Random Moments

Here are some random moments from June...

I finally got a Bosch mixer!!!!! Hoo-ray!!!!

Grandma and Grandpa came for a visit.

And we had a great Father's Day! (Or rather, Robby and my Dad - who happen to be visiting - had a great Father's Day!)

Winter fashion in June

Where do they learn this stuff?

Moving In

I must admit that there are still many boxes around our place that are waiting to be unpacked. But here are some of our early unpacking adventures...

Eating seated on the kitchen floor since we didn't have room for our table to be set up with all the boxes around.

Playing on our new playset (or rather new-to-us playset since it came with the house)

Painting a couple rooms (3 more to go)

And enjoying the beautiful plants surrounding our house

There are more pictures for you to enjoy in the...

Moving In Album
(21 pictures - Click on the large picture to go through the slide show, or select a picture from the top menu)

Our Forced Vacation

As many of you know, the house that we were renting in Indiana sold about a week and a half earlier than we were planning. We agreed to move out early so that our landlords could sell the house since we knew how much they wanted to sell it. Well, we also had about an additional half a week before our new house in Iowa would be available, so we told people we were "homeless" for two weeks. It was also known as our forced vacation. So here's what we did...

We stopped in Michigan on our drive (just so we could say we had been to Michigan).

We stopped at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago two days in a row to check it out.

One of our favorite exhibits was the SmartHouse. A model home that is built with all the latest technologies to make it energy efficient. There was some cool stuff there. Like a prototype for a remote controlled snow shovel! That's my kind of snow shovel! You sit inside sipping your hot cocoa while steering the thing from your window! Too bad it's only a prototype right now.

We checked out the SmartHouse garden...

played in the Museum

and watched some chicks hatch!

And then on the way to Iowa we swung through the very edge of Wisconsin, so we could say we had been there, too.

To see more fun vacation pics click on this album...

Our Forced Vacation Album
(28 Pictures - click on the big picture to flip through each one or select one from the top of the page)

Our Move

Having only been in Indiana 9 months I was amazed at how settled we felt there. It was very sad to leave because I made many wonderful friends, but our future held something different so we packed everything up again.

My mini packing helper!

When we got back from our trip to AZ, we only had two days to finish packing and before we loaded our truck. Then we spent two nights in our empty house before setting off on our forced vacation. Here you can see our last sunset in West Lafayette...

I miss that pond. It was beautiful.

The next day we loaded the remainders in our cars and departed.

One last pic in front of the house. (It's a little crooked because the camera was perched on the roof of the car.)

But we did enjoy our first hotel a lot!

More AZ fun from May

Since this is all old news for most of you I will try to be brief...

This is the last collection of pics from our Arizona graduation trip. We had a great time and wish it could have been longer!

Robby got to see one of his best friends, Casjen! They were so happy! Bonus was I got to see one of my best friends Casjen's mom, Alison, too! We miss you guys!

One of the days there we took a trip to the local pool by my sis-in-law Andra's house. As you can see we needed the break from the heat. Of course, 100 is nothin' in AZ!

This was my favorite pool pic! Jamesy, you are so cute!

And Jenna even got time to visit with some of her old AZ pals, Graham and his brother, Quinn!
Again, I got my bonus of visiting with their mom, Marci!

I am going to have to plan a trip to AZ during the winter months! (I can at least dream, can't I?!)

From our resident expert...

"Do you know what, Dad?" Jenna asked this morning.

"What?"

"Monsters have big pinky toes."

Graduation 2009

We're back from vacation, and now all the pictures that I have been meaning to post are haunting me! I have to get this stuff posted pronto, or I will never catch up! I have hundreds of pictures to post, but I don't want to overwhelm you (or myself for that matter), so I am going to post a small selection of pics for each of my next several posts, and I will include a link to an online photo album with the complete selection of pictures. This way those of you who care to see every single moment of our lives can do so, and those who just want a glance, can get a glance.

I begin with Robby's long awaited graduation! To sum it up briefly, it was hot, hot, hot!

Graduation 2009 Album

(34 pictures)

Click the link above to see the full selection of pictures and click the back button on your browser to return to our blog. And now for the highs and lows:

• Low - being confined to the stadium for 3 1/2 hrs. before the ceremony in the extreme AZ heat! Yuck! Our seats were in the direct sun for 2hrs of it, so several of us spent the time retreating to the shaded concessions areas.
• High - That they did have plenty of free ice cold water available for the spectators. (I wondered how many thousands of gallons we all went through seeing as the stadium was just about packed!)
• Low - being forced to listen to an Alice Cooper performance. I'm surprised I still have my hearing!
• High - That I did not bring my girls (they would not have survived the torturous afternoon/evening, although I do wish they could have been there for the moment their daddy walked the stage.)
• Low - being subjected to all this because Obama "asked" to speak at ASU's commencement.
• High - Hearing Little Robby ask me if we were going to have to sit through ALL of the graduates walking across the stage. The football field was packed with thousands of graduates, but only about 200 of those were doctoral candidates who were actually walking at this ceremony. He was relieved to hear we wouldn't have to wait for ALL of them to walk.
• Low - not having all of our family who wanted to be there with us.
• High/Low - Okay, so Obama's speech was pretty good (all except for one part, but I will not go off on that here).
• HIGH - seeing my honey walk across the stage! Congratulations Dr. White!