Home again, home again, jiggidy jig!

We got home last night around 5:30 and spent the rest of the night unpacking. Jennifer had a wonderful surprise for the kids. She had totally redone their bedrooms. She repainted their rooms, bought new bedding sets, and closet organizers. The kids were totally surprised and excited! So were we. Here are a few pictures of the new rooms:

West Virginia Update

We've stayed pretty busy here in West Virginia. Lately, we have done some traveling to visit Robin's grandparents and Jeremy has been helping remove a rock retaining wall along the side of Rob and Violet's house. Jeremy smashed his fingernail up pretty good yesterday and it's nice and purple. We took Olivia and Garrett camping Monday night and they loved that. Last week we spent a day at Chuck E. Cheese up in Charleston. Tomorrow we are driving down to southern West Virginia and taking a scenic railroad trip with the cousins. I can't believe we fly back to Vegas next Saturday! Of course, we're staying at a beach in North Carolina for 3 days first! We hope your summer is as fun as ours!
PS... For a bunch more pictures of our kids, click here to see Robin's sister's blog.

West Virginia here we are

We are amazed at how big our kids are getting. Seems like not too long ago Olivia and Zach were just two little busy bodies in diapers. Now they're both swimming and reading and being great examples for Josh and Garrett. I'm not quite sure about the goggles and the tricycle, though.

Go Ahead, Fence Us In

We finally got our fence installed. They came about 4 days late so we were pretty bummed about that -- technically they still aren't done since they need to come back out with 12 fence caps. The company has been a pain to work with, but we are so excited to get it done! It'll be nice not having to worry about that dang canal anymore. Olivia keeps asking when we can get a puppy. Maybe Jennifer will surprise us with one when we get back from our 5 week vacation in Vegas and back East. We won't be updating this blog much while we're out of town--we'll probably still update ours more often than some of you :)




I'm also posting a picture of the kids swimming a few days ago.

Jere's river rafting trip

I just got back from a 3 day river rafting trip with my scouts. It was pretty fun. We combined with 2 other groups. We had 4 big blue boats and about 8 two-person "duckies". I let the youth use the duckies the first day so that on the second day, the day with the real rapids, I would get a long turn. There was a guy who sits on the side of the river and just takes pictures as people go by. He puts the pictures online and you can buy them for $13 each. I'm thinking I'm just going to post one I downloaded off his site (I might buy some later). This was the wildest part of the river. The guide told us over and over to go to the right side of the river. The two boats in front of me decided to go left. One boat flipped and the two guys got banged up on some rocks. We saw their boat flip and decided to go down the middle. Everyone got a little sunburned--some got alot sunburned. It was a blast!

Olivia's Dance Festival

At our school each year we have a dance festival. Each grade level has to perform 2 dances for all the parents and the rest of the school. We spend alot of time practicing and getting ready for it. I left my class with my high school student while I went to the other side to try and get some pictures. She was so cute. She was very animated and new the dance well. One of the parents of my students who also has a child in Olivia's Class video taped it. She said she would make me a copy. I was so mad that I forgot our video camera. -Robin

Geocaching with Grandpa and Grandma

For an early Father's Day/birthday gift, Robin got me a handheld GPS unit. We've used it to find a few geocaches around the area. Click here to learn more about geocaching. My parents came up for Memorial Day and we went and found a couple of caches. The kids love finding "treasure" and we love taking them on little outdoor adventures.

Gettysburg video

The local newspaper made this 6 minute video about our Gettysburg reinactment. You see me at about 2:40 (I'm holding up a pair of binoculars). -Jeremy

The Battle of Gettysburg

Every year the fifth grade at my school does a three-day long reenactment of the Battle of Gettysburg. This year, they were one teacher short and they asked me to participate as a general on the Confederate side. It was really fun. The neat part was the students were not told what was going to happen ahead of time so we generals would direct the captains and the captains would give orders to the troops. We had a horse, 2 cannons, and 60 soldiers shooting marshmallow guns. We also had a sound system that narrated the battle and provided theme music. Tons of parents come to watch and several newspapers came to report on the events. It was a blast pretending to get shot and faking injuries. I kept trying to find a way for the South to win, but the Union ended up winning anyways :)
If I find a link to a newspaper article about it I'll post it here, too, but here are 3 pictures from the battle:

Here's what's new

Here's a quick update of what's new. We got a new Slip and Slide for the kids to play on in the back yard. They had fun but got cold. We're all excited about getting a privacy fence for our back yard. The fence posts go in on June 5th.


Olivia lost another tooth. It had been loose for a long time and she went to a birthday party and the grandfather of the birthday girl pulled it out. She is convinced that she saw the tooth fairy that night.

Also, our seeds are coming along nicely. We're going to transplant them into the garden box soon.

Thank you, Jennifer

Jennifer this past weekend, even though she was still sore from her fall, kept our children for us over night while we went out to celebrate our 10th anniversary. While she was gone she went the extra mile and did the laundry, dishes and straightened the house. We didn't expect her do these things. We really appreciate all that she did.

For our anniversary we went to Black Angus, saw Shrek 3, and stayed at a bed and breakfast. It was all nice.

INCA QUIPU

I am teaching my students about the Incas. It is apart of our 3rd grade core. We talked about the Quipu. The quipu is a counting device they invented to keep track of food supplies and other things. They basically took rope and tied string to the rope and then used knots to keep track of things. How long it was, what color it was and how many knots were all important. For my class I decided to have them make a quipu. I didn't want to do knots so I bought beads and rope and colorful string and had each kid make there own quipu that repesented themselves like how many people where in their family, how many pets, their birthday etc. They got to choose. Well Olivia saw we at home cutting the string and counting out the beads. Each student go 30 beads and piece of rope about 12 inches long and 6 different colored strings. She helped me count and then she wanted to make one for herself.

She did
String 1- 6 beads (how old she is)
String 2 2 beads ( her favorite colors pink and purple) yes she used a pink and purple bead
string 3 5 beads (number people who live in her house) a black bead for Jennifer since she is hurt
Sting 4, 5, 6 10 beads, 2 beads, 7 beads (her Birthday Oct. 27)

The incas are fascinating. If you want to learn some great information go to
http://incas.mrdonn.org/empire.html

Planting seeds

We built a box garden a few weeks ago and then decided that if we planted seeds in it right then, we would be out of town when everything was ready to harvest. So we waited until today to plant the seeds. We got little soil pellets, added water, and pushed a bunch of seeds in them. Once they sprout we will thin them out and plant them in the box garden. We're planting corn, cucumbers, zuchinni, pumpkins (for Halloween), tomatoes, carrots, and squash.
Hopefully something will grow!

Jen's accident

Yesterday Jen was working at the swimming pool. She was walking away from a chair and her foot got caught in a lifeguard rope and she fell. She fell kind of sideways and her ribs and back landed directly on the metal foot rest that sticks out of the lifeguard chair. I guess the wind was knocked out of her for a while and she was in a tremendous amount of pain. Robin got a phone call from Jennifer as they were whisking her to the hospital in an ambulance. They took some x-rays (they said it didn't look like she broke anything), and diagnosed her as having a deep tissue contusion. She got some prescription pain killers and has to take a few days off from work, but she should completely recover in a few weeks. This picture shows pretty much what she's looked liked since Robin brought her home from the hospital yesterday afternoon:

It's A New Zoo Review... Coming Right At You!

We went to the zoo a couple of Saturdays ago. The weather was nice and it wasn't too crowded. Here are some pictures. We might add more text later since I'm posting this while I'm at work. -Jeremy

The best aunt ever!
Some mischief is hatching!

Our kids love the train ride at the zoo.

This elephant makes all kinds of noises when you sit on its nose.



We love the zoo!