Celebrating 40 Years

My sisters and I threw a 40th Anniversary party for my parents yesterday. Their anniversary was actually June 25th (I was born on their 11th anniversary). But with Tiff having a baby we decided to throw it later. My friend Melanie help me put together a DVD showing some old pics and everyone loved it! (Thanks Mel!) Here are some of my favorite...

Ahhhh...such cuties.
The bride and groom.

Hippie love.

The family that resulted from the hippie love.

(always in matching outfits made my mom)
And here they are stuffing cake in eachothers faces yesterday.
After 40 years they still know how to have fun! They were married when they were 20 (before my dad was shipped off to Vietnam). I am sure it has been a long ride, full of ups and downs, love, and forgiveness and being surrounded by family and friends. I hope Tim and I make it through with as much love as theirs.
Happy 40th Anniversary Mom and Dad! We love you!

This is my life...

My house doesn't typically look like this by the way. This all happened in the midst of a 15 minute phone conversation with my boss yesterday. First it started with Lucas building a "fort" around him and Lilly with the cushions and then he started to cover Lilly in the clean clothes that he took out of the basket. Lilly started crying so I set her outside the mess and the next time I peeked around the corner Lucas had emptied out his toy bins into what was now a massive pile of crap.
He thought it was sooo cool.And this is the proud monkey standing on top of his castle...before I made him clean it all up. No wonder I had a mental break around 4:00. Sometimes being a mom, a wife, a working woman, a housekeeper, and a cook is really not that easy to do. I think without Tim I would just go insane.

My little Crazy Stacker

Have I told you my son is into everything?? Up high, down low it really doesn't matter, he will find it. I was making dinner and had to distract him away from the "baking" shelf (which I thought was out of reach...but when you stand on top of a stool it is not) so I told him he should put some of the cans into his kitchen cupboard. Well, he decided stacking might be more fun. He took all of the cans out of the pantry and stacked them up as tall as he could reach.

He has always been into stacking and this reminded me of a time when he was only 15 months old. I was working on the computer and all the sudden looked up to realize that Lucas had stacked his blocks as tall as himself.

Typically I always listen to him as he plays around the corner while I work, but it is always pretty funny to walk around the corner and see what he is actually doing. Sometimes its funny, sometimes its scary, but most of the time I am just amazed. So, will he be an architect, an artist, or just a crazy rock stacker like Tim and I saw in Sedona. Hmmmm. What do you think?

Slowly but surely

I know you have all been anxiously awaiting our deck progress, so here you go...

Here is the deck before last weekend. Pergola is framed out, rail is started.
Here is skinny Tim working last weekend. We have been blessed with good weather.

Here is Lucas using daddy's new drill.

Here is the deck after last weekend. 5 final posts set and "first step" before stairs framed out.

Hopefully by the end of this coming weekend we will have the railing knocked out and hopefully some stairs to go up and down. Not really looking forward to Lucas being outside helping though...since it has been raining all week the dirt that Lucas loves to play in is now mud. We will have to go to two baths a day now...or maybe we will just hose him down. Boys will be boys.

Silly Lilly already 8 months old

I look soooo good!
She loves to eat but it is always the BIGGEST mess to clean up!
She is also on the verge of crawling. She army crawls and rolls to where she wants to go...(Iam in no rush to have two children going in different directions). Lucas always says to me..."ilye tyng to cawl mama" (translated: Lilly trying to crawl mama!) and then he starts to gets down on his hands and knees to show her how...it is pretty cute.

Here she has rolled herself under the futon! Silly Lilly!

The Playground that Dave built.

We got together with our friends this weekend for a BBQ and to check out the new Clark Playground that Dave built.
This is Dave...and this is the new playground that Dave built.

These are the kids enjoying the playground that Dave built.
This is the reason there is a new playground that Dave built.
You can fit two kids in one swing on the playground that Dave built.

And even Tim knows how to have a good time on the playground that Dave built!

(Wait until you read about the deck that Tim built).

A boy and his dog

Just hanging out with Wrigley inside the Thomas tent.

Wrigley kisses.
Wrestling with wrigley!
Peeking out with Wrigley. Lucas and Wrigley have so much fun together. Couldn't ask for a better dog! I think every kid needs a pet...even if it is a fish.

More Lake Fun

Cute as can be.
Playing in the sand with Olivia.

Soaking up the rays.

Playing with Noah...(who wouldn't sit still for long b/c he is crawling now).

We also went over and saw Miss Allie again. (We were trying to get a picture of the four cousins but Lucas was not participating). Just the girls.

I didn't even get a picture of the birthday girl (Tim's grandma is a firecracker!) Happy birthday grandma/great-grandma!

Aren't they both so beautiful??

Nola Jo Elling finally decided to make her appearance...and even though she was 5 days late she still wanted to make a SURPRISE entrance (whether there was someone there to catch her or not!) If you are interested in the full details of the delivery you can click on Ellinghouse under my blogbuddies!

Congrats to Emily and Michael and big sister Piper! Can't wait to meet Miss Nola on Thursday! (I soooo thought you were having a boy! Lucas is totally out-numbered!)

Mini-vacation

The Hess brother crew on the pontoon (minus John).
Lilly asleep on the boat.
Lucas asleep on the boat (seriously).

And the ladies in their pink hats on the boat.

Well, I was going to try and do a little synopsis of our mini-vacation last week up to "the lake" (as we call it) but there are too many pictures. So today will be about boating. We headed up for July 4th and stayed the rest of the week. Tim's parents live up North and got a new pontoon this year as I think I have mentioned before. We spent alot of time riding the lakes and looking at the houses (and being jealous of the people with big huge gorgeous houses who only come twice a year). We also did alot of diving off the pontoon, holding sleeping children and just having a good time. We will have to go up again soon! More pics to follow this week.

Swinging Up High

I was going to label this Swinging Siblings...but thought maybe that would get some hits on my blog that I may not want. I don't think we are going to be able to afford a playgym this year, but we did hang our swing back up in the tree. Lucas was swinging and it looked like Lilly just might fit in there with him so we asked if we would mind, he suprisingly said no. Her chubby legs barely fit in but they definitely had a good time swinging. Lucas is pretty cute as a big brother. His favorite thing is to make her laugh hysterically...and that pretty much gets everybody laughing.

So Close...

Well, we ALMOST finished the deck boards on our deck last night. So close.

We actually would have probably finished had I not broke Tim's last drill bit. Sorry Tim.
We pretty much spent all weekend trying to crank out our deck...we actually got pretty far for two people with two kids. The kids did take a little trip to Nana and Papaws so we could try to work faster and go out to dinner. That was nice. (Check out Wrigley chillin' out in the shade under the deck!)
Lucas helped by putting the screws in the holes between mommy drilling the holes and daddy screwing in the screws. Not sure it was faster...but at least he was on the deck and not running off somewhere we had to chase him.

Lilly just slept, sat and played in the shade and then when we got far enough along she checked out the new deck to make sure we were doing a good job. (I think she is happy with it). This deck (when and if it is ever finished) will have to take ALOT of kid abuse.