Yay for Ginny!

I love my family! I love my friends! I love when they're one in the same! This past week my sister Ginny came to Virginia to visit. Besides being one of my very best friends and someone I really look up to, she's an amazing mom of 5 and takes on more in one week than most humans do in a year! Needless to say after basement finishing, soccer gameing, mothering, teaching, tutoring, Young Womaning, single-parenting, and supportive wifeing for the past few months, her cute hubby, Dave, gave her 'paid vacation' from being all that she does and flew her out to be with us. Although she ran away from 5 kids to be with 2, I hope it was a fun break for her. We sure enjoyed her coming! While she was here, we hired her as our photographer to get some family shots that were waay overdue. I hope we were good customers for you, Gin ;) Nice when you can pay your photographer in backrubs and ice cream! :) But she did such a great job, I need some serious help deciding!! Any votes?

And these are just a FEW of the MANY great other shots she took.

We had some great fun, great food, great laughs, and great company, and made some great memories. Thanks Gin! We love you and miss you already!

Halloweenie weekend

A fun weekend of ghosts, goblins, and a midieval family! Friday was our ward Halloween party, with a pumpkin carving contest...I'm a sucker for such contests and had way too much fun creating this of a certain prominent church leader. I didn't win my free cruise like I was hoping for though. :)
Rudy wasn't able to make it as he was just returning from a week long externship. (hence the picture of the floating crown-- the wizard apparently accidentally turned him invisible and couldn't turn him back before the party.)
We were all able to go trick or treating as a family on Saturday and were even joined by a group of traveling cowboys! :) We got to enjoy a feast of pumpkin pizza, goblin goo and eyeballs in blood for dinner...YUM! Yay for Halloween!

Happy Halloween!

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An apple a day...

...or in this case, 40,000 apples in one day!
This weekend we went to the Carter Mountain Apple Orchard in Charlottesville. The weather wasn't the greatest, but the apple picking, the apple cider, the apple doughnuts, and the time together was great!

We tried a variety of apple-picking methods...

The Baby-Picker-- cute, but not so efficient.

The Hit-and-Catch Method--fun to watch, a trial of masculinity, a test of hand eye coordination, but made for some bruised apples (missed catches and overexuberant hits ;)

Climb-and-Snag Method-- efficient, effective, attractive, but scary (hardly insured, almost-dentist climbing a 20 foot high tree...)
Uhhh...this wasn't one of our proven methods...


Although it was rainy and quite brisk (which has been unusual for us lately), we had a lot of fun.
And even got to enjoy a picnic lunch!...in our var. Yay for apple orchards!

Rudy's big boo-boo

So Rudy called me last week about to pass out as he was looking down at his finger. All he was able to tell me on the phone was, "babe, I cut my finger really bad and right now I can't move it, definitely going to need stitches and I might have cut thru a nerve." He had to get off the phone to talk to faculty and work out what he was going to do about it--so he said, "I'll call you later," and hung up.
Sheesh! What am I supposed to do with that information?! Now I have 20 minutes to let my imagination go CRAZY. Ok, he's sliced thru his finger that he does all of his dentistry with and has cut a nerve. Which means thousands of dollars in medical repairs, and who knows if it will ever work the same? Four years of dental school and he's not even going to be able to be a dentist!?! Ok, so I tried not to go to crazy, but those thoughts definitely went thru my mind as I waited for the follow-up call.
He called me back after what seemed like forever to let me in on the ever so important details...
He was working on a cast for a bridge he was making for a patient using an x-acto knife. With a fair amount of force, he slipped off the cast and dug the blade deep into his left hand pinky, slicing a deep cut all the way across his poor little finger. As sad as I was to hear about his pinky I was so relieved that it was pretty much the best finger possible to have anything bad happen to. He was relieved and very grateful too, especially because he started gaining feeling back as he headed home.
Now here's the other miraculous part of the story: Yes, he was heading HOME and not to the emergency room because we have some pretty amazing friends that just so happen to be medically inclined. So Rudy was feeling well enough to drive himself home and one of our favorite doctors came over on a 'house call' to stitch up his finger! 10 stitches, some good pain medication, a little food, and a lot of laughs later, Rudy was all patched up and ready to go- no nerve damage and it's healing nicely, he's even able to work on patients without a problem! (In fact, he just took the stitches out tonight...himself...ewww.)
We're so grateful for the angels watching out for us in so many areas of our lives, both those we can see and those we can't!

Warning: Viewer Discretion Advised.
Those who are squeamish of stomach when it comes to blood and needles may not desire to view the following graphic photos (that's for you, mom :). Those sick few of you who really like it may click on the photos for a close up view (i.e. Ginny).


Pre-Op
OpIf you can't see his eyes on this one, you'll definitely have to enlarge it. It was really interesting to see what happened to the man who has no problem dealing with blood and gore. Not so tough when it is HE who is the patient! Made for some good empathy for his patients, though.
Post-Op

Mug Shots...

I was going to be cute and clever and photoshop a mug shot plaque onto the photos, but since I barely can find time to throw some pictures up on the blog to let people know I'm still alive, you'll just have to imagine it.
Partners in crime...
I dare say this won't be the last time!



Yeah, I knew there would be hazards to having my "art studio" be in the same location as our "library" and "Cooper's room", but we don't have a lot of choice right now! :) I just have to say two things:
1. I'm SO glad it was acrylic and not oil
2. Our used steam carpet cleaner was the best purchase we've made thus far in Virginia

Love being mommy...

Just wanted to share a couple of fun pics that my friend, Jen Martin, took while we were at Kings Dominion. Cute little Cooper.

The belated blog post from the big summer trip from which we're still trying to catch up

You know you're in blogging trouble when it takes you three different days just to upload the pictures!
Ahem... onto Our Summer Trip!
What a whirlwind of fun! We started the trip out in San Diego with Rudy's family. We were able to fit it a lot of fun in the time we were there!

We were able to celebrate Rudy's 29th Birthday (Dr. Wolf, you're gettin OLD! :)
Rudy had some great help opening presents, blowing out candles and eating cake...the tough jobs!


Some good quality time was spent with Oma and Opa.
Some yummy food was eaten- with some great company!
And, of course, Oma and Opa's pool was a HIT! Tucker became quite the swimmer while we were there.
I'm sure he became such a good swimmer because of the great teachers he had! :) (Rudy showing his excellent dog-paddling skills)
We were able to go to Sea World. It's so fun to go back to places with your children and rediscover a magic only kids can see.

Tucker's become quite the comedian. His faces and jokes keep coming and keep us laughing.
A rare couple shot. So fun to share all this with you! Love you, babe!
We got to go with Oma and meet up with Rudy's ol' buddy Ryan Mcknight with his wife, Jen, and their little girl, Kayla.

As if that weren't enough fun, we went up to Big Bear to the cabin. We enjoyed a trip to the local 'zoo'.

We got to take the Miller's (Oma and Opa's Big Bear friends) boat out for a day to do some serious fishing.
The boys seemed to really enjoy being on a boat.
And I've got mad skills catching seaweed.Heading to the Big Bear ward for church with our handsome boys (Tucker sporting Rudy's or Adam's old suit)
One of the really nice parts about this trip was that Rudy was finally able to relax. He had no tests to study for, nothing looming over his head. It was fun to watch how much fun he was able to have. He was able to participate in some serious 'man-boy bonding'.

Then this is the part in the trip where the road, and pictures, split. I left with Cooper to go to Utah for a few days to do a mural and see my family. We all wanted to be able to go, but with cost of travel, we decided it'd work best if I went with the 'free flight child' and Rudy and Tuck stayed back. It was a fun adventure and so nice to see the family, but Rudy and Tucker were definitely missed in Utah.

Picture of the mural I did...blow it up...it looks better ;)

The rest of my and Coop's time was filled with fun, games, and family. Cooper LOVED being around all the cousins, aunts, uncles, and Nana and Papa. So much so that he got quite perturbed when he was left alone.

Nana showing Cooper (and Ginny's cute twinners) the 'Gardner ways' of game playing early on in life.We had a 24th of July family party, where Rudy and Tucker were really missed, but it was really nice to have almost the whole family together!

Although I have all boys and love it, I LOVE my 'girl group' of friends that I have in my family!

So, do we look like we're related?

Rudy and Tucker missed us terribly and were barely able to get out of bed while we were gone...wait, NO. :)
Rudy called me every day with a new adventure.
They went to the science museum together, swimming, shopping, parks, etc.

Tucker loved his bonding time with Oma and Opa, while Rudy enjoyed a lot of I'm-pretending-I'm-a-bachelor-again time with his some old friends and brother, going to 'fight-night', deep-sea fishing, surfing, etc.) It was a fun week for us, but nice to be back together again!
Coop and I came back to San Diego for the last couple of days before we all made the long flight back home to Richmond. We got in touch with the Bramwell's (Rudy's family he lived with for a while after he joined the Church), and we were able to go visit them and enjoy a little more swimming and then head over to a kid's play place and get some ice cream with Oma as the last party day came to a close.

The small picture just doesn't do the true ice cream mess justice.


After a looong flight and lack of sleep, we made it home again! We're still trying to play catch-up on all the things that should have gotten done while we were too busy playing. :) But that's what summer's for....right??
That, and Keepin' Kool. Nice shades*, boys.* the shades were actually 3D glasses from a movie that Rudy and I got to see in the Theater!...wow. that was fun. It had been SOO long since Rudy and I had been to a real theater. Like, SO long that when they told us, with a discount, the total for the two of us to see the movie would be $28, we laughed and told him, oh, sorry, you must have misheard us, we just wanted 2 tickets. Yeah.