TAY-RAE-SAY

Needles to say, I'm very proud of our 3 beautiful girls! Taylor, 5; Raegan, 23mo; Sarah Beth, 8mo. As a dad, I love watching them interact. here are several pictures of them playing on the floor. We had fun laughing and taking pictures...you can see that Sarah only lasted so long!

Taylor will start kindergarten in 3 weeks and is very excited. She loves to tell people that she is 5. Answering the phone is her new favorite thing. If you call and she answers and says..."can you hang on a second?....ok, I'm back"...she really is just making you wait for no apparent reason other than to feel important.

Raegan will try to climb anything and everything. We are proud to announce she has been pacifier free for over 2 weeks. Since loosing the passy, she now is talking more than ever....and not the kind of talking that only Mom can understand. I will say, I believe pacifiers are laced with nicotine. The other day Kelly saw Raegan go into the bathroom, shut the door and shut the light off. Clearly something was up...and we now have all of the nail polish hidden. When Kelly opened the door, Raegan was sitting in the corner with....yes she had a relapse...she had a pacifier in her mouth.

Raegan's new thing is to have Zoey by her side at night. So much for keeping the dogs out at night!

Sarah Beth is growing everyday! You can see a photo of her sitting up. She now gets into the crawl position and lunges. She really doesn't crawl but has an amazing reach and seems to get whatever she wants. With two big sisters that dote over her...that seems to be pretty common (her getting what she wants). Her nick name is Princess and the Pea. She loves her sisters - Raegan and Taylor make her laugh all the time...except when they hold her down for a photo.

Super Sized Slip-n-Slide

This 90 ft stretch of plastic, water, and plenty of joy soap is not for the faint of heart! After some brief research I'm sad to say that this is only 1/6th of the worlds largest recorded slip-n-slide, but I would have to say this was probably the biggest in Iowa, well at least Marion County....OK so, let's just say I'm confident none of the other 476 residents of Tracy, Iowa have ever had a slip-n-slide of this magnitude in their back yard!

As the main feature for our 20's and 30's group's inaugural party (from Liberty Evangelical Free Church)...you could say this was our attempt to stay young. Well, needless to say the aches and pains of Monday morning were there to remind us...we're really not. After two nights of ibuprofen I can tell you...I'm still sore. In the words of Drew Nelson..."you know it's bad when it hurts to staple paper together".

A special thanks to our friends Drew & Jill Nelson as well as Dustin & Sarah Flaherty who organized this party and dreamed up the Super Sized Slip-n-Slide!

Garden Update

The fruit of our harvest has arrived! The nice thing about container gardens is their efficiency! We've been able to harvest many tomatoes, red onions, yellow onions...this is from our second cutting of lettuce. Not pictured was our peas, which I'm sad to say we didn't pick soon enough, green beans, and 15 lbs of red potatoes!

We're still picking tomatoes daily. The canning hasn't started just yet. The intention is to make salsa and speghetti sauce.

We've used peppers in potato salad...however haven't tried any of the jalepeno peppers yet! more to come on that!

Life in Libby Lu-ville

Taylor is now 5, and being the girly girl that she is, this year we took the big leap. For her beleated birthday bash we hauled 4 of her closest and dearest friends to Des Moines to a swanky little joint called Club Libby Lu. While there, the girls enjoyed an afternoon of pampering of hair, fashion and make-up play. After suiting-up in authentic looking Hannah Montana gear (wigs and all) they did a little ditty to Best of Both Worlds they enjoyed a health concious lunch of pizza, pop and cake. Taylor enjoyed her loot and fine company before heading back home.

The CAKE!!!!

After much research and undulation, Pete and I decided to temporarily enter the cake decoration business. After all, we have watched atleast 73 episodes of Ace of Cakes and are thus fully qualified to "save some money and make the darn thing ourselves". Well, after $83.00 at Hobby Lobby and two nights of experimentation, here are the results of our first run. Not bad, huh?