Day at the Zoo

Chelsea, Karlee, and I spent a couple days in St. Louis while on the graduation trip. Ashley thought it would be fun to take Karlee to the zoo. She was a little nervous about a few of the animals but mostly she really liked it. She started saying "what's that" on the trip and said that will all the animals. She especially liked the monkeys and the penguins. We had a lot of fun at the zoo. It's a really good zoo with lots of fun animals, and the best part is that it's free.

All Grown Up

There are officially no more kids in my family. Zach, the baby, graduated from high school and Ashley graduated from college last weekend. It worked out really well that both graduations were the same weekend, but by the end we were all graduationed out. My mom says she's ready to have all the kids grown up, but I'm really not sure what she's going to do with herself.

Ashley's pinning ceremony for nursing school

Karlee kept us entertained during the graduations. She loved when everyone clapped and even joined in.

Ashley at graduation


Ashley's graduation

Zach's graduation

Karlee is Spoiled

Being the first grandchild/niece has its perks. Karlee gets just about any and everything she wants around this place. We are probably creating a little monster, but she's just too cute.
playing with all sorts of things at the store
eating every other second. this time she's eating turkey. this girl loves meat.

grandma had to buy her some toys to play with while in town. she loved them and stayed pretty entertained. she loved this turtle and ball. we took her to the park a couple times. she loved going down the slides.
she loves to move

swinging at the park

i convinced chelsea to give her a mini ice cream cone. chelsea was freaking out a little about the mess, but she loved it.

Race for the Cure

I love love love the Race for the Cure! It is by far my favorite race. I look forward to it all year. No matter who comes or doesn't come and race with me, I will be there. I wouldn't miss this race for anything. This year I knew a few people doing the race, but I planned to run by myself. Now that I'm more of a "runner" I was fine running by myself and a little excited to see how fast I could do it. I am by no means fast, but I was happy with the pace I ran.

this is why i love this race. there's nothing quite like 18,000 people coming together for a cause. the number alone is amazing but so are all the people running in memory of/in celebration of their mom, wife, sister, daughter, friend, self.


after the race i met up with my friend, Lindsey, and her family. her family knows how to have fun, and i was lucky enough to get to tag along.

our first stop was So Cupcake. it's the cutest gourmet cupcake place, and they have the cutest yummiest cupcakes. these mini cupcakes are only $1.50 and come in delicious flavors. Lindsey's cute family insisted I get a cupcake or two.
Lindsey's niece and nephew were so cute. They knew exactly what to order. Her mom is a breast cancer survivor so it was an added bonus to participating in the race. Her family is really so cute. After the cupcake stop, we hit Cheesecake Factory for lunch. I had so much fun meeting her family and spending the morning with them. Thanks Lindsey for letting me tag along and thanks to your family for being so kind.

I'm Back

I took a little blogging break-not because I wanted to but because I have been so busy. I got a crazy idea over a year ago to make little travel scrapbooks for the Martin girls. We have been on lots of fun trips together, and I have documented them all. The girls always make comments about copying my journal, but nothing ever gets done about it. I started out just planning to type out my journal for them, but the project exploded. I've never been one to take the easy way out, and this was no exception. By some miracle I pulled off making 4 travel scrapbooks complete with journaling, pictures, and even some fun embellishments (thanks Katey) without Nettie having any idea. We all got together for dinner last Sunday, and they were pretty shocked with the surprise. It was a lot of fun giving them the books. It's also been fun going through all the trips and thinking of all the fun we have had over the years.

Yard Work

This isn't even the grass after I got done. It's after Roman and Rocky spent a couple more hours working on the grass. It needed some major edging, and it looks great now.

Nettie made a lawn mowing schedule for us this week so we make sure that everyone takes their turn. It was my turn this week. My Wednesday evening plans didn't happen so I decided to mow. First of all I have probably only ever mowed the grass 2 or 3 times in my entire life and that was probably at least 15 or more years ago. I haven't really touched a lawn mower since then. I couldn't get it started forever and after calling Nettie a bazillion times I finally figured it out. I had to call her several more times with other questions. Our yard is a beast. By the time I got to the front it was getting dark, but I was determined to finish. Nettie did a beautiful job the week before, but I was just racing to get it done. It's not really pretty, but the grass is mowed. The best part is I don't have to do it again for 5 more turns. After I finished I needed to be reminded why I wanted to live in a house. On the upside, I did burn 350 calories while mowing.

Easter Photo Shoot

Michelle and Andrew invited us over for Easter dinner. Nettie and I mostly missed dinner since we have late church but arrived in time for leftovers. After the meal we decided to take a walk outside since the weather was so nice. Our walk kind of turned into an impromptu photo shoot. Nettie tried taking walking/action pictures, but that just resulted in lots of laughing. We got back to the house to try to take some posed pictures. Andrew could not stop laughing. We might not have gotten the best pictures, but it was entertaining to say the least.



being silly. trying to take 10 pounds off with our poses(you can see it didn't work). nettie trying to get a walking shot(also didn't work so well)

now for real. andrew and michelle.

it took several atttempts to get a halfway decent picture. i tried putting more of the funny ones on here, but blogger is being annoying. maybe later?!?!

Blog Worthy

I always kind of laugh when people take pictures just so they can post them on their blogs. I'm not saying I haven't done it (see recent uh-oh post). It just makes me laugh a little. I was already laughing a little when I took these pictures, but I had to do it. This was definitely blog worthy. We live in an old house which naturally equals problems/repairs. We have had some problems with a water leak in the furnace room. The owners are great and have had the repairman here several times to fix the problem. We also discovered we were using 5x as much water as the house was last year due to a huge leak. No wonder our water bill has been $100. We thought everything was figured and taken care of. For some reason I went into the furnace room to check the leak. There wasn't just a a little leak. There was a flood. There was so much water we had to sweep it out. It was pretty gross dirty water. We used almost every towel we have in the house which is a lot of towels with 6 girls, and there was still so much water. The owners came over to check things out and got things taken care of the next day. We were just lucky nothing got ruined and the flood didn't spread into any other rooms.

Recipe Dinners

I get together once a month with a few girlfriends for dinner. We each bring part of the meal and exchange the recipes. We always eat way too much and have a lot of fun talking and catching up. This month we went to Laurann's. Dinner was yummy, and the socializing was great. It's been a fun way to make sure we see each other and keep in touch.

More Fun this Time

I went to Vegas again over the weekend. I went for a conference for work, but I got to go a few days early to spend time with Jeff, Chelsea, and Karlee. Since we spent the last trip stuck in the house, we tried to get out of the house a little more this time. We didn't do anything especially exciting, but it was fun just being there. I love seeing Karlee grow up. She is starting to do more big girl things-crawling everywhere so fast, pulling to stand, imitating gestures and some sounds, turn taking with sounds, playing with toys, and lots of other fun stuff. Chelsea and I have always made this funny noise saying girl girl girl in our hands. Karlee is trying to do the noise, and it's so cute. It was a great trip, and the conference was pretty good too.

We tried to stick to Karlee's schedule including bath time. Showing off her painted toes.

She wore her new outfit. Karlee turned 9 months old. She used to be smaller than the elephant, but now she's much bigger. She is starting to really like stuffed animals.

We played with bubbles. Karlee wasn't sure what to think about them or what to think about the grass. We painted her toes after talking about doing it since she was born.

We ate frozen yogurt at Golden Spoon. Shhh don't tell anyone I gave her lots and she loved it. We went for a little walk that turned into a big walk when Karlee fell asleep.

Uh-Oh

Nettie's co-worker's wife, Joy, is an amazing cook (so I've heard). She recently published a cookbook, Bliss, with all of her favorite recipes. Nettie has tasted a chicken dish that she loves. It happens to have capers (whatever that is). There must only be one chicken meal with capers so we opened up the cookbook and found a recipe. It was a chicken dish, and it did have capers, but it wasn't the meal Nettie thought it was going to be. It was pretty funny. We're trying to branch out and try some new meals, and this sure was a new meal. I had to buy capers (we had to call Joy to find out where you even find those in the store-in the pickle aisle if you're wondering) and white cooking wine. It wasn't Joy's delicious chicken meal we were hoping for, but it was something new and different. I don't recommend lemon chicken picatta, but some of the other recipes look delicious, and the cookbook sure is cute.


carrie and nettie did most of the cooking that night