School Answering Machine

This is the funniest video I have heard in a while! Parents are always making excuses for their kids and I guess that this school got tired of it! Enjoy!!!

Happy Anniversary!

Happy Anniversary to my sweet husband. Nine years ago today, we were sick and feeling awful with fever and Mono. And at 3:00 in the afternoon we were married! What a way to start! But here we are nine years later. Laughing and happy with two sweet little guys to tag along!

Actually they tag along a little to often! I wanted to do a bunch of really cute pictures of Cale and I together for this post and I could not find any without the kids! How can that be?

Anyway, Happy Anniversary honey! I love you!!

New Braces

E's new braces came in about a week ago so I thought that I would update with pictures!

This is the second set because the plastic around the hinge broke on the first set. These are taller braces because we found out that the lower braces only cause him to lose his range of motion in his ankles! Not Good! I wanted to lower braces through the summer because it gets SOOO HOT, but nothing is worth losing his range!

He also has new shoes! Yes there is a lift in this shoe in case you could not tell. The guys at the shoe repair store do an excellent job putting in the lifts. Now if only the lift would stay clean on not attract every piece of dirt! The white tends to look dirty really fast!

We are all happy with the new shoes and braces. Hopefully we will gain back the range of motion that we lost with the lower braces. Only time will tell.

Fresh Tomatoes

You have to love tomatoes right out of the garden! Not very many things taste much better. Except maybe chocolate or maybe warm chicken and noodles on a cold day. Oh how I long for the cold weather!! The weather this year has been wonderful for the tomatoes and hard on the people! It has been around 100 degrees most of the time. In fact, as I write this at 8:00 in the morning it is 83 degrees. Anyway, back to the tomatoes....here are they boys enjoying a treat. Not sure why they are not smiling.

Okay, there is a smile! And a mouthful of tomato! Also not sure why L is not wearing a shirt.

Yummy fresh tomatoes from the garden.

Not my garden, by the way. I do not have the work ethic to get up every morning while it is only 80 degrees and go out and pick vegetables. No, I am the kind of person that gets up only when I have to and then I still dont want to talk to anyone for at least an hour!

No, we have a wonderful grandma that has the dedication to get up early every morning and work in her garden. Then she gives away her wonderful food to all of those lazy people that I talked about earlier!! Thanks grandma!!

Panzanella

My sister in law tried this recipe this summer and it is wonderful! It is a great way to use up some of the abundance of tomatoes our hot summer has produced!

There are tomatoes, yellow peppers, cucumbers, and red onion in this. There is also a olive oil and balsamic vinegar and some other seasonings to make this taste really yummy!

Then you make your own croutons and sprinkle on top of the tomato mixture! Mix it all together and you are in for a treat!

This might be my new favorite dish for the summer!

Summer Days

In the summer time it is very easy to go all of the time and never be home. We like to go most of the time, but there are days that I like to stay home. The problem with staying home is that the boys are constantly bored and asking me for something to do. So the other day, on one of our "home days" I decided to get out the paints. The boys, especially E, love to paint and I hate it! I dont really hate it, but I hate the mess that it makes. They enjoyed it though and that is all that matters.

L was pretty serious. Notice that I found a way to recycle an egg carton. I divided all of the paints into each section of the egg carton. Not that it mattered because L would dip his brush into every color before he would put it on the paper.

E was in painters heaven on this day. He loves to do things like this! I am not sure why his picture is blurry, and for some reason this is the only picture that I took with him looking at the camera!

We ended up with some really cute pictures that we hung up on the fridge. I will have to do this again sometime. The cleanup was not that bad because I just threw the egg cartons away when the boys were through with them. Then I washed out the brushes and we were good to go!