Pictures of My Brothers

Kelly asked to see pictures of my brothers and I realized that I did not even take any of them while we were together for our family reunion. A family reunion and no pictures of my family! Imagine that. However, my mom and sister-in-law took care of me and emailed pictures they had taken.

This is our whole family (minus Krys who must have been taking the picture and Launa who must not have wanted to be in the picture).

Adults from left to right: Stash, Mom, Sheri, Lance, Dad, Erica and Stephen

Kids from left to right: Sydney, Seth, Lukas, Drue and Samuel

This is Stash's family when he was headed back to Iraq. This is Stash's family. I wanted to include a good picture of his wife since she skipped out on the first one. For those we went to school with, she used to be Krys Clemons and was, I believe, a year behind us.

Lukas's Tae Kwon Do

BEFORE
AFTER

Lukas received his orange belt last weekend. Usually he justs tests and receives his belt at the next class. But, twice a year they had a BLACK BELT SPECTACULAR and hold a ceremony with the Grand Master and receive their belts. They have a special team that performs different TKD moves and they break tons of boards and bricks. It was a lot of fun and even better, Lukas is now and orange belt.

Samuel was taking a break from TKD but after this event has decided that he will join in again. He will hopefully test for his orange belt next month. The boys also started sparring this last week and it is too cute. I totally forgot to take pictures this time but will have to get some on here later.

Broken Nose

REMEMBER:

Our kids love to ice skate

Lance started school in August and only comes out to eat.

Well, one Tuesday Lance's dad said that he wanted to stop by and see the kids around 2pm. Lance told him that we would be at the ice rink. I reminded Lance that I needed to go grocery shopping and this is what I do while the kids skate. He decided to go with us to the rink, see his dad, then go with me to the store (he likes to grocery shop with me) after his dad left the rink. Well, Lukas did not think that Daddy watching him skate would be good enough and begged him to get on the ice. The little ones then thought they also should get on the ice. Lance felt bad about not spending a lot of time with the kids and agreed. Now all of my family is on the ice skating and I meet Lance's dad (Papa) at the door. We both go down by the ice to watch everyone skate. While watching the kids I see someone fly by out of the corner of my eye and then hear a thud. I thought "that is going to hurt". When I turned around I saw Lance laying on the ice. I yelled and he got up and looked at me. I saw blood coming out of his face and ran. I ran to the hockey coach, told him to go help my husband and then they called 911. I stayed in the lobby because I cannot handle seeing things like that. The kids were very interested and stayed with Dad and thought it was really cool when the fire fighters came to "fix" Daddy. I did not get any pictures until a week later because I could not look at him. This pic is just before the stiches were taken out. His eyes did not get any blacker than this. We were surprised.
This is how he looked for two weeks. I think he wore the bandage for so long so that I could look at him when we were talking.

A close up.

He is doing fine now, just has a slightly crooked nose and a scar. We are hoping the scar will lighten with time and don't think his nose will straighten with time. I should have an after picture, but didn't think about it until now. You can hardly even notice when you look at him.

Florida

In late August our family (the Burke side) had a family gathering in Orlando. My parents, Stash, Krys, Sydney and Seth (my older brother's family), us and Stephen and Erica (my younger bros family) all stayed in a 3 bedroom resort near Downtown Disney. Our family arrived on Monday and the rest were scheduled to arrive on Thursday. Therefore, our family did a little "touristing" for a few days. The above picture is my parents and all the grandchildren. (the giraffe is not real)
Our first "touristy" event was the world's largest McDonalds. (I did not take pics) The kids had a blast, and after the plane ride to Florida it was much needed. Oh, I forgot to mention that due to the high gas prices and low airfare, we flew to Florida this time. Half of the family liked it better, the other half of us preferred driving. We looked like a parade going through the airport. I wanted to take a picture, but couldn't, if you saw us you would understand. See, Lance's legs are taller than Launa and he was the leader. Also, one is allowed two carry ons and each checked luggage cost money. With six people we were allowed twelve carry ons. We took twelve carry-ons. After all, we were there for over a week. We all wore a back pack and rolled a suitcase, with the exception of Launa who only had a backpack filled with baby dolls. Lance carried her extra luggage.
Moving on, our next event was the M&M store in the mall. The kids thought this was the coolest place. Even cooler than the large McDonalds. We put six M&Ms of each color into a bag and went to a table in the middle of the mall and ate them. We each took the same color, counted to three, and then ate it. Lance and I decided that all the colors tasted the same. Drue had a different opinion.

Next, we took the kids to Arabian Nights. This was now their new favorite event. Launa and Samuel were so intrigued(sp?) by the horses they did not even eat their food. When we came back home (to AZ) that was the event they spoke the most about. Samuel even did some sample tricks to show everyone what they were talking about. (He did it on the ground, we do not have a horse)

Now the rest of the family arrived and we began to swim until we all looked like prunes. I do not have any pics of the swimming time. Some people don't like to have "swimsuit" pictures. The pool had three slides and I am surprised the kids did not wear them out. Launa was a crazy person on those slides. She would fly off there so far because she is so light. It was hilarious.

We took all the kids to Downtown Disney one afternoon. The highlight for my kids was the LEGO store. They had been dreaming about this since my mom told them about all the things she had seen there. The picture below is my mom and all the grandkids mixed with LEGO people. The LEGO people were amazing.

That just about sums up our trip. Other than Mema (see earlier post) we did not visit any other family. This trip was especially for my immediate family. Stash had just come back from Iraq for the second time and my mom really wanted all of us to get together. I am so glad that we did. It worked out so well, we may have to do it every year.

Drue's First Skating Competition

Drue has been ice skating since May (minus the summer) and started taking lessons six weeks ago. She quickly moved up to level 3 and entered the skills competition. She had to perform three moves that she learned in her classes. She did a great job and earned second place out of four competitors. Her teacher said she is doing an excellent job and progessing very fast. She will start level 4 in two weeks. Thankfully for me, this competition did not require a special (and very expensive) outfit.

She really does love skating. See next picture.They were taking more professional photos after the competition, but we thought this one turned out just fine.

WHOA!!! It worked. The first time I was able to load a video. Hopefully, it will play. Anyway, this is half of her competition. It only last a minute or so, but she did great.

Two videos! This is the other skills she had to perform. The turn and then the spin. She did one other spin and then skated off.