Picture catch up!

So, I figure since I have been so bad at updating you here I will just give you another pile of pictures to look at.  I DO take pictures for you often, but I forget to sit down and put them up.  So here I go..............

I make lots of lunches.  I am getting very creative.  Sometimes they get dinosaur or heart shaped sandwiches.  Sometimes they get flower shaped cheese.  Sometimes they get fruit and nuts, or cheese and meat rollups.  And some days I'm super lazy and pretzels and cream cheese is just how I roll....

I can't remember if I ever sent this to you or if I...errr..."forgot."  I think I may have emailed it -but I meant to put it up here for you too.  This was Waterworld day, uh, yah, it's called something else now, and I can't for the life of me remember.......

Oh, and this is what goes on when your sons spend the night at your sister's house:

This is Jenna's "Cave Art" drawing from school.  I think she did a pretty good job.

 Jenna, at golf practice.  Her first game is tomorrow.  She is nervous that she doesn't have practice today because there is an early game.

Jeanette, Thomas and Michael came to one of Jenna's golf practices and this is how the boys do golf practice:

This is Julie's birthday:

And this is how we do night time.  Lukas was on the floor reading a book.  Jenna is usually reading too but was exhausted this night and I think we was actually asleep already.

Love you so much, and miss you tons.  Wish you were here to crowd into that bed with us tonight.  Hurry up and get here.

The long awaited Swim and Dive Videos.

Food and Kids, thats all I really do anyway, right?

I know I have been bad these last few weeks about getting pictures and updates for you.  I feel like I have been going nonstop.  From waking up before 5am, getting bits and pieces of school done, cleaning, cooking, playing, swim, cleaning, cleaning, more cleaning....to (you know me) staying up way too late, even though I need to get up before 5am the next morning....  nonstop.  I am sure your nonstop is worse than mine.  So that is why I feel bad for not updating you pictures (because I certainly am staying up late enough reading or watching tv, and *could* be doing this instead!).

So, you know - I actually DO have curtains for the bedroom window now.  I do not yet have them up, unfortunately.  The ones I bought are grey.  Really love them.  They match that soft grey blanket that I love.  Gray? I don't think I know how to spell that.  Spell check is not telling me either one is wrong.  Gray looks better than grey.  Anyway, I always like to look at the shadows of the tree on the sheet (that is still hanging up because I am being lazy about putting a curtain rod up) in the morning when I wake up.  The shadow is different every morning, for whatever reason.  I'm pretty sure that tree doesn't move much, it is dead or dying and I can't imagine it is moving.  Although, the earth is, and I don't wake up at the same exact time every day - so the shadow is different.  So I always look.  I woke up one morning, I think it was the morning I left to come to Kansas to say goodbye.  And my tree-shadow had a heart.

This is pretty much exactly what it looked like.  To me, it is a heart.  It has never looked like that since.  It really is different every day.  I will miss it when I put the new curtains up.  I like the sun and I like my tree-shadow.

I miss cooking for you.  Every time I cook I wish you I were cooking for you and you were here to eat it and eat with me.  One night I told the kids to get bowls out.  And I let them eat cereal for dinner.  No joke.  Just as much as they wanted.  Filler up.  I had no appetite, and did not feel like cooking for just me - because whatever I had planned I knew the kids would eat a bite and a half of and it just seemed ridiculous to go through the trouble of cooking for just me when I didn't want to eat anyway.

 So the next day I woke up and made breakfast, lunch and dinner with you on my mind - and took pictures, so that I could share them with you.  It made me more determined to actually cook.  I don't know why.  I should do it every day though because I made delicious food that day.  For breakfast I made scrambled eggs, with sauteed kale, onion, mushrooms and garlic, and cheese.  Actually, I eat this almost every day, thanks to Bountiful Baskets always giving me a boat-load of kale every week.  I made the kids scrambled eggs.  But their picture was boring, so I took a picture of mine.  For lunch we had salad - kind of plain, but it looks delish, right?  Just a salad of romaine, tomato, cukes, zukes, and leftover chicken chopped.  I think cheese too, you know me and cheese - best friends and all.


For dinner I made chicken with asparagus, and wrapped it in, and baked it.  The white looking rice stuff is actually my new favorite cauliflower/kale/garlic concoction, it makes me drool thinking about it.  The kids even eat it.



So, I had really good intentions on doing a "Day in the Life Of" for you, with pictures of everything we did, hence the foody pics, but I kept forgetting to take pictures.  So I plan on doing that eventually, hopefully quite a few times.  But I did manage to get a cute shot of our adorable children at swim lessons.

Goggle Nerds, eh?

They all have sublime tans at this point, which I already told you I am incredibly jealous of.  But whatev, what can I do?  Every time I ooh and ahh over one of their perfectly golden arms or legs, Jenna says "it's okay Mommy, I love your freckles, they are so cute!"  Then she followed that up with "Do you think you should just get more freckles and be tan all over?" Yah, no, not gonna happen!  But at least she thinks I'm cute.

I can't remember if you saw this before you left, but Ethan attached himself to me one night at bedtime.  Curled his fingers around my shirt and clung on for life, I guess.  He needs his own bed.  Or maybe I do.

Miss you much, love you more. <3

Alan brought his smoker over for me to smoke some ribs.  I thought for sure I was going to ruin them or make us all sick from not cooking them long enough.  I don't know what else I thought.  I just thought I couldn't do it.  This is the best kept secret of grilling-men, I think.  Because grilling is easy.  Threw them on, put on some sauce, turned 'em a few times, and voila (or wala, as Liv likes to say), beautiful, easy, delicious, little clean-up.  They turned out wonderful.  I smoked chicken last night without any sauce and they turned out fabuloso as well.  The grill is my new best friend!  So look at my delicious ribs.  I made a beautiful salad with it, with romaine, cukes, zuches, mushrooms, etc., as well as a homemade cauliflower/kale combination that was dynamite.  Not that you can make this anytime soon, but I'm telling you anyway, because you need to hear how delicious it was: steamed, chopped kale and cauliflower.  Threw it in a bowl.  Minced a few cloves of garlic.  Threw in some olive oil and butter.  Salt and pepper.  Freshly grated parmesan.  Tossed.  Perfection.  Seriously, so delicious.  I want some more right now and I just ate breakfast.

I also had to show you what dorky kids you have.  I missed it when they were really rockin' out because at this point they know I'm recording them.