Zach's birthday

Amy & Zach at morning meeting.

Catch Zach's cool moves.
He made these leggings at home and got his Indian spear at Goodwill.

Wow!  This is hard.

Is it ever!

We left after church Sunday to be there for Zach's birthday. We also made an "exciting" trip to Good Will where I got a hardback copy of the 6th Harry Potter book for $5.00. Do I know how to have fun, or what? As it probably did with most of you, it poured down rain Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. We really did need the rain, but it sure made getting around interesting. We were in Taco Bell when the skies opened up on Monday. It looked like we were going through a car wash as the rain hit their big windows.

Zach is now nine years old. Sorry, Amy, but it's true. Where has the time gone? He had a good time with family and will be having even more fun when his friends come for a party on Saturday. Hopefully Amy will post some great pictures from that. Until then, you will have to be satisfied with mine.

We will be leaving after church again this week, this time heading for Karen & Mike's. They are moving across town to an even better apartment/duplex. I'll try to get some pictures of that and put them online in a week or so. We have a lot going on in the next couple of weeks, so I'm not sure of the timing. We're heading for Nauvoo after the move. Then Michael and family are coming down after that. Whew!!

Andrew Rides Again!

Alan and I went to Columbia yesterday since he had an eye checkup at the VA hospital.  They dilated his eyes so I was the "designated driver".  When he got out of there we drove on over to see Karen, Michael and Andrew.  They were getting ready to make a trip to St. Louis, but they made some time for us.  Andrew grinned and ran around doing all sorts of cute stuff.  It seems like that's about all I've had in my blog lately.  When your kids are gone from the house there aren't that many  topics of interest to put on a blog.  I'll have to try harder.

Oh, I do have one more thing that I could put on here.  Alan has been practicing hard on his guitar for the past month or so.  It is really starting to show too.  He claims his fingers aren't working today, but he sounds good to me.  Laura took a good picture of him when she and Michael and the kids were here in June.  I can't find it now, but will add it if I can locate it.

Fourth of July Weekend 2010

Jason teaches Andrew about bubble wrap.

Andrew teaches Jason about bubble wrap.

Andrew enjoys Blues Clues

Jason gets Leggo Harry Potter.

Wow!  Two pies for me?

We had some company for the 4th of July weekend.  Jeanette & Jason, and Karen, Mike, & Andrew came.  Jason had a birthday too.  We didn't really do a lot today, but hope to make it to the river tomorrow.  The weather has been wonderful the past couple of days, but it's supposed to warm up again tomorrow so the water will feel pretty good.  Andrew is full of energy, so we checked a couple of Blues Clues videos out from the library so he could slow down for a few minutes.  He seems to love it.

Branson Trip (Belated post)

This is Chief Malachi right before he put the fire in his mouth.

I'm just going to post one thing today about our Branson trip.  Another day I will add to it.  The first show we went to was called Island Fire.  It was mostly dance done by Island dancers from Samoa, Tahiti, etc.  The last thing was pretty impressive, but we couldn't get any good pictures of it since our camera wasn't fancy enough to handle it.  The room was pretty dark while the island men were doing a fire dance.  They were flinging those firey torches all over the place.

Before the Tahitian hula the lady that introduced it said that the Hawaiian hula dancers told the story by using their hands; the Tahitian dancers tell the story by using their hips.  You need to keep your eyes on their hips.  Then they came out and really did some fast gyrations.  Alan turned to me and said, "Where was it that we were supposed to keep our eyes?"  I thought you might appreciate that.