What Fun!

Papa and the kids have been wanting to go on their first fishing adventure, for months now.

They gave up waiting for a sunny day to go fishing and went for it, in the rain. Daddy even got to go too.

Yay, she caught one!

They tried to let this poor guy go, but he didn't make it. For some reason, they thought that meant they should bring it home to me. Yuck! Caleb was quite disturbed that his head was cut off! Oh the joys of fishing! They all had a good time.

What a Relaxing Weekend!

Well, okay, not really.

I'll start with the good stuff.

We decided to join my dad, brothers, and grandpa at their beach house for the weekend. We took off, as soon as Caitlin got out of school, on Friday. The weather was absolutely gorgeous, when we got there.

We finally made it!

For some reason, we hit construction, after construction on our way over and the drive took over 3 hours!

We had fun soaking in some great beach and sun!


Everyone else got there late that night. Then, the not so fun part of the weekend began.

Let me start out by saying how amazed I am with my dad's strength. He just amazes me! He has had a couple of months from you know where, and he's stood strong. Let's see, within the past 2 months, his mom died; he was hit by a drunk driver, while driving down the road; his wife was recently diagnosed with incurable, painful, cancerous tumors that have definitely changed life as they knew it; his horrible daughter announced that they are moving his only grandchildren half way accross the country; and then the added fun of this weekend.



My dad and I enjoyed staying up late visiting and we headed to bed around 1 am. I was abruptly awoken, about 30 minutes later, by running/dripping water and an alarm. As I jumped out of bed and ran towards the sound, I felt the stream of water dripping from the ceiling. I was definitely still in a half asleep fog, when I made it to the top of the stairs and splashed into water. My dad was scrambling under the kitchen sink and put a stop to the gushing flow of water. We both stood there taking it all in for a minute, trying to figure out what the heck was going on. The whole kitchen, living room, and hall were flooded. For some reason a pipe under the kitchen sink broke, while we were all sleeping. The water was streaming out of the smoke alarm downstairs in my room, which caused all of the smoke alarms to intermediately go off. It was a little disturbing that no one else woke up to all of this! It almost looked just as bad downstairs. Water was trickling out of light switch plates, ceiling lights, and any other cracks it could find. Luckily the majority of it seemed to get through over the garage. So, we swept as much water into buckets as we could and used about 25 towels to mop up some of the bigger puddles. After that adrenaline rush, it was hard to go back to bed!



The next morning the carpet restorers came with their high powered vacuums, fans, and dehumidifiers. They quickly established that they would be ripping up the carpet and we should probably pack up and head out. My response was of course "Are you kidding me, we just unpacked!" I asked dad if we could try to find someplace to stay. I had to at least get my gas money's worth, out of the trip! We were lucky enough to be able to move all our stuff just a couple miles away at one of their friends homes. It was nice to be able to stay, but it was a lot of packing and unpacking and the other house just wasn't nearly as comfortable as theirs. By Sunday, I felt a bit like I had been run over by a truck. It wasn't quite the relaxing weekend I had pictured, but it was nice to spend some time with family!



I feel horrible for my dad. I hope the beach house requires minimal construction. I'm glad that we were there though. If nobody would have been there, the leak would have done some very massive damage. The damage in less than a half an hour was horrible. I can only imagine what it would have looked like after a day or week.


Here are a couple pictures of the damage.





The Living Room










I could not believe how much water was still sitting under the ripped up carpet padding, even after the heavy duty vacuuming!








The flooding downstairs garage.

We did manage to enjoy the beach a little bit more, before we left.

Caitlin and Uncle Nicholas

Opa, Nicholas, and Caitlin

A Chapter in My Life...

is over. This week we closed the preschool up for the summer. We rent a large space and classrooms during the school year, but we have to take down and clean out our large space for the summer. It is a HUGE room that is usually quite full and colorful. The Huge walls are always covered in fun stuff. So, it always looks quite bleak, when we strip it of EVERYTHING. This year, it was really weird cleaning everything and packing it up, knowing I won't be there to unpack and set it up again. After everyone had left, I realized that I dropped a key inside, so, I ran back in to find it. As I turned to leave, it hit me like a ton of bricks. I was in tears. The emotional side of school ending hadn't really hit me yet. It's been my and the kid's second home for 8 years. I am going to miss teaching in this wonderful place with such wonderful people. I feel so blessed to have had this experience.

Preschool is Out!

I don't know where this school year went, but Caleb and I are out for the summer.

Caleb had fun playing in the bouncy house at his end of the year party.

Caleb had fun with his buddy Tyler, at school this year. These two are pretty funny. They've had fun since Tyler started toddling around. Tyler is a year younger, but quickly caught up to Caleb. He's now inching above him.

What a couple of cuties!

The Children's Museum

Last week we had our school field trip to the Children's Museum. Ryan was nice enough to take Caleb, with his class, since I had just been the day before with my class.

He had fun painting his face.

What a masterpiece!

Enjoying a yummy sandwich.

He had lots of fun with his best buddy Tyler.

A little too much fun in the dig pit



Watch out daddy!




It was nice enough to check out the park afterward.

Big Changes

Well, we're finally moving! We just have a little change to our destination. Ryan's work is opening a new restaurant in Denver, Colorado and a little over a month ago, they asked him if he would consider relocating to open the restaurant for them. He of course said "I doubt my wife would go for it, but I'll run it by her." Of course, when he told me, I instantly said "I don't think so." I told him that I'd do a little research to give it a chance. That night I did a lot of reading and I suddenly got an overwhelming feeling that that's where we needed to be. I told Ryan that I thought we should do it. He of course gave me a bewildered look. For those of you who know me, you know that I'm NOT an impulsive person. I like to have every aspect of every little detail planned out. So, this whole thing is WAY out of my comfort zone. I do feel like it's the right decision though. We have been wanting to move to a different climate for years now and all our moving expenses will be paid for. So, it looks like we will probably be heading out there sometime in July. We don't have a specific date yet. We are wanting to buy a house in one of the suburbs south/southeast of Denver.

It's kind of been a whirlwind of emotions this past month. So, I really have tried not to think about the emotional side of moving away from most of my family. I know it's going to be VERY hard. I really just can't think about it. I wish they could just all come with us!:)

Busy, Busy, Busy!!!

I know that I have been a bad blogger lately. Life has been so busy. My last month of school is always quite full with Mother's Day, final projects, and trying to squeeze everything in. It's so hard to believe that we only have one more week of school left. Where has this year gone?!? It's been really hard this week, going through all of my (MANY) school supplies that I have collected over the past 8 years and packing them up.(More to come on that in another post.) Words can't even describe what a wonderful experience this job has been. It's been such a wonderful working environment, it almost hasn't felt like work. I've been blessed to work with such wonderful women. They have become such great friends to me, over the years. We've had a lot of fun. Of course we've all had a couple of classes that make us want to pull our hair out, but that's when it's great, when the year flies by!:) I'm truly going to miss teaching at Berry Bright. It really doesn't help that I've had a fantastic class this year. They are all near and dear to my heart. It's going to be hard to let them go!


Well, it's been a wet, cold spring, but now we've gone straight to summer.
Despite the snow in the foothills, we've had record breaking temperatures this week. The past four days have been in the 90's! The kid's have been cooling off on the slip and slide.

I don't know what's appealing about this bucket of grassy water, but they couldn't stay out of it!

Caitlin had her school program this week. She was a carrot. She is turning into quite a little actress. I've gotta try to get the video up. She's a hoot to listen to.

What a Sick Feeling!

I have had overwhelming thankfulness, this afternoon, for my dear children.

Today, I let Cailtin ride the school bus home.(I only let her do this every once in a while, since it takes her 40 minutes to get home and we can see the school from our house.) She thinks it is quite fun though. Anyway, I went for a walk on the side street next to us. As I was walking back towards home to meet the bus, I kept hearing police sirens and then a solid flow of traffic down this little rural road I was walking on. I knew there must have been an accident that closed the highway. Of course the thought crossed my mind that I hoped Caitlin was okay. I picked up the pace a little as I trudged through the grass on the shoulder, since my quiet walk had turned into highway traffic. The bus was able to get to me, and Caitlin was safe and sound. When we got home, I looked online to see what was going on, on the highway. My heart just dropped, when I read there was an accident involving a fatality and a full school bus from Caitlin's school. Thankfully there weren't any serious injuries on the bus.
Still a little too close to home though.

As the helicopters hover around our house, I'm so thankful for my family. It's easy to forget how quickly things could change. I'm so very glad it wasn't me getting that phone call that my daughter's school bus had been in a head on collision. And I'm so glad that there weren't any major injuries on the bus.