It's Official

We now have a Kindergartener on our hands.  I took Rachel to register for school today.  August will be here before I know it.

Illinois Sunset

Quick Weekend Trip

We buzzed over to Mom and Dad's after church yesterday to spend Memorial Day with them. Sunday evening was hot dogs and brats followed by some messy smore making.

Today we squeezed in a picnic at the lake before a thunderstorm moved in and followed it up with some cake for Dad's birthday which is tomorrow.

Happy Birthday Dad!

Buggy

Happy 5th Birthday Rachel

Rachel and I started our day with a free chicken biscuit breakfast from Chick-fil-a. Then Memaw and Granddad arrive and we visited for a while. Rachel was surprised when her cousin Makenna and aunt Sarah rang the doorbell. We all headed out to McD's for a Happy Meal. Memaw and Papaw came later in the afternoon and we had a party going on.

Makenna was just as excited about presents as Rachel!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY SPECIAL GIRL!

Let me splain...

...no, is too much, let me sum up!  It's been a non-stop week of activity.  I've farmed Rachel out to 5 different families in the last 6 days while I took care of photo shoots, chiropractor visits, a 2-day girls getaway and tonight's Jars of Clay concert.  I've promised her that we'll do something special while Dusty and Aaron are away at Man Camp tomorrow and Saturday.  So here's the recap for the past week.

Tonight we took in a Jars of Clay concert.  It was the Rewind Tour.  They performed all the songs on their 1st album -  plus some.   Here are me, Aaron, and Aaron's friend Joel with the band.  The boys got autographed CD's and we had a great time with the Painter crew. 

If only the people in the front 2 rows would have not stood through the entire concert, it would have been a bit easier to get some good photos, so I'll post my best one and defer to the photographic excellence of Mr. PEC who spent 1/2 of the concert sitting on the floor in front of the stage. :)  I'm sure there will be plenty of great shots over at Painter El Cinco.  On a side note I met Jen Murray who sat right in front of us.  She writes a really fun blog called 4tunate.  She and her husband are raising 3-year old quadruplet boys.  I really enjoy her blog!

Wednesday evening was Awana award night.  Rachel was awarded her 2nd year Cubbies ribbon and certificate.

Tuesday and Wednesday, Heather, Sarah, and I headed up to Shipshewana, IN to go to the flea market and antique auction.  Lots of fun and lots of eating ensued!

Here's Heather hauling out some of the junk...er, I mean treasures she found. :) 

We stayed at a really nice bed and breakfast and had a FABULOUS breakfast and brought home an oatmeal recipe that we will all be trying out.

This huge old camera was at the auction. Really neat, but where would I put it? :)

On the other hand Sarah managed to score a treasure of her own.

This is the wonderful wheel that she thought was wood when she was bidding. Only after she won the bid did she discover it was actually made out of iron and weighed at least 60 pounds. She fought bravely to get it all the way out to the car. Heather and I carried the rest of the stuff and laughed.

Saturday I did a family shoot out at Arbuckle and then Dusty and I went downtown and I shot a wedding on the canal.  If you want to see any of those pics, head over to my Photography Facebook Page  After the wedding was the "Incident mentioned in the previous post"  Got an estimate today....ouch!

Finally on an absolutely unrelated note...as if this post isn't long enough...I leave you with a photo of my lunch today.

For anyone who knows me, you know that vegetables are not high on the list of things I really love.  And if you really know me well, you know that broccoli is one of the vegetables I most dislike.  Thanks to Heather I have found a recipe for crunchy broccoli salad that I really like.  There may be hope for me after all.  Hey Dad, make sure Mom gets a good look at this photo.  Perhaps it will alleviate any lingering guilt she may have for forcing me to eat broccoli as a kid that one time! :)

Ooops

Downtown driving + thinking you're getting ready to turn the wrong way down a one way street = momentary laspe in judgement.

Laspe in judgement results in fender bender in which thankfully the other vehicle was not damaged.
Thought I was turning down the wrong street and turned the car back into the flow of traffic and got sideswiped by a SUV.   Blah!