demolition derby

we made a third trip to delaware this year!! the purpose of this visit: matt scouting out a possible business venture: a chicken farm; experiencing first hand the life on a chicken farm, by working with his uncle and cousin on their's. too bad i don't have any pictures of that, he was gone before i woke up those mornings! ;)
it was a great visit to delaware, as always! thanks so much or having us again grannie and pop pop!! this time of year is always fun because this is when they have their state fair! we really love the delaware state fair. it's focused more on agriculture and there's room to walk...freely (unlike the nc state fair!!). the main event that we always try to go to is the demolition derby! the very first time i went (6 or 7 years ago), i was very skeptical, but now i holler with the rest of them! i had to get a video of it to share with everyone, and especially anyone who has never been to one. it's definitely hard to capture the atmosphere in this video and the cars look much slower than they seem when you are watching them in person...but hopefully you'll get the idea!! enjoy!

my birthday

do they look like they are having fun or what!? :)

today was my birthday, and it was a sweet relaxing day with the family! just a few pictures to remember the day. :) fun times.

 

 

 

 

my birthday...matt's favorite kind of cake...guess we know who was baking...food lion!! hehe! maybe that explains the expression on my face?? ;)

 

me with my favorite peeps! :)

just a fly

i just thought that claire looked super cute today...i actually got her hair to look nice...in my opinion anyway! :) while i was taking these pictures, this fly kept buzzing around us. normally, i don't think a fly would really bother claire, but i guess the louder buzz noise it made when it hit against the back door made her a bit uneasy. in the little video, notice how the fly keeps getting her attention...it's subtle until the end.

ah, home!

we have had two very fun weeks, but we missed daddy this last week and are so glad to be home in our own beds again! :)

Indiana!

while we were at the beach, i did all our laundry before we left. we got home from the beach saturday early evening, unpacked matt's stuff, then the kids and i headed out sunday morning around 4am to meet my parents, andrea and eli at andrea's house near statesville...we arrived at my cousin michelle's house at 10:15pm that night....long day!! we were exhausted when we got there, but we still stayed up talking for awhile, after we got the kids settled of course.

my slackness in photo taking shines brightly in these random photos i have from the trip, but i still wanted to post the memories!

we visited my grandpa and grandma (mutti's parents) while we were there.

claire and her great grandma nichter

mutt's favorite animal, she told me i needed to get a picture of them...i remembered!!

during our visit we visited the zoo. i remember this zoo from when i was really little. do preschools take field trips? either way, different places triggered old memories here, like the ponys, i remember riding them when i was little...well, probably not the exact same ponys!

eli, the animal lover, said if he saw one more animal he was gonna...zzzzz...
so sweet.

wyatt seems to like zebras and giraffes right now.

our own monkey!

ready to head back to michelle's after a fun day at the zoo.

on the way back, we were hoping the kids would take a nap (it was a little less than a hour drive)...it took a while because claire kept interupting our serenade to get eli to go to sleep. it's almost as if she knew we had hoped it would work on her as well! you can hear her protest as soon as we start singing. the other funny thing about this video, is that i thought i had claire on the video, but i have michelle the whole time, you can hear claire, but you just see michelle giggling!! :)

(...i just realized another funny thing...toward the end of the video, you can hear wyatt saying "cheese" a few times!! because he can see that i have the camera pointing back there!! little ones are too cute and funny!!)

a relaxing morning at michelle's...i think this may have been the only relaxing morning there! otherwise we were always trying to get ready to go somewhere. michelle was so sweet to let us stay with her, and she helped us so much with the kids. thanks michelle!

claire passing the time on the trip to the lake.

this particular day we headed to the lake with michelle, my cousin angie and her two kiddos gracie and austin. we always hear stories about them going to the lake, and were always sad that we never got to do that sort of thing with them, so we are getting to go with them!!!

two lil cuties! (well, ree is too, but she's not quite as small!)

wyatt and austin...playing with something...?

me, claire, eli, ree and gracie. i apparently thought i wasn't going to make it all the way into the picture...
...i was wrong.