Sad post this time

Ok so this post is a little different than my normal posts. The last several weeks have been pretty tough around here. Ty's dad, Mike, had been struggling more than normal and we all knew that he was really getting worse, quickly. Week before last was a bad week, thankfully on Thursday when Ty took the kids by to see him he did recognize them and talked to them a little but even they knew that Papa was not doing very good. Then, on Friday he didn't move at all. He was asleep, or something, all day, he didn't move at all and was completely non responsive. We lost him early Saturday morning. Even though we all knew this day was coming, it didn't help the grieving any. We waited a week to have the services so that Melissa and Avery (our niece and her mom) and other family and friends could make it here. I think each of us had good days and bad days. I do believe there is a good reason why when someone passes away, you have the services sooner rather than later, the waiting is tough. The memorial services were beautiful. By our best calculations there was somewhere around 130-150 people there. We picked out two great songs, The Best Days, by George Strait and Go Rest High by Vince Gill. A very good friend was kind enough to sing at the service too which was just beautiful. Mike was a huge lover of all things outdoors. He loved camping and fishing and boy scouts and he lovingly passed on that love to his boys. They decided the best place to put his ashes for the service was in an old Coleman lantern. A perfect touch I thought. One of Mike's wishes had always been to have some of his ashes poured into the family's flagpole at the cemetery. So, late Saturday afternoon, with the help of a friend, that is exactly what the boys did! Bob lifted them up to the top of the pole and using Mike's favorite coffee cup, Ty and Tad poured Mike's ashes down the pole. Poor Tad is deathly afraid of heights, so we were all impressed that he was even able to go up in the bucket, but he sucked it up and did it! (However there may be permanent impressions from Tad's fingers) Although it was a very sad occasion, lots of tears were shed and hugs given, I felt very lucky that I was even there and able to say that I had known Mike. He got a new heart 15 years ago this week, but if some other family in Iowa had not lost a member of their family or honored their son's wishes and allowed his heart to be donated, Mike's funeral would have been years ago. If that had happened, I would not have had a father-in-law at all, he would have been gone before I was part of the family. Mike was a tough old guy, he was opinionated, loud and sometimes harsh, but we loved him, a lot! He also had a BIG heart, he adored his family, doted over his grandchildren, had a special place in his heart for all his 'girls' and we put him in a special place in ours! You were loved Papa Mike and we will miss you terribly. I truly hope you have found the perfect fishing spot and are loving life now that you are healthy once more. Until we see you again, rest in peace!

Pictures from Austyn's Birthday

Here are just a few pics to share:


First time to have blueberries! I think she liked them???

Austyn's Birthday pictures to go with previous post....

We took the girls (and Dagan) to dinner and movie for Austyn's birthday, instead of doing a big party.

Early scrapbook lover........

Dagan's first lost tooth!!! He pulled it himself and was very proud of himself!

Birthday Angel

I can't believe Austyn turns 7 on Sunday. We brought cupcakes, lemonade and treat bags up to her class today and the entire walk from the car I kept looking down at the candles in the cupcakes and thinking that can't be right......Ty? She's 7, is that right? I must have asked him 3 times walking from the car. It just didn't look right. How could 7 years have passed since our sweet angel Austyn blessed our family. She has a friend over for a sleepover tonight, then we are taking her, and 3 friends, Emma and Dagan to dinner and movie tomorrow night. On Sunday we will have lunch and birthday cakes (and possibly a few presents) after church. By Sunday afternoon I'm sure she will feel very well celebrated! We are so very lucky to have been given such a precious gift as our sweet 7 year old Austyn!

Pictures of all our little parties to come.......

School, Friends and Finally some crafting!!!

Ok so I have pretty much stunk at updating much this summer....honestly I don't even have a good excuse either! Here's what we've been doing. We took a week right before school started and went to visit friends in Arkansas and then dropped down to Texas to visit the grandparents for a few days. It was a short visit but we had a good time. Right when we got back one of Ty's childhood best friends came to KS for a visit (they live in Canada so it was a great treat to see them again). We tried to remember and I think it had been about 9 years since we'd seen eachother or met eachothers kids! It was a wonderful afternoon, thunder/hail storm and all!!!

Almost all our kids (Macy wouldn't join in the group)

The whole crew!

Andy, Chad and Ty

Here are a few pictures from the lake with Grandad...

I love this picture of Dagan & my Dad!!!

Helping build the 'sandcastle'

Meara didn't get to play in the sand or the water much but she sure had a good time!

Water fight....this was taken just moments after Emma threw a whole bucket of water on Granddad!

We stayed at grandmas too and played and hung out by the pool but apparently I was too lazy to ever get up and get the camera because I got home with no pictures from there or Arkansas!!! Hate that!

As a reward for reading so much this summer (over 50 books each!) Auntie Carol took the kids to the Salt Mines in Hutchison. It was such a cool tour and the kids really had fun (and even learned stuff...shhhhhh!) Heres a couple pictures from that day too.

It is still a working mine so we had to wear hardhats and have emergency breathing thingys.

And then it was time for school to start! I've never seen kids as excited as they were to get back to school! Long may it last! When I picked them up from school the girls chattered non-stop about what they did, their teachers, their friends, lunch, recess.......you get the idea! Dagan says mom I was a good boy ALL day I used my NEW listening ears almost the whole time. Almost? I said, yes he said the rest of the time I used my OLD listening ears! Really, and where did you get the NEW listening ears.....at the EARS store. ROFL!!!! He was so funny, grinning from ear to ear!
And no that isn't a TV over their heads in the background, it is a picture hanging on the wall with a reflection on it.

And finally a couple new pictures of our new crawling Meara! She is growing WAY too fast, I can't believe she is already crawling!!!


And as if that wasn't enough......I finally got some scrapbooking done. Good news I got several layouts done for Aunt Donna's book, bad news it isn't catching me up on my stuff any but it is always fun to work with baby photos and Mya is such a cutie! You can check out the layouts (I think) here: http://www.scrapbook.com/myplace/index.php?mod=galleries Hopefully that works.....Ok I think that's it for now, I might have more pages added to that gallery if I can get myself organized and back to the table to craft this afternoon...we'll see!

Much needed time together!

We have been married now 12 wonderful years. We've been through so much in our time together, grown up a lot, learned more lessons than I can count, seen some amazing things & places and have 4 fabulous children together, but it is so nice to be reminded that we are truly best friends too. We found a great deal on last minute plane fare/hotel/show tickets for Vegas. We bought the tickets on Sunday I think and we left on Tuesday early. So we were really rushed to get ready for the trip but we did it, got ourselves organized, the kids sorted with all their appointments and such and got away for a few days, just the two of us. We walked, I think, about 50 miles in 100+ temps, but we saw so much! Even though we saw a lot we didn't feel rushed at all, we stopped when we wanted to and it was really relaxing. We saw two shows, a Cirque de Soleil show and Jubilee. the acrobatics in the Cirque show were really good but we were both blown away by Jubilee, it was a 'show girl' type musical show, kinda what you always think of when you think of vegas shows complete with huge feather head dress things and all. It was fantastic! We stayed at New York New York which was really cool. It was huge! I think that was what surprised me the most, the shear size of the casinos/hotels. They were much bigger than we imagined. There was a piano bar at our hotel with 'dueling pianos' that was really cool to watch. Ty got a Guinness at the 'Nine Fine Irishman' Pub at our hotel, sadly it wasn't nearly as good as those at the true Irish Pubs, but he suffered through! We aren't huge gamblers but we did play the slot machines and video poker and blackjack. The slots were more frustrating to me than anything else but I did alright at the Blackjack...at one time I had doubled my money (which a whole 20 bucks!) But sadly I didn't stop playing then....I quickly lost it! On our last evening there Ty did pretty good at the slots and won back all that we had gambled the days before so we broke even! I was happy with that and we were smart enough to cash out then too! We were only gone a couple days but it was so nice, a great break we had such a great time just being us and being together. We missed the kids but loved our time away.
Twelve years ago (tomorrow)......I married my best friend, the one I laugh with, dream with, live for and love! Happy Anniversary sweety! I love you and can't wait for the next twelve years with you!



a nice couple took our picture while we were waiting for the fountains at the Ballagio



Ty out front of Margaritaville

Our gondola 'driver' at the Venetian

Ty was sad drinking a Guinness at the Irish Pub.

Self portrait at the Venetian.

Foot bridge over the Gondola river at the Venetian.

Ty at the botanical gardens at the Ballagio

Ty with Miss M&M


Kel with M&M and NASCAR car

For their surprises we brought the kids back t-shirts from M&M World....Meara the lil Peanut!

Lots of cool stuff...

Its been crazy around here and I've been really really bad at blogging so far this summer. We've been so busy but that really isn't an excuse. To Make up for it though, I'm going to pack a HUGE amount of pictures in this one post!

Well first of all, today we had little Meara baptised. She will be 6 months old next week (and thankfully the dress fit). She was such a cutie, she sat in Ty's arms at the front of the church and the entire time the pastor was speaking to the congregation she was smiling big, kicking her feet and looking around, as if to say 'I know you all came here today to see me so here I am...'. She was so sweet!

We've had an insane amount of storms passing though in the last week and a half or so. We had an incredible thunder and lightening storm one late afternoon last week and after it passed over us the atmosphere was yellow. It was so unusual looking but beautiful just the same. This is a shot Ty got of the grain elevator here in town.

We have another couple weeks of baseball left and as the days past the kids are getting better and better. We have been loving going to all the games and practices. This week our niece was here visiting from Arizona so the kids were over the moon that she got to come watch a game. The first games they had after she was got here was cancelled due to the weather but she and Tad were at Thursdays games. Here are some pictures from last Thursday's games and also the games from week previous.


Cute little baseball butt!

The dirt on the face was there BEFORE the after-game snacks!

Last week we also hosted a water balloon fight! haha Two of the kids' friends came over along with Avery (yes that's right we had 6 kids at the house) and had a water balloon fight and then a dip in the pool, followed by snowcones....sounds like a good day! They all had a great time I think and slept well that night too!

(Grand)Dad came to visit for Meara's baptism and Father's Day. He got here Friday evening so on Saturday we went to Exploration Place with him. That is the coolest place we've been to in a long time! The kids got to look at a whale exhibit as well as about a million other things and just about everything there they could touch and feel or pick up and play with. It was so much fun for all of us!

The kids in a 'Tornado' tube.

This is a table with running water and you had to arrange the baracades so that the ball would travel from one end to the other.

You could pull a ring up over your head and enclose yourself inside a bubble...

And finally, a day of beauty! We took the big girls to get their hair permed at the cosmotology school in Dodge City on Friday. Aren't they cute!

Ok, that's it for now. There's a lot of pictures there so I think I'm caught up......I think. Wishing everyone a very Happy Father's Day and prayers to Magan and her family (my sister-in-law)who lost her brother on Friday. So sorry for your loss.

Hopefully I will be blogging again sooner this time.