Megan is 8!

How is it possible that Megan is eight years old?! Time sure does fly by. She is turning into such a beautiful young lady now. She is still shy but a very caring and loving person and is always concerned about others' feelings. She loves to read and learn new things. This birthday is an exciting mile stone for her because she is now old enough to be baptised. Megan had a double birthday party this year. Saturday, she had a princess birthday party with her favorite girl friends and then on Sunday, she had a family birthday party. Uncle Nick, Aunt Katy and Cousin Joey, Dick and Judy Lowther, and Grandma Georgia and Papa Dave were all able to come to her party on Sunday. After the cake and presents, Megan and Uncle Nick treated us to a piano concert. Megan did good and had fun.

The Princess Barbie Cake. I put too much icing to make her bodice so she looks a little plump. I had to remove her legs so that she would fit in the cake. The legs sticking out the front was a good sign of that. Oh, well. I fixed it and it still turned out cute. It was fun to make.

Pretty princesses, Emma, Savannah, Eden and Megan. The girls dressed up in jewelry, put on make-up, painted nails, decorated tiaras, played "kiss the frog", listened to the story, "The Princess and the Pea" and then played feel the ball under a pillow game to decide if they were a real princess or not and then of course Megan opened her presents and ate cake and ice cream. They all had a fun time.

Being that Megan got a princess barbie birthday cake the day before, I made a yummy strawberry shortcake dessert for this party and stuck some candles in it. It was a hit.

Megan loved Colton's black cowboy hat so much that he got for his birthday and wears it around so much so we got her a red cowgirl hat and it matched her outfit perfectly.

Megan's Aunt Kath made this doggy pillow case for Megan. Kath made pillow cases for each of the kids on their birthday. The kids love them and will hardly let me take them off to wash them.

Megan with our friends, Dick and Judy Lowther (Papa Dick and Grandma Judy) They used to baby sit Megan when I taught school from when she was an infant to age 3.

Megan with her Uncle Nick

Papa with Megan, Colton and Joey

Katy and Mom

Megan introducing the songs she was going to play with Uncle Nick.

Jayce, Joey and Colton wanted to play too.

Hiking in Dayton

We've been doing a lot of hiking lately. A couple of days we hiked all over the Dayton State Park on both sides of Highway 50. There are a lot of easy trails for the kids. We've been finding a lot of lizards and frogs. I let the kids bring a frog home but then felt sorry for the frog and made them release it in our garden. Today, we hiked along Carson River in Carson City off of 5th street. I forgot my camera so no pictures of that. There is a nice walking path with a couple different loops up to 2 miles long depending upon which way you go. There are also trails right along the river. The river was so low that we were able to go right down on the river bed, take our shoes off and walk in the water. The kids found shells, and even brought a snail home and put it in our fish tank. Colton, of course, loved throwing rocks in the water. The kids were thrilled with all the dogs we saw walking with their owners and the large group of horses with riders and dogs that walked right next to us in the river. Not a day to leave the camera home. Further up the river from where we were playing there was a big beaver dam that dammed the water and made a nice swimming hole. We are bringing our suits next time and the camera.

Visit with Grandpa and Grandma McCoy

While we were in Northern California, we were able to go to Ukiah to spend some time visiting with my Dad, George, step-mom, Georgia and brother, Robert. My dad and me My younger brother, Robert and me. The kids loved playing with all the cats. We saw 4 cats but they said they had numerous litters a few weeks ago and had almost 30 cats around there. They weren't able to see the huge dog that was locked up in the back room. I guess he eats children. =) The kids were fascinated by the pet black widow spider that my dad caught and keeps in a jar. He catches bees to feed it. It has made 4 egg sacks in the jar. We looked it up, that's about 1,000 baby black widows.

The Beach House at Clear Lake, California

My parents like to rent a beach house in Lake County, California for the family reunion. This is the first time Blake and I and the kids stayed at the beach house and played on the water. This year we stayed in Nice on Clear Lake. It is called Clear Lake but it was anything but clear. It was very grassy on the shore and far out. My brother, Jeremy had his jet skis there. One of them was a stand up jet ski(whatever you call that) and we weren't coordinated enough to get it to work so my parents rented another jet ski. Thank goodness they rented one...we'll get to that later. We kept having to stop and remove grass from the jet skis every few minutes and of course it was worse when you went slow. And with kids you go slow. We stopped a lot. After we left, they found a place to ride that was free from grass. You can see the walk way out to the deck and dock where we put the jet skis in. Each house had one. That walk way is actually the neighbor's. We stayed in the house on the far left. The lake was low. Most of the wooden posts of the walk way are usually under water. They were two story houses fully furnished with everything but food. We stayed in bedrooms on the 2nd floor that had sliding glass doors onto the patio surrounded by metal railing with gaps between the rails that weren't up to code. The first thing Colton did when he got up in the morning was go out the door and onto the patio and through the railing. He had one foot on the eves of roof below ready to climb down where I was standing on first floor patio. He thought he found a short cut. I screamed for Blake to go get him and told him to not move. Blake got him and he was fine. This is taken from the the other side of the deck out on the lake above the dock with Clear Lake in back ground. This was the ramp down to the dock where we loaded the jet skis. It was initially at a 45 degree angle. Blake had to carefully back the kids down the ramp one at a time. Under the ramp and the open railings was deep lake water. We joked about sending the kids down the ramp on their bums like a slide but they'd probably veer right our left and end up in the lake. I was too scared to go down it until we figured out how to raise the dock so the ramp wasn't so steep.

Colton and Megan with my sister Katy and Joey. Getting ready to ride. Not much jet skiing the first day for the kids until we rented a jet ski and fixed the ramp so they spent a lot of fun time in the not so hot, hot tub. It was actually perfect temp for swimming. We all had so much fun on the jet skis. We just wished we could of had more time on them. I guess I am speaking for myself. The kids did have a lot of fun too. Just a scarey incident made them happy to get out of the water. We'll get to that. That was one fast jet ski. Colton with Papa Dave. Easy does it. Colton loved the ride. Jayce and Blake on the grassy lake. Megan and Blake. Megan kept saying to go faster. She was riding with me and I accidentally punched it and almost threw us both off. Had to catch our breath and get our hearts out of our throats before we started again. Papa and cousin Joey

Steph and Colton, Blake and Jayce and...are those Dave's fingers on that stand up jet ski? Dave was determined to ride that stand up jet ski. He's moving but not up. After several days of practice, he was able to ride the thing. Papa Dave taking Megan and Jayce for a ride. He let Megan drive. She thought that was fun but soon decided just to steer and let Dave control the gas. They seemed to be having fun. They got pretty far out but not any further than the rest of us on any of our rides. It was just shocking to watch them riding along, turn around to help Blake do something then turn back around and discover that the jet ski they are on was tipped over and I couldn't see the kids or Dave. They were so far out that I had to ask Blake if I was seeing what I thought I was. My sister Katy was off on the other jet ski so when she came back for grass removal we sent her to rescue Dave and the kids. The jet ski the kids were on wouldn't start and had to be towed back to shore. What would we have done if my parents hadn't rented that extra jet ski? There was no way to swim out to help. I guess I could have blown up an air raft I had in the car and paddled out. But that would have taken forever. I guess we would have hoped a neighbor was home and asked for help. Okay, lesson learned...life jackets really do save lives! Hot tubbing with Papa Dave after being dumped off the jet ski in the lake. Grandma Georgia with the kids and Katy and Joey. Photography issues. Katy and Joey got cut off.

Merle and Norman and Andy (not seen) came to visit us at the beach house. It was a small family reunion this year.

Jelly Belly Jelly Bean Factory

On our way to the Clear Lake beach house we took a detour to Fairfield to take a free tour of the Jelly Belly jelly bean factory. It ended up being a pretty long ordeal. We waited in line an hour for a 40 minute tour. Megan thought it was very fascinating watching the process of how a Jelly Belly jelly bean is made and then delivered to stores. It was fun to see all the robots at work dumping trays of jelly beans, stacking boxes and trays etc and of course fun to see the different stages of a Jelly Belly. We weren't allowed to take pictures. Jayce thought the tour was pure torture. He couldn't stand the smell of the factory or the loud noise. In one section it had a strong smell of cinnamon that he couldn't escape even when he plugged his nose. He was crying and I was just hoping he wouldn't get sick because of the smell. Jayce doesn't like to eat most sweets especially candy if it's not an M&M or Hershey's kiss and I guess he couldn't stand the sweet smell either.

Box Fort

Blake bought a couple 55 gallon drums for us and his friend. Jayce tried to convince me that now we didn't need to take water bottles in the car on our trip to California because now we could just take one of those drums of water. I couldn't convince him that that was a bad idea. The drums came in great big boxes that the kids played with for days. They turned them into horse corrals, dog shelters, and we also put them together to make a huge fort. It was dark inside so the kids used flashlights and had a blast. Their friends even came over and played in the boxes with them. I love their imaginations.

Lake Tahoe

We had some pretty hot days in July with temps over 100 degrees. It seems everyone headed to Lake Tahoe. We had a good time swimming, building sand castles and feeding the geese. Sand Harbor is the beach at Lake Tahoe that we went to. It is shallow, then it gets over your head deep and then further out it gets shallow enough again that the kids can touch. Therefore, the name Sand Harbor. Megan and I had a scare where we had to be rescued by my friend we were with. She thought we were playing when actually I was yelling "We need help!" We had gotten out over our heads without a life jacket and Megan decided to get out of the float tube she was in with her friend and she jumped on me (without telling me)but I couldn't touch. She had a death grip on me around my neck and wouldn't let me turn her around so I could swim with her back to shore. Every time I turned her around she thought I was going to let her go and she clung back on for life around my neck. We were both panicking. Megan's friend got her mom who was swimming near us and she got Megan to shore. This all happened in a minute or less but it seemed like the time dragged on. I still get scared feelings of what could have happened with just the memory.