Lip Smackers

My little miss who LOVES "lipstick" (chapstick for her)!! She was so excited this morning to find her strawberry lipsmackers. She will walk around all day today putting mulitple applications on to keep her lips sweet and soft. Can you see the shine that is already there and it is only 9 o'clock. Cover girl here she comes!!

"I can feed myself!!!"

Lauryn has hit the "I can feed myself" stage. She has been feeding herself non messy things for forever but now has asserted herself with EVERYTHING. Not that I mind much I don't have to stand there and hand feed her, but one thingn Lauryn is not, is tidy. She is a pig pen, we put her in the kitchen to eat while we are all in the dining room because she had the stage where she flung everything off the tray and thought it was hilarious. This is from this morning. We had oatmeal which she loves. She literally shovels it in handfuls at a time. She is provided with a spoon but chooses not to use it, hands are better. I have had to start putting a kitchen towel on her because the other bibs were just not cutting it. Food would still leak down between her and the tray and get all over her legs. Notice the oatmeal in the hair. Happens every morning!! Crazy kid-

Green Thumbs

Ayden and Meysa love strawberries. Here they are looking for the few ripe ones left. Nana and Papa still plant a garden big enough for half of Seattle, which is ok because we are the recipients of all the extras.
The whole clan looking for the last few berries.

Lauryn thought it was pretty neat to walk between the corn rows. Almost like being back in Iowa (without all the flooding of course.)

A girl and her shoes (or anyones)

Little Miss Lauryn LOVES shoes. She can be found at any time of day trying to put on shoes, anyones shoes. She is actually pretty coordinated and succeeds most of the time. She raids the shoes basket and will find your shoes and come and try to put them on your feet as well. The top picture is Lauryn in Ayden's dress shoes which she found in his bedroom closet, and the bottom three are of Lauryn in Meysa's cowboy boots. She wore those around all afternoon, falling and them coming off and putting them back on repeatedly. She is a funny kid, and we love her!!!

More Pics of Seattle

Down on the Piers

While we were so close to the water we thought we would go and check out the piers. We didn't stay long, it was getting late and the kids were hungry but we did get a few snap shots. We are going to have to go back and spend a day just on the piers and see the aquarium and the pike place market.
Ryan was postcall today and was really a walking zombie. He was a trooper to go along for the day. This is right after we got something to eat and were leaving to head home. I think he is finding some similarity between him and the horses bum!!!(at least on postcall days when he has had less than an hour nap!!hee hee)

Space Needle

Ryan's Dad and Step-mom came to see us for the day and so we decided to head up to Seattle to see the Space Needle. I had only ever seen it from afar, so I was excited to get to go up. The day was perfect for it, blue skies and only a few clouds, which for Seattle is an absolute miracle. We got to the top and went out onto the observation deck and you could see everywhere, really cool. The kids loved looking through the telescopes to see the boats out in the water.This is a shot looking right into downtown. You can see off in the distance on your right the Mariner's baseball field.

Cool shot from the ground!!
Group photo with Ryan's Dad and Step-mom, Don and Faith. We had a lot of fun with them!!
Next to the Space Needle is several other things to do. Like the music museum and of course they had carnival rides. Ayden really wanted to ride the ride that took you way up in the air and you spun around really fast. We tried to tell him that he really wouldn't like it, and then Ayden saw the bumper cars, we decided we could do those. So he and Meysa had a good time crashing into each other.

Technical Difficulty

Ok, I am not sure what happened to my blog but somehow my background ended up looking like it was attacked by photobucket. I had added a little slideshow and somehow it changed everything. I could still get on and it looked fine but some people couldn't so I changed everything. Obviously I am not suppose to be technically up to date with my blog. Maybe someone who is really good with that kind of thing can help me!!! Sorry for the hiccup -

My Man

Thanks Katie for a cute idea!!!
Basics
1. Who is your man? Ryan
2. How long have you been together? 10 1/2 years
3. Dating/Engaged/Married? dated 2 1/2 years, engaged 8 months, married-just celebrated 8 years this month
4. How old is your man? 28
You or your man?
1. Who eats more? Him
2. Who said "I love you" first? I don't really remember
3. Who weighs more? Him, he has an extra foot on me
4. Who sings better? Me
5. Who's Older? Me by six months
6. Who's smarter? Him, he is a doctor, how can I compete with that!!!
7. Who's temper is worse? I think him, but I am not too far behind him
8. Who does the laundry? mostly me
9. Who does the dishes? mostly me
10. Who sleeps on the right side of the bed? Me
11. Who's feet are bigger? Him, like I said he has a foot on me
12. Who's hair is longer? mine, although he likes it shorter
13. Who's better with the computer? i think we're equal
14. Who mows the lawn? When we had a lawn it was Ryan, now we have rocks
15. Who pays the bills? Me
16. Who cooks dinner? Me
17. Who drives when you are together? Him,
18. Who pays when you go out to dinner? Him
19. Who's the most stubborn? both of us, gets pretty interesting
20. Who is the first one to admit when they're wrong? did I mention that we are both stubborn, we both eventually come around to the "I was wrong" part.
21. Who's parents do you see more? Probably his mom, she lives closer.
22. Who named your dog? Don't have a dog
23. Who kissed who first? Ryan kissed me
24. Who asked who out? Ryan asked me to Winterball our senior year of High School. We kind of hung out a few times before the dance and we just hit it off and kept dating
26. Who's more sensitive? Probably me,
27. Who's taller? He is
28. Who has more friends? equal
29. Who has more siblings? 8 in my family, 2 in his
30. Who wears the pants in the relationship? I would say we both do, we are pretty equally matched.

Ocean Shores

Lauryn's first time in the ocean. She loved it and kept going back for more. But the tide was coming in and my toes were frozen off, so she only got to do it a few times.
Ayden and Dad wrestling. They had fun chasing each other and wrestling in the sand.
Well our anniversary was on the 7th and Ryan and I enjoyed the most romantic evening. I shampooed my carpets and he spent the night at the hospital!!! I know you are all jealous!! Anyways on Saturday he didn't have to work so we headed to the coast with a lunch pail and a camera. I don't know why it is but pictures always seem to look better on the beach. The kids had a great time. The day was perfect and we will get back there again real soon. A view from the rock/sand bar. We saw a whale just off this and followed around till it was right in front of the beach. He/She stayed there feeding for seriously about 5 minutes. We saw it spout every few seconds and even saw it's mouth open coming out of the water. The kids of course thought they were in their own Wild America special.
Lauryn dropped her cheese stick and learned the word "dirt". She wouldn't give it up so she packed it around for a while and even took a few bites before she gave it to me.
The only time this kids sat still. He ran around the beach and rolled around in the sand the whole time we were there.
Meysa loved the beach. She enjoyed covering her feet with sand and also helping Lauryn in that area too.
We were watching a surfer freeze his bippy off trying to surf. It was ice cold water.

SAVE, SAVE, SAVE

Ok, so I went to play with the template of my blog and I got to the part where I had to delete the html of one template and copy and paste from another. The first thing on the page was save a copy of your current blog just in case. Well I thought "I need to hurry so I won't bother with that step". Well I changed the template and viewed my blog, only to find out that all of my friends and family links were GONE!!! So if you are looking at my blog and I usually have your blog link in my list but you don't see it there, just leave a comment with the address ok. I tried to find as many of them as I could, but I could be missing some. So the lesson learned- SAVE, SAVE, SAVE!!!!

Grandma and Grandpa's House

Lauryn ventured out into the gravel without any shoes. She was bound and determined to go see the cows with the rest of the kids with or without shoes.
Papa's cows come when he calls them, no need to go and round them up. He just blows his horn and they head on home. They are enjoying a treat, some corn stalks brought over by my uncle Raul. The kids got a kick out of feeding them.
Meysa hand feeding the cow a baby corn. She was brave enough to get that close but not Ayden. He likes to look from afar.
A yummy treat for the cows. With it being the middle of summer, green is really sparse. As you can see from the surrounding hills. They are in heaven. They also got some apples that had fallen off some orchard trees. It was a good day for them.
Lauryn enjoying a free ride from Papa Chip. She threw a huge fit when we extracated her from the bike to get her in the car to leave and head back to Lacey. The kids had such a good time at Grandma and Grandpa's house.

Me and My Kids

One of my greatest accomplishments by far is being a mother. I enjoy seeing my kids grow and become who their Heavenly Father wants them to become. They make me laugh and they definately make me cry. Sidenote: Lauryn by this time was already being taken back to the reception hall. It was too hot for her and she was hungry. I didn't intentionally leave her out.

Heitmann Family

We figured since we were all dressed up we would get some snapshots of our clan. This might be the only one where Lauyrn is not fussing.

Good looking bunch aren't we?!!! We all needed sunglasses to keep the sun out of our eyes.
Oh, don't you just love the construction site in the background. Happy Anniversary (on the 7th ) Eight bliss filled years!!
Handsome boy. I can't believe that he is six years old. I wonder where the time has gone.
This is one of the times that I actually got Meysa to sit still. She was too busy being a horse and running all over kingdom come.

THE BIG DAY

Ayden and Rachel (the flower girl) got to escort Teresa down the aisle. Ayden took the job of ring bearer very seriously!! He looked sharp and I think he had a good time too.

"I now pronounce you husband and wife." Don't they look good. It was a sweet ceremony and everyone got some degree of sunburn. We were ready to get into the cool of the reception hall and enjoy some lemonade!
Andy and Teresa enjoy restoring old cars, hence the oldies fabric and cake topper. It was good cake but a pain to serve. The bride and groom have finally arrived, now let the eating begin!!
They had an anniversary dance and Ryan's grandparents won with a whopping 52 years of wedded bliss. Grandma is in the black dress.

Rehersal Time

Here are the boys. Ryan is the second from the end. The wedding was in a beautiful garden with a reflection pool, gazebo and LOTS of flowers. Really a neat spot for an outdoor wedding.

The gang waiting for the pastor to stop talking so we can go eat FOOD. We were late getting to the rehersal because of road contruction and Ayden was the ring bearer, so by the time we got there and it was over it was past dinner time for the kids.

Ryan's grandpa had this RedNeck lawn mower made for Andy and Teresa, since they have a nice spread to mow. Doesn't work that great but still a great idea!!

This is Andy and Teresa's back yard at their house in Viola. It was nice and quiet and except for a little tikki torch fire the night was realitively uneventful!! Good food, courtesy of Don!!

The blushing bride to be Teresa and her captive Andy!!! Such a cute pair!!

I'm Bushed!!!

On our way to the rehearsal for Andy and Teresa's wedding we got stopped for road contruction and I happened to look back and find my sweet darling girl snoring loudly and drooling. The kids went about 110 miles an hour everyday and so when Meysa actually stopped moving, she really stopped. I couldn't pass up the opportunity to snap a pic of this. She probably won't appreciate me for this!!!