Welcome Back Colonel Gil!

My Army buddy "Colonel" Gil paid us a visit today, back from multiple deployments to Iraq. Gil was a major golfing buddy back in "The day" when I was single teaching ROTC at A&M. Gil was there at the beginning when I discovered Sara at a local coffee shop in town and he later flew in for our wedding from Hawaii (a mere 3 months from our first date!). The last time we saw him we lived in San Antonio and had just two boys. Gil marveled at how the first two boys had grown and developed an instant friendship with Sammy who he offered to take home with him.

Mid July Top 10

1. Karsten is walking just about everywhere he goes now. He is an excellent communicator with pointing and his own way of speaking but not too many conventional words yet. I understand that I was a little slow in that area as a youngster but eventual did catch on. *At his one year doctor appointment he was at 105% on the height chart!
2. He is also drinking regular milk out of a cup and is very good at it. Who cares about the cost of a gallon of gas? How about a gallon of milk with 4 growing boys!
3. Karsten has already figured out that he wants to be where ever the big boys are at all times, he wants to join the "man" team, but the admission criteria is high. First, you can't be a girl, second, you have to walk, and 3rd you have to want to join. Then there is secret the initiation & hazing ritual...
4. Grant swam all the way across the swimming pool the other day all by himself. He kept saying he couldn't do it so I had to walk just in front of him egging him on, but boy was he proud of himself!
5. Sara is sewing projects for a lot of people now, including an anniversary quilt similar to the one she made for my mom and dad on their 50th- for $400. Yes, our anniversary gift had a retail value of $400! So now she is in her "sewing" room all the time. She only leaves when one of the cats goes in there to poop, yes, that liter boxes are in the sewing room, my idea :)
6. Luke and Grant are in vacation bible school again this week, their last of the summer. After this week Sara has them full time all day (until I get home) until school starts, fun!
7. Luke amazes passers-by with his new Razor Powerswing that he got for his birthday. It is a crazy scooter with one front wheel and two rear wheels that you move by swinging back and forth. Nobody has ever seen one.
8. Sammy wants to go with me and the big boys all the time so I have started taking him on more of the trips that used to be just for the "big" boys.
9. The 3 of them are getting fairly squished in the back seat of my Honda Accord sedan. I keep looking at new trucks and may eventually brake down and get another one. So many things that you need a truck to do, plus it cool, at least in Texas.
10. Planning at least one more vacation this summer, maybe to Schlitterbahn, the world's best water theme park which is just a couple of hours from here.

Hanging out in the Tent

Grant "roughing it"
Luke with his new summer haircut.
Silly Sammy as always.

Karsten thought he was just in one big bounce house.

Yes, its been 2 years since our big adventure to Crater Lake (well, in August it will be). We had a lot of fun camping in Oregon, and I have to say that the weather was much nicer there. I always enjoyed freezing in the morning, whereas here you wake up sweating. But at least here I didn't have to worry about bears attacking our tent!

The fire has always been a point of contention with Joe and I. The first time we ever went camping, I handed him the matches and told him to go to it. He is the man after all. He fiddled around for awhile and then admitted that fire starting was not his strong point. I laughed and said that surely in all his army training and Ranger school he had learned to start a fire. He pointed out that smoke pretty much tells the enemy where you are, so it suddenly made sense.

Before Joe and I were married I worked at a summer camp in Maine. For two weeks before the girls arrived I did Life guard training as well as training to be a certified wilderness trip leader. So I learned to start a fire, and also to put up a tent in less than 10 mins and a bunch of other info that is stored somewhere in my brain. Joe did most of the grunt work for the fire, but couldn't get it to stay lit, so that is where I came in. When it comes to camping, Joe is really nice about letting me do most of the stuff since he knows I like it, and doesn't really question me when I'm adament about doing stuff a certain way. I can still set a tent up pretty fast, but since ours is so big and tall I sometimes need help with the high stuff, and he is great about helping me with that, even when I poke his eye out with a tent pole. Thank goodness he was wearing glasses! Sorry honey!

It is very very hard to camp with 4 kids. You are constantly on alert and you don't really get to relax. But hopefully the boys are making lots of memories and will enjoy it more as they get older. I think next time we will just pitch the tent in the backyard!

Camping with Yogi Bear

Swimming with Yogi Bear

Once Every Three Years

We go camping. So it has been about that long since we took our three boys to the mountains in Oregon and camped in a tent. Zowie, lots of fun but so much hassle that we vowed to never do it again. I mean, take a baby camping in a tent? Come on! So, like childbirth, with time we forgot the pain of family camping and thought, gee wouldn't it be fun to take all FOUR kids (including a baby) camping in a tent in the 100 degree (with heat index) weather. Sure, why not. The departure did not set the stage for success, after packing up the van we had to stop by Walmart for some propane, then to the pharmacy for a prescription and then we were off for the approximately one hour drive to camping fun. Except, hey, did you back the hotdogs and sausages for dinner? Um, no. Ok, so we had to drive back to our house before we even left town to put the food in the cooler full of ice. Sammy was screaming, "No, I don't want to go home!". Once we packed up the weenies we were really off this time to a camping theme park called "Jellystone Park" which has a water park with the Yogi The Bear theme. It was a pretty cool park, we set up our tent a short walk from the pool which had about four water slides. Once you got to the pool it was nice and cool but keep in mind we have to hold on to Sam and Karsten at all times or they will sink to the bottom of the pool, which Sam did just once but I caught him pretty quick. I guess that's a family tradition, I remember at least once pulling Luke out from under the water being just a few feet away from him. Anyway, swimming was great. Luke went down the really tall slide a several times but Grant chickened out after very cautiously climbing three fourths the way up the ladder. Once we got back to the camping site we started to notice that we were the only people in an actual tent. Every one else was in a pop-up camper or a camping trailer. Of course all of those campers and trailers have air conditioning. The hotdog and sausage roast was fun, me and the big boys played frisbee and relaxed. Finally the sun began to set and the time came to start a fire for the marshmallow roast. We had some pre-made logs that you buy in the store left over from our Oregon camping days so we gathered some pine needles and tried to get the logs started. I worked on those things for about a half an hour and couldn't get them to burn. Of course every two seconds we had to pull the boys back from the fire pit, yes fire and boys, they go together like...you know what I mean. Then I pulled out the instructions for the logs and read that that they were made in California and complied with all kinds of environmental regulations and all that, we decided that they were not supposed to burn because smoke hurts animals and trees. So me and the boys went on a mission to gather dried branches that would burn so we could roast some marshmallows! Eventually we got the fire started but there is some disagreement about who was responsible, Sara says that I failed to start the fire and her vigilance in stoking and arranging the sticks just right was the reason while I say that my highly combustible lumber did the trick. The boys had been begging all day to get into the tent so we finally let them go in to what they assumed was a fort / playhouse. So what they did NOT want to do was sleep. I was ready do sit in my camping chair and get some hydration, aka, Budweiser and relax. But we had to get up and threaten the kids every five seconds to be quiet and stop jumping around. Once Sara and I got in the tent the other fun started. Some folks over at one of the cabins had just discovered alcohol and apparently this affected their hearing because they had to yell everything and turn their music up way too loud. This went on until about 3:30 AM, of course we were still up because Karsten would not fall asleep and we were wrestling with him to stay on our blow-up mattress. Not that we would have slept anyway in the heat retaining tent with the other neighbors going in and out of their car every five minutes which turned on their truck headlights which shined directly into, guess where? Did I mention the petting zoo just right next to our camping area? Really nice except that one of the animals was a rooster who must be on daylight savings time or something because he started crowing at 4:00 AM but it was definately not time to get up. He kept hitting the snooze too because he crowed for at least an hour. Once morning came we went swimming one more time and then packed it all up for the drive back home. Maybe it will be easier when the kids are bigger?

All 5 members of "The Hoffman's Man Team" in Beaver Believer Orange!

Trying to get all 5 to smile on cue is just impossible!!!

Orange boys...

The other day we got the boys ready for church. I picked out a cute romper for the little boys and Joe picked out polo's for L&G. I made a comment to him as we were eating that "oh they are so cute, they all match. Everyone except us.". So I load up the van with the boys, and Joe was right behind me locking the door and moving the car out of the driveway. I got in happy to go to church, look over at Joe as he gets in and see him wearing an Orange Polo!!! That stinker changed in 30 seconds flat! So I was the odd man out and Joe laughed the whole day.

Builder Boys...

Your my hero Sam!
Look we're in a bookcase and you have a sharp object!
Are you sure we should be in here? Do you really know what you are doing?

I'm almost finishing putting together all our furniture in a box. These are the two bookshelves/cabinets that now reside in my craft/sewing room. The two little boys helped me assemble them one night when Joey was out with the older boys. They had so much fun. Sammy had a fake hammer and everything. Poor Karsten had his shots at his well baby appt that day, so he has a little bandage where they took blood. :(