Audrey's 3rd Birthday - July 25

Audrey had a fun pool party for her birthday with all of her family and a few friends.





I just had to include this picture of Audrey in her terry turban, which she
loves to wrap her hair in after her after swim shower! Emma too!

Another wonderful Gulf Shores Vacation

We just cannot seem to get enough of the wonderful beach at Gulf Shores. It is our favorite place to go for summer vacation with the whole family. Once again we went this summer and we all had a great time. There was some wonderful fishing that Harvey, Josh and Kim, Josh and Heather and Aidan participated in this year! We had some delicious grilled fish when they returned home from fishing on Tuesday 6/23. This year was Aidan's first trip out and everyone was anxious about how he would take it and HE LOVED IT! He cannot wait until next year. I am told that is Emma wants to go next year she can since she will be old enough then! I will tell you all one thing, those fishing trips are not for me. I went once many years ago and it was not a pleasant experience and I will never, ever do it again. I just love the sand, sea sun, and pool!
The last picture of the fishing trip is a video of Heather bringing in a mackrel fish!





McDonald Family Rembe, Aidan, Audrey, and Emma
Tried as we might, we could not get a photo of the Groach family this year.

Waiting for our pool!

We are getting ready to go down to Orange Beach this Saturday and upon our return in one week, our backyard pool should be almost finished. It will be 20' by 40', with the shallow end being at 3 ft and the deep end at 8 feet. The electrical work was done today. We are now looking at the leveling of the area around the pool and then they should be ready to come in and do the concrete work and upon that setting, we should have the liner installed. They tell us we can plan on swimming in the pool over the July 4th weekend. Yipee!

The digging began

Strawberry Picking 2009!

As mentioned previously, with all the rain in May, we also found it hard to find a good time to pick the ripe strawberries. Since the last week of May brought us much sunshine, we planned to rise early and go to Southern Belle Farm and pick us some strawberries on Monday, June 1. We had a beautiful morning, school was out. What better way to start the summer than to go strawberry picking. We brought home 4 gallons of strawberries! Now, that does not count what the children ate while they were furiously picking them!

Waiting for their containers.....all were wearing their garden boots!

May activities....baseball....birthday and flower girl

May was a very busy month. Most of it was filled with lots and lots of rain, until the last few days, then we finally saw some sunshine. In spite of the weather, we had Rembe's 3rd birthday, Aidan had some baseball games and then on May 30th Rembe was a flower girl in her Uncle Keith's wedding on May 29, up in Germantown, Ohio.
We finally got to plant the garden after days and days of rain shortly after we had it tilled. It was too wet to actually plant, but that is all done and it is coming up very nicely.

Aidan is playing for the Florida Gators this year!




Had lots of water fun for the birthday party!






Flower girl Rembe.....so pretty!

2009 Garden Preparation - Full Crew!

Due to Harvey's heart surgery in February, he was under orders not to do the tilling this year. Well, Liz and I did the first tilling, then Kim did the second round and the children helped with getting chunks and rocks out of the way. Then another day and Heather came down and did some tilling. It certainly will turn out to be a victory garden for all!

Easter 2009

A glance at our egg coloring, that is always a huge event and always a success! Then onto a beautiful Easter morning and to church. After church they had their annual egg hunt!

Emma's 6th Birthday Party

It is always hard to believe that these grandchildren are growing up so quickly. Here are a few pictures of Emma's birthday party on March 21. The children had an absolutely wonderful time with the jumping/bouncing castle. The weather was perfect for such activity.


Emma and Da plant an Emma Tree

Time to update

WOW! I cannot believe that I have not added anything here since the holidays. It is not like there is not anything happening here! It has been just the day to day routine pretty much, but you know how the time just seems to fly away. I have been sewing quite a few cart covers lately due to several new babies arriving soon. I really do enjoy doing those because I find the sewing very relaxing. What I really need to try and do is to get back to the scrapbooking. I had such fund creating one for Aidan and then Emma, but have barely put any effort into one for Audrey and Rembe. I have all the materials, just need to push myself!
January went by as pretty much uneventful with the exception that Audrey decided, while we were out shopping (had no camera) that she wanted her little ears pierced like Emma's. Well, Kim said that she has been talking about it a lot, so we decided to go for it. The facility was able to do both of her ears at once, so that made it easier, but she honestly did not react. She just blinked as they pierced and then it was over!



February was a very eventful month. We found out that Harvey needed a quadruple by-pass and on the 17th he had that surgery done. As of this posting, he is doing extraordinarily well. He walks every day, several times a day and he never complains about anything. I am so proud of him! We go to the heart surgeon this week on the 19th and the cardiologist on the 20th. We expect good reports from both. Hopefully he can begin to drive again, he really misses that alot. Of course some of that may be due to the fact that he just does not like MY driving! LOL!
We had our one and only snow fall on March 1st. Oh, it was exciting, it has been several years since we have had any snow to speak of here. It was enough to0 keep the children home from school on Monday the 2nd. Of course, by mid-day on Monday it was pretty much all gone! So it goes in Georgia!



After that snowfall on the first weekend of March, we had temperatures into the high 70's the following weekend. And also, on the 7th we celebrated Kyler's 3rd birthday. What a good time we all had. He is such a cutie!!! Happy Birthday Kyler!



Will not wait as long for the next updated post. Baseball season is beginning for Aidan and we always look forward to that, so you know I will simply have to post a picture or two of that event.
Also, it just seems like all these grandchildren are growing up much to quickly. I will say that Emma and I had a slumber party of sort on Friday night, March 13th, we watched 2 Madagascar movies, 1 Pinocchio and then the grand finale was the Beverly Hills Chihuahua. While watching the movies, we enjoyed chocolate peanut butter ice cream and took a break between movies to bake some cookies. We had a grand time! When the children have spent the night they have always slept in the spare bedroom by themselves. Well, since Da's surgery, he has been sleeping in the spare room, so this was really the first time that I actually slept with Emma and we had so much fun because we had the TV in our room!!! May have to do this again some time!!!
And Emma can wink!!!