Back To The Races

Our friend Rachel was promoted to Colonel on Friday. As a part of the celebration we went to the Newmarket July Course Racetrack to watch the races and then enjoy a concert. They do this every Friday night in the summer. It was a blast! A lot different than the last experience I had up in the posh box, this time we had a picnic in the garden enclosure and brought all our own food and more importantly, wine.

They have a great children's area with park and Jackson met his friend Cormac McCain there. The two of them had a great time terrorizing the place.

Connor was taught to "bet" thanks to several special people and actually won more than his daddy.

Colton was taught about wine by Miss Reba. He thought the bottle and cork were spectacular to chew on!

After the races were complete Estelle was the headliner and it turned out I recognized some of her music.

All in all, it was a brilliant evening. Eating, laughing, dancing under the stars with a great group of people.

By the end of the night, our little guy told us it was time to go. Look at those tired baby eyes.

Give The Baby a Love!

Colton, like every other baby ever born loves mirrors. He usually hides his head and plays shy when he sees "the baby" in the mirror. He stares very perplexed as he can't understand why his momma is holding that baby. So I was in the hallway the other day and he kept reaching for the baby. I told him to give the baby a love and the photos following are the result! Hysterical!

Happy Fathers Day to Jeff, Gene and Gary, my 3 favorite fathers! How blessed I am to have so many amazing men in my life to be examples to my children.

6 Month Photo Shoot

I wanted some new pictures to frame from Colton's 6 month age so I got out the fabric and camera today and produced loads and loads of pictures. Here are a few of my favorites from the day along with the lead photo on the header which is my favorite.

SUPERSTAR!

Well, Connor was quite the rock star at school on Thursday. It was the last day of school and he won several awards. The most impressive award was he was the top reader for the entire school earning close to 900 points in the reading counts program. He was almost 200 points ahead of his nearest competitor. The PTO gave him a check for $25. He also was one of the top 5 math olympiads from the team at his school consistently scoring high on his quiz challenges. We had to give him a hard time because the number one on the team won a trophy and it was a GIRL! He had to sleep in the garden that night! We are VERY proud of our budding young man who managed straight A's all year. I can hardly wait to see what the first year in middle school will bring.

Milestones

Colton is growing up too fast. He loves his new "highchair" and I do too. I'm wishing I'd never every bought a real one as this one is so convenient to strap onto any chair and takes up no space in my matchbox sized house. How did I live without it?

Colton surprised Jeff and I on Sunday by pulling up on a chair for the first time. He is moments away from crawling having gone from just pulling to his knees, to rocking, to now being able to move his hands without collapsing. He is surprisingly close.

I just want him to stay little forever and time is marching on very quickly.

Smelling The Roses

It seems like whenever we travel anywhere we are always in a rush to get ther4e. The drive to Edinburgh was so beautiful we decided to stop along theay and "smell the roses". There are an amazing number of castles in Northern England on the coast. We stopped at two and really went into neither because unfortunately there wasn't time to really explore either of them fully. So we enjoyed them from the outside and have promised ourselves we will return to go inside. The first stop was as the Bamberg Castle. It is right on the water and from it you can see 4 additional castles. The beach was GORGEOUS!! White powdery sand, perfect. The boys love the beach and had the weather been nice we probably would have stayed longer and let them get wet and play longer.

We went for tea after our beach stop and walked through Bamberg. Cute little town. There is a Castle Inn there and Jeff and I thought it would be fun to come back and stay sometime.

The next place I wanted to stop was Alnwick castle. It was one of the main castles used in the Harry Potter films 1 & 2. It was used for several of the courtyard shots and when the kids have their flying lessons. I watched the films when we returned home and was amazed at how much I recognized. This castle is an all day event with gardens and programs for the kids so we again decided it wasn't worth the money to just spend an hour. So we snapped our pictures from afar and moved on down the road. We can't wait to explore some more of the towns on this route as many are beautiful and offer some interesting sights. I believe you can't for 50 yards down the road in this country without finding something historic!

FRENZY FEVER!

The main reason for our trip up to Edinburgh was to attend a Christian rock festival. Jeff's very favorite group Third Day was the headliner along with one of my favorite artists Jeremy Camp. There were a dozen smaller lesser known bands playing on a couple of outside stages. There were six acts that made it onto the main stage and this is where we spent the majority of our time. Connor spent a lot of time watching the smaller bands as they were very willing to visit with the fans and talk to everyone. They also had rides and food booths, it was a really fun event. My favorite was Jeremy Camp.

I was able to be three people deep from the stage during his performance and he was amazing. Third Day was amazing as well and Jeff was right up front during their performance while I hung back with the baby and Jackson.

Jackson unfortunately couldn't see when we were so close unless he was on someone's back. So we did manage to get some seats in the back where we could keep the stroller and have a bit of a rest from time to time.

This was a very unusual concert for us. The artists were excited to be there and share their stories and lives with the audience. There was prayer and scripture reading which we loved. It was a great clean, fun, family event. We can't wait to see who is at Frenzy '10.