Randy's New Toy

Any of you who know Randy very well, know that he loves airplanes and flying. He has wanted to get a remote control airplane for a while now. A few months ago he found a inexpensive way to build a plane of his own. He finally finished it this week and took it out to fly.

These aren't from his first flight, but I worked from home on Wednesday so I got to see him in all his glory. Let me just say, he is in HEAVEN!!

Pennington Trip

This past weekend, Randy and I headed to Pennington with 3 other couples to spend the weekend with friends. Mark's family has a vacation house on several acres that they let people use for get togethers. Randy, me, Jacob and Laura headed out after work on Friday with the car fully loaded. After a 3+ hour drive, we finally arrived. We of course had to stay up late catching up. The next morning we got up early (way too early for a Saturday morning) and went fishing in one of the ponds. A few fish were caught but the best moment happened after Brian caught a perch. He had reeled it in and we thought we was going to take it off the hook. All of the sudden he started jumping around and swinging his pole wildly in the air. Then he starts swatting at something with a stick. His fish was still on the hook at the end of his line flying around with every swat he took. Poor fish got the bad end of this pole, literally. Finally all the dancing stopped and Brian says, "Um, guys. Not sure what happened, but my fish is dead." Randy responded with, "That's because you slammed him on the ground so many times!" Come to find out, Brian thought a hornet was after him and was trying to get swat it away. It was actually a large bumblebee. Sorry Brian! Randy and I did get a good laugh out of it though.

That afternoon the girls got to be crafty and paint our own aprons. See the month before I had the idea of us making aprons for all us girls and found them on sale super cheap at Hobby Lobby. So I loaded up all my paints, stamps, and brushes and we got busy being creative. The hardest part was deciding what to actually put on our aprons. Janelle got us started with designing the cutest cupcake for hers. I had to copy, because it was just too cute not too! Laura decided to put a crumb monster on hers, and Shonda set out painting plaid on hers. They were beginning to take shape! In the midst of it, we had the ideas to put Jeremiah's (Shonda & Mark's 9 month old) feet and hand prints on Shonda's apron. Thus the collage of pictures below:
This was a 4 person job with little Jeremiah at the center. He was such a good sport!

Here are the finished products. I love them all!

All the girls - Janelle, Me, Shonda, and Laura - unknowingly we lined up by height and by anniversaries. We're geeks! :)

After a great dinner we headed down to the pond for more fishing. The guys did find a "lawn-cycle" that they had fun with while we were painting and Jacob has it documented on his blog here.
Some views of the pond and the Franklin family.

The highlight of my evening happened just at dusk. Mark and Randy had caught some small pan fish to use as bait. Mark had one on his hook and had thrown it out toward the middle of the pond. He decided to head back to the house to let Shonda have a chance to fish since Jeremiah's nap fell during the morning excursion. I ended up holding his pole since he left it in the water. Shonda joined us and we were talking. All of the sudden I felt a tug on my pole and my cork went under. I started reeling it in and then saw the fish jump out of the water. I could tell it was big and Randy kept telling me to hold the tip of the pole up. I kept saying I was trying to, but the fish was pulling against it. I got it up to the dock and Randy pulled it in. Here's proof:
Randy is starting to get jealous of me - it seems that everytime we fish together, I catch the bigger fish. All I can say is thanks for all the fishing lessons Dad!

The whole gang - me and Randy, Laura and Jacob, Janelle Jonathan and Brian, and Shonda Jeremiah and Mark. Thanks for a fun weekend! We need to do it again soon!

-Side note: Randy has been friends with Brian since middle school and Jacob since high school. They are two of his closest friends. I've known Laura & Janelle since Randy & I started dating. We live far apart and lives are crazy busy but whenever we get together we have so much fun. This was really the first time Randy & I had hung out with Mark & Shonda, but I'm looking forward to getting to know them better too!

Randy's 26th Birthday

Randy turned 26 this weekend. It was his weekend to work, so I was planning on getting his present and cake/brownies ready on Saturday while he was working. Well, he woke up on Saturday morning with a horrible migraine. So bad he had to call in and stay home from work. I was glad I was going to get all day to spend with him, (he got home from NM on Tues and was heading to Tyler on Monday, so this was great!), but I had to rethink my plans for his surprise.

See I decided to get him a tent for his birthday. However, if any of you have been shopping with Randy, you know he has a hard time deciding what he really wants. :) And he is very particular about certain things - tents being one of them. His mom wanted to go in on it with me, so she sent me the gift card and I was going to find a small kiddie tent to wrap the gift card up with. That way he would have something to open on his birthday, but still get to go pick out exactly which tent he wanted. The thing was I hadn't found the kiddie tent yet, so wasn't sure how I was going to go get it, wrap it and make his brownies with him at the apartment. Birthdays have always been a big deal for me and my family and I want them to be special in our family now as well. So after a shower (I think best in the shower! lol!), I decided to see if he would be willing to be blindfolded and go with me on a trip. I figured I could blindfold him, take him to the store and then give him the gift card once we got there. He agreed, after much persuasion that I wasn't going to embarrass him (intentionally).

So I found his sunglasses and he helped me to rig them with paper so he couldn't see out them. We loaded up in the car and off we went.

Randy patiently smiling for me so I could blog about this later.


Randy telling me I'm a dork for taking a picture at the red light.


Taking a pic of the card once we got in the store.

Randy is really hard to surprise. I don't know how many times I hand him a wrapped gift with no distinct shape or weight and he has guessed what is in the box. So once we pulled into the parking garage at the mall, he had an idea where we were. I did confuse him a bit though when I went a different way to get there. :)


Randy as he took off his blindfold/sunglasses. I think he was surprised!


Looking at the tents.

We didn't end up getting the tent here, so no pics of that. I didn't take my camera in to the other store, as I didn't want to embarrass Randy there too.

We did find him a tent and it was a bargain! We haven't set it up yet, but when we do, I'll make sure to post pics. I also got him a camp cook set and some utensils for camping.

Here are his birthday brownies. I learned my lesson after his first birthday after we got married. Unless you have enough time to let the cake cool properly before you ice it, stick with brownies. If you are wondering what I am talking about, try this post.








Randy + Fire = Heaven (for him!)




The only pic I got of us on his birthday.




Eyeing up the competition.


Look at that form!

Love you Randy! Hope your birthday was great. Can't wait to see what is in store for the year to come!

Fun house guests

So a few weeks ago I had some fun house guests staying with me. Our friends S & J had to move and had to move in a VERY short time. Add to that the fact that they had been without A/C for 2 weeks prior to that and S was going to be out of town when the move actually happened - let's just say it was a very stressful time for them. Thankfully they had family to watch their 2 oldest kids while the packing and moving was going on. After spending 1 day helping Jami pack with no A/C, I insisted J & little G come stay with us in our extra room. So for the next 5 days I had 2 of the best house guests. I think I may have gotten a better part of the deal. Who wouldn't want to play with this fun little guy?

We had so much fun. Plus since I had to work from home for part of the week, G got to stay with me a few days. It was a good experience on how working from home after kids might be. Little G is such a good baby. He is rolling over now and once he gets to his stomach he loves to move his arms and legs as fast as he can. Its a combination of flying & swimming!

Just couldn't miss this photo opportunity!








J & G - you can come stay again any time!