Daddy Daughter Date

I was scrolling through Pinterest one day, and came across a blog written by a dad, who takes his little girls on date nights weekly.  We know another dad of 6 girls, who makes it a priority of his, to spend one on one time with each of the girls that are still at home.  Jason has done this from time to time as well, but after seeing this blog, it just reminded me that it had been a long time since they had been out together. So I suggested it to him and he had been thinking the same thing.  Girls need their special Daddy time.

We talked about it all day, which got Katelyn excited about her evening out.  She could pick what to do, but we suggested they try the new frozen yogurt place, which was met with a huge smile.  They both got casually dressed up and I could even put clips into Katelyn's hair, that's how special this time was to her.  (If you know Katelyn, her hair is the least of her worries and not something she enjoys having me do for her)           I made it extra special by giving her a little lip gloss.  She packed her purse with all the essentials: her play camera, a plastic egg, a pop rocket and her pretend cell phone.  (You just never know when you are going to need a hollow plastic egg :)  )She completed her look with a ring, bangle bracelet and orange flip flops.  She was beautiful!

Look at the joy on her face!

The Bellamy Brothers sing, "Redneck girl likes to cruise in Daddy's pick-up truck", and this girl does.  That's just was this little girl wanted to drive in for her date and Daddy obliged.

Off they go!

They hit WYogurt for some strawberry, chocolate and pineapple yogurt, topped off with squishy, juicy "fish eggs", gummy bears, chocolate chips, a cherry, whip cream, caramel and chocolate sauce.  Yes, she was very hyper when she came home :)

They went for a drive and parked to skip stones in a pond.  I'm sure the conversation was simple, but special and it filled up her little heart with love.

4th of July

This was the first year that we didn't go to the annual Cody Stampede Parade.  Instead, we were asked to join a co-worker of Jason's and his two girls on their boat.  The only draw back was that Jason had to work from 2-10pm.  We headed out early and drove 45 mins to Yellowtail Reservoir.  Thankfully, there were not a lot of boats out on the water.  

 Taking the plunge.  Katelyn kept a tight grip on one of us, otherwise we drift away from the boat and it's hard to swim back.

 Megan sporting her new life jacket.  She did pretty good with it, but she did start to fuss closer to nap time. 

 Katelyn and her tubing partner, Anna

 Ready to get going.  Mike knew to take it easy and Katelyn loved it.

I got on the tube solo while Jason held Megan, who was starting to fuss about the life jacket.  She was just tired and actually fell asleep while the boat was going.  The front of the boat has pads on it, so after Jason took this photo, he covered her form the sun and stayed by her while the girls finished their tubing.  

We left just before noon, and thank goodness we did, because the dock was congested with people wanting to get in the water.  It took us a while to get out, but we made it out and back in time for Jason to get to work.  So glad we went and we didn't really miss dealing with throngs of people and finding a parking space in Cody.  

That evening, however, the sunny weather gave way to clouds and a torrential down pour.  We went to some friends for supper, where Jason could meet us for a burger while he was on shift.  We packed the kids in the cars and drove to the fireworks, but a new shower had started as we left.  It rained the 45 minutes we were waiting for the fireworks.  Just as the 10 o'clock start time rolled around, the rain departed and we could get out of the vehicles to watch the show.  Apparently, our fireworks show was way better than Cody's.  They had some technical difficulties and couldn't do the whole show that night, but they had to blow them up the next day since they had already set them the night before.  There went their fireworks fund, up in smoke.

Spaghetti Girl

This girl loves her food.  

She is too much fun and such a ham.  The spoon is merely for holding.  Fingers are still the utensil of choice.

Bike Trailer

I've been wanting a bike trailer for some time but I've been too cheap to buy one.  I'm not a garage saler, so I don't find them on sale or they're not in great shape.  Well, we got lucky.  The people who we traded trucks with, was having a moving sale and guess what was there?  This brand new bike trailer!  She used it 2 or 3 times and let it go for $30.  So we saved at least $50, so I felt good about that.  It has come in really handy since Katelyn is off and running with her bike and training wheels.  We've gotten braver with her driving on the sidewalk with us on the street.  We make our couple block circle and head home.  Megan likes being in the trailer and is quiet.  They both can fit in there, but it's much lighter with just one instead of two.  So now that we had a trailer, I broke down and finally bought a bike.  It's just a Walmart bike, but it works.  I'm too cheap to buy a really good bike at a bike shop.

Happy Belated Father's day

I saw this idea on Pinterest and thought it would be a good present for Jason.  So we quickly took some photos before heading to Walmart to develop them and find a frame for them.  This way Jason could have something on his desk to see his girls.

Happy 1st Birthday Megan

Here is my monthly grow up photo of Megan at 12 months old

This photo makes me laugh.  It is typical for Megan to sit in her high chair with her feet crossed one over the other.  She looks so relaxed looking at the water bottle.

We were very simple with Megan's birthday.  Grandma and Grandpa Derksen had been down for a visit and had just left, so it was just us.  Angel food cake and strawberries was on the menu since this girl loves her strawberries, just like her mother.

 Big sister was just as happy about the dessert as little sister.
 

New Truck!

Our dear old 2000 Dodge extended cab has been for sale for probably over a year.  Since Jason doesn't need to drive to work anymore, it has been sitting for sale.  We let a friend use it for half a year while he waited for his truck to get fixed.  It's been sitting on the highway, enticing a few people, but just not making any good deals.  We bring it home for a week and it sells in front of our house.  Well, not really sells, but more trades and upgrades us. 

     We take this as a God story for us, because it's almost unbelievable that it could only be from God!

One week after taking it home and parking it out in front of our house, I notice someone looking at it one evening.  Jason gets a call at work from someone asking if he would be willing to trade our truck for their truck.  They have a 2005 Ford Powerstroke, automatic, quad cab with under 100,000 miles.  For a diesel, that's not even broke in yet.  They just bought it in March, but are moving to Oregon hauling a bumper pull camper.  They thought the truck sat too low to haul their long trailer, or something to that affect.  They liked that ours sat up higher and wanted to trade straight across.  They came over and everyone went for a test drive.  Jason really liked it and they liked ours, so before they changed their minds, we wrote up a bill of sale and swapped titles!  Thankfully, they had paid cash for it and there was nothing holding up getting the title.  We were dumbfounded.  Jason felt bad that they were getting our truck what with everything that was wrong with it.  You forget what is wrong with something until you sell it.  "Oh yeah, the a/c doesn't work." "That's okay." That was just one thing on the list of fixes we didn't want to fix.

     This thing is roomy! Compared to an extended cab with 2 car seats, we can really spread out.  It's also got a Bully Dog chip in it.  If you need some get up and go, it's got some POWER!  There are some cons to it, that were making us think of or even try to sell it.  It's only 2 wheel drive, it sits somewhat low, but it rides smoother than other 4x4s.  There are things that can be done to it to "over-ride" the cons, but that's all in time.  I think we're keeping it now.  It's our "Sunday go to church" rig :)  Thankfully, the sellers didn't have it very long, so it's in mint condition.  There are 2 small holes in the back seat from cigarette burns.  Yes, it did have a smoke smell to it, but we've had that taken care of and now it's clean.  They had some tacky stickers on the sides that looked more like scratches from far away, but I took them off along with the skulls on the front hiding a small scratch.  Much Better!  Now if we go to Canada in the winter, we can pack lots of stuff with no fear of it getting wet in the back with the topper.  It's funny and only God would do something like this, call it ironic if you will, but the topper is a Jason topper.  Yes, his name in on the back.  Are we meant to keep it?  Maybe.  Our truck was only worth $8000 or maybe $9000 and here we get a truck, free and clear that is worth at least double what we were going to get for ours.  Thanks God!  

Hi Grandma & Grandpa

Mom's working on getting some more things on the blog, but here's what we look like in case you forgot :)