The Walden Family

Thursday, July 22, 2010

A peek at our family vacation...

We had a great time together as a normal family on our vacation to Wisconsin Dells! We had ten wonderful days together but by the end of the vacation, I think we were all on Daddy's nerves! :)

Of course, we couldn't let this trip get by without a crazy story or two! You know me...

One day the twins wanted to ride the inter tubes in the "lazy river!" I thought it sounded like fun so said I would take them! I got in the water, grabbed a double raft, and then proceeded to try to jump in very graceful like!!! I was a bit awkward to say the least. I was feeling mighty proud of myself for finally getting onto the back of that thing when all of a sudden...my inter tube did a complete flip backwards and down I went! I came up sputtering and looked at Jonathan who was about to die laughing at me. It was then that I realized that I had lost my glasses in the current of the river! Oh no.... I am blind as a bat too!!! I let my inter tube float away and grabbed the twins. Jonathan proceeded to climb into the river and go searching. He did end up finding my glasses quite a ways on down the river. They weren't broken and I was thrilled. That experience wasn't very "lazy" for us that day!!!

On Wednesday night, the weather had been bad and it was really storming outside. They kept talking about tornado warnings in certain counties. Of course, we had no clue what county we were even in that day!! The sky was black and winds were strong, thunder and lightening flashed but we didn't let that stop us from sleeping soundly! All of a sudden, Jonathan and I woke up to an ear piercing sound of the fire alarms going off in our resort! We both quickly got dressed and I went out in the hallway. People were staggering out of their rooms in a daze wondering what in the world was happening! I began to try to wake the kids who hadn't even moved since the sirens began blaring!!! Talk about extremely sound sleepers... Parker wouldn't budge and I was trying to figure out how in the world we were going to carry these kids down 5 flights of stairs! The sirens stopped as I was trying to wake the kids and I told Jonathan to go downstairs and make sure it was really something big before I woke up our kids!!! Ha!!! He took the elevator downstairs of all things!!! Said it was total chaos in the lobby and people were asking what time it really was! Would you believe it was only 11:22pm!!!!! Ha Ha!!! The storm had actually knocked the power out a couple of times and that caused the alarms to go off. It took us a while to settle back down and sleep but the kids never knew it happened!

The next morning the kids were looking out our patio door and saw some debris on the patio. As they looked below, Paige saw that a huge pine tree had fallen just below us! Good grief....

Click on the picture below for a photo journey of our vacation!

Wisconsin Dells...July 2010

Thursday, July 8, 2010

4th of July weekend!

On July 4th, we got to visit TaMerra Edwards...

Daniel & Angie Edwards new baby girl!
She's precious...

Paige thought she was hot stuff cause she got to hold baby TaMerra!

Parker fell in love with the farm cats at Jonathan & LuRhe's and wanted to bring one home!
Lucky for us....Paige came in from outside and her eyes were almost swollen shut! :)
I do believe she has a cat allergy! So...no kittens for this household!

Parker & Peyton having the time of their lives on the Edwards 4-wheeler!

I had several mini heart attacks that day! :)

Parker did a great job driving Peyton "slowly" around the farm!

He just HAD to take me for a ride!

I think Daddy enjoyed his ride more than I did!

Paige had her cousin Jesse wrapped around her finger!

Boys will be boys...

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

I'd do it all over again...

It was a beautiful summer day, on July 6th, 1996. A day I had dreamed about for many years. I was about to become Mrs. Jonathan Walden! We had fallen in love at a youth camp in July of 1991 and had 5 happy years of dating.

He proposed to me in July of 1995, in the middle of a wheat field, on a huge John Deere tractor, on his sister and brother-in-laws farm.

I thought our wedding day would never arrive. We were counting the days and the hours until we would be married! I was afraid the Lord would return before we got married!!

That beautiful summer day finally arrived and our wedding was a dream come true. I was the luckiest girl in the world! (I still am by the way!)

Now, 14 years later...here we are...."So happy together!"

Happy Anniversary Jonathan. I love you SO much!

Thanks for letting me be your wife and for choosing me out of all the girls in the world! I'm so glad you did!

I Love you!

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Char-broiled...

Last weekend was an extremely busy weekend for me. I had a baby shower for a girl at work on Saturday afternoon and had been busy preparing my house for the shower all week long. On Saturday morning, Jonathan had gone golfing with a friend and the kids were spread out with a couple of different sitters. I had a fun day with the girls away from work and was cleaning up after the shower when the phone rang...

Jonathan was calling and wanted to know if I felt like having company that evening. He thinks every time the house is clean, we need to invite someone over! :) I told him that would be fine and we quickly decided to grill out hamburgers and hot dogs on his new grill that he had gotten for Father's day, just 6 days earlier! I ran to the grocery story and grabbed what I needed and hurried home to begin supper.

(I want to throw in a tid bit of info right here... Chuck and Mary Jane McGuire highly recommended the type of grill that we chose and said that we would never even have to use a squirt bottle on it!!!) :o) Hold that thought...

A short time later, I had the side dishes cooking and Jonathan went out to start up the grill. He turned on the grill and heard a slight hissing sound. He said he thought the gas was just going through the tubing since the grill was new. (However, we had already used it twice the weekend before!) He then proceeded to flip the "ignite" switch and all of a sudden... huge flames began to shoot out of the back of the grill! He ran around to the back of the grill to see the entire gas tank engulfed in flames!!! He immediately sprinted towards the door, and in his haste, pulled a muscle in his calf! I was in the garage getting something, and all of a sudden, Jonathan came busting in the patio door, screaming..."I need a fire extinguisher!!!" Of course, my first reaction was "WHY???" He proceeded to quickly run to the pantry and say "The grill is on fire!" I had no clue where the fire extinguisher was at that moment but he found it within seconds. We have kept it right inside the pantry door ever since we got married! Glad he was thinking straight because I sure wasn't!

Back out the door he went, doing the "PASS" acronym to quickly put out the fire. Pull the pin, aim, squeeze and sweep! The fire immediately went out as soon as he started to spray it. The next door neighbors quickly came running out to see if we were okay! They had seen the excitement from their kitchen window. After Jonathan's heart rate slowed back to a normal rate, he then surveyed the damage on his brand new grill. :( It was now covered in a white powder, my side dishes were basically done, company was on their way and we had raw hamburgers and hot dogs!

Jonathan ended up cleaning up the grill and reconnecting the gas tank. I can't believe he would even try to light the silly thing again, but he did and it worked just fine. Evidently there was leak in the connection from the tank to the grill. It's a wonder we didn't blow up our entire street!

The hamburgers and hot dogs were delicious and we had a good time that night with our friends despite all of the excitement! We had several good laughs and made more hilarious memories! Someday, I'm going to write a book of all the hilarious happenings in my life...