Happy Fourth Birthday Sophia!

Our niece Sophie celebrated her fourth birthday this past weekend. It was a princess water park themed party. Sheli and Tony turned their backyard into a water park and princess Sophie ruled the land with her magic wand and crown.

Owen in the "Lazy River"

The baby pool.

Princess Sophia

Mighty Knights: Owen and Ben

Sheli and Tony pictured here with the flower girl (Alexis)

and ring bearer (Adam) from their wedding 10 years ago!

I bet you thought it was one of the kids that shot their rocket

to the roof. Nope that was Uncle Tony or should I say Princess Tony?

Happy Birthday Sophia!

Happy birthday from one four year old to another!

Sophie and Ben are just three weeks apart in age.

Does this chair make my butt look big?

YMCA Carnival

Last night I took the kids to the YMCA Carnival. It was super hot and sunny! The kids had a great time. Well except for that moment where Ben got stuck in the giant slide tunnel and I had to rescue him. They won all sorts of plastic garbage to fight over. Emily particularly enjoyed her snow cone. She also liked the games where she could throw a ball and she was surprisingly good at it.

Picnic - 3 co-workers and our families

My boss, Ann Young, had my ex coworker, Brian Schoonover, and our families over for a Saturday picnic at her house in Ellsworth, WI. Ann and her husband Terry have a beautiful home in the country. Ann went crazy with all the things she had for the kids to do. She is going to make one amazing Grandma someday! They even provided live entertainment as their dog, Lucky, jumped into the pond to retrieve sticks the boys threw out there.
In 3 hours time the kids bowled, played basketball, played in the sandbox, played on the slide and swings, ate lunch, went swimming, ran thru the sprinkler, checked out the hummingbird nest, ran around with 4 giant balls, and watched Lucky jump in the pond!





Jackson (age 5), Jefferson (age 3), and Allison (4 months) are the children of Brian and Jodi Schoonover.











They are great kids and Ben had a blast playing with the boys. Emily checked out baby Allison and thought she might be a baby doll.


Despite a few difficulties Terry was able to get the sprinkler working properly. Thanks to Terry for grilling, it was great to have a REAL WISCONSIN BRAT! Ann also made this amazing taco salad, and here is a secret she put WESTERN dressing on it and it was amazing, the sweetness of the dressing with the taco meat and taco chips was great! Jodi made an amazing chocolate Trifle and chocolate chip cookies and I hope she doesn't mind me giving away her secret too the cookies were super moist and yummy, she actually puts a package of instant vanilla pudding into the dough! Who knew?

Chicago

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Originally uploaded by jendockerty

Last year we went on an extended family vacation to Chicago. We rode the Amtrak train from Minneapolis to Chicago. The train portion of the trip was all due to Ben's LOVE of trains. Turns out Ben liked the "Magic Bean" and the football field sized water park thing the best. I know of course that he really liked the train ride, but somehow a 3 year old doesn't quite get as much enjoyment out of the real trains as he does the toy ones he can build track for. We had a beautiful Indian Summer weekend in Chicago as it was October after all. This year the adults are going to Las Vegas in October, that promises to be a different kind of vacation. Here is a link to our Mobile Me Gallery and you can easily view all our videos here. Check out the Chicago video for a 3 minute slide show of our trip.

June 2008 Birthdays

June is a busy month for the Dockerty family.

June 4 - Owen's big 6th birthday party. The first party with a jumping castle.

June 17 - Mike (aka Daddy's) birthday. Daddy's friends surprised him with a special French Silk pie from Baker's Square.

June 21 - Sheli's (aka Aunt Sheli) birthday. This year we had a big farm party for Ben on Sheli's birthday.

June 24 - Ben's fourth birthday - Ben had his school and neighbor friends over for a BIG play date party complete with a red knight jumping castle.

and don't forget we also celebrated Father's day in there!

March 2008 Birthday Mosaic

Mom's March 15th birthday and Emily's (March 30th) First birthday party!

Don't run in Crocs!

Emily wearing her crown princess dress

from her Birthday. 4 months later it finally

fits her properly!

Ben giving me his nice smile!
This is what we do while we wait for Daddy to come home from work!

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Originally uploaded by jendockerty

On the left Emily is pictured running in Crocs and getting her first skinned knee. She is a tough girl as it didn't seem to bother her much. Just two days earlier Ben was also running after his cousin Owen wearing Crocs and he not only skinned both knees and his hands but also his belly! Moral of the story: DON'T RUN IN CROCS!

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

The Search for Hidden Falls

Day 1 of our search for Hidden Falls. We actually had a "free weekend" for the fourth of July holiday weekend. We decided to go on an adventure in our neighborhood, we took off on a walk to find Hidden Falls. Our adventure started by us trying to find Hidden Falls Park just about a mile or so from our house. Thanks to the iphone map we were able to zero in on its location. Ben was very excited to find a "beach" so close to our house. Hard to believe that we have lived here for 7 years and never been to this park or to the river bank. Mike and Ben had a good time skipping rocks. We were not really prepared for an all day outing so after 2 hours in the hot sun we headed back to the house for lunch with promises to return the next day so that we could actually see Hidden Falls. The best we could come up with on the iphone was a picture of Hidden Falls from some one's Flickr site. Apparently the location of Hidden Falls is top secret!

Day 2

The next day we set out on our mission prepared. Lunch from Jimmy John's, beach toys, sunglasses, and water. We were prepared but not prepared enough as we still could not find Hidden Falls. While the kids and I played at the beach Mike combed the park looking for the Falls. Emily was happy playing in the sand until she did a face plant down the hill into the sand. It wouldn't have been so bad if she hadn't had a runny nose for all the sand to stick to! And then there were the tears mixed with the sand.
Day 3

That's right we didn't find the Falls on the second day either. So on Sunday I decided to take the kids to this flower park I had caught a glimpse of during my bike training for the tri. I thought it would be a pretty place to take pictures of the kids.

It would have been great had it not been 95 degrees outside and super humid! Despite the heat I was bound and determined to show the kids a waterfall so I took them to Minnehaha Falls of which I had never even seen before myself.

Ben was quite impressed and now I'm afraid he will be very disappointed once we do take him to Hidden Falls. As I do now know the location of Hidden Falls. I asked the very friendly and helpful park ranger at Minnehaha Falls if she knew where it was. She got out a map and told me exactly where it was and how to find it.

Turns out you can't

actually get to Hidden Falls from Hidden Falls Park!

Who knew?

I promise we will find Hidden Falls, someday.