Summer Synopsis

 First day of school!!

 Before catching the bus!

 We went to the Ada Farmer's Market almost every Tuesday!

 Craig and I caught a concert at Frederik Meijer Gardens (thanks Hailey!!)!

 We celebrated the opening ceremonies of the Olympics and watched it incessantly!

 We discovered a fabulous new beach! Duck Lake!! Two lakes for the price of one with a shallow, warm channel between and minnows to catch!

 We visited Yaya and Papa and saw the hot air balloons fly over their house!

 We survived having our house on the market from July 21st-Sept 25th and had showings 4x's or more each week!!

We visited Hailey and Steve in Chicago!

 We worked really hard as "Team Starkey" to keep the house perfectly clean at all times (and showered at the pool ALOT)!

 We went to the beach without Daddy and everybody carried stuff!(and nobody got lost or drowned)!

 We explored more of Michigan and loved everything we saw!

 We had the most fun on the Alpine Slides! Well, Taylor and I did! Best memory ever, riding down the slides with Taylor and him yelling over and over "This is soo fun!!! This is fun!!" and laughing like a maniac and say "don't slow down!" (as if I'd slow down!).

 We goofed off during dinner.

 We played at the park (alot).

 We discovered a new wonderful place to get frozen yogurt (Spoonlickers) and had so much fun licking the spoons clean!

 Delish!

We went to the mudroom and painted some cool pottery!

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Playing Catch up- Katie's Birthday (May 12th)

 We threw a Luau birthday party for Katie in May and here are some pix from the festivities!

 Don't the girls look soooo cute dressed up in their leis, grass skirts, sunglasses and flower for their hair?!! I picked those for their favors!

 I made each of the girls their own little cakes to decorate and we let them each blow out their own candles.

 Look how fun the the decorations were!! I had so much fun watching them decorate their little cakes. Katie  (unbeknownst to me) had promised them a water balloon fight so some of them came in their swimsuits (and some did not, thankfully Katie has a bunch of swimsuits to loan out). Thankfully the weather was warm and I had water balloon so we scrapped the games I'd planned and had a water balloon fight!

 Here's our impromtu water balloon fight. I used the prizes I'd bought for the games as a bribe for the girls to pick up all the water balloons from the grass and gather their stuff together to go home! Worked like a charm!

Here's Katie on her birthday, I have traditionally made her pink pancakes for her birthday breakfast! She won't let me forget it! 10 little pink pancakes! She's such a thoughtful, kind, helpful, hardworking girl!

Guess What!!!

 We hiked to Big Sable Lighthouse in Ludington State Park and climbed to the top, great day and great hike and great view!

 Here's the light house from the beach.

 Instead of hiking back through the dunes on the way back we walked the beach! Nice and cool and a blow pop for Soph and Tootsie Pop for Taylor kept everybody running along without any encouragement!

 Up at Crystal Mountain (the resort where we stayed the night, just South of Traverse City) they had these lines to walk on. Katie, Taylor and Soph were a bit obsessed, but they got pretty good.

 The next morning we had breakfast at this restaurant (kids ate free) and Soph really savored every sip of her hot cocoa with whip cream and sprinkles!

 Then we went geocaching to hike off breakfast! Man, give Taylor a gps and promise of treasure and he is a GREAT hiker!

 Katie loved the cinnamon rolls with breakfast!

 Sophie even caught a fish!

 And we saw this frog doing "cobra"( or up-dog position for you yoga fans).

 We also got to swim at the water park!

If you haven't heard by now, we are moving to the Portland, Oregon area (probably South Beaverton to be more specific). Unfortunately, I can't be more specific than that.  Our house is currently on the market and while we have had a multitude of showings and tons of great feedback we have yet to find somebody committed enough to give us an offer. So our future plans remain on hold while we wait for an offer.... every text message has me wondering if it's the real estate agent with a showing time or an offer, every phone call has me wondering if it's the real estate agent with an offer...it's complete torture! Talk about your lack of progression situation! I feel like we're living day to day (which we are), putting off buying school supplies and planning soccer, swimming and gymnastics. It has yet to feel very exciting, but the move was inevitable. GE was moving Craig to Cincinnati so when a recruiter called with a possibility in Portland we jumped at the opportunity. Cincinnati would have been a much easier more predictable way to go, but this is the 3rd house in 6 years that we've (I've) needed to sell so we were ready to try a different employer. Craig is enjoying his new position with Maxim Integrated (no, not Maxim Magazine, although Craig is quite dashing, hee hee! Maxim Integrated is based out of San Jose, CA and manufactures circuits used in cell phones, computers and thermometers to mention a few). He is excited to make his mark and get things in order for the HR side of Maxim. Here are some pix of Craig's recent visit back to MI.

Never a dull moment..

Last night I accompanied Craig to the church to do some set up for the Relief Society Birthday Luau on Thursday night. I wish now I hadn't but in any case I did. While there Sophie caught her ankle under the accordion door in the Primary room and cut it quite badly and we had to take her immediately to Urgent care where she received six stitches. Poor baby! It was quite traumatizing (probably mostly to the rest of us). I took Taylor out to the waiting room while she was getting her stitches and let Craig stay with her in the exam room. We could hear the screaming and crying while they were stitching her up! It was so horrible! I was in tears! (and I'm mostly dead inside!) Anyhow, it was a late miserable night for us and thankfully once we got her home and gave her some meds she was able to sleep well and wake up only once for more ibprophen. I'm so grateful that the cut wasn't worse and we weren't in surgery!!! It drives me nuts how kids can hurt themselves on things you wouldn't even imagine to warn them about!!

and the winners are..... (drum roll)....

LANEY OSWALD had the winning combination of a girl born on February 29th! Keep an eye out for your grand prize arriving in your mailbox soon!! Congrats to Leisy and Kent on having baby Metta Joy Miller! We're so thrilled for you!

AND

Congrats to Megan and Kevin Hinman on the arrival of Alexander Dale Hinman born March 5th! They are the sole winners in this pool as nobody guessed that day, and their grand prize is a gorgeous baby boy!

Baby Pool Time!!!

Hey Everybody! Time to play a Leisy Miller baby pool!!! You know the rules, pick a day and a gender and email or facebook me or comment on this blog (or text me) and I'll send a prize to the person who wins!!!! Her official due date is March 5th. I'm going to guess she's having a boy on February 29th (There can be multiple guesses for the same combination of gender and day). Happy guessing (and Happy laboring Leisy!!!). Hope you like the pic Leisy! Since there's never been a photo of you with your pregnant belly (and many of us doubt it even exists), I chose this one of you with the boys! I hope Kent doesn't feel left out!

Hold on to your hats everybody!! Prepare yourselves for a baby boom of cheesy cousins!! My cousin Megan (and hubby Kevin Hinman) are also expecting a baby. They are due on March 10th, they already know they are having a boy, but send in your guesses for which day he'll make his big arrival! Congrats Megan and Kevin! (Same rules apply to this baby pool as the one for Leisy! Prizes!!)

Keep an eye out for Metta and Clair's baby pool!!! They are due July 2nd but I'm going to wait until they find out the gender to start the pool!

Baby Pool Time!!!

Night at the Museum and Snow Days

Here's one of the knights from the sword fight. He looked really hot (as in too warm) after the fight. I don't think that armor and chain mail was very good at wicking away the sweat! Sorry for the blurry pic. Low lighting +mediocre camera..boo.
Here's a pic of Soph right was we were getting ready to leave. This whole area was packed full of people on our way in!
There were real dolls having a tea party!
Here's a pic of the fam on the porch of a house in the historic downtown Grand Rapids exhibit!
The kids all got a chance to try to ride this bike!
We had fun riding the carousel!
Here's a pic of the planetarium. It was cool, the guy was dressed like an astronaut and had a blow up Alien as his assistant!

I would have loved to have been wearing one of these costumes!

Soph looked good dressed as a general in the Union Army.
Here's Taylor all dressed up!
Here's another knight! Below is a pic of Sophie and the snowman we made with the snow we got after Christmas. Here's proof for Hailey and Steve that we didn't steal the snow from the neighbors to make our snowman! The snow was heavy and wet and we just kept rolling the snow balls around the yard until they were big enough to stack! All the rest of the snow around the snowman melted so it looked like we'd imported snow to make our snowman by the time Hailey and Steve showed up! :>
Here are some more pix of our Christmas vacation! We went to a special Night at the Museum event at our Grand Rapids Public Museum and it was pretty awesome! We got to go in to the dimly lit (but decorated for Christmas) museum and have dinner (pizza, lasagna, bread sticks, salad and pop, later followed by chocolate chip cookies and cocoa later in the evening). We also got to attend the Christmas lazer light show at the planetarium and listen to a concert on the big organ and go through all the exhibits and watch a real sword fight (real swords spark when they fight, did you know that? The armor weighs 75 lbs alone!). They had a really neat exhibit on the Civil War and it was so cool to see all the costumes. There were pharaoh costumes too! We also got to see a real print shop from the turn of the century and watch them printing some flyers and go for a ride on the carousel.