Another new trick

Ryan is at that age when kids pick up a new trick every other day. Here is his latest...dribbling. He has been working on this one for a couple of months, with a neurotic persistence. He gets the neurosis from me and the persistence from Heather:)

POUNDED by the mountain!

For somebody who just started running, I have to say that the satisfaction that comes from exercise is AFTER your done. During the exercise, especially trail run races, the sensations are best described as pain, agony, anguish, exhaustion, thirst, and as you can see from the photo, grimace.

Ryan has figured out the pedaling thing

Grandpa Day!

Grandpa Salisbury got to come for a day a weekend or two ago. As you can see the kids had great fun, and Curt and I got to go out for dinner . . . alone!! We love you Grandpa!

Kid Fun

Just having summer fun with friends. We found something for each color on our walk.

Holy Hydrangeas!!

These hydrangeas were SOOOO huge and beautiful. Look how there are two different colors on this bunch!!

Family Pictures

Here are a few pictures of my birthday present--family pictures!!

I know,I know . . . Isaac's hair looks super slick, we had been playing in/around a fountain and Isaac was sticking his head under some dripping water. He was having fun though!

Ballerina's

Princesses and ballerinas. The best of both worlds, when the ballerinas get to wear princess crowns for their recital! Nicole did a great job at her recital. She was so happy she got to wear a beautiful crown full of jewels--maybe that's why it didn't even phase her that her sometimes scatter brained mother forgot to pull her ballet shoes out of her purse and give them to her. She ended up wearing just her tights on stage. Her sometimes scatter brained mother still didn't even notice the whole time she was on stage (so maybe no one else did either?) and Nicole even led the girls on and off the stage!!! Yipes. Fortunately for the mother (it's fun talking in third person isn't it?) when Nicole told her what had happened and the mother started apologizing profusely Nicole said "It's was o.k. because Miss Sarah said I could just wear my tights, and I didn't even slip!" That was the last we heard about that.

We learned the hard way Nicole's first recital that it is ritual, tradition, custom, (one of those) to give dancers flowers at a recital. We hadn't gotten Nicole flowers (this was when we were still in ALBQ) and she was asking why we hadn't. Fortunately for us a friend gave Nicole one of her own flowers and Nicole was happy. This time we were prepared and had one of our own to give her. Despite the above picture, Isaac really was excited to give it to her.

A little dirt never hurt anyone . . . neither does chocolate cake for that matter

Our backyard playground has been torn apart for a month or so, no grass, tons of tractors, LOTS of dirt. The kids came in looking like this (see above picture) every day. Two weeks ago, they finally laid the sod, and now that it has been a few weeks we can finally play on it!! Ryan looks cute in a mustache eh? Even in Canada Curt would say.

Pre-Knack
What do you get when you put a Ryan on a dryer with his daddy's wallet?















An opportunity to take 3 layers of paneling off of the back of the dryer to retrieve the wallet!




















Ryan was first playing with the wallet. When he got bored, he noticed he could pull the dryer screen in and out. When that got boring, he noticed the deep dark hole where the dryer screen goes. When that got boring he wondered what would happen if he put daddy's wallet down into that deep dark hole. Notice the wallet sitting in the bottom of the dryer screen cavity that I removed from the dryer. I wish he didn't get bored so easily.