Summertime fun with family

Whether we were home, or traveling, this summer was a great one for reconnecting with lots of family. We enjoyed catching up with "Uncle Charlie" while Emily and kids were in town. We had a fun visit with him and of course, the kids all got their fill of hanging on his back! He's so fun!

Austin and Jordan got a little boy date with John one day while Jordan and fam were in town. They went out for some fishing fun at a little pond near our house. From what I hear, they had a good time... looks like they enjoyed themselves.

They even caught some fish!

This is one of the few that they caught and released. They were proud.

We didn't get up to Kelsi's big sweet 16 bash, but we made our own litle version here with a cake and a few little gifts. Can't beleive how fast she has grown up into such a beautiful young lady! We were glad we got to celebrate with her.

It even worked out that we all got a rare visit from Grandpa Jack. He traveled through while Emily and kids were visiting at our house, so we all caught up for a couple of hours and enjoyed a short but sweet visit.

It was fun to have Emily, Kelsi, Jordan and Mareena here for a couple visits this summer too. It's great that everyone gets along so well and enjoys each other's company. The girls play house and dolls for hours and the boys play video games of all sorts for even longer... Kelsi goes out and makes all kinds of new friends and Cameron tags along with anyone who will welcome him. :-)

Thanks for all the fun visits everybody!

Fun times visiting

We sure had a wonderful time visiting in Colorado this summer. Just a few little shots of some of our favorite times with Ry & Mels fam. . . . Brooke and Mel canoeing the blue lake

Cam with Mel on our fabulous beach day, so great, the kids didn't want to leave. They had lots of fun building castles in the sand. Too bad the battery died before we could get any great pics of their creations. It was beautiful weather and great company which made for an all around very nice day!

Ryan and Mel introduced us to our very first drive in movie! It was a fun time and we enjoyed the first show a lot. We saw Toy Story 3... which was a great movie. We had fun making lots and lots of popcorn to bring with us. Austin might have eaten a little too much of it, since the evening ended with him puking out the window of the car and begging to go home. :-( Poor guy. We sure had lots of fun anyway though!

Brooke loved looking through the hair books with her "Auntie Watermelon" and coming up with just the perfect style. It was a great little date and she is thrilled with her new hair cut!

Also on the list of fun . . Elitch gardens, trampoline jumping, rock band jamming, hide and seek playing, crazy frog singing, boat building, and lots of quality time with some of our favorite people ever...

Thanks for all the fun Smith Fam, we miss you guys!!

Invaded...

We have some visitors that have set up permanent residence at our house recently. They've become rather bothersome though and we'd really like them to leave. Who are they? Well, here are some clues...

They make a lot of noise at night, when they are hard at work tearing holes in our soffits and scratching at the walls.

You may think they're cute, I used to. )Then they decided to move in.)

They are raccoons and they seem to think they own the place!

AUGHHHH!!!!! These (assuming there are more than one, not positive.) are smarter than your average Joe raccoons too. They are like stinking geniuses. They're not falling for any of our tricks intended to lure them, scare them, trap them . . . get them OUT of our attic!

Apparently this is a common thing around here, raccoons in attics. They like to live in there. It's better than the trees, obviously. There is a good possibility that it's a mother and she's taking up residence for the purpose of giving birth. FANTASTIC! I learned that raccoons love to have their babies in the shelter and warmth, protection of attics. Then the babies are raised in there. They won't leave unless forced to do so. Good news for us, right?

We store lots of things in the attic above our garage and one day a while back while John was up there organizing some stuff, he decided to open a window for a little ventilation. The window had a screen, so he never thought it would be a problem.

Well, that was until we saw the big hole that was torn/chewed in the screen and began to connect the dots to the sounds that we thought we had heard. We closed the window that day and set up some traps.

It was when we closed the window that the coons got mad. Their point of entry and exit had been closed off, so they started looking for a new one. They did that by chewing, clawing, and tearing holes in the fascia at the roof line all around our house. I mean lots of holes. We knew it was happening one night when it was outside of our bedroom. How can you not know that it's happening when an animal is remodeling your ceiling with it's teeth and claws at 2 am? We visited them several times that night, with spot lights and other items,(paint ball gun) intended to scare them away. They weren't even phased by us. We tried to scare them off and get them to stop working every few minutes and then went back to bed. It was a long night. We didn't win the war. They tore stuff up and we assessed the damage in the morning. We have a lot of stuff to fix thanks to their handy work. Good times. I'm really not lovin' raccoons anymore. NOT cute after all.

Baptism Guests

I never got any photos added of all the family that came to support Austin on his Baptism Day. So, here's a little sampling of them. We were so glad everyone could be here with us. It made it extra special for Austin to have you all here.