Tubing, tubing, and more tubing

We went to my Aunt Rhonda's house last Sunday. My great-aunt Connie is visiting from CA for a few weeks, so it was nice to see her of course. We hung out, went tubing, had dinner, etc. We had so much fun tubing! See pictures....and I have lots more from the afternoon in general, but that will be another post.

This might be a new favorite family picture...we had so much fun tubing together :)

We went fast and both kids LOVED it. I thought Jack might be scared, but he was not at all and both kids were screaming with delight.

My back paid for all the bouncing around, but it was worth it to be able to do fun stuff like this together.

Getting ready for his first tube ride on this awesome tube! They all went together before the four of us went. I'm super jealous b/c this tube is so neat. It's comfortable, huge, and so much fun! Three people can sit in those seats and one can actually kneel behind where Hunter is sitting.

I think this is so funny...all laying back and relaxing while going slow through the canal.
Rhonda, Hunter, and Connie
Joe and Heather took Tyler (almost one year old) tubing too :)
You can't even see Tyler on here...ha.

Tyler turns 1 on Sunday, so we'll be back there again and looking forward to it. I got Hunter a fishing pole, so I'm hoping my cousin Joey will help Hunter learn to fish b/c he's the best fisherman in the family.

Just some random cuteness

He gets into this random somersault pose all the time...he was running away from me while I was trying to get him ready for bed.

Jack and I hanging out at the baby pool while Hunter had his swim lesson
I love this cutie! What a perfect smile :)

Such a happy guy

So much energy

Hunter has been into kissing us a lot lately...he makes the "smooch" noise and I just love it!

He loves blowing kisses now too

Brotherly love...doesn't happen often. I'd say 10 hits/kicks to 1 hug/kiss, but I love to see Hunter being nice.

Six Quick Takes

1) Nick and I went to visit Jacquelyn, Matt, and Alana...she was two weeks old the evening we stopped over. She is so sweet and they all seem to be doing well. I wish they lived a little closer so I could see them more!

Me, Jacquelyn, and Alana. Jacquelyn looks amazing for just having had a baby! I think Nick looks great holding a baby girl!! Don't you think?? haha.

2) Nick loves to pick berries for some strange reason. We went to this place to pick raspberries and blackberries a few days ago. It was really fun and we got some yummy berries! I think the kids ate as many as we picked.

This is a car we saw when driving back to the area to pick berries (it's at a farm type place)...We all thought it looked like Mater from Cars so I had to stop and take a pictures.

We made waffles for breakfast and put berries on them--I don't really ever buy blackberries, but these were really good! I love raspberries too, but they can be expensive.

3) Our soccer star!

4) Gigi has been in the hospital twice in the last month and it's been scaring us! I don't know why some of these pictures are small, but if I enlarge them, they get super blurry. Anyway, I went to see her one day by myself and then Jack and I went last week while Hunter was at VBS. Jack was laying in bed with Gigi for a little bit...she had food so he was willing to sit still :)

5) I just love it when this child does not take a nap, goofs around in his room for two hours for quiet time, and then falls asleep as soon as quiet time is over and we're in the car going somewhere--so annoying! 6) Is it weird that my husband eats the bottom of the cheez-it bag crumbs with a spoon? I think it is. On a similar note, he is not allowed to chew gum in my presence. It is beyond me, but the man can not chew gum properly. He chomps it and has extremely bad manners when it comes to chewing gum. I try to hide it from him, but if he finds it, he tries to sneak it and I know within one minute that he is chewing it. I give him three strikes and then it has to go. That three strikes happens in less than three minutes EVERY time. Gosh, I feel like a mother talking to her child. I also feel like a mean wife, but it's like hearing nails on a chalkboard listening to him chew gum...and once it starts I can't think about anything else.

Have a great day. This week is going by SO slow. I think it should be Friday already and it's only Wednesday!

Hunter at Vacation Bible School

All last week Hunter went to Vacation Bible School at our church. Monday through Friday from 9am till noon. I thought it was a great break for him to do something new, Julie to spend time with Jack alone, and of course for him to learn about Jesus! It went better than I could have ever imagined. Hunter LOVED going and looked forward to it every morning. They did tons of fun things from crafts to singing to hearing stories about God (and yummy snacks--hmmm...ice cream at 9am on Friday morning!?!?). He looked forward to going and for $15 for the whole week, you can't beat that. Thanks to all the volunteers. I even did my part to help volunteer...last Friday I helped the kids make these cute picture frames. I really enjoyed helping the pre-schoolers to the 5th graders. It's interesting to see the kids interact and how a 3rd grade girl can have a fit over not having the right color popsicle stick to make her picture frame. Hunter was really happy that I was there to help and then I got to see their recital at the end. I don't have a picture of his frame that he made (it's him with his whole pre-school class), but here are a few of the things he did last week. We got this cd on the last day--PandaMania (God is wild about you!). I have purchased many kids cd's in the past and this one is AWESOME. Even Nick likes the beat to almost all the songs. I would highly recommend it. Talk about melting.my.heart. Hunter loves to sing the songs. There are two that we love to sing together...."God is wild. God is wild. God is wild about us!!!" and "Hallelujah, Hallelujah. God reigns over us..."I just sit and stare at him in the car while we sing these songs together. It truly makes me so happy to see him sing and love songs about God too. They taught them these hand motions to go with it and it's just the sweetest thing on Earth. I took a video, but since I'm singing too, I will not be posting it. haha. The only problem is that Jack likes to watch Elmo in the car and now Hunter and I want to listen to this, so Jack gets pretty upset. I want to get out of the habit of watching Elmo's Potty Time every single time we're in the car together anyway. Jack points at the tv in the car and whine until you turn it on. The worst part is we all have to listen to it! Hunter is up on stage...second from the left. He is holding himself and one minute later ran down to tell me he had to go potty. This is the "old" church--we were married here and Hunter baptized here, but now we actually go to church at the "new" church.
They made tie dye tee-shirts the first day and then all the kids wore them on the last day for their singing recital.

Painted rocks...there is a story about Jesus behind all of these crafts, but I can't recall this one.

Big smiles before heading into class!

I am just so proud of my little guy. Most of the pre-schoolers were four and five year olds, but since he is already in pre-school at church they said he was fine to attend. I am so glad he enjoyed it, learned, likes to sing the songs, and is just growing up and becoming more independent. I feel like we've had a good week together since we got back from the wedding, so please pray it continues and we are turning a corner with his behavior.

Mark & Brandie's Wedding

Here are some of my favorite pictures that were taken on our camera from the wedding weekend. I can't wait to see if the photographer got some good ones of Hunter and Nick.

So stinkin' cute!!! I love his expressions!!

I love the expression on Hunter's face here too...

Nick's mom, Dori. I think this is a really nice picture of her--she looks so good for her age! I like how the bridesmaids are blurry in the background. Thanks to Nick's friend, Rich, for taking all these pictures with my camera. He is good at taking pictures and if it weren't for him, I would not have any picture b/c my hands were too full with the kiddos.

Nick's dad and step mom, Anne. (aka, Hoppy & Mimi).

This child is lucky I have unconditional love for him...and that I think he's so darn handsome. He can be so difficult at times, that if he were not cute and not funny, I don't even know what I would do.

Me and my handsome 3 year old being silly!
Nick's friend from high school and I. On another note, I am really happy with the necklace I found at Express to wear to the wedding. I had purchased (and since returned) two others before finding this one.

Mark's parents and stepparents with Brandie. The newest member of the Hopwood Family!

Brandie, Mark, and Dori

Place cards at the rehearsal dinner--I thought they were really cute.

Nick's dad, step mom, and Aunt Marty (middle). We were really happy to see her b/c we don't get to see her all that often. She is one of the sweetest people we know!

Nick wrote a pretty good best man speech, but Mark was being weird and basically yelling at Nick while he was trying to talk, so he had to cut it short. We don't even know why b/c nothing was that embarrassing. He really got Nick flustered, so he cut out a lot of it and didn't get to say all that he wanted. I thought Mark should have kept quiet and let Nick give his speech, but what else is new. Nick felt like Mark was mad at him...it's not like it was anything too revealing---and it was all true. Only the part about how when he was in high school (and we were in college) we all went to Vegas with Nick's family. Mark brought his high school girlfriend's baby blanket with him and smelled it the whole time. He also wrote 20 page love notes to her EVERY SINGLE DAY. We made fun of him the whole time. He deserved to get made fun of, but he did not appreciate it on his wedding day. Whatever...be a good sport and take it!

On a totally unrelated note, we had a really nice weekend. I'm done talking about the wedding and moving on. My back has still not recovered, but went to the dr this morning and they are going to adjust some of my meds to try to get me some relief quickly! Anyway, we didn't have any plans for once, which was awesome. We picked yummy berries on Friday evening, went to the pool Saturday evening (and met some people we'd been hoping to run into there), and went to Couchman's on Sunday. The four of us (me, Nick, Hunter, and Jack), went tubing together behind Joey's pontoon and had an absolute BLAST. It was seriously so much fun and I got some great pictures--check back! Also, my great-aunt Connie is visiting from CA, so it was fun to see her!