I finally went for a regular check up after 3 years. I figured seeing my OB/GYN counts a little right? But yesterday my Dr told me that he was diagnosing me with diabetes and slightly high cholestorol. For those of you who are in the medical field my A1c was 7.5 and my bad cholestorol was 126. But the good news is that the Dr thinks with diet change and weight loss I could in 6 months be taken off my meds. So here I go into the holiday season with no choice of the matter of diet.

We had Indian Summer on Thurs.-Sun down here. So on Sat we went to Old Mans Cave, Conkels Hollow that is "stroller" accessible. It was beautiful, we even saw a 4 point buck in the woods. Here are some pictures from that day. I didn't post my favorite one yet, because it is being used.....

We are asking everyone for their prayers right now will give reasons at a later date. Thanks

Well no new pictures because no camera. We are busy getting ready for the new school year. Suzy is busy trying new fruits and vegetables, Sammi is busy asking if each passing school bus is her bus and Beth ignores me when I tease her that school starts next week. Earl is busy working what hours he can get.
Last night Sammi fell asleep at 8:30 and Suzy at 9:15. So Beth and I decided to watch a Veggie tale show when Beth opened the cabinet and bent over to pick her movie she banged her head into the corner of the door, now she has a beautiful bruise on her forehead.
We attended the birthday party of one of the kids friends on Saturday. The kids had a blast catching crawdads and minnows. I am afraid that I am one of those Mom's that doesn't freak out when the girls are near water. It could be because I played in the creek growing up and without my Mom telling me I respected the water. (It could also be because I was near by watching like a hawk haha).

I had promised some pictures from our vacation. We have been so busy since we came back that I haven't had the patience to wait on blogger to load them up. SInce we have been home we have gone to 3 VBS, 1 Peenview Quartet concert, 2 Dr appt, 1 fun fest, MANY yard sales haha, and now we are trying to get ready for school. Sammi goes to headstart on Sept 8th and Beth starts back to school the 24th. I am still on my diet (yikes), so far I have lost 17.8 lbs and yes the point whatevers count haha. Around 13 more and I will have lost all of my Suzy weight.

We are at (what we we refer to as ) the duck park. This was the little tykes playground. Beth and the boys let Sammi have a FEW minutes to play and explore the wooden train. Then we were off to the big kids playground.

We had a picnic at the park so we put Danielle and Suzy in my stroller, when Vicki and I saw them we laughed and laughed. Vicki said it looked like Danielle was climbing up Suzy. Maybe they were trying to escape the stroller hahaha

One morning when we were getting ready to go. With 6 kids it took an hour to get ready to drive 5 minutes down the road. I would like to say that the 2 youngest took the most time to get ready for. I told Vicki today that she needed me for a maid and the she should buy the other side of her house and we would move there. haha She was looking for her cell phone while we were talking on it, I suggested she look at her ear for it. Ah the joys of being a mother that has not had enough sleep in the last year.

We got to take the kids to a park called Knoble's. It was fun until the 3 kids in this picture wanted to go on the big Ferris Wheel and Vicki said that I should go with them. Have I mentioned that I am afraid of heights. In fact anyone who went on our mountain hike about 9 years ago would know that. I got to this point in the hike up the mountain that you had to climb a TELEPHONE POLE ladder and to your left was nothing but a beautiful view. I did not go all the way up I didn't even get to the top of the mountain. SO I guess you could say that instead of 46'r or 49'r I am a 1/2'r. Anyway we survived the Ferris wheel and the kids had fun.

We had a wonderful time at the 4th celebration. We are blessed to get to be in the parade every year. Not only do the kids love it but we miss out on all of the candy being thrown, haha. We have 'Rutlands Famous Roast Beef" that people LOVE so much that they paid $3.50 a sandwich for this year. Or you could buy it by the tub for $20, this way you get more meat and it seems to last longer. I know men that have a contest to see how many sandwiches they can eat, in the numbers of 15 - 20 every year.

Our church had 2 floats this year, one for VBS and one for "What Does Independence mean to Me" theme of the parade this year. Beth was on the VBS and Sammi on the other one. We know that one of them won 2nd place we just don't know yet because no one was there when they announced the trophies. Sammi got to sit in a little fire truck and ring the bell. I on the other hand walked the parade route handing out bottles of cold water. That was my exercise for the day.

I helped to paint the background for this float and had a blast. It took all day Wed, even through church. We are going to use this for a background in VBS July 20-24.

This is how Suzy watched the fireworks. Ours were at 11:00 that night. It made getting up for church difficult. Our SS teacher said that she appreciated those who made the effort to leave their house and come to church. I told her it wasn't leaving the house that was hard but the bed. haha.

One of the blogs that I like to read often is The Mennobrarian so today while I was reading her blog I was asked to tell 7 things you might not know about me. Seeing that usually only family and my friends read this I'll try not to bore you with stuff you know.

1.I was proposed to 2 times before my husband asked me.

2. A dream of mine is to swim with sharks in a cage.

3.I never made homemade cookies until I was 17 and Joyce M. showed me how.

4. My fingers on my right hand can't hold up 3 fingers with the thumb holding the pinky(like the boy scout pledge salute) don't know why.

5.I've never done a cart wheel, tried to but ran into a tree and broke my Mickey Mouse watch.

6. I pulled out all my baby teeth except for my wisdom teeth, no one helped me. Though my GrandPa Dean tried except he smoked and his fingers tasted horrible. haha

7.My dream is to have enough land to have a small cabin that missionaries, pastors and those who need to get away can come for free and don't have to interact with my family but they can if they want too.

This was harder than I thought. Hope you enjoyed.

The girls and I went fishing at my brothers Sammi's first time. He also had caught a coon the night before and I was very concerned with Sammi trying to touch the creature. Usually I am not a worrier when it comes to things like that, but I wasn't sure that she understood that it was a wild animal. I was glad when Donny took it away.

We went on our first hike with Suzy to our favorite place to walk. Except someone had brought horses when it was wet and made it hard to push the stroller up the hill with DEEP hoof prints. but we managed anyway. Suzy loves looking at the trees when in her stroller. Everytime I grunted to get her over the hoof prints she would smile at me. Like I was doing the noises for her entertainment. Sammi was good until we got to the top of the hill then she wanted to go home, without going back down the hill. Huh? Sammi got 2 ticks on her in fact when I saw the first tick it was just biting into her neck so I picked it off. Can I comment here that 10 years ago I would have gotten out tweezers and tried NOT to touch the bug. Now I just pick them off and go on, what a difference 3 kids make. (By the way I have no idea what I did to make the letters blue and underlined in this portion and therefore have no idea how to fix it)

This is the hill that I pushed the stroller up!

This is what we climbed the hill to see.

We also celebrated Father's Day by going to McDonalds. haha

Beth took Suzy down her first slide.

Earl just wanted to eat in the air conditioning but sat outside with us.

On Sat. the girls went to a birthday party at a gymnastics/tumblers business and loved it. I made the girls wear pants because I knew that it would be a show for all if not, then one lady came and said that whe put shorts on under neath her little girls skirt. Never thought about that haha. Sammi loved the foam pit, Beth loved the rings (which made her arms very sore the next day) What I would have loved the most was someone telling me not to walk on the edge of the trampolines because I fell through with just one leg and laid there praying for the rapture to take place, while everyone is asking "Are you OK" I really wanted to answer "No I just shoved my dignity down a 4 foot hole"

I took a couple of pictures of Suzy today trying to get one of her smiling. The pictures don't do justice to the beauty of her smile and how her whole face lights up when she smiles. Suzy smiles more than any of our girls.

My camera is acting up again. But here are a couple of pictures that we took last night.

This little lane is where the girls and I walk to go visit the cows and donkeys.

Beth took this picture. I thought it would be cute to get Suzy peeking over my shoulder. Suzy was a little grumpy last night but goes through fases like that. The other

day Earl came in laughing. He said that Suzy was asleep in her swing with her hands folded on her tummy, her mouth open, tongue hanging out and that it reminded him of Gana when she was having a good nap.

Here are some pictures from Suzy's dedication and our church's Baby Day. This is the last year that Sammi is considered a baby/toddler, next year she will be recognized with the rest of the children.

Sammi at a fun fair on Fri May 1st. Beth wouldn't get in the fire truck

Sammi wanted to be a leopard like her sister, just a pink and purple one.

Beth loved the fun fair. When we were at the Columbus Zoo the girls wanted to get their faces painted but it cost $15 here at the fun fair it was free.

Beth and Sammi both love horses. This little one is 13 days old and the girls had a blast petting her and feeding the other horses apples.

Sammi on her birthday dressed up for church in the dress/outfit that Aunt Glady's And Uncle Dave sent.

Today is Sammi's 4th birthday

This is how she looked this morning when she got up.

Her birthday gifts from us and Aunt Gladys's. Aunt June's came in the mail after pictures. Sammi wanted to put on her new pink stripped out fit right away but I convinced her to wait until tonight at church.

The girls got to go 4-wheeling with my brother Donny. They loved it, we will wait till Suzy is a little bit older for her first ride hehe.

The girls also sang in the Palm Sunday Childrens choir. Sammi even knew the actions to the songs even though she was off a little bit.

I can't believe that I forgot to take pictures on Easter. I think the main reason is because I let Beth go to a slumber party on Sat and then we met her at church. Then after church we went to a dinner at my friends house, not to mention that I sang in the Easter cantata Sunday morning. So I am planning on having us all wear our outfits again on Sun. and take pictures.We had planned on trying to go somewhere during Earl's time off, but an unexpected bill came up and so we just stayed home.

The girls and I went to 2 Easter egg hunts on Sat. One of them was at our church. We had 319 people show up, 209 of them being kids. Both Sammi and I were claustrophobic so we stayed away from the crowd as much as we could.

These are 2 pictures of all the people

Not to mention that we had camp meeting at our church for the last week. We only missed one night. I am so glad that we are having a little break before our Revival in May.

The group of kids that we had dinner with on Easter.

The girls got their hair cut for summer. Beth was very happy about how easy it was to brush and Sammi just liked the whole process and has informed everyone that she got her hair cut. Suzy now weighs 6lbs 5oz, 18.5 inches long and is doing well except for congestion and some fussiness. Suzy got a stroller from the Aunts and we have been going walking everyday, today Sammi and I gave it a spin, I think she liked having me to herself.

Earl took this picture at church. Can you tell that Sammi was starting to feel yucky. I took her to the Dr on the 19th and she has ear and sinus infection.

Suzy wearing her first church dress. We tried hose but they would have gone over her head and that was without stretching them. Haha.