Danae's Birthday!!
This past weekend was a big one! We celebrated Danae turning 29 (That's her, me and our friend Melissa).



John and I celebrated 6 years of marriage....WooHoo!, and now we are getting ready to leave on our Disney World Vacation and Cruise!!! Danae's party was fun, a nice dinner with a few of her closest friends, it was a special time for her. There are pictures of everyone further down (just click on them if they are too small to see well). She is such a gift to me and each of her friends. Danae is one of those few people who thinks the world of me even when I am at my very worst. She always believes the best in me, and tells me how great I am when I am feeling anything but great. I know she will love me and stand by me, no matter what. We all need people in our lives like that.
John's and my anniversary was awesome! I can't believe it's been 6 years! I remember being a newlywed and wondering if John and I would still be really in love after 5 or 6 years :)....the answer is YES, it gets even better. We had a great time together. Both boys spent the night away and we had so much time just the two of us, to do whatever we wanted, go wherever...it was wonderful. We were blessed. John even took me to a haunted house, he paid $10 for me to squeeze the life out of his arm and keep my eyes closed 80% of the time! But, he got a big kick out of my reaction, he said it was worth it. :) He gave me a beautiful sappy letter (I LOVE letters). It was a great anniversary. Tonight we get ready to take off on our BIG vacation. We are just beside ourselves, we are so excited! We have been like 2 little kids getting ready for this trip. Of coarse Josiah could hardly even sleep last night! He said he tried sleeping sitting up to practice for our flight tonight. :) As soon as we return, I will post pictures and stories of our trip. :)
Happy Birthday Danae, I love you!

Danae's 29th Birthday!!

We have a politician in the house!

Josiah is the 2005/2006 class representative for his 3rd grade class, voted into office by his peers! :o) We are so proud of him. He ran a little campaign, he even had a campaign manager. He had to give a speech to his class on why they should vote for him and it worked, they voted him in! It's so cute.
On a similar note, John was recently selected by his peers at the police department to be on the peer support team. This doesn't mean more money :), but nonetheless it is a honor to be chosen by the people you work with for this position. The peer support team is basically a team of police personnel who provide support to fellow officers and their families in a time of crisis or need (like an officer involved shooting). It is a honor to be recognized by your peers as someone they would trust and be able to turn to in a difficult time. Shout out to John! :)
Let's see what else....Oh! I reached my weight loss goal!! WooHoo!! I weighed myself last night at the gym, and I have reached my goal. It took about 3 months, the last 5 pounds were the most stubborn. But, I just want to encourage anyone who has a goal to lose weight and get in shape, you CAN do it!! Changing my diet was the key, exercise alone was just not cutting it for me. Now that the weight is off, exercise is much more effective for me. Now I can focus on toning and shaping, and really see some results, but I had to get the fat out of the way to really be able to do that. That is how it has worked for me, I know everyone is different. But, I just want to encourage anyone who wants to lose weight...It totally can be done, with just a few simple changes to the diet and moderate exercise. OK, enough about that. I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes....."Secure in God's love, I will not surrender my self worth to the opinions and judgements of others. When I am rejected, I will not retaliate; when I am hurt, I will allow God to heal me. And knowing the pain of rejection, I will seek to love those who suffer from its anguish." --Lloyd Ogilvie
Lord, help me to live like that everyday! :) Jess

OK, this picture totally cracks me up! It completely captures a "moment". Let me explain this for you. This is John being slighty defiant. :) This is the response I sometimes get when I ask him to do something he doesn't want to, which in this case was most likely to sit down and eat. Notice the closed eyes, that means "I can't see you". Notice the arm motion and the turning of the body, that means "I don't hear you". The open mouth, well I'm not sure I can explain it, there is no sound coming out of it, but that is how he forms his mouth when he is pretending he doesn't see or hear me. It totally cracks me up. I know this look so well, and I'm so glad to have it captured forever on film! It's as if he is saying, "Do you hear somebody talking... because I don't." :)
My big boy!! I won, he is sitting down. :) Here's John sitting at a regular chair, so nicely, and eating with a spoon (not just his fingers!). He will be 2 in just a little under 4 months, I can't believe how fast it goes. I love staying home with him, and being able to just savor these moments as they fly right by. By the time we have another, I will be so ready to hold a newborn in my arms again. Almost there, not quite though :o)

13 DAYS!!!!!!!!!!!!
We are off to DisneyWorld for 3 nights and then hop on The Disney Cruise Ship cruising the Caribbean for 4 nights. I really can't believe it. We booked this trip 9 months ago, it didn't even seem real then, and now we leave in 13 days! We celebrate our 6th wedding anniversary at the end of this month, what a way to celebrate! I guess they are also gonna do something special for us on the ship. :) I'm just beside myself, I'm so excited. John and I have never taken a vacation like this, we've never even been anywhere warm besides California and Nevada! :) Yes, the boys are coming! My parents are coming also, and they went large....they are staying at one of Disney's Deluxe Resorts and got one of the bigger cabins on the ship with a deck over the water. Our rooms are great, but we will be visiting Grammy and Grumpy when we can! :) We too are staying at DisneyWorld, we are in a really neat hotel that was designed after New Orleans, their southern style and trademark music and food are everywhere, what a tribute that is, now more than ever. My parents will be at The Animal Kingdom resort, there is actual wildlife on the grounds...it looks awesome, it's designed after beautiful Africa (one place I hope to go someday). We will cruise the Caribbean and we are super excited to go snorkeling! Once again, we do plan on eating our way around the cruise ship! Do I even need to mention how excited we are about the food? :)
Josiah is so excited, as you can imagine! He has this DisneyWorld vacation planner DVD he watches all the time, it's so funny. They have SO many things for him to do on the cruise ship, after all it's Disney! They even have a Disney DayCare we can use for a couple hours here and there for John II, but of coarse Grammy and Grumpy will be helping out too. Halloween will take place while we are on the cruise, I can only imagine what Disney will do! So, I will take great pictures of all our adventures to share when we return. WooHoo!!!!

I haven't had time to write!! So, here is one of my favorite "blurbs" as I call them..."Most decisions you make on a day-to-day basis to walk in the way of righteousness will require you to say no when you want to say yes. They will require you to close your mouth and say nothing when you feel you have much to say (one I need to work on!), or they will require you to give more than you know you have"- Darlene Zschech

OUR TRIP TO NEVADA!!
The Girls!! Mary, Me and Karon. This picture was taken outside their church.
The Boys!! John, Kurt and Justin. This picture was taken outside the Reno Hilton before we went in for some serious BOWLING!! John and I won the "couple's competition"!!! WooHoo! Our prize was an extra night stay at The Von Eschen Manor and two free dinners prepared by local celeb chef, Gita (a.k.a. Karon) :o)
The whole gang!! I'm not sure who's idea this was, but we all had way too much fun doing it. I know, we are geeks.
The Kids! Here is Grace and John kissing goodnight, these kisses did not just take place at bedtime however, but ALL throughout the day!!! Yes, John is wearing girl p.j.'s in this picture. When we stayed an unexepected 4th night, he needed some clean jammies and Grace was the only one around who wore his size! :) They were SOOOO cute together!

Just outside The Peppermill Casino's Buffet. Forget gambling, we ATE our way through Reno!!!
I'm not really sure I can explain this picture. :o) Let's just say we were having way too much fun having our very own photo session taking pictures of ourselves in the car, and there are a ton of them...this being one of our favorites. We kinda think it looks like one of those rollercoaster pictures! But, no, we were just in the car!! :o) We laughed so hard this night! It was Sunday night and our only night out without the kids, so clearly we turned into a bunch of kids ourselves! Since Grace and John II were home with a sitter this night, we decided to take Dora out with us. :o) Either Mo or Karon have a great picture of Dora bowling!
Dora visits the Hilton. "Ummmm, where's Paris??"
This is my husband and Kurt. I'm really not sure what else to say about this photo. But if you look closely Kurt is laughing so hard I think he almost passed out! :) Also, if you really look closely you will see my husband has a wound under his eye, that was from the previous night's wrestling match between him, Kurt and Justin. All in love!! :)
Yeah, ummm, well....you had to be there I guess.
All pooped out. This is our flight home this afternoon. I think all of us are totally wiped out, but we had so much fun. It was very bittersweet to leave. We love home, but going there reminds us of what we said good-bye to when those guys all moved away. We are not moving however:), but we have fallen in love with where they live, it is a very fun area and we think it's really beautiful. We look forward to many more visits to see our dear friends, who we miss and love so much. It is so nice to hang with people that know you so well and you are all so comfortable together, and we just "get" each other. Ya know? There were lots of laughs and lots of FOOD!! We really did eat our way through Reno! We flew in early Friday morning and got home today, Tuesday afternoon. We were suppose to come home yesterday but all the flights were full, so we stayed an extra day. That really turned out to be a blessing. Yesterday we just a had a nice low key day, Karon fixed us an awesome dinner, and then us girls went on a dessert and Starbucks run and came home and just all watched TV together, it was great. We are thankful for that extra day.
We loved visiting their church again. Kurt lead worship and it was awesome, of coarse! Mary sang a solo, and it was wonderful to hear her sing again, she is so awesome. Let's see...what else?? Oh, I think the local Starbucks doubled their profits while we were all there....I think we went 2x every day? :o) I also got to see Mary and Karon at work in their office(which is upstairs in their home), let me tell you these girls work hard for their money!! It was fun for me to watch them at work....they seemed really smart!! :) That's about it, we played cards, ate, laughed, ate, went bowling, laughed, ate, watched a movie, ate, laughed, went to church, ate, laughed.....you get the picture, right? Hopefully all the laughing burned off all the extra calories!!! Keep an eye on Mary and Karon's blogs (they are in my links) they have way better camera's and got some great pictures of their own!