We had good intentions of taking a photo today. Mark took Jacob to Cottonwood Golf Course today to play their 9-hole, par 3 course. Jacob was in seventh heaven...he hit the ball very well, according to Mark. He even drove one onto the green, very close to the pin! Mark took the camera with him, but left it in the car.
Well, here we are! After a month+ of lagging behind (since July 23 - happy reading for you, if you so choose!), I am finally updated with the bliggity-blog. I promise to take better care of her and update her daily. I think one of the reasons I fell so far behind is that I am running in the evenings, which seriously cuts into my computer time. Then, once I was behind, it seemed so daunting of a task to update it, which led to more procrastination. One of those vicious circles.
Did I mention Jacob's Kindergarten schedule? It is full days, every other day. So, one week he goes M-W-F, the next week he goes T-Th and so on. When there is a Monday holiday, the schedule flips days. I hope we can keep our days straight. Already, the bus driver thought Jacob should be on the bus when it wasn't his day. Yikes!
Charlie....isn't that cute? Anyway, Kendall was right with me helping along the way and it turned out good. Chenille on one side and flannel on the other, with some decorative stitching for flair.
stop if Nathan could come over and play on Monday.
It was a work day around the house. In the afternoon, our financial advisor guy stopped by. He wants me to give him my Dana 401K. He's working up a proposal. :) Then, Anna and Ashley came over and played until dinner time. They are such nice girls.
Jacob got on the bus for Kindergarten just fine. After that, the morning was filled with nature! I happened to be picking something up from the grass outside and noticed a small spider with a fly in it's clutches. I ran in the house, grabbed my camera, and Kendall & I took some awesome pictures of it. Then, we found a large toad in the garage. It had rained overnight and I think he was hanging out by the garage door. When I 
opened it, he hopped on in! Kendall and I "walked" him back out into the grass.
We didn't do much today. I decided to get our jumper out today, too. Anna came over and enjoyed it for a while with Jacob and Kendall while I scooped several wheelbarrows of stone out front.
Jacob went off to school today without a hitch. Kendall and I met playgroup at the Perrysburg library. When we got home, a package from the "Race for the Cure" was in the mailbox. I guess it's official...I'm running the 5K. I have the t-shirt, number, and timer thingy to prove it!
Lisa, Sydney, and Zack came over this morning. While the kids played, Lisa worked on networking our computers. We have a Vista machine in our office and we put our old XP machine down in the basement. Well, we found out that Vista and XP don't play nice! Ugh. Lisa did finally get a folder to share. Now, I need to replicate the settings for everything else we want the computers to share.
Today was Angel's second annual playgroup potluck (she says "popluck" as English is her second language - very cute). What a great time! She and her husband, Dave, really put on a BIG spread of fillet mignon, chicken, brats and everyone else brought a dish to pass, too. What great food and company. I'm not sure how many of us were there, but I think Dave mentioned they planned for 23 children (& parents). Oh, and Angel had games all organized for the kids: ladder golf, yard tic-tac-toe, egg races, 3-legged races....with lots of sweet treats as prizes. More pics are here. We are already looking forward to next year.....some even joked with Angel that we should do this every month! :)
We met my mom at Elder-Beerman. She wanted to get the kids a new school outfit. Boy, were they having the sales! Jacob and Kendall both were spoiled from Grandma and I picked up a swimsuit cover up for $3.99 (originally $54).
He sat with Nathaniel (who goes by Nathan) and waved out the window.
The kids and I headed out to Illinois to visit with Kim and kids for several days. The drive to and from was relatively uneventful, even trying to entertain Jacob and Kendall by myself. With Mark starting his new job so recently, he still is trying to get acclimated and didn't think the timing was good to take most of a week off as vacation. Next time.
Father's Day, I had given Mark 2 tickets to go see Chickenfoot (new band with Sammy Hagar, Joe Satriani, Michael Anthony Van Halen, and Chad Smith (from Chili Peppers)). The show was today in Detroit, so we made it into a little 13th wedding anniversary get-away, also. We drove up and parked outside Tiger Stadium, ate dinner at HockeyTown - a restaurant devoted to the Red Wings, and met up with some neighbors to see the show.
Anthony's wrinkles! These guys are no spring chickens, but it was a GREAT show. The drummer, Chad Smith, is from Detroit and his 84 yr. old mother was there. At the end, Smith made like he was going to jump right on top of us and scared me half to death! It was a great experience to be so close.....although, at times, I was stuck behind two 6'5" guys....but that's the deal when you're short!
The remaining stone. Hmmm...what to do, what to do. We are going to put some extra down in some areas we just did and we will use the rest of it in the back yard. However, we need to install landscaping edging and put more landscape fabric down. The pile might sit here for a little while until Mark & I get the back prepped.
Some new plants that I got at the perennial greenhouse near the lake last week.
All done...no weeds.
This was the thistle patch area....I posted a picture on a previous post. Click here to see the mess it used to be! 
I called the stone supply yard this morning and they were able to deliver 12.5 tons of stone by noon! Mom, being the wonderful person she is, came over with some yard carts and an extra shovel and helped me "shovel-shovel-dump" for the afternoon! We got maybe 1/3 of our 1,200 sq. ft. project done. Thanks, Mom!! Lisa's husband, Alan, also dropped off a wheelbarrow to use - that worked great! I'll be busy (and sore) for the next few days.
Jacob lost his other front tooth today. He has certainly kept the tooth fairy busy this summer. I believe this is his 6th tooth lost.
Before...
After the landscape fabric. I got about 2/3 of the fabric laid today. Ready to finish it up tomorrow. 
Ok, now it is time to get down to business. I spent the whole day prepping our front landscape for an overhaul: trimmed trees, removed 2 half-dead shrubs, pulled weeds, applied weed killer, and started laying the landscape fabric. This is a project that I want to get done this coming week. It has been a long time coming. 
It was a beautiful evening to go to a local, weekly car show in Perrysburg. As you can tell from the photo, the kids have fun no matter what we do!
What a perfect ending to July. Just down the road from the lake is a great perennial nursery/greenhouse. They have very unusual and beautiful plants. I bought some for our upcoming landscape project.
After the kids' dentist appointment in the morning, we headed up to the lake for an overnight. The weather forecast is beautiful - 80's and low humidity.
Happy 4th Birthday, Kendall!!
Kendall received her first birthday card of 2009 from Great Grandpa Cordrey.
I took the kids into JCPenney for a retake of their pictures - with no spiked hair. It went well and we now have normal-looking pictures.
I forgot to mention that the kids had their vacation bible school program today. The church alter was really decorated. You can't see from the pictures, but there was even a real row boat up there! The kids really enjoyed the week-long school and saw many friends from preschool.
