Our new babysitter

Our family has a new babysitter.  He's really wonderful.  He knows my routine.  He's quite dependable and pretty cheap.  It's Big Brother J!

I had a sitter cancel on me and I had a doctor's appointment.  The husband was home, so I thought we would try him out.  I gave him explicit instructions.  He did great!  

I told him he had to pay attention to her the whole time.  He decided to program his Lego Mindstorms robot to talk to K.  He even uploaded her picture to the robot.

He is not your average babysitter.  K loved it!  He programmed his voice into the robot to say "Hello baby girl!" when she hits a button.  I never had a sitter program a robot for me.

She just loves her biggest brother.  She's walking now and loves for him to walk her down the block.

He does everything except change diapers.  He has no interest and looks at me like I am crazy when I bring it up.  Oh well!  I will just have to settle for the robot programming babysitter.

He's asking when I am going to hire him again.

4th of July 2013

We went to Fredericksburg for their 4th of July parade.  The weather was lovely for Texas.  

Here's the girl and I  in our hats.  I have to apologize to everyone at the parade.  We did not know that our daughter had contracted the highly contagious hand foot mouth disease so we were toting her all over the Hill Country.  Sorry for spreading germs.

We met up with some friends at the parade.  My friend helped me diagnosis our ailment.  That was a new one to me.

It was a great parade with all sorts of country charm.

The Pacific War Museum had a group of men in uniform in the parade.

What's a parade without a double decker tour bus.  I think every small town fire department was there with their sirens and lights a-blarin!

We had a great time and weren't melted when the parade was over.  Later in the evening, the boys all headed out to the fireworks.  This is the first year that we didn't use ear plugs to help the tender ears cope with the fireworks noise. The girl and I skipped the show as we had an early flight the next morning.

E's 10th birthday

After our last blog post, we drove to my sister's for my oldest nephew's birthday.  

Here's my sister and baby K.  The skin tones is a big difference between myself and my sister.

E, D, and J all posing before church.  I can't believe how big they have gotten.

Nana and Grandave were there with their dogs.  Baby K really enjoys Toby.  Thankfully, he is quite the trooper and lets her pet him.

Cousin A and S like to play animals and horses together.  W was there, but somehow managed to avoid the camera.  

Nana and her 2 granddaughters.

Cousin A made a playmat for baby K with toys for her.  It was so sweet.  Baby K seemed to enjoy the attention.  

We had lots of fun celebrating cousin E's birthday.  Just for my memory:  E had received a large gift for his birthday so his parents toned down the birthday celebrating.  It was a small party at his home with family.  I think it was a great party.  Apparently, he was a little disappointed.  

One evening, he was sad for some unknown reason.  My helpful son says, "Are you sad, because your parents didn't give you a REAL birthday party?"

We had a good laugh over that one.