Watermelon Babies

I love the fact that my bizarre sense of humor has pass on to my children. We now have a garden and we planted ONE watermelon plant. That plant took over like no other and we got 7 watermelons off of it, some larger and more edible than others. I had no clue what to do with all of them. Jason picked one up and started to cradle it and talk baby talk to it. We both formulated our plan. To dress them up as "babies" with faces, hats, diapers, blankets, and even belly buttons. We put them into "baskets" and delivered them to unsuspecting families. The boys had so much fun coming up with little notes pinned to their diapers and naming them.

Watch out for pumpkin Buddha babies or triplet zucchini's!

 
Jason with the first baby. They got better as we went along.



 


Nick being surprised with the baby. They named ours Charlie but shorten it to Chuck.



 



Nick cutting up Chuck. He scares me a little


 





Nice. Nick even drew a tear on it. How ghetto.

Shelley's 26th Birthday

Last Thursday we finally celebrated Shelley's birthday. We had the theme 'Tool Belt Diva'. We played a name that tool game and had a bird house building contest. Jen and Alene won that one and scored some sweet tools. Shelley got a tool belt, girl style, and a pink tool kit. We had manly food - nachos, hot wings, and IBC root beer out of the bottle. Happy birthday Shelley. This is suppose to be one of our last big parties but who knows....

 
The gang of divas.

 








The gals building the birdhouses.

 
Jen and Alene with their winning birdhouse.

 

The cake. I was mighty proud of this one.

First Day of School

Well actually this is a picture of the 3rd day of school if I must be completely honest. We had just gotten home at 1 in the morning on the first day of school from Colorado and I forgot to take pictures. I was lucky to do their hair and get them there on time!
Alas, I don't even have a picture of Nick going off to Jr. High for the first time. And even worse, Jason as a Freshman. We left him here with friends and missed his first 2 days at High school. What a pathetic excuse for a mom!
 

Camp ILA

This weekend Cole and I found ourselves at Camp ILA which is a camp for families that have kids with arthritis. ILA means , Imagine Life without Arthritis. Cole's friend at work, Matt, is in the Tempe Kiwanis Club and had asked us to volunteer. It was a great weekend and I wish we had spent more time getting to know the families. We were on kitchen duty and still had a blast. A big thank you to Matt for giving us this opportunity and for letting us stay the second night at his cabin so Cole wouldn't keep people up all night with his snoring!

 








Some of the campers teaching us songs around the campfire.

 









Camp Wamatochick near Prescott

 


Cole and I in the kitchen.

 








Matt, Cole and I with our award certificates!

Guy's Weekend

Well our husbands have been a little put out with us girls for all of our parties and girls nights and weekends out. So we told them to shut it and plan their own stuff then. Jon Mabb took the hint and planned a guy weekend. They went to Long Beach for 3 days and went deep sea fishing. Coleman enjoyed the time away and a pretty good buffet at a casino.
They left on Friday afternoon and went to the buffet that night. On Saturday morning, they woke up at 4am to be on the boat by 5. Fishing went pretty good earlier in the day but dwindled by the afternoon. Plagued by seals and more experienced fisherman I guess. Cole got 2 sea bass, a barracuda, and a rock fish. Jon lost a barracuda to a seal and was not too pleased. Tyler did fairly good and poor Chad kept catching "bait" fish. Chad finally got an edible fish at 4 in the afternoon. Good job! At the end of the boat ride, some fishing pro on the boat had caught 20 barracuda and was giving some away. The boys snagged them so everyone got fish to take home for supper!

 

Chad and Tyler

 

Jon-The team captain of trips :)

 

Cole and Chad

 

Our boys, finally on a guys trip! Maybe this will buy us some more girls nights out!!

Blog-o-rama

I have just blogged at least 6 entries and still have a few more to go. I think I will wait a week so people have time to read it and not spend half a day on our little humble family blog. Sorry for the backlog and try to enjoy!

P.S. to my readers of our food critic blog. I'm going to update it as well with pictures and all that good stuff!

Colorado Bloopers

I love all the goofy picture that we take . We are a weird family and unfortunately I parade it around to the chagrin of Cole.(and his dignity)

 

Nick and Ryan hiking up to Treasure Falls. They were trying to scare the little kids.

 

Our nephew Aidan asleep. (Afton's 2nd boy) He is a funny little kiddo and definitely has second boy syndrome!

 

Baby Oliver spit up all over Cole's shirt so he took it ALL off. I'm sorry for disturbing some of you with this image. Afton's in the back and I love her shocked expression.
Hey girls, back off! He's mine!

 

Me being a dork. What's new?

Old Hundred Mine.

On our last day in Colorado we decided to do something completely new. It is amazing that we have been going to the "cabin" (which now that it double in size, we should almost say lodge!) for 16 years and we didn't even think about getting a travel brochure to see what there is to do around town. We saw that in Silverton there is a old mine that does a tour then you can pan for gold. It was really fun and glad we decided to fork the money out for it. $69 for the family. Thank you Quinn's for kicking our tushes to try something new again!

 
Suited up for the tour. Our group didn't scare anyone away like we hoped. A full tour group.

 


Inside the mine. I forgot Donelle is claustrophobic. She did O.K. and held her panic attack pretty well. She won't be going back!


 



Panning for gold. We got squat expect for little silver beads. That part was pretty lame but the little kids did not notice the lameness in the least.


 





Another older mine in Silverton.

Vallecito Lake

We met up with the Quinn's at Vallecito Lake. We have never even thought of swimming in this lake as it is always freezing. The Quinn's are always up for anything and so the kids took the plunge. It was freezing but the kids had fun.

 

 

 

 

Treasure Falls continued

 
The boys at the top pool.

 




The Quinn family. Brooklyn was not happy.

 










Donelle and I

 














The valley

Treasure Falls

We took the Quinn family to see Treasure Falls just outside of Pagosa Colorado. It is one of our favorite places. The Valley that it is located in is truly breathtaking.

  The gang at the bottom of the falls.

 

 

 

Colorado...again

We love Colorado so much, we decided to go again 3 weeks after we got home the last time. Aaron joined us and got to see the new "cabin" for the first time. Afton had her 30Th birthday up there and we also met the Quinn's who were there for a family reunion.

 
Greg and Aaron playing chess and Cole looking on.

 

Afton with her cake I made. She is a domestic goddess now so I made her a sewing cake.

 






Nick playing charades. He was being Wall E.

 







The first day up, Ryan jumped off the top bunk and broke the bunk beds. Luckily PopPop is a master at almost everything and cut and replaced the broken plank. Ryan is trying to look upset but he's not that good of a actor.