Memorial Day

Here are a few pictures from our flag planting activity for scouts. They actually cancelled going as a group because only two scouts showed up from our troop, but my friend and I still went with our kids. It was a really neat experience. Every memorial day they plant flags on the graves of all the veterans at the graveyard at Fort Sam Houston (which is all of the graves). There were thousands of them, but thankfully there were thousands of scouts and young families from all over San Antonio who went and participated. The kids loved doing it and it only took about an hour with all of the volunteers. The only hard part was that after all the flags were planted, Nathan wanted to pick them all back up and had to be dragged kicking and screaming from the grave yard. He loved putting them in the ground though. The other funny thing is that I took the kids to Burger King after the activity because it was dinner time and they were hot and sweaty and starving. We had been looking for a McDonalds but we found Burger King first. All the kids ran inside and started getting ready to order and Nathan finally looked around and started screaming "This is not McDonalds!!" Luckily he calmed down pretty quick, but I thought it would have made a good commercial.

Mother's Day

Mother's day was great this year. As you can see I got a crown and a bouquet of hand flowers from my children. It was great. The kids also brought me breakfast in bed without spilling the juice on the new carpet. (Nathan did try to eat my cereal though). I even survived the cherry and mushroom soup chicken (with a hint of cinnamin)made by Justin for lunch. Just for future reference be wary when Justin says "I added a secret ingredient". It actually was pretty good, but I like to give him a hard time. Just remember Justin if you are reading this, eggs do not belong in chili.

Father and sons campout

Upon arriving home from the camp out Justin proclaimed, "From now on only kids 5 and up can go to the father and son camp out." I guess Nathan wandered a bit while Justin was trying to set up the tent and they couldn't find him for a while. Justin was a bit upset. I maintain that if he was just a bit more creative and say tied Nathan to a tree, he could still take him to the camp out with no problems. He doesn't agree. Other than that incident it seems that they all had a good time. The boys read a lot of Prince Caspian and had fun with water guns.

Father and Son Camp out

So this weekend is the father and sons camp out for our stake. Justin is going to take the boys so I told Samantha we could do something really fun that's just for girls. She looked at me and said "like go to the mall?!" followed by an excited girly screech you would expect upon hearing that we were going to Disney Land. I'm not exactly sure what she expects. I guess it has been a long time since she has actually gone to the mall. I'm excited. I think we'll go eat and may be watch a girly movied. If we're super motivated we may even paint our fingernails before we go. yay! Move over Disneyland!

Battle of the Flowers Parade

I finally got to go to the Battle of the Flowers parade this year. I've always thought it would be fun, but because Justin is always working, have never mustered up the courage to brave it alone with the kids. Kelly Landin called me this year to see if I wanted to go with her since it was our last chance. It was crowded, but not as bad as I thought it might be. (I was picturing a repeat of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parde in NYC or New Year's at Big Ben in London.) Compared to those events it was practically abandoned. It was a lot of fun and I know the kids had a good time too. Thank you Kelly for giving us a reason to go!

6 days on the market and counting. . .

So we've now had our house up on the market for 6 days and things are going fine. We've had 3 showings so far. It really hasn't been too bad keeping everything clean since they give at least an hours notice, but it is just annoying because I never feel like I can just relax. At the same time, I don't feel like I can do anything very interesting either because all of those things make messes. No little projects to keep me sane, just the same old vacuuming and cleaning bathrooms. Yuck! I'm so bored, but of course always have lots of boring work I could be doing. Since the house has been up I have not really cooked. We've been eating, spaghetti, boxed dinners, stew and biscuits, easy stuff that's quick to prepare and requires little or no dishes. I never realized how much time I usually spend cooking, figuring out what to cook and cleaning up after cooking. It's been kind of nice to have the break, but at the same time that is probably the homemaking responsibility I enjoy most. Now I'm just left with bathroom cleanup.
My agent showed our house today and she said of the 11 houses she showed to her client ours was #2. The client liked my neighbor's house better because it's bigger, but she said ours was really clean! That's always good to hear. The new carpet helps alot with that. It is great at hiding dirt and stuff and we are working really hard to keep everything cleaned up. THe kids have also spent a lot of time outside lately which helps.
Samantha had a birthday party at the park on Tuesday which was great. According to Kethy Holland there was a scary man stalking us, but I was oblivious to the fact. Luckily her husband showed up to scare the man off. As usual I forgot to take pictures, or I would post something here.
Justin emailed Major Long today to see about our next assignment. He said he is working really hard to keep us in Mountain Home so hopefully that is where we will be. We are really looking forward to seeing family a little more.

Waiting, waiting, waiting

Well, we carpeted the entire house, touched up all the paint, planted flowers, raked leaves, hauled off branches and other various pieces of junk, replaced the dishwasher, washed windows and cleaned blinds and our house is now on the market. Just days before all that work (and after all the money was spent) we found out we might not even be moving where we want to go! We want to go to Mountain Home, Idaho, and were told that was probably where we are going, but now we are hearing that we might get bumped and sent to some place on the non-volunteer list. yuck! Hopefully we will find out soon! Meanwhile, we have had two showings and no feed back. One of the showings was on Easter. Who goes house hunting on Easter? Easter was exciting anyway. Our ward choir did a cantada which I was semi in charge of. Justin sang a solo and the whole thing was pretty neat. Then we had dinner at the Landin's house. kelly is so awesome . . . she made blackberry pie, need I say more?