Happy Birthday, Lisa!

Yesterday was our friend Lisa's birthday. Keith and I worked up a surprise for her and the 4 of us went to Derby Dinner Playhouse. We saw Beauty and the Beast. It was amazing. The characters and costumes were so unique and creative. I think Lisa was impressed and had a good time.

Happy Anniversary!

It's been a long 4 years since we said "I do!" I won't say that it has been easy, in fact it has been extremely hard. But, I love Brad very much and despite all the difficulties I know that he loves me. We've been through alot together and all of that has brought us closer.

So what special thing did we do for our special day.... We played 2 softball games...in the pouring rain! What an anniversary!

No seriously, we did go out for lunch today. Makinsi had spent the night with us Tuesday night and stayed all day Wednesday. Wednesday, my grandma was admitted to the hospital for some tests and IV antibotics. She's fine and will be home in a day or so. She was on schedule to keep Makinsi on Thursday while Lauren was at work, so she ended up spending Wednesday night with us too. So we took her to lunch with us! We had a ball. We went to Ginza, which is our special occasion/anytime we can afford it restuarant! It's a hibatchi place and she had a good time watching the chef cook. So, no pictures of Brad and I together but I did take several of us with Makinsi. We had a really good day! Happy Anniversary, Babe!

BATS BASEBALL

Every year for Christmas my mom gets Brad a package of season tickets to the Louisville Bats. The great thing about the package that she gets is that the tickets can be used for almost any game and we can go whenever we want. We had 20 tickets at the beginning of the season and we are down to 3 I think. We love to grab a couple of people and head to the game.



Monday night we got together with our new neighbors, Josh and Lisa. We had a great time getting to know them and enjoying the baseball game. They are originally from Cincinnati so they are big Reds fans. Brad loves the fact that he has someone new to talk baseball with.

Brad and Josh at the game.

Josh with Brad and I.

Lisa with us.

Josh and Lisa

Lisa is about 7 months pregnant with BIB and so cute. And yes girls, I think we have a new scrapper. She came down during the day Monday and I helped get her started on an album about Josh's military career. She completed 4 12X12 pages in a couple of hours. Hopefully, she's hooked and I can bring/drag her along next time we scrap.

We've also gone to a couple of games with Keith and Lisa this summer and a couple of weekends ago we brought along Lauren, Jeremy and April.

Louisville is also hosting the International League Minor League All-Star Game in a couple of weeks. Brad got tickets for that as soon as they went on sale in Feb. so we are going to the Home Run Derby and All-Star Game which should be kind of cool.

Mixed Nuts Softball

We've been playing softball 2 nights a week this summer. We are kind of like the Bad News Bears. We have potential, but we make ourselves look bad with all our clumsy mistakes. We have a good time though, as long as some people (Brad) don't take it to serious. Makinsi is our mascot!



So this is my buddy, Keith at the game Tuesday night.


Keith up to bat.

And the result of his foul ball!

OUCH!

Summer Update

So, I've been out of school for a couple of weeks now and people keep asking me what I have been doing. Well, basically NOTHING! I think I have gotten caught up on all my sleep. It's amazing how quickly I can change my schedule from going to bed early and getting up early to staying up until 1 or 2 and sleeping until 10 or 11. And then taking a nap in the afternoon too.


Seriously though, Brad has been working almost everyday. We go to the ballpark on Tuesday and Thursday nights to play ball and other than that that's pretty much it. I've scrapped a couple of days and finished a little book for Makinsi about her family. It is similar to the story "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you See?" It's called "Makinsi, Makinsi, Who do you see?" each page has pictures of her and a family member. She really likes it. She's played with it a couple of times. I still need to order page protectors to go over it, so she doesn't tear it up to bad.


Makinsi has been spending the night with us once a week or so. We love having her here, well, Brad and I do, Bailey doesn't. She is so jealous of her. I guess Bailey doesn't get as much as our attention when Makinsi's around. Monday morning, I fixed her breakfast and she climbed up into the recliner to eat. I put the tv tray in front of her and she sat there and ate. She was too cute!
Then mom and dad picked her up that afternoon in the Mustang. Dad got this car for his 50th birthday. He really likes it and Makinsi loves to ride in it.

I've got my little flower garden growing out back in my hanging planters. I'm impressed that they have lived so long. I planted them in early May when they hadn't bloomed at all so they've spread out pretty good.


And to bring the excitment of my summer so far to a close, I have to brag on this company.



I order a pair of shoes from Zappos.com yesterday morning. They said 4 to 5 business days to ship which was fine, because shipping was free. They came today. I was shocked. Yes, they only came from Shepherdsville, but overnight at no extra charge, I was impressed. And they were a little bit cheaper than in the store.


I'm also on the 3rd book of the summer, so I have been working a little. Of course, they are middle school books, but I'm still on the 3rd book. Hopefully, I get at least one adult book read this summer. Don't forget just 37 more days until Breaking Dawn.

Kinsi Belle

She's growing up so fast. She's talking some "hello, bye-bye, etc.". She's not as innocent as she looks!

Go Baby, Go!

Yesterday was teacher appreciation day at Churchill Downs. Several of us from school went, along with some spouses and my dad! We had a great time sitting on Millionaires Row and learning how to bet and I actually won a few. I only came home with $20 less than I took so, I figure I did pretty good and bought a couple of drinks. So it was a good day.

I had fun playing with the camera and the sports setting. It lets you take a bunch of pictures real fast so you get the action. Dad and I went down to track level and I got several fun shots of a race that I actually won!

Ewww, Gross!

The guy that took Brad's picture at the ZZTop concert emailed us the picture today.

All I can say is, I'm glad we weren't up close during the concert. Seeing that onstage would have probably grossed me out!

ZZTop sings that?

Happy Birthday, Michelle! For her birthday, we all went to the ZZTop concert at Ft. Knox this past Sat. Yes, I had heard of them, but couldn't tell you anything that they sang until someone told me? But to my defense, I can tell you only a handful of songs that I know the singer of. I just don't keep up with it. Anyway, we had two carloads of people with us; Michelle and Dave, their son and new daughter in law, Mike and Samantha, David, Keith, Brad and I.

I was really excited about this and even went to the scrapbook store and got this stuff to do a layout.

Then I found out that we couldn't take cameras in and that they would be taken if you were caught with them. So I thought all would be lost for the layout.

I've still got ticket stubbs so all might not be lost and Keith took lots of pictures with his camera phone. Who knows if they will come out though.

The show started with Blackberry Smoke out of Atlanta. They were pretty good, had a couple of funny songs. Then Blind Melon came out. I had never heard of them either, until someone actually sang the song for me a couple of weeks ago at school. No Rain ended up being the only song that I knew or even understood.

While we were waiting for ZZTop to come out we ran into a girl that plays on our softball team. She was working at the Chase Credit Card booth, signing people up for free t-shirts or something. She brought all of us t-shirts and then had a something special for Brad and David. Yep, backstage passes! Brad and David were going backstage after the concert. ZZTop finally came on and were pretty impressive for old guys. The bras started flying, not mine thank you, but they seemed to be going everywhere. People are crazy. We had a ball dancing and singing though.

After the concert, Brad and David took off backstage. They apprently got a big briefing about how they could not take pictures, use cell phones, or even speak etc. They said it was like going to see the president or something. They got things signed by all three guys, but didn't talk to them at all. Someone did take Brad's picture to put in the Turret, the Ft. Knox paper, though. So hopefully, I'll at least have the picture to put in my scrapbook. And he got my t-shirt signed.

So that was our weekend. Brad's at work and I'm in my scrapbook room all alone. I might actually try to do something here scrapbook wise. Two posts in one day is pretty productive though for the first day of summer vacation! Make sure you read below too.

Weddings, Weddings

I've been working on this photography business a little this last month. I posted pictures before of the engagement pictures of took of Mike and Sam and they got married May 17th. This was the first larger wedding I have done. I had a great time and I think they turned out pretty good. I'm still working on posing and remembering poses when everyone is ready to move on to something else. But this is what developed...

Then Brad's sister, Lindsay, got married on the 24th. There wedding was at Camp Carlson near Ft. Knox. They have a beautiful building up there that over looks the lake. They actually hired a photographer, but Lindsay wanted me to take pictures also. So I got some, but most of them they are looking at the other photographer so there eyes are a little off. Lindsay and Brandon did a sand ceremony instead of the unity candle. It was pretty and different.

This is our favorite "Uncle Mike". We even got to take a picture together.

I didn't a take my big zoom lens in so I didn't get many of Hunter as the ring bearer. Funny story though, as he came down the isle with the flower girl, a lizard ran across the sidewalk in front of him. Of course, he took off after it hollering "A bug, A Bug, it's a wizard!" He got a big laugh from everyone!