Cutest baby ever (in our opinion)

Most of you have been asking of pictures of Anna, Anna, Anna. It's not that we don't take pictures of her, it's just that she doesn't do much that is blog-able yet. We did break down and get her both a walker (pictured) and a "piano" no-wheels walker. Anna's gotten mobile enough that she's not safe in her bouncer anymore; and besides, she's in mild peril on the floor around Sam and Daniel.

Anna is one of the happiest babies I've ever seen--crying is a true, rare event. She thinks her brothers and the dogs are hilarious, too.

This next picture cracks me up, so I had to post it. I think Anna is trying to intimidate me into not taking anymore pictures.

Ooooh...I think it worked!

Finger painting bonanza!

Since making my birthday banner and cards, the boys have been very prolific finger painters. Expect that for each of your upcoming birthdays that you will receive a card or other craft based item from them. In this particular instance, I was looking for something to keep them out of my hair while I organized our new craft desk. FYI, finger painting was not my wisest choice--too much supervision necessary.

Happy Birthday to Oooo!

I wish I could post a voice recording of the boy's singing happy birthday. Daniel still sings, at the top of his lungs, "Happy birthday to Oooo!" I think they sang about 10 times to me yesterday--they were so excited that it was my birthday. I told my family no presents please this year, I just wanted to do something to celebrate with the family and for the boys to make me something. Did they ever! Observe the dynamic finger painting on my sign!

As you can, see, they also got to help decorate my cake!

And the family helped while I was at work

Two blogs in one day--who knew it could happen?

So because work is so slow right now I really am going to try to keep up with blogging. John has been talking about this pizza from a place in Vancouver, WA, that went out of business, since we've been married. Each time we have pizza, it is compared to "Uncle Milt's." Well, he was able to get the recipe and made it tonight!

Splash, splash, penguin

We finally took a day away from unpacking/organizing/working last Saturday and went to SeaWorld! Unfortunately, we don't have any pictures to post at this time because we were too busy having fun to cheese for the camera. However, we did get season's passes, so look here later for wet, watery fun.

I called this post "splash, splash, penguin" because it's the quick summary of our day. Sam, Daniel and Anna were quite content to spend the majority of the day in the water park. We started out in the toddlers area, where there's a max 8 inches deep of water. There's fountains of water to walk through, small slides to go down, and best of all--shady areas to be in the water. Anna and I mostly stayed in that area while John supervised the boys--and by supervised I mean played like a boy himself. We ate lunch at SeaWorld--we normally don't have lunch inside the parks, but if you leave the water park area on a Saturday, we're told it's a good chance that you won't get back in! That's when we saw Shamu. That's right, we went to SeaWorld and the only Shamu we saw danced and sang on-stage. Sam was talking yesterday about the singing fishes and I finally figured out it was this lunchtime stage show! After lunch we took turns taking the boys down the lazy river. By the 8th time or so, Sam just wanted to bob along in his life jacket as long as we stayed close. I thought Daniel was going to be lulled to sleep as we floated along, but we kept going through spray areas which woke him up.

Anna wasn't allowed to go on the lazy river, but it worked out for one of us to be out with her and the other to be in with one or both boys. When we started getting some weather--thunder, lightning--we were already changed back into dry clothes to do the one non-water thing that the boys had been asking for--see the penguins. The water park, the rides, and the shows were temporarily closed down for the weather, and it was funny to be going the wrong way against the throng of people who were leaving SeaWorld. When you think about many of them buying their ticket for just one day, we were surprised by how many left the park just because of some sprinkles.

I must say we were not terribly impressed by the penguin exhibit. You ride past the penguins on a people mover, so you don't get to just stand and look. Luckily, there's an area that's set back up above where you can take your stroller, and we stopped there. We were also disappointed that the lights were so dim in the exhibit. We couldn't even really see the back wall where it looked like most of them were grouped. Lesson learned: go to SeaWorld for the lazy river, not the penguins.

We live 10 minutes away from SeaWorld, so we'll be going back often. Mom and I are taking the kids Thursday. I figure that if we only see three things each time we'll go, we'll still see it all by the time we leave San Antonio.

They moved to San Antonio....and survived

So I'm posting what, once a year? Better then never, right? We're more or less settled in here in San Antonio. By more or less, I mean that all the projects that didn't get finished while we worked on the house these past few years, are now sitting around in boxes waiting for us to disposition them. Sigh.

We're both back to work, John has even already been put in charge of the change of command for his squadron at the beginning of August. Nothing like jumping in with both feet! I've been back at work for almost a month also, really enjoying the team of nurses I work with and for. They were super quick about getting my work phone and internet service set at home. One of the first improvement projects that John did on this house was getting electrical and phone run to the second master closet which is my office. Sounds terrible to work in a closet, right? Actually, it has a window, an A/C vent, and is quite spacious for my work needs. It even has a built-in hardwood closet organizer that functions very well as a bookshelf.

We've been "church shopping" ever since we got down here and (fingers crossed) I think we've finally found our church. It's called Wayside Chapel--it's a bit farther away, and a bit bigger, then I'd really like, but we're not going to let those be stumbling blocks. It's a denomination that I have no disagreements with (Evangelical Free), it has AWANA for the kids, and the people there were so nice. It reminded us a lot of our church in Ohio, Patterson Park. That's high praise.

We're finally all getting healthy and well after having strep pass around among the family--everyone but Mom and I had it. Prayer requests: That we listen to God's leading in finding a church and getting involved there. That John's stress ends as we finally finish unpacking. That John's health increases. That we finally find new bookshelves so we can get all these books out of boxes.

Love you and miss you--ya'll know who you are. Also, we're preschool shopping for Sam, and the field is pretty thin right in this area. Any advice on what to look for in a preschool that is not also functioning as a daycare for us (hint hint LeighAnn)?