Ryan's Youth Temple Trip to DC.

This year as the youth temple trip approached Barry became very excited to attend the temple with his son, Ryan. They had a great time. They left early Friday morning. Their session for baptism work was at noon. Afterwards, they went to the visitor's center for a testimony meeting. Then it was off to find food.....Mmmmmm pizza, and some down time at a park. Off to the Davis hotel (Bro. and Sis. Davis' family live up there and often let people come for the night when they visit the temple) This is were Ryan and Barry stayed.
The next morning they meet up with the girls, who had stayed in a different home, for breakfast. Then off to the Manassass Civil War Battlefield. After this brief stop, it was time to head home.
Here is Ryan's point of view of the trip:

July 4th Celebrations

This year our 4th of July was quite busy. In the morning we attended our ward pancake breakfast. Connor's cub scout troop was in charge of the flag ceremony. Connor got the position of 'caller'. This is where he instructed the other troop members to come forward and post the colors. With the flag in it's rightful place the food and games began.
We all enjoyed the food. Pancakes, sausage, fresh fruit, juice and milk. The High priest group made wonderful egg casseroles in dutch ovens. Barry and Ryan were up at the crack of dawn and off to the church to help get these under way. Mmmmm, these were delicious too.
After breakfast the games began. An egg toss, and three legged race were among the fun. Delaney and her friend Janet--although slow-- completed the race and had a great time. Connor ran the race with his friend Finn and Cailin was with Clarissa.
After a brief nap for Liam....and me, we were off to Blackburg to watch the 4th of July parade. We attended the festivities with the Brame family. Yummy fruit popsicles were purchased by Ms. Beryl. Clearly Liam enjoyed his!! Mmmmm strawberry.
This summer Cailin is participating in the Blackburg Summer Musical Enterprise's production of 'Joesph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat'. She loves it. She is a member of the children's choir.
Here, Cailin and rest of the cast are a part of the parade. This is Cailin's second time being in a parade. She obviously loves it.
After the parade it was time to go home and grill the steak, burgers and chicken for Risa.
My brother, sister, and sis-in-law came this weekend, not to join us in celebrating the 4th, but to do an extemely huge service to me. Deep clean my house. Morning sickness has been....well, normal. I can't do much of anything at all except lay around, hating pregnancy, (yet loving the end result :) Of course the kids are helping quite a bit, Cailin's good at getting some laundry done, Connor has cooked quite a few meals lately and Ryan is good with general cleaning. However, the house is just not getting clean. So my siblings came to help me out....I never knew mop water could get so dirty....and oh, a clean oven and counter tops--the fridge, it's clean again too. Yeah!! The biggest moral booster was seeing the mess in the upstairs vanity area clean and orgainzed again. Thanks, thanks, and thanks again!! You are the greatest.
After dinner all of us headed off to the fair grounds for a spectacular fireworks show. I forgot the camera, darn, but it was great. We had fun playing in the grass sitting on blankets waiting for the show to begin. Rough housing with Uncle Brian was the favorite passtime of the night. Lucky for us, although Barry had to work, he was there too and we got to see him.
Home again....and Liam fell asleep in the car- the rest of us were soon to follow.
We had a great busy day. Happy Birthday America.

Oooh a Snake!

A few days ago we spent the day at the Mattson's and while the kids were playing Jen discovered a black rat snake in her front yard. She loves snakes and couldn't pass up the opportunity to check this one out. She found that it was calm and so we gathered the kids around to show them this snake too. They learned that the white coloring under it's belly told them it was young. They learned where the musky smell that the snake was emitting was coming from and how it used this as a defense against preditors. We also learned that you must remain calm and move slowly....or you will get bit! Poor Cailin, she was holding the snake when the little ones got a tad over antsy--this unnerved the snake and it struck. Cailin was bit three times on her forearm before Jen was able to get the snake away from her. She cried brave silent tears, it hurt! Yet, she was quite the trooper, after the washing, cleaning, and bandaging of the bites she said that it hurt worse than a cat's bite, but not too much more than that. I asked her if she'll hold another one, "Sure, as long as no little kids are around!!" she replied.
The snake is using it's tounge to smell Connor and check him out. He is the first of my crew to hold the snake. At first he was a bit apprehensive and then he replied "yah, I'm going to hold it, after all I'm going to be a wildlife biologist, you know, I'm sure I'll have lots of other snakes to hold."
The snake kept wrapping it's body around their arms and even tried to slitter to some of their necks and backs.

Cailin with Jared and Clarissa before the strike!

Another one on the way....

I'm getting all these blog entries ready to print into a book and I'm checking all of my posts and found that I didn't document that I was expecting another sweet little one. What I did find was a post about Barry getting a new baby--riding mower--and how I was glad his new baby wasn't really a baby at all.

I think someone was listening and played a joke on me.

I've also noticed that I didn't blog much during this month of June 09--or for the summer for that matter. I'm sure that's because I was miserably sick on the sofa for 4+ months.

But, for the record....I was expecting a new little one.....but I'm not now (as I write this 14 months after the fact.)

Catching Up

It's been a while since I've written (other than Ryan's birthday) and since this blog is suppose to double as our family history I 've been wanting to catch up on what's been going on with us.

Summer is now here....we're busy in the garden and playing in the sun....okay, not so much sun fun, as we are having so much rain, but that helps the garden grow.
Cailin and Liam are taking the tops off the radishes.

One great, rain free, hot day the kids had their friends come over and they got to play in the sprinkler...the first water fun day of the season. Hopefully soon I'll be able to get the swimming pool up.


Memorial Day weekend my sister Elizabeth came for a visit....with a suprise to boot, she found me in the house and insisted I come and see an end table that she thought I would want for the house. Instead, I find Cheri scaring me from the trunk of the car, albeit a pleasant suprise. Liz and Cheri had been planning for a while to come for a long weekend and visit the east coast living siblings. (The living ones, not the dead ones, perhaps "abiding" would be a better word.") We spent 2 days shopping, eating out at Texas Steakhouse and helping me rearrange some of the rooms in my home.

A few days later, Ryan and I traveled to Buena Vista, VA to the campus of Southern Viriginia University to attend the LDSEastern Home Educators conference. We had a great time. Ryan attended different classes and group games that inspired him to build team work skills. He talked much about the class 'Boy World-Girl World', this is a class that talked about the biological, emotional, and cognitive differences in boys and girls from birth on up. As he is very fact oriented, this class caught is attention. He enjoyed the speakers Brad Wilcox and Ahmed_______, can't remember his last name, but he is the UN ambassador for the church. Really cool and inspiring speakers. Another favorite was pianist Jon Schmidt. He loved that Jon's mom would nag him to practice, even pull him in from playing outside to practice his piano......hmmmm, more of that will happen around here too ;).

I enjoyed the Mentor Mom classes. There were some great 'how-to' ideas on making our homeschool even better. I also attended a day long seminar on the constitution. I'm sadly amazed at how far our country has strayed from the foundations that our Founding Fathers set in place through the inspiration of our Heavenly Father.

Barry was able to come for a few hours, he was planning to attend the whole conference but court cases from work proved to take over the time instead.

I found a you tube video of Jon Schmidt playing some of his music. Ryan was so impressed with him, and I thought you'd be too. He's an amazing musician. Check it out for yourself.

Happy Birthday Ryan

Can it be? Fourteen years ago, today I had my little angel placed in my arms. He was a bit fussy and I was certainly not thinking straight, as our case worker had to prompt me--remind me that he was probably hungry and I could feed him. What.....oh yeah, the bottle--food, yes, I -I can do that. From those beautiful and wonderful moments in Texas to the teen age joy (okay, okay, not every moment has been blissful.), ....to the teen age joy I have now, I can only thank and feel so blessed to have Ryan as my dear son.

And how did he want to spend his 14th birthday, working with his dad on their mowing business. The two of them worked on 5 yards until the heat over took them....I keep reminding them to wear hats and sun screen, but do they listen?.....they came home and enjoyed battling it out on the Xbox. A few days ago they went to see a movie, I believe it as the new Terminator movie, they had hoped to see the new Star Trek, but that had moved on just the night before. We also enjoyed an impromptu lunch at Cici's pizza the day before his birthday

Getting the mowers ready for the day.

In the evening we enjoyed cake and ice cream. Ryan wanted chocolate....lots and lots of CHOCOLATE. So it was chocolate cake with chocolate icing (mixed with whipped cream) topped with cut up Reseces peanut better cups (thanks Amy for the great idea)

Yumm....but very rich. It suprised me, but Ryan could only eat one piece. Yep, it must've been that rich.

As for gifts, "Give me MONEY!!" he plans to take his birthday gifts and add them to what he is saving for a new gaming system....it's not like we don't have enough of them already.

Going Private

We are going to change the status of our blog. If you're interested in reading our blog please let me know by email and I will put you on our list of invited individuals that will be allow to access our blog. Thanks!