Happy Father's Day!

Today we spent the day with my parents to celebrate Father's Day.

My dad is the smartest and gentlest man I've ever known.

He raised 4 daughters and never acted like he wished he had a son to do manly things with. As a child he let me do his hair up with bows and clips, he helped pick out pink wallpaper for my room, and he'd take me to get dolls and help me put on their clothes when it was too hard for me. In the winter he'd take me "hunting" with him (when I'm sure he'd rather the alone time) and never once harmed an animal when I was around. Instead he would always made it into a time to appreciate how beautiful the animals are around us and his excitement would rub off on me as he'd get so overjoyed when we'd spot a deer.

Over the years when our family would face hard times, he would always quickly sell his prised gun collection in order to pay for the things we needed. He worked long hours and drove sometimes over 2 hours each way to his jobs to provide for our family.

His hands are rough and scarred from hard labor and his arms scarred from reaching into our vehicles as we were teenagers to keep them tuned and safe for our travels.

My dad did everything for us and still does things for us even though we've all grown and moved away. He is my hero and I'm very glad I got to spend today with him.

Kennedy's Big Debut

Yesterday we had the honor of attending our niece Kennedy's dance recital!

She tap danced...

AND ballet danced to "The Candy Man" from Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
She looked like a princess and did a great job!

Events of the First Week of June

Dad turned 64 on June 3rd!

We celebrated with Olive Garden, Chocolate Cake and Tres Leches Cake.

Chandler graduated kindergarten on June 5th and was the most handsome boy in his whole graduating class.

June 5 was also National Donut Day! I'm not a big fan of donuts, but I ate at least one bite in honor of the holiday.

And we also kicked off the beginning of Summer by breaking out the Slushie Maker and buying two delicious flavors for our frozen goodies!
Matt's flavor is cake batter.

Oh and of course no June is complete without my car breaking! It just got out of the shop again thus setting us back much further in our efforts to get out of debt. I just wish we could catch a break. Hopefully the next weeks of June will contain something lucky in our favor.

An I35 Adventure!

I finally got to go to Willie Nelson's Truck Stop!

I've wanted to go to this place ever since Matt and I watched a Truck Stop Special on the Travel Channel one night when nothing else was on. However, our last attempts to visit this stop were unsuccessful because they were remodeling for a looong time! I'm so glad that the construction is over and Willie's stop was ready for me!

I'm crazy over Willie!

(Not a big fan of his music...just of his work for Animal Rights)
A Willie Nelson Record Purse that couldn't hold anything...but was neat to look at!

Willie's Smokin' Guitar collection...pun intended.

Willie's Stage!

It's Willie and the boys! You can also see my cowboy boots that I wore especially for this occasion!

These frogs were outside of Willie's Restaurant/Honky Tonk. There were also a ton of motorcycles outside parked in a row that made me want to tip them over like dominoes just like PeeWee Herman did in "PeeWee's Big Adventure"...but I figured in real life I couldn't dance around and get myself out of the pickle that would have put me in...so I held back from the temptation.

As a souvenir, I got a feather shaped sucker which turned out to be delicious! It was great!

Memorial Day at Sandy Lake Park

For Memorial Day we decided to go with my parents, niece, and nephew to my dad's annual Local 100 Union Picnic at Sandy Lake Park.

This park is like the park that time forgot. I think everything is in the same place and painted the exact way as it was when I was last there in the early 90's. It was crazy!

As soon as we arrived we promptly grabbed our ride tickets and went to mingle with all the interesting characters that one finds at a union picnic.
Kennedy has her stash!
Chandler awaiting one of 4 rides he took on the bumper cars.

All strapped in and ready to rumble!

And then on to "The Scrambler" we went! Chandler was really digging this ride once I told him it was my favorite when I was his age.

Enjoying the breeze.

Then Chandler and I took a ride without Uncle Matt on the "Tilt-o-whirl"!

This ride brought lots of laughs.

Then we met up with Kennedy again for some "Space Adventures"

Chandler was a really good sport for riding in the girly, purple spaceship.

And then we talked Chan-man into the most vomit provoking ride of them all..."The Spider"!

After this...Chandler needed to let his stomach settle. Poor guy.

While letting it settle we played a LOT of the traditional Bingo they put on after feeding everyone BBQ...yet we only won a lunch box and a cap. Matt was pretty bummed we weren't leaving with a big screen television or gift card, but it was fun playing anyhow.

We ended our day by riding the "Little Dipper" which should have been called, "Little Back Breaker" with Chandler and then letting him attempt a ride on "The Scrambler" all by himself.

And he did alright! We were very proud of Chan-man and very happy we got to spend some quality time with the kids.

Jack and Tucker

The apartment wildlife was overjoyed that we returned from Europe and their food source had replenished. Here is our friend Jack (he has a girlfriend named Diane) bathing in some birdseed.

And here he is after eating so much he couldn't move. Also, a new dog park opened in our complex! It has all the equipment needed for training a dog for an obstacle course. Here's the first and last picture of Tucker practicing on the seesaw since he did not find it at all amusing. He did a great job though!

This year's favorite television shows in Europe

I love watching television in Europe.
Here are the top 3 things I enjoyed watching this year:

The Italian version of deal or no deal with a twist of it being a wedding couple picking boxes and the wedding party holding the boxes.

The Spanish version of trading spouses...kinda....only WAY better because the whole family goes to live with the other family....and those other families are tribes and no one speaks the same language!

And this song I heard while watching the Italian channel. It's so catchy!

But I also must acknowledge Matt and my favorite herr, Oliver Geissen (The German Ryan Seacrest) from the Super RTL channel. He never lets us down on quality entertainment: