Over the years the fourth of July has become one of my favorite family fun holidays. We took the kids and both sets of grandparents to a local parade. The streets lined with children and American flags reminded me of something out of a movie. It felt like home town America. My favorite part is always when the Veteran’s march past. As I stand and clap and cheer, I can’t hold in the tears of gratitude for these men and woman who deserve honor and recognition.

It’s Thursday again, which means I am once again using pictures from my past as blodding fodder for today. [] (https://latc.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/spring-97-21.jpg) Here is a picture of my hubby and I in the spring of 1997 at an All Night Bowling event for my youth group. Please take note of the shirt I am wearing. Two and a half years later here we are in October of 1999 at a College Football game.

Here are my boys enjoying a beautiful evening out downtown. For more Wordless Wednesdays, click here.

Shannon at Rocks in My Dryer has asked us to post 5 ingredients or less recipes this week for Works for Me Wednesday. Some of my favorite quick and easy recipes are crockpot recipes. The only time I come home to the smell of a home cooked meal is when I cook a crock pot meal. My favorites are the kind when you dump and pour cans into the crock pot.

I think everyone should be so lucky as to be married to an engineer. While it is true that purchasing large or technical products such as televisions, cameras, or computers will take longer as we’ll he’ll have to research the various brands, settings, options and figure out which one is the best price and has the best features for us, when any of those things breaks he is not afraid to open them up and fix them (and since he spend a larger portion of his childhood taking a part such items he actually knows what he is looking at and how to fix it).

Recently my 2 year old daughter has decided that a good way to pass time in the car is to scream really loudly. It’s also a really good way to annoy her older brother. Typically we start driving down the road and she starts making some annoyingly loud noise and then 2 second after she starts, my son starts screaming, “Yell A Little Bit Quieter” followed by, “Mom, she’s not yelling a little bit quieter,” over and over.

…your son won’t sit on your lap because your legs are “too spiky.” My four year old son told me yesterday that my legs “are prickly like a cactus.” You better believe I made sure to get up early enough to shave my legs before leaving for church this morning. They are silky smooth now (a fact that my son and my husband are both glad about).

This week I wrote about my daughter’s hang up call to the local police station. We have no idea how long we were "on the air" before she hung up. I immediately started thinking, "What did they hear during that time?" Thankfully It wasn’t one of those meltdown moments when everyone was whining and crying, but what exactly did we say? I remember the day we discovered that our baby monitor could pick up the signal of our neighbor’s baby monitor.

My sweet sister in law, Jessie , tagged me with this “Share the Love” award in which you tag the blogs of people whose blogs you enjoy reading. The rules are to tag bloggers who make your day, make you laugh and smile, and/or leave uplifting comments on your blog. You then include a link to this post , and ask each person you tag to do the same! Soooo, time to share the love my friends!

I was shopping at BJ’s the other day with the kids when we passed the jewelry counter. My son asked, "Why is there jewelry at BJ’s?" I responded, "So people can buy it." He then said, "Yea… I guess if they were getting married and didn’t have a ring they could come here." Hmmm…. clearly this Mommy doesn’t wear much jewelry, since my son thinks wedding rings are the only kind of jewelry one wears.