Old time Olive and faces

Olive always looks like she could come out of another era. SO one day she had on this shirt and I got inspired. Sat her down took a few shots and I just love how they look.

Oh the joys of parenting.

Oh man, again the joys of parenting....all the crying and whining. eekkss

But then it is all worth it...one smile makes you forget.

The traditional book reading before bed. Ethan has to read a book a night for school. So it keeps us regular.

August 08

Olive LOVEs birthday cake. More please was this caption. Olive's birthday was on the first day of school. To bad, but I guess she did not care as long as she got a cake with candles. Olive is 3 years old.

Here is Olive sitting in the pick up area of her pre-school. It is so funny you drop them off and they sit in their little circle with their class and then when the entire class is there they go to class. Does not seem like it would work, but it does. They all sit and talk to each other before they go to class. Dee the Dog still lives at school which all the kids love. It seems to be going well-but Olive brings her blankie just in case.

It is Ethan's first day of school. He wears a uniform with really helps on deciding what to wear. He is learning a lot of Spanish already and is having a great time. He has a really good teacher and the entire school is just so different, they call the kids "love", and hug them. It is full of energy and comfort, yet very orderly...so for Ethan it is working well. He is a little a head of his class as far as reading, so his teacher has him read books and help teach the class during English reading time.

Here at the Matthews Fair Olive is catching a shark, which won her this gross Ernie doll thing that is still stuck on the window of the Jeep. Pretty gross.

Ethan ordered three darts and popped three balloons and won a stuffed snake. Yippeee...but it was fun to see him play, he has no fear. The other day he was playing football with Jeremy and he threw the ball really hard and Jeremy said, great throw Ethan. Ethan matter of factly replied "I know I have a gun for an arm"....totally Napoleon Dynamite sounding....still makes me laugh.

Oh dear, this ride.....the poor ride attendant would walk around making sure all the kids were buckled in, and by the time he would make it around half the kids would unbuckle. So he went around and around and around, then kids were getting impatient so some started crying and wanting to get off. So he let them off and then went around and around again, buckling buckles. Then the ride started, and some kid stood up, so he had to stop the ride and go around again...I was about to crawl over and pull the kids off....Olive just kept yelling, "when is this thing going to start"....Ethan was also concerned that he still had not collected his tickets yet.....So he was yelling "tickets, here's my tickets".....all I could do is shake my head.

The swings, Olive just kept waving and yelling ETHAN, ETHAN,

Ethan is such a good brother, on this ride Olive could not climb in, so Ethan climbed back out and stood by her holding her hand until the attendant helped her in. His instructions that day was to NEVER leave her side. So he didn't.

Olive go to ride on Moon Pie.....I was a bit jealous...but I think I would have smashed moon pie.

Here are some pictures from earlier when we went peach picking. Ethan and Olive were both in search of the best peach tree.

Only Ethan would point out the "funny" peach.

Miss Independent, is ALWAYS trying to do everything on her own. She was in charge of the box.

August 08

Here Ethan caught the smallest large mouth bass in the history of man kind. It wad really tiny....it looks a lot larger in the picture because he has it so close to me, but it was about an inch big....it was pretty funny.

Here Ethan did catch a fish. Olive actually touched it, but right after this it flopped out of Jeremy's hands and onto the ground. Olive's blood curdeling screem could be heard for miles and miles. Now she is terrified of fish....oh dear.

Fishing at Candlewyck Pond. It is a nice place to have.

The kids are running after us, as our guide has us going down the run backwards....yikes

here we are on one of the runs.

Here we went to the white water rafting center. Milly had hurt her neck-so she had to sit out and watch the kids. They seemed to have fun on the climbing rocks.

Tom and Milly came to visit us this month. August of 08. They did a lot of fishing and swimming.

Jeremy was playing feed the little birdie. Olive did not know and was getting frusterated that he kept pulling the cupcake away. She went after it however.

Ethan's Birthday at the pool

Elijah came over to swim for Ethan's birthday. They boys always have fun together. They really enjoy so many of the same things it is so nice to have wonderful friends.

lake wysota 08 wi

Ethan and Papa trying to outmatch each other with their favorite word.....PERFECT.

What a cute sequence of events. The girls trying to catch the water spashes.

Again, right out of camera, yummy light, the girls were reaching over trying to catch the splashes with their hands.

That yummy sun. I have a harder time getting this light down in NC for some reason. I think the mountains are to the west of us and I don't get that late evening sun. WI evenings are so much cooler than I remember, but also so nice.

Auntie Ericka and Olive

Auntie Koko and Ava

The girls loved to help Papa drive and peep the horn. Olive always plugged her nose when we went under bridges. It was pretty cute. Ave always ducked and Papa always laughed.

Uncle Karl schooled us in wake boarding. Jeremy and Karl both took some nice falls, and Ericka all got it all on tape.

I have to admit I was not thrilled with this idea. But Jeremy did try to help Ethan water ski. He did not get up, but tried 4 times. He still had fun and thought next year he would be able to do it. So that gives us something to look forward to.

Awe. I think it was near our anniversary. 11 years or something. It was really nice to see Jeremy so happy and relaxed. He loves the water and his family, which this week he got a lot of.

The sunlight was so yummy. This shot is taken right out of camera as with most of my personal blog photos, but it is about perfect just the way it is.

Anther fish of some sort. They all look the same to me.

It was from a family from Minneapolis. Those city slikers and their littering...just kidding, I think we need to write them back yet.....

We then were doing our civic duty picking up garbage floating in the lake when we found a message in a bottle.

Yeah, a catfish....GREAT....no I guess I mean great....at least we got to let it go because the last thing I am going to do is fry that thing up. eeekkss

we are getting closer to seeing the fish....dad was way more excited than Ethan. That is a first.

Here is the bite.

Olive always wanted to be in the Captian's Chair. But of course I was always afraid she would fall out. I see here, she is in her PJ's. Well you never know with me, maybe she was in them all day...they sure are cute if she was.

Heidi and Jamie came down to visit us for a few days. It was so special to have our "family" come to visit us. We really miss you guys so much in Charlotte. I really wish you farmed tobacco instead, but then you really would not be doing very well. So best wishes on the farm. I know your struggle with yeild GREAT rewards.

The kids had an extra special time fishing this year. Next time I will bring a book, for this is the view I had for hours.

The kids would use the tube as their island. Uncle Karl would be the shark. You never knew when there would be an attack and someone would be pulled overboard.

These are now back the summer at Lake Wysota. The kids LOVED to tube. I think we spent our entire food budget on gas. It was a good thing mom had the kitchen stocked with groceries for us. Thanks mom, we had a extra special time this year.

Mia is now 9 years old, but if you toss her ball she still can move.

Olive does not always do things the way Ethan would like, for example when you shovel dirt you must keep it in the designated spots. I think you can hear Ethan's self dialogue in this picture.

Again, April of 08 we planted a black berry patch. The kids LOVE to garden and dig. Here Olive is grunting REALLY loudly-I think you can almost hear it through the picture.

This is an add on photo, of spring 08 when we did a lot of hiking. Olive loves to ride on dad's shoulders. We went out exploring in our neighborhood to look at a resident wood pecker.