Pictures of the Family

Maddy Moose at the airport, waiting around before her flight overseas. I love this kid. She's hilarious. She uses words like "actually" and "apparently" as part of her normal vocabulary. I miss the little monster already. It's not like I got to see a lot of her before this trip to Japan but somehow, just knowing she's half a world away, I feel like crying every single time I think about her not being near.
This is my daughter-in-law, Jodie. We were at the airport, seeing Nick off. Nick flew out yesterday morning, while Jodie and Maddy left yesterday evening. Don't ask. Long story. Anyway, I got out of the car and was fiddling around with the camera when I looked up and saw Jodie loaded down like a pack mule. Nick and Randey were getting the "big" bags and Jodie was handling Nick's carry-on stuff. I thought that if she had to pick up one more thing, her spine might snap (she's very tiny...Nick's carry-on stuff isn't). lol

Jodie's the one who got me into scrapbooking. Therefore, it stands to reason, she's a lot of fun to go shopping with when you're looking for scrapbooking stuff. Oh, the bags of goodies I brought home from our little shopping trips. It's almost shameful. And even though our bank account is now screaming for mercy, I still wish we could have gone more places and discovered more paper craft treasures. Then again, in the interest of responsible bill paying, maybe it's best that our shopping time wasn't any longer than what it was!

This is Nick with my dad. Dad and his wife, Wendy (and 2 of her grandsons) drove down from Oklahoma to visit with Nick, Jodie and Maddy. That was nice. Dad thinks the world of Nick and Nick idolizes my dad. I'm not sure that's healthy (if you knew my dad, you'd know what I meant...and you'd also know I'm just kidding - Dad's great - just a little too "quick-witted", shall we say).

And here's my three sons with Maddy and Sydney the Wonder Dog. I'm not sure what it is about these three, but they can't seem to stand next to each other for longer than 30 seconds without getting the urge to punch and strangle one another. Crazy. And poor Maddy frequently gets caught up in the melee'. But, truth be told, this kid can give as good as she gets so it's hard to get worried when I see her head sticking out of the middle of one of these "battles". Oh yeah, notice that they're all wearing Philly Eagles jerseys? That's Nick's doing. He loves the Eagles. So naturally, so does Jacob (on the left). Kaleb, far right, actually likes the Seahawks (his father's influence, what can I say?), but he likes to wear the jersey that Nick and Jodie bought him because the Eagles are his "2nd" favorite team. Nick and Jodie have now bought Eagles jersey's for everyone in the family except Randey. For him, they got a Seahawks jersey, of course. I guess this is the price I pay for having 3 boys. I'm forced to hear about football teams way more than I want to. And I'm also the proud owner of an Eagles jersey of my very own. Hmmm. Some boys buy their mom flowers. Some buy her perfume. Some are even crazy enough to buy her small appliances. Not my boy. No, sir. He buys his mom a football jersey. Ah well, at least he picked a team who's colors I actually like.