What's cuter than cute?

This...

I'm pretty sure I'm married to the best dad in the world. He's a pretty good husband too.

Where did the last 10 years go?

So I had my 10 year high school reunion this weekend. It was an interesting experience for me to say the least. It was really good to see how everybody has changed and catch up with them and their lives. It kind of left me in a weird state of mind though. High school wasn't exactly the time of my life. I was pretty dorky. I still am, but in a different way I guess. I am not the same girl I was in high school, so to be taken back threw me for a loop. A lot of the emotions that I thought were forgotten came back to me and left me in a weird mood. Luckily I have an amazing husband that took me to dinner and made everything okay again.

In other news, as you may have seen in the previous post Kaia has taken a couple of steps on her own. Mike and I have a bet on when she will be walking everywhere. I say by Saturday and he thinks next Tuesday. We haven't decided what the winner will receive yet, but just not having to carry Kaia everywhere we go will be reward enough for me.

My kids have also been getting on my nerves the last little while. I have come to the conclusion that it's because I have been a lazy mom and not giving them the attention they deserve. So I started doing a fun activity every morning and having them do chores to earn an allowance. So far it's working like a charm. They will get 50 cents a week if they do their chores every day without any arguing or fighting. Some of the things we have done and plan to do are a treasure hunt, an obstacle course, and relay races. We also played a game called choices and consequence. I gave them each 6 balloons. In 3 of the balloons was a trivia question and in the other 3 were tasks. They would pop a trivia balloon and answer the question. If they got it right they got to stay in the game, if they got it wrong they would have to pop a task balloon. They could choose to not do the task, but they were then out of the game and didn't get to play anymore. They did really good, and only had to pop 2 of the task balloons. They had so much fun that they wanted to do the other tasks in the balloons. Last night we played some night games. Mike joined in, but I'm pretty sure he cheats. :) I am getting old, because after a couple rounds of British Bulldog I had to sit down so I could catch my breath.
Another thing, if you could keep Alexander, Colby's baby, in your prayers this week we would appreciate it. He is having his open heart surgery on the 30th as long as he is healthy. Colby and Marsha and Alexander will fly to California on Wednesday. I will keep you all posted on how he is doing.

New Developments

I just wanted to do a quick post showing what Kaia learned to do today.




By tomorrow she will be running! She is definitely growing up too fast!!

A Work of Art!

I have been working on getting a tattoo that represents each one of my children through Chinese symbols. I started with Jercie's 6 years ago and finally completed it with Blaze and Kaia last night. I absolutely love it.

We went over Wednesday night and told Steve what symbols I wanted. He is a perfectionist to say the least. He wanted to make sure we were putting the right symbols on. We went back last night, after Steve had quadruple checked the symbols and changed one a little, we put the stencil on. I have never had a tattoo artist use a ruler to make sure the stencil is even and sized right. I am so glad he did. He also did the names freehand.

Mike was there to hold my hand, thank goodness. I think I may have broken a couple fingers when Steve was tattooing my spine. Holy Cow that was painful!! I was finally able to concentrate and relax past the pain. It still hurt but not as bad as when I was tense.

I have to say that it was definitely worth the pain. I love how it turned out even if it is a little bigger than I had anticipated.

In case you are wondering the symbols are as follows: Jercie Little Treasure, Blaze Warrior, Kaia Angel, and the one in the center means Mother.

After the outline was done. I had to take a little break because my legs were shaking so bad :)

The tattoo all finished. I am going to have him touch Jercie's up so that they are all the same shade of black.

My little genious.

Jercie is probably smarter than me. Which is going to haunt me in the years to come. I don't look forward to her being a teenager for this reason. She has a memory like an elephant and is extremely quick witted. She must get it from the Jorgensens because she certainly didn't get it from me.
The other day she spent the night with Grammy (my mom). They walked to the store and Grammy got Jercie a treat. When they told her the total, my mom said, "I'm not bringing you to the store again." Jercie folded her arms, stomped her foot and said, "Well I didn't know that was going to happen".
She is also learning how to swim. My dad and Sharon are teaching her in my parent's pool. She has gained so much confidence in the water. The other day during one of her lessons she was pulling Papa around the pool by his toe. I am so glad she was able to spend some alone time with my dad. They were so cute in the pool together.

Fourth of July Pics ... and a happy birthday

I have kind of been a slacker lately because I just don't think we've done enough to be blog worthy. I am just going to do a picture post mostly because I'm lazy and don't want to make my brain function.
The 4th was Mike's birthday so Happy Birthday a little bit late....

We started out the day at the parade....








We were at the very end of the parade route, which turned out to be the best place to sit. By the end of the parade they still had bags of candy, so they would just dump out the bags in the middle of the road. Perfect since that's the only reason I show up. :)

Then I took Jercie and Blaze to the park for about an hour and let them play some of the games, and do the bounce house. After the park we had Mike's birthday BBQ. We had steak and crab. It was so good.

Later that afternoon we went to the park and had dinner. Then came home and lit some of our own fireworks...



Kaia wasn't too impressed with the fireworks. Can you tell?

Then we set up our chairs and a blanket for the kids and watched the town fireworks...