Happy Birthday, TJ

Happy Birthday, TJ!! Today our son turns 17 years old!! My, how time flies!! I will post some pics of TJ when he was little soon, but don't have any scanned into this computer yet. TJ, we are so very proud of you and look forward to seeing how God will lead you in the years to come. We are thankful that God blessed us with you!
Today, we took our family and Joey Bryan to Busch Gardens to celebrate TJ's birthday. We had a great time! Some of these are hilarious, and I hope they make you laugh as hard as they did us. TJ had never ridden on any of the roller coasters at Busch Gardens, so his goal was to ride every one. I think we did them all except Big Bad Wolf. It had a very long line, so they didn't want to wait. We all rode Apollo's Chariot twice and also did Loch Ness & Alpengeist and others I can't remember. :) I didn't ride Griffin, but everyone else did.

Here is TJ this morning, after opening the Aviators Mary bought for him and the camera Theron and I got for him.
TJ & Mary on the tram on the way into Busch Gardens
Joey and Mary on the tram
Chrissy and Sam on the tram
Theron and Nancy on the tram (Horrible picture of me, but I had to put it on here in all fairness to the kids...as you will see shortly)

Theron and Nancy with FIVE of our kids!

Johnny is the sixth one. We missed you, Johnny, but we'll go again when you can go, too.

TJ, Mary, Joey, & Chrissy eating lunch
Theron, Samantha, and Nancy at lunch

Mary on the Skyway with Mom & DadTheron & Nancy

Chrissy and Sam in front of us and TJ & Joey in front of them on the SkywayThis is TJ, Joey, Theron, Mary & Chrissy on the Griffin. This is the new ride at Busch Gardens this year. They went on it first to see if I would like it. Sam wasn't sure, so she stayed with me this time. I took this as they dropped on the first big 90 degree drop. They are on the back row...if you can enlarge this you'll see them. Otherwise, I'll enlarge it and repost it. :)This is the 5 kids on The Griffin later in the day. I didn't want to go, and Theron stayed with me being the sweetheart that he is. :) They all decided to make faces. Before they got off the ride, we saw the pictures and bought this one. They were on the 2nd row.Here are the 5 kids on the way home. We hadn't been in the van more than 15 minutes and they were all zonked!! I took two pictures and they never knew I took them. In fact, only Joey and Mary know I took them, so I'll be dead meat when they others see them on the blog. Sorry, guys! Moms get to post stupid things on their blogs. :)Here is the other one. Great, huh? We went to Olive Garden, per TJ's request, on the way home. It was great food and the waitress was the best one we've ever had anywhere!

When we got home, TJ opened up the rest of his presents. Here are the girls looking on and being silly.

Happy Birthday, TJ!! We love you much!!

Busy Days of Summer

I'm not sure where the term "lazy days of summer" came from, but around our house we always seem to have something going on. That's a good thing, of course! Here are a few snapshots of some of our days in June.Lisa and Bethany dropped by for a visit in early June. We had been to Michael's and bought some little craft things to keep the girls busy for a bit. Here is Sam puting together her monkey. Here is Bethany, puting together her doggy.
The Weaver kids stopped by one weekend and were able to spend some time with us after church. They loved playing the Wii.
Here is another view of the kids in the family room

Here's Stephen, teaching Nathen how to be cool.

Father's Day for Theron

Here are some pictures of Theron's Father's Day. I have gotten busy and not posted in awhile. Theron is a great dad to our kids and a wonderful husband to me. I hope we made his day as special as he is to us. Here is our church's Father's Day choir. TJ is on the front row..you can barely see his head in the crook of Pastor Mike's arm and Theron is on the back row near the right side of the picture. They sounded great!

Here are the kids with Theron...that's TJ, Samantha, Mary & Chrissy

Here's the retake...not sure which I like best, so posted both!