Elans first tooth, (est. 9/10/08)

Bottom left!

Sorry that one pic. is sideways, I tried to fix it by failed:(

His second tooth has arrived as well, bottom right! He is rather grumpy about them, but it interested in his new abiblity to chew.....

My happy little bug, reading away as always!

This is the only good picture we got from a photo shoot at picture people last month. I'm so happy with it:)

These pictures were taken at the labor day picnic at Oregon Ridge. David and Esther went down the slip-n-slide together and then Esther went down by herself. She was really heistant at first... but you can see how long that lasted!!

This first picture is Esther putting all of her animals in all of her shoes. It was really cute, but this picture doesn't really do it justice:)













Elan is learning to ride a bike:)












This is Esther at Camden's birthday party a few weeks ago. They have this huge water park thing. It's like a kid's dream come true. My brave little girl was not so eager to try it though...what's happening to her??

This is the yurt that David and I stayed in for the past three days In Deep Creek MD. We got to go away WITHOUT the children thanks to the overflowing love from David's family:) There have been some nasty rumors that we actually stayed in a B& B, but those just happen to cost $250 a night, and the yurt was a much cheaper alternative, (and we would have missed out on the "ever-seeing eye" at the top of the yurt.) It looked like a space ship. It was covered with canvas and then at the top was this plexiglas opening to see out. We were blessed with a raging thunderstorm the last night we were there and the whole inside of the yurt was lit up with bright flashes from the "eye" the whole night. It kept us up, but it was fun to watch:)

David is kayaking at the ASCI in Deep Creek , MD. It's this cool man-made water rapid park that brings you back up to the top on a conveyor belt. David got to do 100 runs and play in the waves for hours. I just ran around the park because I don't know how to roll in a kayak and I didn't want to pay for a lesson( cheap-o!)

David jumping into a wave, not so graceful:)

This is Cathy diving into a wave. Watch how graceful she is:)

We followed this bear from the street, down a road and flushed him out into this persons driveway. Of course he was after the trash. He was totally unaffected by the cars and the people. We stayed in our cars, but we were like 20 feet away!!! Crazy!!! He opened this "bear resistant" trash door, swung it around and then proceeded to peel back the rubbermade container! Watch the video!!

I love how this bear stops to look at us in the middle of his pillage!!