Haircut

I took Abby to get her haircut the other day. The lady styled it really cute afterwards but I wasn't able to get a really good picture of it.

Congrats Duke!!

My "little" brother Duke was recently asked to play Juniors hockey for the New Westminister Whalers. They are a juniors hockey team that plays right outside of Vancouver, Canada. He will be moving to Canada for the school year/hockey season and taking his highschool classes online. It is such an amazing opportunity for him and he has been working to get to this point since he started playing hockey 12 years ago when he was 4 years old. Congrats Duke....way to go!!!!!!!

Copan Ruinas

A few weeks back, a group of us headed up near the Guatemalan border to visit the Mayan Ruins at Copan. Copan was the principal Mayan cultural center forabout 400 years. The Mayans settled the area at about the time of Christ. So needless to say, these ruins are really old.



This is one of many stelae at Copan. This stella was carved in AD 730. A stella is a freestanding sculpture carved on all four sides with pictures of past rulers, gods and hieroglyphics.


My Jort'er crew- From Left to Right-Chuck, Matt, Me, Paul aka Fiddler, and Kelly

I love the huge trees growing right out of Temple

Busy girl

Abby has been a VERY busy girl lately. She has been very good at entertaining herself lately, but she sometimes gets into a little mischief.

Thank goodness for washable markers. Who ever invented those is a genius!!!

And here she is doing her ET impression:

Just some random pics for you...

Our friend Katie had a Promotion Party, so my buddies and I decided to sport some kick-ass Jorts (Jean Shorts) and provide the evening's entertainment. This is us with our Air Band. As you can see, I am an awesome Air Drum player.

As you could probably guess, the main sport Central and South America is Soccer. Well enough of that crap. The other weekend my buddy Tim and I took it upon ourselves to teach the orphans at the Air Force sponsored Orphanage to play a real American sport, baseball. They were eating up. Though we did have to remind the outfielders at times to stop kicking the tennis ball back to the pitcher.

Girls Night Out

On Sunday afternoon, one of my dearest friends Josie and I headed up to Blackhawk for a little girls night out. Josie had a free night at one of the hotels up there so we decided to do a little gambling and partake in a few adult beverages. Well, we both lost money (not a lot, don't worry) and we both probably had a few too many drinks! What can you do when the drinks are free?!? We had a lot of fun and we laughed ALOT. We were probably some of the youngest people there and definitely the most overdressed! But, who cares!! I don't get to go out a lot and I definitely don't dress up too often and the bottom line is we had a good time!!

Here we are the beginning of the night!

Josie playing the slots, stupid machine took our money!

Did you meet our new friends?

The night is winding down, we lost some money, had a few drinks, lots of laughs...and now it is time to sleep!

Gymnastics--Part 2

Here are some more pictures and a couple of videos from Abby's latest gymnastics class. I can definitely see improvement in her skills and confidence every time we go. She is becoming very strong, and her upper body strength is very impressive. I am so happy we signed up for this class. Now, we just have to continue when we go back home to Florida!

Here is Abby warming up. They were getting the shapes from one side of the room and bringing them over to their matching color/shape on the opposite side of the room. It was a good exercises for listening to directions and learning shapes and colors.

Here is Abby swinging on the bar, this is probably one of her favorite activities. She loves doing it wherever she can. She does it on the playground, at the pool...wherever she can find a bar low enough to reach!

Abby with her teacher Lizzy swinging upside down on the bar

Here are a couple of pictures of Abby holding onto the bar and walking up the red mat. Lizzy showed her how to do it once and then she did it all by herself. The move is designed to teach them how to be comfortable with being upside down and how the movement is supposed to feel.

Here is Abby doing a "backwards roll" She let the teacher Lizzy help her once and then she said "Abby all by self" and she was doing it without and help!!


Here is Abby on the long trampoline: