when did this happen?

when she went from this:

to this:

i was going through some old photos when i saw these of kaylee. the top two photos are from myrtle beach and she was about 9 months old. love how chubby she was. i think if you click on the second photo of her on the surf board, you can see how chunky her legs were. you just want to eat them up! the ones of her laying on the beach is from kuaui this year. it makes me sad to see how grown up my children are becoming. moments like these you wish time would stand still.

i have lots of photos of kaylee looking out into the ocean. i was waiting for her to do something so i just clicked away but she didn't move for a minute or two and it makes me wonder. what is she thinking about as she's looking out into the big wide ocean.

before + after

i've been waiting for these pictures. this was done last sunday.
ham before:

and ham after:

i think he looks handsome either way just in the after shot, he looks more like his dad and he looks younger. this was done at kim+ gary's house. their son, arrin, ham's best friend, did the cutting. i guess it was decided that if ham did it then tommy had to do it. {another friend} though ham had the most hair to lose.

house news + pictures

i apologize for my last whiny post. i thought it would kinda cancel out since the pictures where happy ones. i told mike this week we are going to sell our house, i can feel it. trying to go with a positive attitude here and keeping the good karma flowing. well yesterday we got a call from the guy who wants to build our new house. he's offered us whats called a "guarantee sale". he would have one of his "marketing analysers" come over and take a look at the house to see what its worth {appraisal technically} and he would buy it from us for that said price once the new house is finished. this looks like a possible win-win situation for us. and it takes some of our concerns away like having to find temporary living if our house did sell before the new house was finished, having someone beat us in purchasing the land and not having to deal with 2 house payments. he said he will get back with us about this late summer, early fall.

i've also been working on the hawaii pictures and getting them developed over at snapfish. since i opened up an account there, i got 50 free prints and i thought i was going to get a free 8x10 but must of missed the deadline. ah well. i've got 137 pictures coming so far. i have a lot more to do. i'm weeding out the bad ones and trying to enhance some of those that looks like they would be cool enhanced like this one.

though you really cant tell on this print but i hard lighted it. love how the blue in the truck stands out. and this is what i dream of: living in hawaii with an old car and a not so fancy house....someday once the kids are grown mike + i plan on retiring over there. {this was in kona}

4th of july

fourth of july. how can i explain it without sounding like a 10 year old whiny kid? ok, i cant. it was really, really boring. {this is mike's favorite holiday. last year he drank from around 9am till about midnight. this year he got a late start- 11:30ish but he still managed to be obnoxious + very loud.} so of course mike wanted to be in laporte by 9am their time. {laporte even though they are in indiana, are an hour behind us} ugg! let me just leave it that it was really boring. i would rather have stayed home and cleaned out the attic and gotten stuff ready for a garage sale.

cousin jessica, her dad- uncle dave and shari did stop by so that helped break up my day. cousin jessica brought her little guy with her. he's 10 days old in the pic. that's gizmo, the dog, belongs to mike's folks. later in the evening we headed over to the dingmans for the annual fireworks. the girls had a great time doing the sparklers though i really didn't want kaylee to do them. {just read on pioneer woman that pesky tim got 2nd degree burns because one blew up in his hand- yep a sparkler did that} mike dumped that big firecracker into the fire pit. you were suppose to take it all apart and do them separately. i think there were 400 firecrackers in there. all that it did was smother the fire and make lots of popping sounds. we had to stay away from the fire pit the rest of the night because some would go off at any given moment. the fireworks were actually pretty good. i need to get my firework photo taking skills up to speed. i didn't get a chance to read "how to" on pioneer womans website till the day after but i'm ready next time around. the girls watched the fireworks for maybe the first 5-10 minutes. kaylee said they were boring. so her and lilly ran around and played tag. next year i'm doing something else. maybe go later in the afternoon or something.

stupid housing market

hard as it may seem, i don't lead a very exciting life. right now my worries and problems deal with this house not selling. i try not to let it get me down but it does. i feel like i should be doing something instead of sitting here waiting for a phone call or email saying that someone wants this house. to get by and to move on, i think of what might be- these are photos of the land we want to purchase. its huge even though its less than an acre. and the second photo was taken from back of the lot, thats the pond we have access too. makes for a nice view and kinda makes our yard seem bigger. this is the house we want to build and the second one is the coloring that we want on the outside. we like the darker stone and trim.



thinking this way is kinda a two edge sword. i'm looking forward to the goal/dream yet i'm reminded that this goal/dream could take awhile.

swaps

just sent out my favorite things swap yesterday. everything went into the straw bag: stickers for scrapping, thank-you note cards, little notepad, burt bee's lip balm + foot creme- love them! bath and body works lavendar vanilla sleeping mist, a "family" magnet and our family's favorite- honey bbq sauce from the parentals restaurant. hope lyn from texas likes everything.

and i'm currently in a kitchen swap and a first name swap. the kitchen one i'm kinda nervous. been reading the person i have to send too blog and she seems so much more "sophisticated" than me. wish me luck!!

hawaii june 6, 2008 friday

{going in order of photos}

if you can remember back from my last post about hawaii kaylee ended up falling asleep before getting a chance to eat anything for dinner and she didn't wake up till she fell off the bed, remember?? well this is her friday morning multi-tasking: eating her leftover lunch of chicken nuggets while sleeping in front of the door. good thing i decided to save those chicken nuggets because at this time in the morning, nothing is open without a little walk. poor sweet kaylee. days full of beach and the sun is really wearing her down besides being a little jet lagged. once again the day was spent pool/beach side. sometime throughout the day thursday mike's relatives showed up. {don statton who cashed out the money for all of us to be doing this + mike's grandma rosie, aunt diane + uncle don, uncle steve + 3 kids- doug, jake+haley, uncle don+shari}

in the morning everyone besides grandma rosie and me and kaylee went for an hour long catamaran ride. ham said it was a good time. and by late afternoon the time that mike and i were waiting for arrived- NANA was here!! mike's folks+ brother finally arrived. being anal as they are, they checked on their flight the night before and saw that they had a time change. good thing for being anal because if they hadn't they would of been waiting at the airport at least 4 hours before having to arrive. kaylee girl got spoiled. anything she wanted to do- nana was there at her beck and call. she loved it and mike and i loved it too- we got a chance to get our "tan on". {a year or so before kaylee asked where i was going- tanning bed and she said getting my tan on? and so it stuck}

after the day at the pool/beach we talked mike's folks into going to pf changs for dinner. once again they did not fail us. we ended up walking around and going into a few shops here and there. it was extremely busy. they were having their pan am festival that night too. got kaylee to bed and had ham keep an eye on her while mike and i went back to senor frogs. we met up with dave and shari- funniest and coolest people i know. i also got one of these palm tree drinks that dave is holding in the last picture. it looks more "adult toyish" in person.

after mike finishes another one of those big ass beers we head back to our hotel for some much needed sleep.