Spontaneous trip down South!

Thanks to the generosity of some dear friends, we got the opportunity to take off and play in a beautiful condo in Destin, Florida! We packed our car and drove the 10 hours, and lounged on the beach for 3 days!

Fish swimming all around our feet, like in Hanauma Bay, Hawaii!

Beach frisbee...

First time to wheel a grocery shopping cart into our little condo!

Huge monsoon storm!  So we hit mini-golfing while we waited for the rains to pass...



Summer Adventures!

Loving working on Stephen's scouting... here with Uncle Sterling, helping sell these awesome trashcans Sterling makes, for his Salesmanship merit badge.

And building a full-scale stage model for his Theatre merit badge...

Geneve enduring nail-trimming ~

Helping pack and move Aunt Feffer and Christopher!

Playing with cousins at Kemah. Kassie now wears that shark hat daily. So nice.

Happy Olympics Opening Day!

Tall and handsome Stephen started the day by volunteering at our library for his Citizenship in the Community Scout merit badge - go Steevie!

Some people bob for apples, but Kenny bobs for coins in the fountain. (He grudgingly threw them all back in after he was done retrieving them...)

Glued to the couch watching the Olympics!

About to lose another tooth...



Take-your-kids-to-work day at HP!

So much fun!  Free goodies, touring the computer-making factory, and eating lunch with Dad!

Then after a long day at work, Kassie unwinds at home by becoming her superhuman alterego:

"The Green Diamond"  (the undies really top off the outfit.)

She has super, super powers. Have you ever?  (Green cape and hood made from HP bag)

And Geneve gets a costume too.

Loving living back in Texas

Here are Steevie and me at our Young Men/Young Women church youth volleyball activity... it's so fun to have him be a teenager and go hang out with him doing fun stuff!

The kids helped me paint polka dots in our craft room...

And who knew we had Bird of Paradise plants growing in our yard!! Love it!

Kassie is displaying the eggs we found in a nest in our palm tree. The momma hasn't been back to sit on them for 4 days so we're caring for them.

And happy birthday to my cute brother Sterling today... here's to remembering good times with him (we're dancing at Stephanie's wedding a few years ago).

Happy 4th of July!!

Our family at an HP Picnic!

Thankful for the thankless jobs...

It's always good to do thankless jobs because it reminds us of how thankful we are for a home to do these thankless jobs in!  Tonight we completed several of those little items... installing 80 knobs on drawers and cabinets around the house (you only notice when those AREN'T there because there's nothing to pull it open!), changing out the 2 previous thermostats to programmable ones and spackling and repainting, putting together a bookshelf for our den, and hanging the last picture in the living room. It feels great to be pretty much done now!

Geneve might quite possibly be the most loved and spoiled dog on earth. I don't think she takes more than 9 steps a day on her own feet because one of the kids is holding her or hauling her around on a blanket or something. And she always looks so forlorn, but she loves it. She's always just so tired. It's so hard to be her. Whatever.

Uncle Dustin helped Kas make a birdfeeder, which now hangs on our kitchen window. We can't wait for the birds to find it. And we love watching our new little momma bird who sits on her 2 little white eggs in her nest up in our palm tree.