Hope everyone had a nice Easter! Ours was good, we had our usual BBQ (that was actually a fish fry this year due to the burn ban) and sunrise service. Here are some pics from the weekend:
Tomorrow, John & I are going with Colten on his school field trip to the Alamo, should be fun :)
The kids finished up taking taks tests this week, I think they did alright, Colten said his were easy but long!
John was supposed to go to Junction today to help with the 6000+ acre wildfire going on there, but fortunately, it was under control enough that he got to turn around in Harper. I hope they get it out soon, all these fires are nerve wrecking!
My weeks have been messed up lately and my usual Monday Austin trip has been on Tuesdays or Wednesdays lately. And next week it looks like I'll have to be there 4 days for training, yay. Please continue to pray for my manager, he's taking leave starting May 1 to focus on his health. He is fighting pancreatic cancer and has been losing a lot of weight and is sick from the chemo treatments. I really hope he is able to be cured. In the meantime, I have a different manager which is taking some getting used to since I've had the same one for the last 9 years or so.
Here is this year's bluebonnet pic of the kids, with the one bluebonnet in Omie B's yard. That's about as many as we've seen :(
We had a great day at Enchanted Rock Friday - the weather was beautiful and there was hardly anyone there. We met the Harwell's there and the kids had a blast. John, Ashlyn, and Colten went through a cave where flashlights were necessary, but the rest of us were chicken :)
Here are the kids on our way up:
We were going to go up one of the other rocks, but John got a fire page so the rest of us went for pizza. John didn't get home until 12:30 that night all because of a guy camping and trying to cook lunch :(
Saturday Ashlyn and I had a great day shopping with my mom, Oma, Rena and aunts. It was a great girls day and we found some summer clothes for Ashlyn. She's not fond of shopping for long periods though and was ready to go after we found stuff for her. I'm going to have to get her over that!
Sunday we went to church and came home with an orphan calf to bottle feed! My parents found it (long story) and decided to give it to the kids to take care of. We named her Bluebell or Bell for short and the kids are having fun with her so far.
Our scouting year ended with the blue and gold banquet last night. John & I got everything ready for it and were ready to get it over with. Of course, Colten got of the bus with a headache, so John wasn't able to get there as early as he wanted, but thankfully Colten started to feel better and was all better by the time we ate. I was able to get everything decorated and organized mostly before he got there though. The banquet is when the boys get their patches and awards for the year and when the oldest boys cross over to boy scouts (Colten will be doing that next year). Everyone brings food and we celebrate another successful year (and now we only have one more year as leaders yay!). Colten got his Webelos badge, colors and several pins and also got an award for selling over $600 worth of popcorn.
Here's Colten getting his badge:
Here he is with the colors and pins on his shirt (under the flag) along with his badges.
This is a short week for the kids, their spring OFYP days are Thursday, Friday and Monday so they get to have a long weekend. I was hoping we might go camping at enchanted rock Thursday night, but I have a training session I have to call in to for work Friday morning so I guess we'll just try to go Friday afternoon. The kids are probably going to hang out with Omie B some, too. It's a nice break, I just wish they'd have it at the same time as Spring Break or a little further away. Oh well well take it!
We all had a good Spring Break - the kids had fun fishing and hiking with Omie & Opie A at Lake Corpus Christie and John and I had a nice relaxing anniversary getaway in Ruidoso. But now we're back to reality!
Here are some photos of our Ruidoso trip:
February has been pretty crazy with sickness and cold weather and fires and now it's March already! So here's a quick update. Ashlyn's finished with Basketball and is now doing off-season track. She didn't really want to be in track since she always ends up in events she doesn't like. Colten is also finished with basketball, he missed 2 games because he was sick and 1 game was canceled because of weather, so he only made it to half of the games, but he had fun. The pinewood derby was last Friday and Colten had to miss it because he had a fever. That was a particularly crazy day getting him to the doctor with John out fighting a fire and both John and I being in charge of the derby. Thank goodness for Omie B!!!! Everyone was nice enough to let Ashlyn run his car for him since he couldn't be there. He ended up getting 3rd in his age group, but not overall.
Spring Break starts tomorrow and the kids are going camping with Omie & Opie A at Lake Corpus Christie. Hope they have good weather and can do lots of fishing and maybe some beach time. John & I are going to spend a couple of days in Ruidoso for our anniversary while they're gone, so we're looking forward to that! Hopefully everyone stays well!
Ashlyn got a letter that she didn't get into the counselor-in-training program and she was pretty upset about it. It's hard to see her so disappointed, but I guess that's life! I told her she should try again next year, hopefully she will and will know better what to do.
And a bit of exciting news - we just booked our tickets to go see Jill this summer, so it's official! YAY!
On a final note, here's Colten with his pinewood derby car:
So I guess the weather has been appropriate considering today is our 15th wedding anniversary! Can you say deja-vu? I can't believe it's been that long, but we're still going strong. Of course we wouldn't have gotten this far without the love and support of our families and friends - so thank you for being there for us all these years! As a sort of gift back to you, I had scanned in all of our wedding photos a while back - you know since we got married before the internet was so popular and before digital cameras were main stream so very long ago :) - and I uploaded them to share with you. Brings back some great memories and everyone looks so young! Time flies for sure. Hope you enjoy them as much as I did :) http://picasaweb.google.com/dlynnb/OurWedding?authkey=Gv1sRgCKvRwd6-n6CYJw&feat=directlink
