Baby gets hurt, mowing expert Annie, 1st day of school, fish tank attack

Wow, I feel like I haven't blogged in ages though it's probably only been a few days. So much has been happening around here though. My mom has been in town since last Wednesday which has been a lot of fun. We have spent time shopping, getting our hair done, watching movies, cooking and just talking. We are in the process of planning her trip back to Oregon. OK, I am in the process. Does anyone else notice that the roles change as we get older? I tell you what! :-)

Little miss Courtney really worried me on Sunday. She'd been fussy, really fussy for a day and a half and Sunday morning I noticed she was not using her left arm. A closer look revealed a very swollen little hand. I didn't think it was bad enough to rush to the emergency room so we proceeded to get ready for church and I figured I would keep an eye on it and make a decision of what to do after the day went on a little. God is amazing though and Mr Brent took a look at it during connection group. We are so blessed to have a pediatrician in our group, and even more blessed to have such a caring one. He looked at it, totally felt around on it (which my little girl would not let me even look at it) and suggested I put her on Motrin and see how it does. So, we did. When we got home I gave her some nummy nummy Motrin and even wrapped it up. She was so cute and let me wrap it and even kept it on! The next morning she was using her hand like normal! Thank you, Lord! See, I think she fell, I know she fell since she had a fat lip. I guess she hurt her hand too but I did not know it. She is all better now though and we now have a new doctor for my baby. Thanks Brent!



The dreaded lawn care. Come home, Paul!!! These are purely for Angela as she told me how much I rock for doing all this. Well, girl, it got better! I went to start the mower the next day now that I had fuel and it was no longer raining and it wouldn't start again. So I had to jump it with my now 'work truck'.

After I got it jumped and mowed for quite some time I got stuck. OK, seriously, there is like one place to get stuck out here and, well, I found it. So, I took one of the tie downs off of the jet ski (that took forever to figure out) and hooked the mower to my 'work truck' and pulled that baby out!

I got the rest of the yard mowed with no problems. We may need some new blades now, those pesky rocks are annoying!

The next day I thought I'd give weed eating a try. Oh, that was fun, let me tell you. After figuring out how to get the thing started. Let me take you through it...half choke, a little throttle, pull that stupid chord a few times. Full choke, no throttle, pull the stupid chord a few more times. Back to half choke...you get it. It finally starts, woo hoo I think. Then I realize, I don't have a clue how to do this. Oh, it was interesting. There are a few dirt patches now; but that's OK, it's grass, it grows back, right? :-) (sorry for all my grammar mistakes, I like commas). So, I'm going along and the string is so short. I turn it off and pull on the string...it doesn't get longer. Finally I call Paul and he tells me to bang it on the ground while it's on and the string will come out. Oh, that was neat - I bet I looked super hot doing that. It worked though so I was going along getting all the long stuff and I ran out of string. I guess when you hit rocks with a weed eater it breaks the string? Weird. Oh well, here are some wonderful blackberry pictures of the parts I did get to. Not too bad, eh?


And the first day of school. Ethan is officially a 2ND grader. I can't even believe it. The night before I called him and asked him if he wanted me to come have lunch with him this week and he said he wanted me to the next day! How sweet is that, his first day of school and he wants to have lunch with his mom. So Courtney and I went and he was so precious. He likes his teacher, enjoys his classmates and was having a great day.

Here he is sitting so nicely in line, can you find him?

Courtney aka Ms Cool

At recess he took a break to take a picture with his baby sister.

Doesn't he look so big?

And last AND least...I came home to this in our tank yesterday. All I have to say is EWE! This is our bristle worm eating our cleaner shrimp. I knew that thing was in there (the worm) but I didn't know it was this big and I didn't know it would attack our precious "Shrimpy" and I didn't know there were like 5 of these worms. Big and small...again, EWE.

We'll miss you Shrimpy.