My New Hero

I have officially found my new hero! Please watch the whole thing, you won't regret it! I laughed SOOOOO hard! Oh, and watch it in High Quality, it's so much better!

Grustie for all

This morning as I was getting ready for the day Isabelle casually asked me if I gave birth to myself. Trying not to laugh too hard I asked, "What makes you think that?"

"Well," she said, "You're a mommy and don't have parents, so you had to give birth to yourself."

I then told her that my parents were her Grandma and Grandpa. This seemed to only confuse her more.

"But that makes you a child! And if you're a child, you can't give birth!" she exclaims.

I then said, "Well, everybody has a mommy and daddy -- even Grandma has a mommy and a daddy!"

"Oh?" she said. "What's her mommy's name?"

"Gustie"

"Grustie?"

"No, Gustie"

"Grustie? Hmmmm..... I think everybody should be named Grustie. Daddy, Trevor, and Kelly are now named Grustie."

"Sounds good to me" I said.

Small Crayon Tote

I saw this on Craftster today and I just thought they were soooooo cute! I'm thinking about making some for stocking stuffers (that's right, I already have Christmas on the brain). Here's the link in case you want to make some too!

Small Crayon Tote Instructions

Oh, and sorry I haven't been posting much.... I guess I've really gotten out of the habit with summer and all. Also, I've been doing a LOT of knitting which I would normally be showing off my progress and finished projects, but they are all Christmas gifts. If I show them off now, then the recipients will see them! So that's another reason for not posting much.
Here's a cute little picture Kelly took while I was knitting one day. I thought she did a pretty good job! There's no cropping or anything done to it.



On another note, Kelly started her 3rd week of school today. She's loving every single moment of it. She has a great teacher, goes to a great school, and the best part is she's in a class with her best friend from Kindergarten. Sometimes I can't believe how big she's getting. She turns 7 in just a couple of months which means in a little over a year she'll be getting baptized. How is that even possible? Here's a picture of her and Isabelle on the first day of school:



Kelly calls this dress her "Sunshine" dress because she says it looks like rays of sunshine coming down. What a cutie. I'm one blessed Mamma!

** P.S. I accidentally lost all of my links to people's blogs. I think I did a pretty good job of finding the majority of them. However, if you notice that your blog is not listed, please let me know!!!!

Going private

After a lot of thought I've decided to go private. So if you're still interested in reading the blog, I'll need your email address so I can add it. For those of you not familiar to blogger, if a blog is set to private, you will have to sign in to be able to read the blog. You will sign in using your email address. So yeah, if you still want to read the blog, just send your email address to:

okkelly@hotmail.com


That includes you too Janae!!! :-) The blog will remain public for several days to give everyone a chance to send me their email address. Thanks!

The end is here....

Well, it's been a great summer. Kelly starts school again next Tuesday and the late nights hanging out with friends must come to an end. Shane got to go on a overnight canoe trip with his young men:




I got to go to girls camp:



We went to a LOT of baseball games:


And of course, we did a lot of swimming!




Hope everyone else can enjoy the last days of their summer!

Vacation pt.2

Before I talk about the 2nd part of our vacation, Danica had asked about the Banana boats. I had never heard of banana boats before that day either, but it will definitely not be the last time I eat them! All you do is take a banana still in the peel and make a slit down the center lengthwise (making sure you don't pierce through to the other side). Then shove inside any type of these toppings: Chocolate (chips, bar, whatever you have on hand), peanut butter, and marshmallows (mini or cream). It will be pretty messy since you obviously can't get all of it inside the banana. Then, you wrap your banana up in foil and lay it on the hot coals next to your fire. After it's completely heated through and your chocolate is melted, it's time to eat! Just eat the insides of the banana with a spoon! It's sooooooooooooo amazingly good!

Alrighty then, on to the rest of the vacation:

After spending time with Shane's family, we then started the long drive to Michigan.



Along the way we stopped at a couple of different places. In South Bend, IN we stopped at a really cool chocolate factory to do a tour. I only say it was "cool" because the tour and the samples were free. However, the tour was really lame. Since there was no one working in the factory that day (it was saturday), there was nothing cool to see. Just a bunch of empty conveyor belts and boxes. But hey, the kids still thought it was cool. After that we drove another couple of hours and then stopped in Holland, MI. At first we were going to visit the Little Holland park thing, but it was going to be almost $60 for us to get it! It was kinda cool, but not $60 cool! So we decided instead to check out the outlet mall that was right next to it. The kids had to go to the bathroom, and the only bathrooms in the whole place were located inside a laser tag/game business. I'm glad we stopped in though. We bowled a little bit, played some air hockey, and did some miniature golf. While playing air hockey, Kelly exclaimed very loudly "This is the best vacation EVER!" Best $14 ever spent.

After playing around, we drove the rest of the way up to Hart, MI to meet up with our friends the Romney's. They have a distant relative who lives there and was willing to rent out a small trailer they owned for just $5 a night. Check out that beauty:


Now come on, how freakin' awesome is that??? LOL! OK, it wasn't freakin' awesome, but it was cheap and really really funny for memories sake! I really wish we had taken some pictures of all of us crammed inside. The trailer was really built for just 2 people and we had 4 adults and 3 kids in there. Oh yeah! We really only slept in the darn thing. It was just too small to do anything else. It was nice really nice, though, having our friends there. In the evening when we would put the kids to bed, we would stay up playing card games and just DYING laughing at the stupid voices that Justin and Shane would make up. Just so you guys know, if you ever want to watch the funniest game of scum or phase 8, just play with Justin and Shane!

The rest of the vacation was spent going to Lake Michigan, cooking out on the grill or over an open fire pit, doing the touristy thing, and just having fun with the kids. The whole trip was soooooooooooooooooo relaxing and it just made it better that the kids just kept saying over and over again, "This is the best vacation EVER!"

Vacation pt.1

Okay okay okay... I know I've been quite the blogger slacker this summer. I'm not exactly sure why, I guess the laziness in me was just starting to come out. Oh well, I'm here now and hopefully I'll keep it up again.

So almost 2 weeks ago we left for our summer family vacation. It was SO much fun!!!! Our main vacation was going to be spent in Michigan, but since Shane's parents house was along the way, we decided to leave a couple of days early and spend some time with them. The nice surprise was that his Aunt Karen and Uncle Von and his cousins Mandy and Kristy were there visiting as well! We hadn't seen them in a couple of years, so it was nice to do some catching up!

Isabelle cooking with her Aunt Karen

mmmm.... banana boats! I had never had this awesome dessert before and now it's my new favorite!!!!

Okay, a couple of funny things about this picture: I thought it was really cute that 7 adults came outside to brave the heat and humidity to play kickball for two little girls. Too sweet! But what's really funny is that when I first met Mandy I was convinced she was adopted. I mean, come on, she totally doesn't look like the rest of the Taylor kids -- am I right people? Anyway, I knew I was wrong when I saw this picture of her and Von banishing Kristy to the outfield. It's like she's Von's "mini-me". Definitely a Taylor.