Blog Hop: Favorite Picture

First of all I would like to strangle thank Brent for making me look through all my old pictures. I had a great time looking strolling down memory lane, trying to find my favorite:
This is Frances meeting Henry for the first time. I was scheduled to be induced on the morning of June 6th, so I had made arrangements for my good friend, Julie, to keep Frances for the day. Frances went to school with Julie and helped her pack up her classroom for the end of the year. That afternoon when Henry was born, we called Julie to let her know that it was time to bring Frances. Frances had been very excited up to the arrival her baby brother, but it was nothing compared to how she felt when she saw him. It was LOVE at first sight. Even now, two years later, she loves that boy to pieces! Sure, they fight and yell at each other; but they love each other deeply and I love to watch them play together.

Monday Menus

I have fallen away from this habit! I love the structure it can give to an otherwise hectic week. It saves time and money as well.
Monday--Grilled salmon, rice, and broccoli
Tuesday--We are going out to Wood Grill for a going away dinner for Ms. Treasa
Wednesday--Spaghetti with meat sauce, corn on the cob, and peaches
Thursday--quesadillas and pears
Friday--Grilled chicken, baked potatoes, and peas
Saturday--Lunch will be sandwiches; dinner will be mostly left overs with some potato sald thrown in for good measure
Sunda--lunch will be more leftovers; dinner will be pork roast, French bread, green beans and oranges

Happy 4th!

MckLinky Blog Hop, take one

Welcome to the Liebers' blog. This blog is a place for me to record our daily lives so that I have a permanent memory of our life as a family. I have never been good at keeping a journal, so this is what works for me. It also allows friends and family who are not physically close to be updated on what we are doing. I love to post pictures of my two kids and especially love making videos of my kids just being themselves. When they are grown I will be able to look back and see them in all the stages of their lives-plus I will have lots of blackmail for future boyfriends/girlfriends and some great embarrassments for the wedding receptions!

Enjoy!!

Camping Out

One of the things that Ken and I wanted to do for our vacation this year was to go camping. One of the reasons is that camping is a lot cheaper than other vacation ideas, but mainly because we had both camped a lot as kids and wanted to pass along that joy to our children. We had gotten a lot of camping gear as wedding gifts, but I am extremely embarrassed to admit that most of it had never been opened! The first major decision that we made was that a whole week would be too much for us just starting out, so we chose to limit our first trip to three days/two nights. We gathered up all the gear, wrote lists, packed suitcases, and pulled our hair out got everything ready. We headed out to Sherando Lake on Monday in the early afternoon. The trip is about 45 minutes to an hour and Henry fell asleep just as we were pulling into the campsite. We picked a site that was one away from the bathroom. We were also pleasantly surprised to find showers. We were expecting just toilets. We set up our new 10 person tent and got the rest of the campsite ready before Henry woke up, so it was a very well-timed and convenient nap! We decided to inflate the boat to go out on the lake the first day we were there. That boat was heavy!! Frances enjoyed being in the middle of the lake although the questions she was asking started to worry me. She was so "concerned" about falling in that I could practically see her weighing that option! Thankfully she did not go overboard. Henry actually tried a few times, but we caught him just in time. We paddled out to the far end of the lake and then paid a visit to the island in the middle of the lake. After we got back to the campsite, Ken made a fire for our first dinner-smoked sausage, macaroni & cheese and carrots. After cleaning up from dinner, we decided to take a walk around the area. We saw a path that said "Overlook Rock 0.5" I thought out loud "How long can it possibly take to hike half a mile?" The answer, unfortunately, was "A LONG TIME!!" We made it to the lookout at dusk and then hiked down in the dark. Frances asked enough questions about bears that we finally yelled at her to cut it out! We got back to the campsite and I took Frances with me to take a shower. The sign on the door said to push the button several times for hot water. Not only did we have a shower, but it was to have hot water! Only problem...it was SCALDING! I had to wait for it to go back to cold before I could rinse the two of us. I never could figure out warm-only hot and cold. I would have greatly preferred cold, but most of the time it was hot-too hot to stand in. Our first night was interesting, to say the least. Henry took a LONG time to settle down. He climbed all over the rest of us. Frances managed to go to sleep pretty easily, but Ken and I took a bit longer. Sleep finally came, but morning came much earlier than I had expected. The second day we tried to go fishing, but Henry was much more interested in throwing the lures in the water than he was with playing with his new Cars fishing pole. After we gave up on the fishing, we got ourselves ready to go swimming. I was actually dreading this part because Henry HATED the beach and water at the lake last year. He wouldn't go near it. What a difference a year makes!! He jumped right in and spent the whole time running back and forth in the water, chasing fishes, throwing sticks and have a rip-roarin' good time! Frances put on her floatie and twirled around the lake-she even went under and got her face wet a few times! Tuesday evening's dinner was hamburgers, baked potatoes, and bananas. We also got nice a sticky making S'mores. Wednesday morning we woke up and had a nice breakfast of "hashbrowns" (fried baked potatoes, really), left over smoked sausage and cereal. We were supposed to check out by 11, so we started packing up as soon as breakfast was over. We had planned on hanging around for a little while after we packed up, but it took us most of the morning to get everything back in the vehicles, so all we did was visit the Visitor's Center and head home. All in all it was an awesome trip. There are a few things we will do differently next time; but the family will certainly be camping again!! In fact, when we got home on Wednesday afternoon, I asked Frances when she wanted to go camping again. "Ummm...Thursday?" "That's tomorrow, Sweetie," I said. She says, "Oh. Uh...Friday?" Nice try darling, but not that soon!
PS I am being lazy tonight. Blogger has been giving me trouble recently when I go to move pictures around, so I give up. Here they are, in no particular order:

"What chocolate? I didn't see any chocolate!"

"I don't wanna say 'cheese.' I wanna say 'marshmallow, chocolate and graham crackers!'" Casa Del Liebers

"I am the marshmallow monster!!"

"Finger lickin' good!"

"Mommy, please don't take my picture! I'm having a bad hair day!"

Happy Anniversary!

It was eight years ago today that we said "I do!" Happy anniversary, sweetheart!

Brainard-Palooza, Part 2

After leaving Raleigh on Monday, we headed east to New Bern, NC to visit with my dad's brother Bob and his wife Mary. They have a beautiful house on the Neuse River and were very gracious hosts while we were there. Henry had Frances had plenty of toys to play with since Bob and Mary have 6 grand kids of their own. Frances worked all of the puzzles at least twice, while Henry was fascinated with a blinking bouncy ball that he played fetch with while acting like a puppy for two days.

New Bern is apparently named after the city of Bern, Switzerland and has something to do with bears (I was on vacation and not paying attention to the whole story!) So, anyway, there are lots of bear figures all over the place. Frances and I had our picture taken with one.

We walked around downtown and got to see where Pepsi was invented. We also checked out a local flea market where the kids got to see a few pirates. (Incidentally, YES, that is a flower in my son's ear. He also had his toenails painted that week. Wanna make something of it??)
We wanted to go sailing on Bob and Mary's boat while we were there, but we had to wait a few days for some clouds to clear, so we went to the North Carolina Aquarium instead.
While there, Frances met her possible future husband, Henry almost got eaten by an alligator Aunt Anne admired the jelly fish,

and both kids had a run-in with a shark.

It was a great place to visit and the kids (and the rest of us) had a great time!

(l to r: Aunt Anne, Frances, my mom. I wasn't wearing blue, so they wouldn't let me in the picture)

We did get to go sailing one afternoon, although it rained most of the time we were out. Henry enjoyed himself long enough for us to get out of the harbor and then started getting really restless, so we went below (AKA the "brig").

Thanks for the great time, Uncle Bob and Aunt Mary. It was great to get to spend some time with you!