Remembering SUMMER!!!

School has begun so I guess that unofficially means that summer is over... :-(  BOO!!  We were so lucky to have Jacob and Jordan spend a week with us without their parents this summer!  The twins are so much fun to have around and remind me so much of the wonderful summers that we used to spend with Preston when he was a little kid!  Oh the fun memories we made.  We tried to pack as much into that week as we could!

A must is always Adventureland!  It was a lot of fun, and those kids aren't afraid of much of anything!

The whole gang!!

The silly silo~ I got sick just watching them!!  I think they went 3 times in a row!!

Mr. Brystol on the Frog !!

Bode~what a cute little skin head!!

All the boys on the Ferris Wheel

 It was a  fun day, but man we were exhausted by the end of the day!!

One lazy day the kids decided we needed a fire pit, so they did some research online and decided Home Depot had teh best (cheapest) one.  Off to buy a fire pit!!  Hailey put it together~what a girl!!!!

They couldn't wait until it was dark enough to start a fire!! Man those Deitch kids LOVE fire!!!

And you can't have a fire without SMORES!!!

Crazy boys!

One rainy day we went bowling.

Jonah loves his cousin Jordan!

There were air soft gun wars...

 Lots of sleepovers...

And just lots of cousin bonding time!!!

How we LOVE our Texas cousins and look forward to next summer!

Part 2 tomorrow!!!! 

Weekend in St. Louis



we took a long weekend before school started and headed to St. Louis for some fun and family time.  We left on Thursday night and stayed at a hotel that evening and on Friday we went to the City Museum downtown.  Upon hearing the word "museum" , Jonah decided this was not going to be fun.  It is SUCH a cool place and I highly recommend it for younger kids.  J & J were a little too old to truly respect what an amazing place it is, but I think ultimately they had a fun time.

There were so many cool bridges and tunnels to crawl through!

The boys were acting bored so Tony bribed them with $5 if they would go down one of the slides inside that went down like 3 stories.  Here they are waiting in line to go down being smart alecs!!  So scared!

Here goes Jensen down the slide!!

Trying to balance and knock the other 1 in the water...

Jensen found another slide to try out!

There were so many cool things, one of my favorites was the indoor caverns and waterfalls, the caverns had tunnels and it kept winding up and up, probably about 4 stories in all.  It would have been very easy to lose our kiddos had we wanted to!!  ;-)

Lunchtime fun at Lucca's Bar and Grille downtown

Time to go visit the Arch!!

We all watched the film on how the Arch was made, which is truly incredible how it was done. Then Tony took the boys to the top, I had gone before 20 years ago and had no desire to go again...CLAUSTROPHOPIA!!!  Jensen wasn't sure he wanted to go, but was glad he did it!!

Looking at Busch stadium from the top!

After spending a great day exploring the City, we headed to Dennis and Carolyn's house to spend the weekend.  We were there to celebrate Dennis' 60th birthday.  Friday night we grilled out and Saturday was spent hanging out at the pool and getting ready for the birthday dinner.  Dennis had some special surprise visitors~ Matt and Ellen came home to celebrate with their dad and Steve and Becky made the trip from Ohio.   He was definitely surprised by Matt and it was so fun to see Dennis' reaction!!  

The Plummer family~our gracious hosts.  A lovely birthday dinner Saturday night with ribs, shrimp, sweet corn salad, and the BEST cupcakes I have ever had!!! And I must say I have had a few!! Such sweet people that I am lucky enough to be related to!!

We look evil with our red eyes!

Jonah and Jensen were so glad to get to see Matt and Ellen, it had been a few years! Matt was so thoughtful and brought the boys each a Nike USA speedskating shirt.

The birthday boy, making his speech

Here are the sibling birthday buddies~ Tony born on  August 25th and Becky and Dennis born on August 26th!!!  Kind of cool!  Lots of cake in that house in August growing up!!

Happy UNBIRTHDAY Dennis and THANKS for a wonderful weekend!!

All good things must come to an end!!

Summer is over!!  The boys started back to school yesterday and didn't seem to happy about it.  Hard to believe the lazy days of summer have come to an end and we are back to a routine and busy schedule~oh how I will miss our Thursdays and Fridays to sleep in and hang out! 

Hard to believe Jensen is in the 6th grade!

Dodger is going to be lonely all day without the boys to hang out with. 

And in typical Jonah fashion~ a little dance!!

Is this the oh yeah I'm an 8th grader dance?!?!

And it was at this point when I started to Add Valya our neighbor into the photos that Jensen decided he had had enough fun for one morning and went back inside.....


Welcome back to school boys!  Hope you have a great year!!

Blue eyed visitors

Steve and Jennie and the kids came to visit last weekend and we had such a great time!  On Friday night we hung out and had fajtas and margaritas.  Saturday we went to Adventureland and it was PACKED!!  We rode some rides and then went to the waterpark. Steve took the 3 boys on some slides and some were HUGE!! 

Zoe and Uncle Tony

Video game time

Adventureland

Saturday night Jonah babysat and the adults went to dinner uptown to Renallo's.  Such a nice evening out and we so enjoyed our time together!

Catch that Bubble ZOE!!

Bubble time!!

Jonah and his new buddy Zoe!!  What a blue eyed beauty!!

Daddy and Zoe

Love spending time with these guys! Jackson and Zoe entertained us with their gymnastics~they are  both awesome!!  Jackson and Jensen had a slumber party in the basement and it was just a fun time hanging out making memories! Can't wait to do it again!!!