hoover Dam was one of our stops on the Judson Family Vacation this summer. I had been when I was 7 or 8 so I didn't remember much other than the smart mouthed guy who made all the "Dam" jokes during the tour.

Sweet Baby Cope

We had a great time on our extended vacation. Then on Saturday the 21st I had some complications and we delivered Baby Cope at 17 weeks. We were blessed beyond measure to have him in Utah where we were had our parents there to support us. We truly appreciate the prayers expressed on our behalf. We have felt loved beyond measure, especially now that we have returned home and are away from our family once again. We will forever miss our sweet baby Cope and know we'll be together again someday.

Have you noticed my lack of blogging motivation?

Yeah, it's really been for a while now. It started out that I just didn't have much to blog about. We weren't going anywhere or doing anything interesting. And then, I found out I was pregnant and any other blogging motivation that might have been hiding deep inside of me became non-existent.

This go around I have been really tired. I think that might have a lot to do with the fact I have two other kids I have to look out for now. When I was pregnant with Lana I could nap whenever I wanted. When I was pregnant with Tanner I could nap when Lana napped. Now that I'm pregnant with #3, Tanner naps intermittently and Lana can only handle quiet time for so long so I'm lucky if I can squeeze in any mommy time that doesn't require me locking myself in the bathroom.

We talk to the kids about the new baby every day, especially Tanner so we can try and get him acclimated. The other day I asked Tanner where the baby was and he poked me in the tummy and yelled, "Hey baby! Come out already! Come out!" The kid cracks me up on a regular basis.

As I mention in Lana's birthday post, we tried to time it so we wouldn't have another holiday baby. My estimated due date this go around is January 30th so hopefully the kid won't think of coming 4 weeks early and we'll be fine. Since we already have a girl and a boy we're not really picky about what this one is but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I think it's a girl. The pregnancy has been very reminiscent of Lana's so that's the only reason but we'll find out for sure in about 9 weeks.

Feel free to guess the gender, name and actual birthday. With Tanner, Paul's boss actually guessed the name and his birthday. It was impressive!

Happy Birthday my sweet Lana!

I think I am in denial that my little girl has turned 5. More especially, that she will start Kindergarten this year. (Big sigh.) Anyway, due to the fact that Lana's birthday is right around the 4th of July we are usually out of town for it. (One of the many hazards of having children around the holidays and one that I will try to avoid in the future since Tanner's birthday is around Thanksgiving...) This year we were on the road up to Nashville to see one of our nieces baptized and another niece blessed. I tried to make the morning as special as possible but we also had promised her a friend party for the big #5 birthday which we scheduled the following Saturday. I have heard nothing but things about her Gatti Town birthday party since we told her about it. In hinds sight I wish we'd kept it a surprise because it was driving me crazy! Some of her conversations went like this:

"Hey mom, when I have my party at Gatti Town is it going to be all Tinkerbell?"

"Hey mom, when we go to Gatti Town, will I get to play all the games?"

"Hey mom, when we go to Gatti town can we invite (insert a billion names here)"

"Hey mom, how many more days until my Gatti Town party?"

"Hey mom, when we wake up will it be my Gatti Town party day?"

Yeah, it's not like I had much to stress about since it was all taken care of by the restaurant but I'm still glad it's done. Now the question is "Hey mom, can we go back to Gatti Town tomorrow so I can get more prizes?" Uh, no. Not for a long time.

I don't know if I would ever do a birthday party at my house. This was just so stress free. I didn't have to worry about cleaning up before or after or entertaining the kids.

Homemade strawberry cupcakes were Lana's birthday cake of choice. (Good choice Lana!)

The birthday girl!

The birthday girl pretending to be grouchy.

We had our own little party helper from Gatti town who played games with the kids, did face painting, and took care of everything else. This is the kids playing the balloon game, not many of the girls were willing to pop the balloon.

Playing "Red light, Green light". I was impressed at how good Tanner was at this game, he even understood that yellow light meant go really slow!

More games.

Tanner anxiously waiting for a cupcake.

Funny story: So the Gatti town helpers come in and sing their own up beat version of the Happy Birthday song. Apparently Lana thought it was wayyy tooo long because she blew out her candles in the middle of the song, so one of the helpers had to come back and light the candles so she could do it again. It was hilarious!

Everyone enjoying the cake. Afterwards we herded the kids out to the games area and set them loose, I think my kids had more fun putting the tickets in the ticket maching than playing any of the games. A big thanks to everyone that came and made Lana feel so special. She really had a great time! Happy Birthday Lana! We love you!

Scott & Amy

The main reason for us going to DC this year was Paul's brother Scott got married. It was a perfect day for the couple. Unfortunately for the rest of us, we got to stand around in the heat waiting for pictures with two kids who were already tired and cranky. (Small sacrifice though)




Lana giving big hugs to Uncle Dave. We didn't take a lot of pictures being occupied with keeping the kids in line and hydrated.


Tanner keeping himself hydrated.

Kevin and Emma.

Grandpa.

Scott & Amy.

So sweet! Congratulations Scott & Amy!

Downtown DC

Friday morning we went downtown with Dave to go see the Natural History Museum and the American History Museum. We tried to get tickets to tour the White House but it turns out you have to do it like 30 days before you go. We did get tickets to tour the Capitol Building but they scheduled us to go right during Scott and Amy's wedding ceremony, so that wasn't very helpful at all.


In this picture we're on our way back to the Metro and the kids (and I) are pretty much pooped from walking around all morning.

Paul is always making new friends everywhere we go.

Both kids really enjoyed seeing the "big choo-choo's" up close.

Tanner getting eaten by a gigatic Tyranosauraus Rex head.

I am so glad these things are dead. I would never want to come face to face with one. Ever. And if I do, I hope it eats me quickly.

Tanner on the metro. He really enjoyed it. Except he thought that every stop was our stop so I had to watch him closely to make sure he stayed in his seat.

Harper's Ferry, WV

Washington DC has a ton of great stuff to see and do (a lot of it being free!) and we are usually in the area once a year but we don't always put forth an effort to go and do stuff. This year we decided we were going to do at least one thing we've never done and it turned out to be Harper's Ferry, WV. It's only about an hour outside of the DC area (that is always dependent on traffic). The drive up was pretty neat, we drove through a couple of small towns and when I could get internet access on my phone, I looked up the history of the towns and read it aloud to Paul (the kids were more interested in pestering each other in the back seat).




It really was the perfect day to get out and go. The weather was in the 80's, not humid at all. Just fabulous. We walked up and down the streets and poked our head in a few of the shops. Paul spotted a wooden toy car he thought Tanner might like but it turned out to be "a piece of art" priced at $35. Uh, sorry Tanner.

We had great views of the two rivers, the Potomac and the Shenendoah.

We even walked across the bridge to the Appalachian Trail. On the left side of the fence is a rail road track. I made the remark of how intense it would be if a train came by while we were walking the bridge. Not 2 minutes later you hear the sound of a train horn coming towards us. Thankfully it was on another set of tracks a few hundred feet away from the bridge, I think the kids would've freaked out for sure if it'd been right next to us.

I can now say I've been on the Appalachain Trail. Not sure if I'd call it hiking since we only walked about 300 feet of it or so.

The kids were surprisingly well behaved while we were there. We stopped by a little place to eat lunch. A man we sat next to at lunch told us he served in the Army with a man from Magnolia, MS which just so happens to be where Paul is building a house right now.

Before we left we decided to get some ice cream. While Tanner and I enjoyed our cones they were so big we couldn't finish them. Lana on the other hand wouldn't let us leave until she polished off her entire cup. She literally licked it clean. The girl can eat some icecream!

Dirt Cheap

Here in Mississippi, there is a store called Dirt Cheap. It is part of a chain of stores (Hudsons, and Treasure Hunt make up the sister stores) that buys salvage items from national retailers, sifts through the trash, and sells whats left in their stores. The prices get reduced progressively on the items until they sell. Now granted, just the nature of the business model leads to shelves full of items nobody will buy because they are either damaged, missing parts, ugly, or just undesirable (like all the high school musical 3 dolls, or the grocery cart full of greeting cards for $10). I do enjoy stopping in every once in a while to look for a great deal. These are some items we have bought:
Leapster hand held game systems-$6-$12 ea.
Leapster Games- all under $12, some as few as $4.
WII remotes-$6
WII Games-less than $20
35 lb Electric Jack hammer-$12
Professional Tile saw with table-$15
Sony-noise canceling earphones-$10
a bunch of toys
Bicycle-$12
Scooters-$12
Misc clothes
Samsung blue ray dvd player with netflix, pandora, blockbuster streaming installed-$38
Sony HD Handicam with 8 gig internal flash memory-$150.00
Gas bar-b-Q grill-$7.00
Dresser for tanner-$65.00
and the list goes on.
I am always very cautious when buying stuff from Dirt Cheap, because you never know why the retailer counted it as salvage, is it broken, missing parts, a return they couldn't send back to mfg, opened packaging, damaged packaging, damaged clothing, overstock? So far we have been pretty lucky, we have only bought a few things that were unusable. The store works out for me because sometimes I am a compulsive buyer, and this store lets me scratch my compulsive itch for, well, Dirt Cheap.
-Paul