More of Evie at the festival

Grandpa took these awesome pictures of Evie on stage!!!!

Standing like a black belt



Power Punch!




Front kick




That girl amazes me!!

SWEET! (corn festival!)

YEAH! Evie was asked to do a martial arts demonstration today for the Urbana Sweet Corn Festival!



I am very proud of her! I took a video of the entire program.. check back, I may or may not upload it to YouTube and put it on the blog, it's 25 minutes or so long, though. She did a fantastic job! She is the only one that is not wearing her uniform jacket, so you'll see her with the red Newberry Academy t-shirt. It was so hot, (97 degrees) and we weren't told (well, at least I wasn't) that she had to wear full uniform, so I had her wear her summer program shirt which she wears to class. I felt kinda bad that she was the ONLY one not in full dress, but you know.. I'm kinda glad! I could find my girl easily and she wasn't as boiling hot as the rest! There were only two Tiny Tigers selected to represent the group so it was aweome that Evie and her friend, Anju, got to be up center stage in front of the crowd!

Congrats Evie!!

(And thanks to Grandma and Grandpa Hoctor, Hope and family and Kacee and family for attending!)

Here are Evie and John Michael walking and eating together discussing the music that was on the other stage as we were walking by.. they thought it was "terrible" LOL
I think John Michael's word was "Yuck!"




On the way home, we saw a group of girls doing a fundraising car wash and Evie and I thought it would be fun to let them wash the van.. Evie said that she would like to "try to help".. the girls loved her! And the van is shiny!

Evie is officially a Kindegartner

Evie started Kindegarten today.. a happy and sad occasion all at once. I could tell that Joe was pretty eaten up about it.. Evie being a Daddy's girl and all... it was tough.
We bought her a special necklace that has her initial on it with a diamond heart in front of it and today's date to mark the occasion. She is wearing it proudly to remind herself that Mommy and Daddy are always thinking about her and that when she gets nervous or sad, she can count on her "magic" necklace to help her be at ease.. she said it worked like a charm today!
Here she is walking to the bus stop.


She really enjoyed herself and although she has been saying for the past week that she would be nervous to ride the bus, she hopped right on this morning with no worries. She said that school was great.. made some friends, enjoyed her teacher.

ANd here she is getting off of the bus.



Now she has the weekend off, and goes back on Monday.

Congratulations to my baby girl for another successful first!

No Bake Cookies!

When I was a child, I used to love eating No Bake Cookies.. the chocolatey peanut butter kind that my Mom always made. It's been years since I made it, but today was a special day for Evie.. her first day of school and I wanted to do something special with her. I called my Mom and got her old recipe and Evie and I made them after school today. They are soooo yummy! Evie did all of the measuring and most everything by herself!



The recipe is as follows:

In a large sauce pan, mix
2 Cups Sugar
1/4 cup cocoa
1/2 cup milk
1 stick of margarine or butter

bring to a boil and cook for about a minute...
then remove from heat and mix in
1/2 cup peanut butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
4 cups of dry oats

after stirring together, line baking sheets with waxed paper and using a spoon, drop heaping mounds of the cookie mixture onto the paper. Let stand for about an hour (if you like them warm, dig in, but they are firmer as they stand)

So easy to make with the kids! And so delicious! and hey.. if it gets my picky daughter to eat peanut butter AND oatmeal, it's a good snack!

Evie even took some to her Tiny Tigers instructor tonight!
Have fun!

Fun with Friends

Well.. Evie starts school tomorrow so today we decided to do some fun stuff to finish up her summer break. We went with Hope and a couple more friends and kids to a new kids center in Bloomington.. They had a great time! Then we went to Miller Park for the kids to play in the water and the park.. and then to Krispy Kreme for doughnuts!

Here's my little man playing in the toddler area.. he made his first basket.. without me ever showing him what to do! He even looks like he wants to take a step in this video.. only a matter of time!

The boys having a tea party

Princess Evie on her throne

Evan on a dinosoar Dig
Aaron singing karaoke

Evie in the ball pit
The group watching the doughnuts being made

My kids were tuckered out on the way home...



What a fantastic day!

New blog tomorrow after Evie's first day of school!

Evan and Friends

Saw this picture on Kylla's blog tonight and forgot all about this day! Was wondering when pics would surface.. I knew someone took some!
It was Ev's friend, Calvyn's birthday at the pool..


Evan, Calvyn, Garren and Rhylan...

Splishy Splashy

Just a little bathtime fun.. my kids love to take baths together.. and play in the bubbles.. Evan likes to swim in the tub.. I'm tellin' ya, he's gonna be a little swimmer like Evelyn.








And here they are watching cartoons in the morning with Mommy....

Yo Ho! It's a Pirate's Life For Me!

Been pillaging Navy guards and pludering ships on Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean Online game. www.piratesonline.com
I downloaded it for Evie about a week ago and It's me that's addicted. Well.. Evie is as well! You can get basic access for free which is great! I think after 7 days, it's about the same only then you have to contend with a smaller screen with ads around it... we've decided that we like it enough to pay the membership fee.

So if you like the movies, you'll love the game.. all of the charachters that you love, (Jack Sparrow, Will Turner, Elizabeth Swann, Barbosa, Tia Dalma, etc.) are in it.. plus many more.. you have to sink and steal from Navy and East India Trading Company ships.. and lots more. It's a HUGE map with tons to do.. crews to assemble with your friends and you can play together. John Michael and Evie's charachters are on a crew together and can sail ships and do tasks together. Evie's Pirate is named, "Cap" (after her imaginary friend), and you can design your own girl or guy..



My Pirate is called "Eliza Firehazzard" (You can create a name from the different names that they provide)


Here I am in Tortuga


And here's my ship.. on fire.. just got hit by two Navy ships.. bastards!
But I got to shore and had it repaired!


The music in the game is straight out of the movies.. funny I hadn't realized that until yesterday, Evie and I were watching Pirates 3, "At World's End" and Evie was like.. "We know that song!" She remembered it from the game.

Anyway.. it's a great way to unwind at the end of the night for me.. and a great way to play something with Evie that I actually can get in to!

There are different servers you can play on since the online world is so big.. I like to play on the same server each time in case friends wanna find me.. It's called "Angassa" (Angassa Ocean), so if you hop on, look me up!

Back to the game!!
Night!

A little more summer fun!!!

This morning the kids and I went to the pool... again... we've been trying to go every day that I have off.. which has been a bit. There was literally NO ONE but us at the pool from 10 am till a few minutes before they opened (one other family), they let us stay in the baby pool up until about 5 minutes until they opened the big pool, since we were the only ones there!
The kids had a great time, as usual..





We had our snack in the concession area and they were blaring country music, anyone who knows me will tell you that I DON'T listen to country music.. but my kids sure seemed to enjoy it.. neither one could stop dancing! LOL
Enjoy the video!



School starts next week! Hope everyone is enjoying the last days of summer! What fantastic weather!

"Hey Hey I Wanna be a Rock Star"

Evan LOVES music, just like his sister did when she was a baby.
Here he is applauding Daddy while he is playing his guitar, and then deciding to help out!

Get your motor runnin'.....

Vroom Vroom! My little man is cruisin' all over the house with his walk behind car this morning!



It's only a short matter of time until he is off and running on his own... Look out for your stuff, Sister Evie!

Jack and Jill Went Up the Hill.....

or..... Evie, Evan and friends went up the "mountain" as the kids called it.
What a full day! Today after Evan's little friend, Olivia's birthday party, (which was a blast, thanks, Jen for inviting us!), I took my kiddos to Evie's new school and got her registered for Kindegarten.. I know.. I know.. Kindegarten. *sigh*
Then we got our naps and got refreshed and went back out to enjoy the wonderful, sunny 80 degree weather! Can you believe this?! 82 degrees... in AUGUST! It's been an amazing summer.. Anyway.. we met Hope and kids at the local children's zoo and after that we walked over to the big grassy "mountain" so that the big kids, (Evie and John Michael) could climb up it.

Aaron and Evan were content at first, to play at the bottom of the hill with the stroller.






Then Aaron had to get in on the action bolting up the hill.. Hope, of course had to go up.. Here's Evie coming down the hill with them..


So... before I knew it, Evan was crawling as fast as his little body would allow up this huge "mountain".


As long as he was crawling straightforward things went smoothly. once in a while he would try to sit up and one time he started rolling backwards down the hill.. he quickly grabbed the grass and hiked himself back up with a slightly panicked look on his face.. and then he trekked back up like nothing had ever happened.
Almost to the top...



And at the very top.. see how tiny our stroller at the bottom looks? He made it up completly by himself and looked very proud.



I had to help him down, though.. he couldn't figure it out.. you can't simply "crawl down face first LOL

So, we had a great day! I hope to have a new blog up later with pictures from Olivia's party. The babies were so cute!!

Ta ta for now!

Celebrity Morph by MyHeritage

I think I found my twins!!!
Kelly Clarkson! Scarlett Johansen? Who knew?
I tried two different pics and here were my results.. kinda amazing how accurate they are! I never thought that I looked at all like these two, but the morphs are pretty perfect! YAY! I'm so glad to have gotten these two!

MyHeritage: Celebrity Morph - Free genealogy - Family tree template

MyHeritage: Family trees - Genealogy - Celebrities

And it looks like my kids are gonna be good looking people when they grow up!
Miss Evie will look like Keira Knightley. (I tried several of Evie and got Parker Posey alot but this one had the highest precentage result)

MyHeritage: Celebrity Morph - Family search - Old pictures

And Evan like Sean Astin! Not bad!
By the way.. I tried 4 different photos of Evan and each time I got different pics of Sean as his top result...

MyHeritage: Celebrity Morph - Free family websites - Research family history

Kinda fun!