Our Barbies

Chris's aunt Darlene brought the girls their first Barbies a couple weeks ago. They had some bath Barbies, but they were mermaids so they couldn't take the clothes and shoes off.

The girls LOVE them! They have slept with them every night and adore their Aunt Darlene!!!
Thank you!

My Beloved Father In Law - Now an Angel

February 7th, 2013 was a day that has forever changed our family. We lost my beloved father in law that day. He hadn't been feeling well for quite some time and his heart gave out.

He was always so sweet to me. I remember him telling me right after Chris and I were married that he never had a daughter and he was so happy to have such a beautiful daugher like me now. I will always remember that!

He also was very excited when we found out that we were expecting our daughters. He would come to see me when I was in the hospital waiting for them to come and he would talk to me about Chris as a child. He would tell me the same story over and over about when he was watching Chris and and had gotten up to use the restroom and set his beer bottle on the floor and Chris drank it. He would crack me up every time he told me that story. :)

He loved his sons fiercely just as much as he loved his grand daughters. He was so proud of all of them. He was such a special man and will be missed till the end of days.

When we told the girls they were so sweet. Brenda gathered them all around and told them that Grandpa had been sick for a long time and Jesus wanted to take care of him in Heaven instead of Grandma taking care of him here. Leigha, in her infinate sweetness, asked "Well Grandma, who's going to take care of you?" Brenda said that we were, Mommy and Daddy and Uncle Kevin and that we all were just going to take care of each other. They seemed to understand that.
Then Kaiti asked if Grandpa was with Cassie (our dog that passed away about a year and a half ago). I said Yes, he is! and she said "Oh good! Now he won't be scared!" Its truly amazing how their sweet little mind work!

God Speed Dutch! We will ALWAYS love you and miss you terribly!

The Original Founders of the Rod Run - Flatlanders Festival in Goodland, Kansas

Grandpa and his "little loves" - Kaiti, Taylor and Leigha

My Dad, Gary, and Dutch at the girls 3rd birthday party

Taylor and Dutch on his 68th birthday

Dutch and Kaitlyn on his 68th birthday

Kaiti and Leigha with Grandpa

Grandpa pushing Taylor on her new tricycle that they bought them for their 2nd birthday

My favorite picture of Dutch

Grandpa and Taylor on their first birthday

His beloved car...... a fully restored Buick Skylark

2006 trip to the Flatlanders Festival

Dutch and Brenda at my parents 60th birthday party

Christmas 2010

The last family picture we took - 2009

Love you to the moon and back Grandpa!



Did you know this about Pearl Harbor?

Tour boats ferry people out to the USS Arizona Memorial in Hawaii every thirty minutes. We just missed a ferry and had to wait thirty minutes.. I went into a small gift shop to kill time. In the gift shop, I purchased a small book entitled, "Reflections on Pearl Harbor " by Admiral Chester Nimitz.

Sunday, December 7th, 1941--Admiral Chester Nimitz was attending a concert in Washington D.C. He was paged and told there was a phone call for him. When he answered the phone, it was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on the phone. He told Admiral Nimitz that he (Nimitz) would now be the Commander of the Pacific Fleet.

Admiral Nimitz flew to Hawaii to assume command of the Pacific Fleet. He landed at Pearl Harbor on Christmas Eve, 1941. There was such a spirit of despair, dejection and defeat--you would have thought the Japanese had already won the war. On Christmas Day, 1941, Adm. Nimitz was given a boat tour of the destruction wrought on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese.. Big sunken battleships and navy vessels cluttered the waters every where you looked.

As the tour boat returned to dock, the young helmsman of the boat asked, "Well Admiral, what do you think after seeing all this destruction?" Admiral Nimitz's reply shocked everyone within the sound of his voice.

Admiral Nimitz said, "The Japanese made three of the biggest mistakes an attack force could ever make, or God was taking care of America . Which do you think it was?"

Shocked and surprised, the young helmsman asked, "What do mean by saying the Japanese made the three biggest mistakes an attack force ever made?" Nimitz explained:

Mistake number one : the Japanese attacked on Sunday morning. Nine out of every ten crewmen of those ships were ashore on leave. If those same ships had been lured to sea and been sunk--we would have lost 38,000 men instead of 3,800.

Mistake number two : when the Japanese saw all those battleships lined in a row, they got so carried away sinking those battleships, they never once bombed our dry docks opposite those ships. If they had destroyed our dry docks, we would have had to tow every one of those ships to America to be repaired. As it is now, the ships are in shallow water and can be raised. One tug can pull them over to the dry docks, and we can have them repaired and at sea by the time we could have towed them to America . And I already have crews ashore anxious to man those ships.

Mistake number three: Every drop of fuel in the Pacific theater of war is in top of the  ground storage tanks five miles away over that hill.  One attack plane could have strafed those tanks and destroyed our fuel supply.  That's why I say the Japanese made three of the biggest mistakes an attack force could make or God was taking care of America .

I've never forgotten what I read in that little book. It is still an inspiration as I reflect upon it. In jest, I might suggest that because Admiral Nimitz was a Texan, born and raised in Fredricksburg , Texas --he was a born optimist. But anyway you look at it--Admiral Nimitz was able to see a silver lining in a situation and circumstance where everyone else saw only despair and defeatism.

President Roosevelt had chosen the right man for the right job. We desperately needed a leader that could see silver linings in the midst of the clouds of dejection, despair and defeat.

There is a reason that our national motto is, IN GOD WE TRUST  Why have we forgotten?  PRAY FOR OUR COUNTRY!

Christmas 2012

I am so bad at blogging anymore! Here are a few of our Christmas pictures that we took this year.

Dispicable Me.....

We bought the girls the move Dispicable Me a couple weeks because they saw it on TV and loved it! I think we've watched it at least 30 times in 2 weeks! They love all the minions and call Gru "Spika me". LOL

A couple nights ago, Kaiti was using the step stool to get on the toilet and she stuubbed her toe trying to get up - she looked at it and goes "Curse you tiny toilet!" which is a line in the movie! I thought I was going to pee my pants I laughed so hard! God I love these girls!

Happy Halloween!

HA! This is excellent! I've discovered that I can blog from work so I'm sure this will be updated way more frequently now!

Here's a picture from Halloween - the girls had an absolute BLAST!!!

World Events

On May 1, 2011, Osama Bin Laden was confirmed dead by our military forces. He is the man that is behind the attacks on September 11, 2001. This all happened before the girls were even conceived, but it still affects all Americans today, whether they lost a friend or family member that day or not. He took away our sense of safety away and made American's more patriotic in a couple hours.
The day of the attacks, I, like so many others, was getting ready for work. I saw the second plane fly into the tower and honestly didn't believe it. I thought it was a preview of a movie or something. It was beyond my realm of comprehension at that point that America could be that vulnerable. When the towers fell, I was crying as so many other Americans because I knew there was so much lost in that second. How could someone hate us so much that he'd order people to take down planes and kill thousands of people? It was a day etched in my memory just as the day the Challenger Space Shuttle exploded or the Columbine High School shootings happened. While I will forever remember those days, I will always remember this day as well. It was the day that America sent a resounding message to the rest of the world.
You can try to break our spirit, You can try to turn us against each other, but we will prevail! To those who wish to try to harm us, let this be your warning. After 10 years, we still kept searching and finally brought that tyrant to justice.
This wasn't a victory for America alone - it was a victory for mankind!
God Bless the USA!