Here we are!

Well this isn't turning out at all like I expected it too, but I guess it is going to have to do... My pictures are about as out of order as my house!!! Here's a catalog of what we've been up to the last couple of weeks. Jon's mom and brother came to visit, the kids and I went to the beach, we had a super duper family fun day that included the sport of all sports, bowling, which I totally kicked butt at!!! Here's Mr. Dalton who had his very own style of bowling. He would throw that ball out there with all of his might and it would literally inch its way down the lane, barely having any measurable momentum. Eventually, it would get to the pins. Thank you to the genius that created the bumpers which we all benefitted from. Dalton was sooooo in to the entire thing. We ate greasy nachos with Sprite and burped. He's got great potential! Talk about Quality Time.
Darion's victory dance after rolling a spare I think. He had a hilarious style too. If you know him, you won't be at all suprised that he sprinted to the line, spun the ball in a very ferocious, hyper way, and danced all the way back, all the while talking our ears off.
Here's the final score card. D Dog , of course is Darion, Bowser is Dalton, then I am Big Daddy and Jon is G Mama.... wait, what was that Jon?, I'm sorry, Jon stepped in and tried to falsify the truth so that everyone that reads my blog won't know that yes, here in plain print, there is evidence... I beat him ( I of course am G Mama... meaning Gorgeous and Great at everything)!!! Not that 132 is a score to be proud of, but, hey, I'll take a win how ever I can get it! Jon complained that the yucky lady sitting near us smoking like a chimney messed him up. Still, I beat him by a sizeable amount... please be sure to note the 2 strikes in a row, thank you very much!

Here's dad in his usual beach pose. It would be my preferable pose as well if I didn't have six little legs to keep up with.
Here's a visual of the lovely bowling shoes. Precious, and highly fashionable.
The most adorable bowler in the crowd, as well as the slimmest and most educated.
Darion sprinting to the line.
Jon playing with his pink ball. We won't really respond too much to that one, this is a family friendly blog...

Mom and Dad with the grand kids. We were at a fun benefit for an American Legion place where mom and dad go dancing. The kids had so much fun. Darion and Poppy are sporting their Indiana Jones hats and the quietest shirts they had. Dalton is wearing a ball cap that we call the "shorty" hat after the character in the Temple of Doom movie. There was a delicious roasted chicken dinner and a fun band playing mostly country music. I was the youngest babe there and the only one there with kids, I think, but my angelic children were soooooo well behaved, you would have never guessed that they were the same little tasmanian devils that I usually tote around town. Darion and Dalton helped serve food and then danced the night away!
The love birds... Mom and Dad have been married 40 years this year. Amazing that they could put up with eachother..... I mean, how lovely that they have endured through the good and the bad and been such amazing examples to us. Thanks mom and dad! Love you!!!
Dalton taking Mema for a spin around the dance floor.
Darion learning to do the Texas Two Step. He was really good at it by the end of the night!
Delyla, during the one moment that she wasn't eating the sand. Those were fun diapers...

Jon and his mom at Chili's.
Uncle BJ and the boys displaying their Mario and Yoshi action figures. They were lost forever about 2 hours later (the action figures, not the kids...)
Delyla the Diva wearing Gammy's necklace and eating cheerios. Quite the life of the party!
Darion demonstrating the finer technique required in the game of golf.
The gang ready to go out and hit the links.

Yes, our lives are as adorable as they appear on this blog, but don't be fooled...we have a dark side. Maybe I'll blog about it another time. Toodles!

The Mesmerizer...

No, I am not a child abuser, but yes, that is one huge goose egg. This photo was taken about 4 hours after Darion had a run in with a grill at the park. It was super freaky as Darion put it. Within seconds of bashing his head on the corner of the grill, he had a golf ball sized bump. By the time we thought to take a picture of it, it was substantially smaller. Thank goodness...
They were playing some type of super hero game and of course D-Dog was totally into the speed and thrill of the game. He popped up from a crouched run and bam!!! Lights out mister!! He was really tough through the whole thing. My reaction was not "ideal", but it was motherly and I eventually pulled it together. We raced home, put ice on it and he was fine. We spent the rest of the day thinking up fictitious super hero names and powers to go with them. The most accurate description for Darion the rest of the day was THE MESMERIZER. Here's why: the Mesmerizer speaks, incessantly, lulling its victims into a restful sort of trance that unless he stops speaking, they can never snap out of. Yes, I was lucky enough to be the object of the Mesmerizer's attention the rest of the day...blah, blah, blah... Now I know what my mom and dad had to go through. I still have problems stopping talking sometimes. I couldn't tell you anything we talked about and I can't describe my relief when Jon finally came home and he became the next victim of the Mesmerizer's charm. Oh sweet release!
This afternoon I cam into the living room and saw Delyla engrossed in the activities going on outside. It was adorable. Even taking the picture didn't peel her attention away.
Darion and Dalton had a friend over and they were playing in the plastic swimming pool outside. I'm not sure if they could have been enjoying themselves more going absolutely crazy and making a huge mess. Hot summer days in Texas - gotta love 'em. Especially when I get to stay inside with the a/c on and watch through the window.

Oops, I farkled...

Have you ever played Farkle? It is a super fun dice game. If I was as cool as Kareena, I'd take the time to find and awesome link to tell you the rules, but let's face it, there's no chance I could come even close to being as cool as she is... Anyway, look it up! You use six dice and keep score based on the rules - we looked them up on Wikipedia. The game is fast paced and even Dalton loves it, since he is able to roll the dice and there isn't a gameboard for him to mess with and make the rest of us crazy. Here, I'm attempting to put a little mojo on the dice with the rally hat on. I was showing Delyla how it's done, and as you can see, she was really interested.
The boys had to copy their cool mom of course by getting rally hats on and blowing on their dice too. Jon wasn't worried, he always wins everything... That is his, does she have the camera out again for that blog? face. Do your husbands have one??? This is all new to me.
After it all played out, Jon won - of course. He always wins at every game. I tried a last ditch effort to see if Delyla would blow on the dice, but she was not wanting to do anything except eat them. Maybe next time. We try to have a family game night once a week and we were soooo lucky that Jon was home for this one, even if he did win - by ALOT!

Bo's Big Day

July 25th was Bo's 26th birthday (neither of us has aged since our 26th birthdays). He had the day off and of course it rained thanks to hurricane Dolly. We totally lucked out though!! We went to the zoo with umbrellas and saw just about every animal we could have ever wanted to see. There was a funny monkey with a tongue as long as his tail, licking the fence and eating lettuce. The tiger was swimming. A cheetah was just about close enought to touch - and eyeing Delyla a little too suspiciously... It was sooo much fun.


Before going to the zoo, we ate lunch at Fuddrucker's - yummy hamburgers... We ate delicious coconut macaroon cookies there that Jon decided were his new favorite. The next day for the actual celebration, I tried to recreate them instead of birthday cake. We had a tower of macaroons. We used leftover plates and napkins from Dalton's Cars birthday. The boys must have hidden out for 20 minutes to jump out and yell suprise. Jon should win a nomination for an academy award based upon his acting suprised performance. The kids loved it! He's such a great guy!

Fun Friends to the Rescue!

We had unexpected visitors yesterday and it turned out to be such fun! Brianne and her kids Austin and Cali stopped by to play on a rainy day. The boys dressed up in silly combinations of random halloween costumes. It was so funny! They kept switching and would run in for help with costume changes. Dalton's combo of Darth Vader and Batman is my favorite.

We found the giant halloween costume box this morning and I am sure they will be having even more fun as the day goes on. We have a neat costume that could be used as Captain Moroni! Maybe we'll even get a Book of Mormon lesson out of this, who knows?

Jon is home today for a birthday celebration and since the rain is clearing up, we're heading to the zoo. Hopefully no one will be there and all of the animals will put on a special performance just for us!

OOPS!

Not meaning to toot my own horn, Kareena chastised me for not mentioning my singing debut at the Pine Trails Ward... Scary ! Along with my lovely friends Megan and Brianne, we rocked the house with a rendition of Israel, Israel God is Calling - accompanied by the famous (perhaps infamous...) Kareena at the piano. We of course tricked it out by using the words of They the Builders of the Nation for the first 3 verses and ended with an accapella 4th verse from the actual Israel, Israel song. It was really fun to get together with my friends and share our talents. Our tribute to our pioneer heritage.

I never knew what all of the gibberish at the back of the hymnal was talking about where it shows songs with the same meter. We really had fun finding two songs with the same meter and singing the words of one to the tune of another. I guess even old dogs(moms, - same thing right?) can learn new tricks.

On the serious side though, it was a lovely experience and I really felt the spirit as I sang the song. Megan and Brianne have such angelic voices and Kareena tickles the ivories with splendor. Thanks to my talented friends for including me in the plan!

What a week!

I intended to have the picture of Roxanne, my sis at the end of the blog, but here she is front and center as she would probably like it anyway... This picture is from when she came to visit just after Delyla was born. There's more about my cool rocker sister at the end of the blog.

We had a really busy and fun week! Jon has a great friend named Randy who came over and helped him rebuild the engine on an old jet ski we have. The kids had a blast riding on it. Dalton is quite a dare devil and wanted to go fast! He is certainly his dad's son... I'm not sure how I feel about that. I don't think I can handle two of them. We had a great afternoon bike ride. As you can tell Dalton was entertaining Delyla with something very funny. She is usually a little afraid to be in such close proximity to Dalton - he tends to be a little loud and rough, but they loved riding in the little bike trailer together.
Later in the week we actually loaded them up and rode to the pool. It was a wonderful excuse to not have to carry sooooo much junk (floats, toys, snacks...). We didn't miss anything and by the time we got home, we were pretty dry and Delyla had fallen asleep on Dalton's shoulder. It was just precious.
Darion got a great new bike this week. We ran his old one over with the truck;) The new one is silver and blue like the Dallas Cowboys. Go Dallas!!! He loves the pegs and yes, he has taken it off of some gnarly jumps.
Here I am putting up the facade that I am actually athletic. My bottom is really sore from the bike seat. They aren't very friendly on the rear that's for sure, but neither is having 3 kids...
Along with a double chin, I got a new haircut this week. I told my sister Roxanne I would post a pic of it. Believe me, this will probably be the first and last sort of close picture you will ever see of me on this blog. If anyone had asked other than Roxanne, I would probably have said nooooo way. Jon and I were on the way to have a hot date... I know, big shocker. Our last date occurred when I was about 5 months pregnant with Delyla and she is now almost 9 months old. He takes me out once a year whether he likes it or not... We had dinner and walked around the mall with most of the teenagers in the area. Afterwards, we went to DQ where we were by far the coolest people and had some ice cream. We read the personal ads in those want-ad type news papers and decided that we are pretty lucky to have eachother. If you are a SWF btwn the ages of 30-40 of medium build (as I am), your choices are DWM, 60-70 looking for companionship or GWM looking for a change. Prrreeettttyyy Scary! It was funny to look at and laugh though!

Up top is a pic of my lovely Sister who is soooooo amazing! She has been battleing Hodgkin's Lymphoma for over a year now. She's undergoing intense ICE chemotherapy this month and goes in for a stem cell transplant next month. I've never known anyone as independent as her. We are just like night and day. She's stubborn and brave! There are a million qualities that she has that I envy. She is really able to speak her mind, even if it is about something that will make her upset. She has strong opinions about things. Roxanne is an awesome seamstress and is an artist with a needle and thread. You should see that beautiful needle point, cross-stitch stuff she does. Anyway, she totally rocks from her balding (thanks to chemo) head down to her tattooed toes - well, the tattoos aren't actually on her toes, but who knows, maybe someday right Roxanne? I love you!