H-O-T Springs

Camp Aunt Debbie concluded on Friday with a trip to Magic Springs. Since we were meeting in Hot Springs to pick-up the kids, we decided to stay for the weekend. Of course it was 100+ degrees, so we tried to stay out of the heat as much as possible. After a big breakfast and long swim in the hotel pool, we tried out the new (or at least new to us) T-Rex Indoor Jurassic Golf. It was all in black light, had realistic looking and sounding dinosaurs, and was blessedly air conditioned! It was very cool, and Nathan's already talking about having his next birthday party there.

Afterward, we stopped for a treat at Holy Cow Creamery before heading to see the Paynes.
Jared runs cross country at school and has been wanting to do another 5k to motivated again. Jeff, Wayne, John, and Jared's friend Thad decided to run and/or walk with him. Like I said, it was ridculously hot, and we are just glad they all finished without having to call an ambulance!

A New Chapter...

Since I graduated in 2000, I have been working as a home health/hospice pharmacist. It is a unique, multidisciplinary specialty, and I have joked that surely I have earned an honorary "R.N." after my name as well! I have spent the last 7 years at I Care of Arkansas, and for about a year, we have been working on some side projects that have really taken off on their own. I can finally announce that as of today, I Care merged with another local competitor. As of tomorrow, I will be working exclusively for Sterile Compounding of America. It is both exciting and scary to venture away from what I know. It felt almost like I was giving away one of my children today as I turned over my charts to the other company. I have taken care of some of these patients for years!

I am ready for a change though. Eleven years of being on-call has been more than enough! Even though it was rewarding to help people get home from the hospital and to provide comfort to the terminally ill, I will not miss compounding morphine for a new hospice patient at 3:00am or missing church and family events because somebody needed I.V. antibiotics. I will not miss always having a contingency plan "in case Mommy gets called in". I will also not miss the red scrubs! ; )

I have worked with some great people over the years and will miss a few of them dearly. I'm sure that I will continue to talk to them through the transition, and it has already been requested that I continue making my famous carrot cake for their birthdays. So here's to a new chapter, and whatever it brings...

Camp Aunt Debbie

The 2nd Annual Camp Aunt Debbie is being held this week. Our kids (and cousin Jenna) are spending the whole week with Jeff's sister. In Debbie's words, it gives us a break from them and them a break from us! She started this last year as a way to help us with the kids in the summer. Also, since her kids are grown and nearly grown, it gives her the chance to use her skills as a children's party/camp planner to the fullest! (Remember Nathan's Survivor Birthday Party?)

Here's a copy of today's schedule of events and some pics from Debbie:

WEDNESDAY
Breakfast:Pancakes
Get cabin picked up
Go to the Rivermarket and play in the park area and the water area. (Please mark some old clothes for me so if they get ruined it is not a big deal.)
Change clothes and go to the Game and Fish commission museum.
Lunch in LR: Pizza
Go play in the tubes at Rock Creek
Home and movie/rest time
Craft: Stepping Stone
Free play
Dinner: Mexican night! Tacos, chips and dip, rice and we will try cheese quesadillas
Flashlight Fun
Free Play
Baths
Bed / Lights out

Pop goes the birdie

So about a month it two ago J got a parakeet. He loved it! So Micah and Lily wanted one. They each got one so we had three parakeets!!! They are surprisingly quiet. They live in J's room, in their cage.

One day I was downstairs on the phone and lily had gotten her bird out to play with it. It bit her and her natural reflex kicked in, she squeezed the bird and pop went the birdie :( she came downstairs crying "my birdie is dead" so now were down to two birds, and it's a constant fight because there are more kids than birds!! So what do I do? Should I let Lily have another chance or is she just too young???????



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Montour Trail

So My friend Jenna and I have been walking the past two weeks. We usually go at night around 9 after the kids go to bed, but today we took the kids to the Montour Trail near Pittsburgh. It's really flat and it has this really cool old tunnel to go through. The kids liked it until they got tired :). Today I remembered why we walk at night with no kids!!!!!!!


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Friends of the Garden 3rd Annual Butterfly Festival

We happened to go to another festival while on our trip to Springfield: Friends of the Garden 3rd Annual Butterfly Festival which is according to ilove.springfieldmo.org "one of Springfield's most popular events". Really? I find that hard to believe. We saw pretty much everything in about an hour. I will cut them some slack because it is only the 3rd annual event. I'm sure it takes a while for these things to really get established.

I think it has potential to be a good festival at some point. It is held at a nice park with a permanent Butterfly House on the grounds. They carried the butterfly/caterpillar theme throughout the event and had lots of hands-on activities for the kids. Another plus - they sold the best strawberry lemonade I've ever tasted. The worst part of the festival was the heat! Usually it's a little cooler in Springfield than it is in LR but not this weekend. It was hot!

The kids' favorite part of the festival was this giant, inflatable caterpillar called the "Kiddie-pillar". We adults couldn't decide which was more disturbing: the entrance or the exit!

Summertime in Springfield

We spent the weekend visiting Brooke, Blaine, and the girls on what was disputably our 8th to 10th trip to Springfield. ; ) We spent Saturday hanging out at the house and playing on everything in the backyard - swings, trampoline, water balloons, and the inaugural run on a Slip 'n' Slide that didn't so much slip or slide. After dinner, we moved on to the front yard to try out the tree house that Blaine and Riley have been fixing up. I don't know who has been enjoying it more - Blaine or Riley!We spent the rest of the evening reliving past adventures, planning future ones, and watching one of Jeff's favorite 80s movies "Gremlins." (We put the kids to bed before they turned evil. The Gremlins I mean, not the kids.)

Happy Birthday, Lily!

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LYLAS!

Nathan spent the night with a friend Friday night, so we invited Lydia over to our house for a girls' night in. They had a giggle-making, cookie-eating, bubble-splashing good time! Saturday morning, we went to Firefly Studios to paint some tiles that will be placed in the Founder's Garden at our school. Those girls were painting machines! We finished over 50 tiles!

Afterward, we met up with the rest of the Krebs family and hung out together for most of the day. Still yet, Ashley did not have enough Lydia-time and cried when it was time for us to go home. I think she would move in with them if she could! She considers herself an honorary Krebs girl. I guess it's kind of like how Mandi was an honorary Fischer girl in our house growing up. : )

Quick Trip to the Rock

Jennifer and the boys made a quick trip to the Rock this week, and we crammed a lot into just over 24 hours. We started with an evening at Wild River Country. This was Will's first trip to a water park, and he loved it! (Evan was a little more timid.) Ashley and the older boys went on every slide in the park in about an hour and a half.

The next day, we played in the tubes at Rock Creek and had lunch at Purple Cow before ending the day with a trip to the Climbing Center. Whew!

Tyler has been out of town for a couple of weeks, so the boys were in need of some major rough-housing time with Jeff (a.k.a. "Bowser"). Will and Evan were "Mario" and "Luigi"; Nathan was "Blue Toad", and Ash was "Princess Peach". Good times!

Happy 3rd of July!

Though highly out of character, Jeff actually encourages the use of explosives around children. After taking the kids swimming and out for ice cream yesterday, Cool Uncle Jeff took the boys to the fireworks stand. They showed up at Mom and Dad's with a huge haul!He even showed Ashley how to light the fireworks......and (most importantly) how to run away!

Water Balloon Fight!

How long does it take to fill 100 water balloons? 20 minutes or more.
How long does it take to bust 100 water balloons? 2 minutes or less.

Amanda and the kids have been home this week. When they came over Saturday afternoon, Brandon brought a package of water balloons. We did this a few weeks ago with the Johnson kids, and I filled and tied all the balloons myself. This time, I enlisted some helpers. Amanda and I took turns filling, and we taught the older 3 how to tie them. (Ashley couldn't quite get the hang of it.)