Lowery Park Zoo and Grandkids

Adam and Jullian walking the zoo together.
Grannie and Eden checking out the Twiga's (giraffes)
Jullian feeding the giraffe a cracker. He was grossed out by it's tongue.
While Adam and Jullian checked out the kangaroos in the petting zoo, Eden checked out the water. She loved it.
By the time she was done she was totally drenched but man did she have a blast. She was mad at me when I put her back in the stroller.

Eden's 1 yr. Pictures

She loves to sit in big girl chairs. She didn't want to get out of the white wicker chair.
Had to get this one because it shows her cute little chubby legs.

She was talking gibberish to the lady taking the pictures. That's the look.

Her shirt say's Miss Independant. And she is
What can I say? Her Grannie loves her tons.

Working Hard

Our new path from the screen porch to the garage slab.
Our new landscape for the screen porch area. We had to dig up all the grass (what was left of it), and then plant the plants. Dean made the borders to keep the mulch in.
Of course can't forget to add Dean's office doors to the home repairs.

We've been busy the last two months doing some work in the house and the yard. I feel pretty good about the accomplishments. We have a huge yard and anything we do will add to it. For the most part the back yard used to be orange groves, so it's just sand and weeds at the moment. We've slowly been adding some pieces to our landscape. I'm working on a butterfly garden area. I took a picture, but it turned out looking like a bunch of weeds, but I"m pretty proud of the effort. And the butterflies love me for planting the plants.

Dean of course added his office doors this year. Which look great and I'm thrilled with. Then last month we finally got the house painted. It's no longer salmon pink! Yeah, We painted it a nice green with cream trim. I love it. What a difference it made. In November/December we got our screen porch added to the house. We added two more concrete slabs and put on the screen porch. We now have our weights and bike on the porch. Dean has been faithful about using the equipment every day and has lost about 20lbs. I think I've gained his 20. Boo!!

And we had an area in the back that had the dog run, a bench and a birdbath out back. The birds love us, but it looked terrible. So we have put some vine to cover the dog run, planted two trees and some sea grass. I added some butterfly plants around the bird bath and Dean got some stones to make a small patio slab out there. It looks pretty good. We want to put weed preventing material down and then cover it with some pea gravel so it will finish that area off.

My next goal is saving enough money to buy a wood swing set for Eden and making a nice play area out back. We want to add some fast growing trees for shade back there since it's just open and sandy. So, the home improvements will continue, but for now I'm pretty please with what we've accomplished so far.

25 YEARS

25 years ago June 24, 1983, Dean Kevin LaFollette married Mary Kathryn Rambo at the Oregon City courthouse.
Crazy kids that were 20 & 17, people said it would never work out, but 25 years later here they are, married with 3 children and 2 grandchildren.
What God has joined together let no man put asunder.

Ahhh... the difference one year makes

Celebrating Eden Rae Jennings.
Born June 22, 2007
8 lbs. 6 oz.
21 " Inches long

One year old and still making us smile.

Happy Birthday Eden

Dora was in Eden's balloon bouquet. She kept pushing her down on the floor and telling her to stay down. We were laughing so hard because she was frustrated because she kept floating back in the air. So she'd continue yelling at Dora to stay down.

This is Eden's new rocking horse. She stayed on all night.
Eden is "These many" now. She loved eating the frosting. But she is such a little lady she only wanted to get one finger dirty.
I think this ribbon was one of her favorite things to play with.
Eden loves to clap her hands and have everyone else clap with her. We all said Yeah and she claps. What a happy little princess. We don't know where this first year went, but we're glad we got to be part of it. What a joy and a blessing she is.

She walks around now and calls Adam "Dum dum" . She tells us to stop now, and she loves to feed us things. She got a little tykes piano and she loves to play it. She is very musically inclined. She claps to the beat of music and she tries to sing songs now.

She's HOME!!!

My girl is home from Belize and Cancun. I am so happy! She was glad to be back to her normal routine. She is tanned and walking all over the house. She is still wobbly, but she goes completely across our huge living room all by herself. And no she hasn't bitten me yet. We had a great day and I can't believe she will be ONE on Sunday. Where did that year go? Will post birthday pictures next week.