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.