Jim is back home!!! I am so happy to have him back, but I think my kids are even happier! They won't leave him alone! They went all 4 days without complaining or crying about daddy being gone, but when he walked in through that door today, it was like they realized that he was gone.
Jim camped over the last 4 days and is very glad to be home! At $10 for 6 minutes of water and very long waiting lines, a shower was the first thing on his mind!! He brought me and the kids t-shirts and they were SO excited. They had to try them on right away. Look how cute they look!!!



He took quite a few pictures, so I thought I would make a slide of a few.

This is day 3 of daddy being gone. The kids have been keeping themselves busy, whether it be by playing with each other or arguing! It amazes me just how good Kayla's vocabulary is getting because of Shane. She repeats everything he says to her!
It was a very hot day today. I figured, istead of a bubble bath, today we needed to go to the pool! My kids are both turning into fish this summer. It is wonderful to have a pool just down the road, we use it almost everyday we can!





These pictures and this video were taken with my cell phone, so the quality is not very good, but at least you can see how well Shane is swimming!

For some reason, it seems that every time Jim goes our of town, the kids want to take a bath in our whirlpool tub! I fill it up with water and bubble bath and turn on the jets and you'd be amazed to see how thick the bubbles get in there! The kids were in there for 45 minutes today and about an hour yesterday! Shane's first words this morning were, "Mommy, can we take a bath in your tub again?"

Here they are!!

So Jim's plan was to leave at 3am this morning... well, it was more like 1:15am! He could not sleep! We were in bed at 10pm, and I don't think he slept at all.. he was up and moving at 12:30am, and I asked him what was wrong, and he answered, "I am just going to leave now!" That had me so scared because he was going to drive 8 hrs to Indianapolis on NO sleep! So he left and I was up until 2:30am eating ice cream, nervous out of my mind, thinking about him and just praying that he would make it there safely. He got there bright and early and him and Jack got their camp all set up. Here is a pic he sent me of their home for the next 4 days!



Tonight they got to go to the O'Reilley Raceway track tonight to watch to the USAC Midgets race. This is the track where they will get to watch the truck and Busch series over the next couple of night. Then on Sunday they get to go to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard. That is the BIG race!!



The kids have been a handful today, but that is normal when Jim leaves! These two walk all over me! They got to take a super long bubble bath in my bath tub this afternoon and they absolutly loved that!!! I am hoping it made them a little tired!! Now we are sitting down, watching a movie and eating some popcorn. They are actually enjoying it quietly, so needless to say, SO AM I!!

We got to talk to grandma on Skype today.. she went out yesterday and bought a camera so that she could see the kids. We were on for over 30 minutes and half of the time she was just content with watching them play and be silly. Too bad it took us so long to find out about Skype! We could have been sharing so much more with our families and friends in other states!! (For those who don't know about Skype, ck out www.skype.com)

The kids enjoyed themselves a lot this morning. They asked me to build them a tent in the living room, and I have to say that they had a blast! Amazing how much imagination these little kids have!





Jim is leaving SUPER early tomorrow morning to go to Indianapolis for the Nascar race. He is meeting his dad up there and will not be coming back till Monday. :( It is always so hard when he is gone.. we miss him SO much. But with that being said, I do pray that he has a safe drive, that the weather turns out great and that he has a memorable and wonderful experience!!

As soon as he got home tonight he realized that he forgot his cell phone charger at work, so he needed to run back out there to grab it before he left in the morning. We all hoped in the car at 6pm and rode with him to his office. He promised the kids ice cream since it put a small damper on some quality time with them. Needless to say, they enjoyed that!! They were covered in ice cream, and had to go straight to the tub when they were done!!

I was up pretty early this morning (6:15am!) with Jim and I just couldn't go back to sleep. For as tired as I was, I end up enjoying days like this because I can get a lot accomplished early in the morning and have the entire afternoon to spend time with the kids pretty much doing whatever they want. We ran to the supermarket by 8:30am and were back home by 10am, which felt wonderful. At around noon, Shane went over to Heather's to go to the pool with Daniel, Alison and Lexy, but it started raining, so they ended up not going. Shane came crying home because for some strange reason lately he has been really scared of severe weather, (although it was seriously barely drizzling!)So, after Kayla woke up from her nap, we went back to Heather's and ended up just hanging around there and letting the kids play till almost 4pm. Then we decided that we should try to give the pool another try! It was pretty chilly today.. but the kids still had a really fun time.

Here are some pics of the kids playing at Heather's. It was a big day for dress up!!





The 3 little ladies!

One more milestone out of the way!! I passed my Citizenship test! I was so nervous going into that office. They just make it sound and look so intimidating! Let me say, it SO wasn't! The lady who interviewed me and gave me my test was the sweestest lady ever.. she even told me that she has been known to repeat a question up to 5 times! Well, lets just say that there was no need for her to do any repeating.. the questions were super simple! After it was all said and done, she gave me a paper that stated that I passed my English and Civics tests and checked the box that stated "recommended for approval", which I guess is good since the only other box stated "needs further review".

So now, I have to will for a letter to come in the mail, which could get here any time between now and September. It will state where and when I need to go take the oath. Its not over yet, but I am almost there!!

What a blessed day this way! I am so thrilled to be one step closer to becoming an American Citizen!

Its official! I am going to San Antonio, TX from Aug 22th - Aug 24th! I just got done buying my plane ticket today!! Nicole invited me to go quite a while ago, but I really didn't make my decision to go until yesterday. We are going to attend the "Living Proof Live with Beth Moore". For those of you not familiar with her, she has written numerous books and Bible studies. I think it will be a wonderfully fun and fulfilling experience! I have been following the Fiesta Siesta Blog for the past few months now and I think it will be wonderful to meet some of these amazingly faithful women who participate in it!!

I am an aunt again!!! This blog is dedicated to my new little nephew, Landon Charles Gallagher. Here are a couple of pics on the little guy!

So we have been getting ready for our garage sale for about a week.. well, thinking about it for about a month, but really taking action in the last week so that we could have everything set up for this past Saturday. Its amazing how after having 2 garage sales last year, I still had enough stuff to sell this time around! As usual we had our early shoppers who were parked outside at 7:10am even though our signs stated our sale was from 8am to 2pm! We ended up with a lot of our sales during this early time. It ended up being a good thing because at around 10am, it started raining. We quickly moved everything inside the garage and all of a sudden, we had the most amount of people at our garage sale! I guess like to shop in the rain. We closed our doors at noon since the rain had picked up a lot more though. We didn't do much on Saturday afternoon/evening. We just ordered chinese food and hung out with the kids. It was a great relaxing time!

On Sunday we went to church and then met up with Brian and Nicole for a yummy lunch at Olive Garden. I am never dissapointed when I go there!! Then we ran to Babies R Us so that I could buy some baby shower gifts for a friend from church. By the time we got home it was 2:15pm and we needed to lay Kayla down in hopes that she would be rested enough to wake up around 3:45pm to go watch Jim play Softball. Jim left ahead of us and went to the game and I stayed behind to get the kids ready to go. We got there right at 4pm just to see all of our players sitting on the steps, sad looks on their faces.. the other team didn't show up!! Our team was ready to play!! But, I guess a win is a win! So... we took the kids to the park and then to get some ice cream.. VBS (Vacation Bible School) started last night and Shane gets to go again this year. I am helping out in the 2nd and 3rd graders room and it really was a lot of fun. Shane told me he had an "awesome" time.. I told him he has 4 more days of it and he was very excited!!

Once again, my daughter just fascinates me! It is so much fun having a little girl! She is all about dressing up and looking pretty. I have found some hideous jewlery at Goodwill and she absolutely loves it! I decided to look there because I wanted necklaces and braceletes that were big enough so that she couldn't choke on them if she put them in her mouth... well, that means 70s jewlery!! We can never find all of it since she leaves it everywhere through out the house, but here are some of her pretties. I found this cute little nightgown at a garage sale for $.75, and its practically new! She LOVES it! She really does look SO cute!

Look at that smile! Do you think she knows she is a cutie or what?!


We also got to go to the movies today. As part of the Vacation Movie Series, the movie we got to watch was "The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything", its a Veggitales movie. I took Shane and Kayla, and Jamie took Ryan. All in all, the kids behaved VERY well.. even Kayla did better than I expected. The best part is that it only cost Shane and I $2 a piece to go watch it and Kayla was free. With some home popped popcorn, some drinks and other snacks, it was a cool and cheap afternoon! It was really warm outside when we went to the movies, and by the time we left, it was raining. Go figure! No pool today.

4th of July weekend.. can you believe that its come and gone? Time does fly when you are having fun!! It was wonderful having Jim home on Friday (July 4th). He woke up early and went to the gym before any of us woke up. The kids and I got up and as usual got our breakfast and watched some cartoons.. you had to see their faces when they heard the garage door open! They ran to the door and as it opened, they jumped on Jim! Shane said "Daddy, do you have to work today?" It was too cute. Kayla just yelled, "Daddy, daddy, daddy!" We had a wonderfully fun day planned at our neighbours The McNeels. We were really excited for our Mexican food menu (it was decided that this year, we were celebrating 4 de Julio), some Hillbilly horseshoes and lots of fireworks! We did some running around in the morning for a few little things, Jim mowed the front lawn and I had to finish my dishes to take over to the party. I made this cake that turned out super cute and super yummy! Leave it to the Brasilian to bring the American Flag cake to the 4th of July party!!



The kids had a really fun time. This is the first year that we really let Shane light up fireworks. The more he lit, the more he wanted to lite! Kayla enjoyed the little snaps. She didn't know what to think of them at first, but then she figured that if she stepped on them, she could make them pop!

Here are some pictures of the kids.



On Saturday we hung around the house for most of the morning. Jim and Shane played some video games in the afternoon while I went grocery shopping and Kayla took her nap. Brian and Nicole invited us over for dinner and games. They had this wonderful pork tenderloin that their neighbours had given them. It was so nice of them to share! We played Skip Bo and Jim won! Kayla was tired from the night before, so she was a handful, but Jim took care of that!! Overall, a fun time had by all as usual!!

Sunday was a nice restful day. We stayed home and I cleaned the house. Jim mowed the back yard and then took Jozie to the lake to practice jumping. I got a lot accomplished since the kids were over at Bailey and Miranda's all morning. We decided to skip on our Sunday volleyball, and invited Jamie, Mark and the kids over and grilled some hot dogs and burgers instead. Our community dinners always turn out great! When we were done, we decided to go to the pool. That was the end to a great day. The water felt wonderful since it was in the mid 90s!!

We had a very strong thunderstorm last night and I have never seen so much rain and wind before. It really looked like a hurricane out there. The guy on the news said straight line winds of up to 70 mph! Our patio furniture blew over for the 3rd time! Shane was very scared last night and kept asking if we needed to go down to the basement. He cried and cried and had this look of total panic. He wanted to be sure that we could hear the siren if it went off. We reasured him that everything was ok. And it was.. no basement for us last night!
I wanted to give you guys all an update on our beautiful flowers. They are loving all the rain! And after that soak last night, they looked just gorgeous this morning! The pictures don't do it justice. If you guys remember my blog back in May when we first put them in the ground how little they were, they now look at least twice as big.

What a gorgeous day we had today!! As part of our calendar of fun for the summer, it was the day to go to the zoo! Shane had been looking forward to this day for a long time! I invited Kelli and Kayla (our neighbors from next door) to come along with us and said jumped right on at the invite. We left at around 9:30am and off to the zoo we went. We had a wonderful time. Kelli and Kayla are such great helpers! They enjoy my children so much, and my children love them! They really are like brother and sisters!! We met up with quite a few moms and their kids.. we got separated after lunch, but I think it ended up being for the best because my kids wanted to move a little faster than the others! We saw lots of animals, got to pet a snake and Kelli, little Kayla and Shane even rode a camel! We had to take lots of shady breaks because the sun was really hot! We left the zoo at 2:30pm and got home around 3:00pm. I had mentioned to the kids while we were at the zoo that it would be a fun day for the pool. Well, they didn't forget that!! As soon as we got home, that is what they wanted to do! My only worry was that Kayla had taken no nap... but they all wanted to go, so off we went! We had the pool all to ourselves! The kids loved it! By the time we got back to our house and got changed, it was 5:15pm, so I finally laid Kayla down in hopes that she might be rested enough so we could all go watch Jim play volleyball. Well, she was still asleep when it was time to leave, so we stayed home. Shane went over to Ryan's to play so I thought that I was actually going to have some quiet time to myself! Boy was I wrong!! Jim called me at 7pm asking me if I could go sub at their game.. Lacy ran over here with the boys and babysat them and Kayla and off I went.. Their game was at 7:15pm and I left the house at 7:09pm!! I made it there right on time! It was a fun time. I had to run to the supermarket after that too.. what a day!! I can finally sit down and rest a bit.. its only 10:03pm!!!!
Here are some pics of the kids today.