Miscellaneous Post

There have been a few different things and pictures that I have been wanting to post, so I will do it all at one time. The first will be of Gunnar at his last swim meet, which was held at Coffeyville. He seems to be enjoying it pretty well. He didn't have his best swims yesterday, but I think he still had a good time.

Here he is waiting on the block. Only the swimmers and coaches were aloud to go inside the fence by the pool, therefore I did not get a good picture of him swimming.

I got a good picture of him after a swim talking with his friends.

I have been experimenting with the shooting modes on my new camera. I always enjoy taking pictures of the kids while they swim, hence the pictures below.



Gunnar boy and his goggles.

Miss Wylie.

Wylie is getting much better at swimming. She recently swam clear across the pool (24 feet) to her dad.

Gunnar still enjoys the slide, while Wylie still refuses to go down it.

We sort of have a new pet in the DeWeese household. Wylie named him Toadie, which I am pretty sure this is a frog, but Wylie still thinks she'll keep the name. He hangs out on the side of our fish pond or on a lily pad and then jumps in the water every time we open the back door to go outside. Although, he is letting us get closer and closer to him everyday.

A front view of Toadie on a lily pad.

A side view of Toadie.

So when we tore down the house next door we knew we would find "treasures" that would come up from the ground and they will probably keep coming up for the next 20 years. Josh found this piece of glass on the lot. And yes, the color is actually that pretty and it is also a hefty chunk of glass. I would guess it weighs around 4 pounds. Gunnar liked it a lot. He said he though maybe Superman might be real, because it looks like kryptonite. Gunnar also informed me that if it were a diamond we would get to meet the President of the United States.

The New Lots!

A BEFORE picture of the front of the house. And the AFTER picture. The BEFORE picture of the lot next to the old house.

And the AFTER picture.

The BEFORE view of the house from the front of our fence.

And the AFTER picture.

We obviously have more work to do on the lot...the next step is to bring in some fill dirt, which we can then plant grass and gravel a new driveway so we can park under the carport easier.

Happy Father's Day!

We decided on Saturday morning to head towards Wichita, so that we could do a little camper shopping, go out for a nice dinner (we had all you can eat King Crab Legs...Yum!), stay in a hotel, and then Sunday morning go over to the zoo. Josh was nice enough to let me get a camera Saturday after our dinner. It is the Canon XS10 IS that I have been wanting since I saw it in the Consumer Reports magazine. It's a lot like my other Canon, which I liked a lot, but this new one has twice the mega pixels and more than twice the zoom. The zoom will come in handy for Gunnar's swim meets I think. A pretty good picture of the three of them.

Wylie got a great look at the tiger. The sheets of glass that her and I were looking through were perpendicular to each other.
The tiger exhibit is new to the Wichita Zoo. Much better that before! In the picture I was testing out my 20x zoom. This was a different tiger than the one Wylie was looking at in the picture above.The kids loved looking at the map of the zoo.
Who doesn't like the gorillas?

Gunnar and Wylie looking at the bear.

Josh and Wylie in the jungle, which is my one of my favorite parts of the zoo.

An excellent picture of the kids...this is my new background on my computer.

Wylie with her Daddy.

Wylie and the Komodo Dragon.

The kids had a take a couple of swims in the pool. These were taken right after I got my camera.

Gunnar and Wylie really had a good time playing together in the pool. Overall, I thought it was a good Father's Day weekend.

Busy Summer!

I finally got the KC pictures posted from the weekend before last and have more to post from last weekend where we had Jillian's (Josh's cousin Randi's daughter) 8th birthday party at our house. We had a great time! It was a lot of fun to get the backyard ready. Also, last Thursday the guys (people who we hired) started tearing down the house and taking out the trees on the lot that we bought next door, which made things a little bit hectic, but it only took them two days and it was gone. I will post pictures soon!

Fortunately Saturday night was a beautiful day to hang out in the backyard and swim. Unfortunately it rained Saturday night and I left my camera sitting in a lawn chair. That morning Aunt Angie found it laying in a puddle of water, which of coarse ruined it.

The good news is I should be getting a new one soon! I have already been checking the Consumer Report Recommended. Anyway, here at some of the picture from Jillian's birthday party. Side Note: I started this post 4 days ago...sigh...and now I have a new camera, which was really nice of Josh to let me get since it was the day before fathers day (pictures with new camera from our fathers day trip will hopefully be posted soon).

Quite a bit of swimming took place. You can see Grandma January (Nanny) checking it out. Wylie liked spraying Nanny with the water guns she brought for them.

This is where most of the conversations took place. And yes, that is a fire going in the pit even though it is warm out. I though Wylie looked cute wearing Dustin's hat, while he gave her a ride around the pool.
Again, everyone hanging out enjoying each other company. From left to right: Aunt Angie, Uncle James (Face is covered has the green shirt on) Joe, Christina, and Grandma J.

The birthday girl (Jillian) with Randi and Dustin.

The kids warming up by the fire after a swim. It kind of looks like Randi is about to get burned by the tiki torch, although no one was burned at this party...only Jillian got a chunk of toe taken out by the sidewalk. She was still a trooper though!


Jeff is giving Gunnar a Wylie a ride around the pool. I am pretty sure anyone who got in the pool with the kids had to give a ride.

Gunnar a Jillian just hanging out.

Dustin and Jeff in the pool doing what they would say "just living the dream!"

This weekend was the start of Dustin's vacation.

A Trip to KC

Josh had a conference at the Great Wolf Lodge in Kansas City last weekend and we decided to buy one more night at the hotel and make it a mini vacation. The lodge has a huge indoor water park.

Wylie's favorite was the red slide in the kiddy pool. She had to have went down it 30 times, at least!By the smile on her face she definitely liked the slide.

This is a picture of the front of the inside water park.

There is a bucket on top that drops 1,000 gallons about every five minutes.

It's a lot of water!You can kind of see Josh, Gunnar, and Wylie to the right of the waterfall.

A good picture of Josh and Gunnar I thought.

Wylie and Daddy waving from the top of the playground.There were 3 slides that you slid down on tubes. Josh and Wylie rode some of them together and Gunnar and I rode all three together. Of coarse Gunnar had ridden them all by himself in the first 20 minutes that we were there. I think he is so brave! I couldn't have paid me to do that when I was 8 years old. I was a scaredy cat though.The view from the balcony of our hotel room was nice. There was a man that would play steal drums in the afternoon that was nice to hear.You could also see the miniature golf coarse from the balcony. The kids and I went and played a round while Josh was in his meeting. Gunnar had 2 holes in one!

We ended up spending an evening at Josh's' uncle John's house, who live in KC. This is a picture of his wife, Amy and their son Joey.

A cute picture of their youngest Molly.

The kids played with some bugs that they found in the yard. Jack is the oldest of the 3 kids his is unfortunately the one turned around.

Cannon Ball!!

It is officially swim-time for the DeWeese's! These picture were taken during one of their three swims yesterday. They went to bed pretty early last night...all the swimming wore them out! Well, I think Josh and I had a pretty good 9 days off and now it's back to work again. See, you think as teachers we would get the summer off, but not exactly, or at least not the whole summer. I start my usual summer job at Upward Bound through Independence Community College where I teach ACT math prep to high school students. It's only 3 days a week and only for the month of June. Josh, bless his heart, start drivers ed tomorrow. This too, should only last the month of June and maybe into July. He will usual work 8-10 hour days 6 days a week in order to get it all done in a month. He will also be coaching summer softball a couple of nights a week. As for the kids, Gunnar is going to do swim team and Wylie will stay in Gymnastics.

Pre-School Graduation Pictures.

I had said that I was waiting for my brother-in-law to e-mail some pictures from Wylie's graduation on one of my last posts. Well, Joe just happened to leave his camera in my car the other day after spending a couple of days with us, so I downloaded the pictures I have been wanting. I thought they were good. I trimmed a few of them up a little in order to get the other faces out of the picture. Enjoy!

A Man of Many Talents!

I thought I would take a moment to brag on my husband for a moment. If you ask Gunnar what his dad does he will say many things like; Scientist, Firefighter, EMT, Divers Ed. Teacher, Bus Driver, and last but not least Softball Coach. Josh’s team are the Regional runner-up in softball as of last week. I am pretty sure they would have gone to state had his shortstop not have been hurt in the 1st inning. I didn’t realize the team received an award till I found it this weekend in his truck (see Wylie below). Josh is good at everything he does and I think he did a great job coaching this year. Gunnar, Wylie and I are sure proud of him.

I Came, I Saw...I Conquered!

I conquered the kids' room that is. Holy cow! It was messy! My cousin had left a post on facebook about how it only took her children 2.5 seconds to mess up a room and that it would take her hours to clean it up. I totally understand what she means. I hate to admit that Gunnar and Wylie's room has been messy for awhile now, mainly because I also knew that it would take me hours.

I don't know if it was the waffles I had this morning or the fact that Josh is bringing back more stuff from the farm and I had to organize the storage closet upstairs, but I finally got motivated! I thought it would be funny to show how bad it was by posting before and after pictures.

South side of the room BEFORE...

South side of the room AFTER.

North side of the room BEFORE...

North side of the room AFTER!

Congradulations Wylie!

Wylie graduated from the United Methodist Pre-school last week. I would have posted these pictures earlier, but I was waiting for my brother-in-law to e-mail me some pictures that I took with his camera. (I am still waiting Joe! Ha! Ha!) His camera took a lot better pictures than mine, because of the lighting, I think. I have been working on trying to talk my husband in to getting me a new camera, which I think it's going pretty good so far.

Anyway, Josh and I can hardly believe our baby will be going to kindergarten next year! We are just so proud of her...she is such a good student and loves school! Here are a few pictures of before the ceremony, I will try and get the other pictures that I took with Joe's camera soon!

There was long line to get up to this spot to take a picture of your kid.

Wylie and I got in behind Halle and her mom, so of course they had to get their picture taken together. I am sure the other parents waiting in line were not happy..



Here is Wylie with her teacher Mrs. Julie. Before bed the other night Wylie gave Josh a notebook and pen and told him to write down what she said and here it is: "Dear Mrs. Julie, I miss you very much. I hope you have a nice life. Love, Wylie" The next day Wylie put it in the mailbox. She told me she had to send it, because she really missed her!