He's finally here!

Here are a few cute pics of our new baby boy! He's doing great and is an amazingly patient, mellow, happy baby. We couldn't be happier.

Summary of our trip back East

Hello all-
Cindy, Katie, Celeste and myself went on a fun vacation to Syracuse, New York the first week of July. Below are some pictures. Some back ground info before I tell you about the trip.

Cindy's birth dad, Skip Springer, passed away when Cindy was 3 years old. He was killed by a lightening strike. After his death, Cindy's Mom, Cammie, converted to the LDS church and moved to Provo to attend BYU. There she met Lee Bishop. They eventually married and Lee adopted Cindy. Over the years however, Cindy has kept in touch with her birth Grandma & Grandpa Springer as well as her aunt's and uncles and extended family members.

This past July 5th, there was a family reunion of sorts on the Springer side of the family. Relatives attended that Cindy has not seen for a very long time and others she has never seen. It really was a fun trip. The Springer family is large ( 8 children) very Catholic family.

The purpse of the trip was two fold. We wanted Grandma & Grandpa Springer ( and extended family), who are in failing health, to meet Katie as well as their newest granddaughter. This was great. Seeing Grandpa Springer hold little Celeste confirmed for me the effort and expense to make the trip.

The second reason was to visit church history sites. So we flew off to Cleveland, Ohio and roadtriped it moving East. 30 Minutes outside of Cleveland is Kirtland, Ohio. It's pretty much a suburb of Cleveland but still retains it's rural flavor. This was a great experience. We then continued East on to Niagara Falls outside Buffalo, New York. Followed by Palmyra, New York and then Syracuse.

I will enter in blog posts for each segment of our trip with pictures. It really was a great trip. The northeast is beautiful during the summer. Intensely cold during the winter. So here we go....

Hi everyone! Here are some cute pictures from the last month. Kate had her 4th birthday on May 25th (a princess birthday of course). School got out on May 30th and the kids have been having one heck of a summer! (I'm exhausted already). We took a family "field trip" to the zoo last Friday. I braved it alone (without Jeff to help) and it went surprisingly well until the last five minutes when as we were leaving the kids begged to walk through the gift shop and against my better judgement I let them. Needless to say we left 10 minutes later with a SCREAMING Kate-sie loaded on to the top of the shade of our single stroller (she refused to walk and I am very BIG with child so I couldn't carry her). She screamed "I WANT A TOY!" for a solid 10 minutes with crowds of people staring at our little group and me trying not to totally loose it. It's sad when the last 10 minutes can ruin a great 3 hours. For the record, I did not buy her a toy and I do still love her even though in her words I was the meanest mommy ever! And after she fell asleep crying in the car 2 minutes after we were on the road, I could laugh about it. . . sort of.

This week the kids and I have worked on scrubbing, painting and retro-fitting our old rabbit stand into the Aloha Ice Cream Shop for Kira's summer project. She made 40 flyers and passed them out for her "Grand Opening." When she opened that first day at 11:30 she already had a line of about 15 kids (of course 3 of those were her siblings). She made $23 the first day. We had a near meltdown when I reminded her that she had to pay back the "loan" she had taken out from Mom & Dad to buy the ice cream. But eventually she did. She opened again for her 2nd time today (Saturday) and her Allen cousins were over to help. They had a great time and quite a steady stream of customers. They made $14 today. Kira is already adding up how many times she'll need to be open to earn enough money to buy a battery powered scooter. We'll see how long the enthusiasm lasts (although $37 in two days is pretty good money for an 8 year old).

Marly - Most Promising Freshman

Marly was voted Most Promising Freshman (a most coveted honor) in the Poway High Choir Program. She is very excited!!!

PROM

Prom was May 31. Eric went with Caitlin Gardner, and Rachel with Bryan Sabin. The dance was on the roof of the Western Metal Building at Petco Park, downtown. The kids had lots of fun

Conference in Scottsdale

Marc had a five-day conference in Scottsdale AZ last week. We took the 4 little girls with us and left the highschool kids at home. It was lots of fun. My favorite was all the bunnies in the courtyard.

Music Man Video

Rachel's in the middle in the green dress.
Eric's in the back with the girl in the bright yellow dress.