Prize Winners

Jeff makes me proud in many ways, but this is the first time he's brought home a trophy to show that others are appreciating him too! He got an award at work for being a caring manager. They said that members of his team are not sad about changing jobs, but rather about losing a manager who really cares about them personally and helps them with their goals of career development.

Jackson is showing off his 2nd place ribbon from our first swim meet a few weeks ago. There were two people in the race. Jackson just started swimming without floaties shortly beforehand, so I was really proud of him for making it the full length of the pool.

Jacksonisms

Since his cousin Davis's birthday party all he can think about are Ninjas. He wants his room to be a ninja room and he wants Ninja legos and can I please print out some Ninja this and thats. I told him he could save his money and buy himself a lego set. He got Dad's old wallet and has been carrying it with him everywhere he goes (and forgetting it there too!). He really wanted to sell his artwork door to door, but we encouraged him to have a lemonade stand instead. He has been working hard at it and is very persistent. Both of my big boys are hard core salesmen! They work out in the heat selling, come in for a little break and want to go right back out again.

In the last picture Jackson had fallen asleep in the car one afternoon. He woke up long enough to walk in the house, but only made it about two feet in, saw a soft, clean laundry pile and crashed right back out again.

Yesterday he asked what his dad's new job was. I told him the official title, "Outside Sales Specialist II"

"You have to sell computers on the street?" Ha ha... outside sales! Jeff's quick reply was, "yeah - maybe we could set up next to your lemonade stand!"

Last night we had dinner with some friends who have three girls. On the way home he asked, "why do girls get to be so pretty?"

Arkansas Continued

I was waiting for a few pictures from our day at the lake that uncle Joe took, but instead I have this awesome link to a slideshow he made.

On our last full day we spent the morning following Joe and Tosha around the area and learning about Geocaching. People hide things in public places and you can find clues and directions to find the box. When you find it you sign the sheet and sometimes you exchange little gifts. You can take what is in there and leave something behind for the next person. It was really fun (and HOT). In the process we found a nearby swimming pool at state park. It was only 20 minutes away and we discovered that it cost the same to rent the whole pool out for the evening as it would to take the gang while it was open to the public in the afternoon. They squeezed us in last minute and we had a blast with the pool all to ourselves. There was plenty of competition going on with every kind of race you can come up with with two slides and some kiddie floats. Pictures from this even are also in Joe's slideshow.

In the afternoon we had Davis' Lego Ninja birthday party. He had a lot of clever games, like picking up legos with chopsticks and getting across the room. He hid the pieces to a whole little set in rice and two team s had to find the pieces blindfolded while the other team members built it. Fun!

We had such a great week that we started thinking about the next trip before we could finish this one.