Star Spangled Banner Texas Style

I found this beautiful version of the Star Spangled Banner while blog hopping this afternoon. I have listened to it over and over with chills each time. It's absolutely amazing!

Off to School!

Today the girls started school. They woke up shortly after 6am and were ready within minutes. I fixed their hair and they quickly ate their breakfast. They thought 7am was a good time to leave for the bus which didn't arrive until 8:05. At 7:20 they asked again if they could walk to the bus. I finally let them walk down at 7:40 which was about 5 minutes earlier than usual but they were too excited.
They didn't want me to drive them, they really wanted to ride the bus. I didn't argue, I let them call that decision!
After school they said they had a great day. They have great attitudes about learning and making this school year super. Dallin starts next Monday, he's also super excited.

Picture Scavenger Hunt

I thought I'd post the pictures to our fun party we were invited to tonight. It was for a Friends hubby who was celebrating a birthday. Since they're into photography and knew we enjoyed it, they invited us and another family to go on a hunt. We were emailed a list of pictures this morning to have all day to find and capture. So, here are our finds! Hope you enjoy them Smith style. :-)
DISCLAIMER---- WE LOVE OUR DOG LOLA! We just love being silly with her.

Water- we found this on base



Happy: this is on our antenna
Action: My face is HOT in this one!


The Letter "R" this is from the sign entering our village
Our favorite German Candy - this was taken on a bench next to the sign
A Funny Face- This happens to be Lola the dog sporting some panty hose. I'll post a video of her at the end of this
Windmill- this is a toy we brought home from Holland
Funny sign- pronounced eye-n-FART which means entrance. Exit is AusFART
family portrait - Brilee as a sunflower
Maddi the sunflower
Dallin too cool to be sunflower
Angel- found in the cemetary
Reflection- a huge marble headstone in the cemetary
Something orange- a cool bench in front of a barn in the village. Super cool picture!
An animal- UGLY cat we saw in a driveway
Statue- in the yard of the ugly cat
A Flower
Lauryn the sunflower

We're boring lately

There hasn't been anything exciting to blog about recently. This week we've lounged around while we caught the delayed taping of the olympics.
Yesterday I took the kids and the neighbors to pick blackberries. I had gone out by myself on Friday to search for some gems. I didn't have to walk far before I saw bush after bush. Last month we looked for them and figured they just weren't going to be blooming since the berries looked dead. I guess they were just beginning to grow. :-) I found a trail that led down a hill where some big ones were growing. We had to climb under 2 barbed wire fences to get to the mother load. Cows were grazing on the other side of the fence. Dallin tormented them with his umbrella and obnoxious MOOOOOO's. We had fun picking, there were lots of spiders in the mix with thousands of stinging nettle plants mingled in. We each got stung on our hands which only itch for a few minutes but I believe the hard work paid off. We had delicious blackberry, banana, mango, strawberry smothies. MMMMM!!

Some Holland videos

Here are some videos from the trip. It was terribly windy so you hear a lot of loud wind in the videos. Sorry!
The park ride that Dallin is on was a lot of fun. You ride up to the top then it lets you down in a boat. You hit the bump and jump in the air. Your boat is attached to a bungee cord that brings you back in. We loved this ride. The big swinging ride was Maddi and Mom. The other girls were too small for the ride, they were not happy!
The wooden gears moving around are the insides of the windmill. This mill is used to grind down paint pigment.

Finally the Holland update

The Windy Beach






A beautiful canal in HollandThe expensive chinese food near where we stayed. What were we thinking?? It wasn't anything to call home about. The clogs I gotLauryn licking her chocolate from the pancakes we ate at the shoe factory. They are like crepes.The Pottery

Windmills

CHEESY Mike! :-)
Canoe ride at the amusement park

We had an absolute great time in Holland. It did however start out a bit bumpy. We had decided NOT to bring a cooler because we weren't sure if we'd get ice to re-fill it. But, after meeting up with our friends the Walkers who live on the way out the direction we were headed, they talked us into taking their cooler. So, we shopped at the commissary and filled the cooler up with fun foods that would make breakfast much more exciting. We headed to get ice when we were told the ice machine was broken and there wasn't any ice. WHAT??? We now had a cooler with food and no ice. So, we headed off down the road hoping that once out of Germany, we'd find ice. We stopped after Belgium, we stopped at a couple places in Holland all with the same reaction "Ice?" "I don't know what you are saying" Long story short, nowhere in the Netherlands sold ice. What were we thinking?? That night for dinner we ate a package of lunch meat, dozen eggs, a couple yogurts, lots of milk and some kind campers across the way put some of our milk and cheese in their cooler for us. We did end up losing quite a bit of food but oh well, lesson learned right? So, you're wondering what they do for coolers?? They use portable coolers half the size of my igloo that plugs into an electric outlet. Those smart people! No ice to slush around and make the food wet.
Ok, so we had fun at the amusement park. This park had a lot of fun rides. We went and saw some real working windmills and got to go inside one. It was pretty cool! We went inside a cheese factory and saw them making cheese. It was yummy gouda cheese. I could've sampled all day long there. Then, we went into a wooden shoe factory and watched them make the wooden clogs. I had to get me a pair for display of course! We ended our exploring that day by heading into Delft the town that is famous for the blue/white pottery. We went into the factory as well and got to learn how it's made.
We went to the beach except it was 65' and terribly windy. It was the only sunny day of the trip but it was too cold to enjoy the water. The kids had fun running through the waves but they didn't get completely wet.
Our trip was filled with a lots of fun memories. Our tent that we ordered didn't arrive in time so we rented a 6 man tent from the base. It held up through the pouring down rain that we enjoyed for most of the trip. WHEW, I was really worried we'd end up soaked!