Can't. Keep. Up.

Last Saturday we had a young family church picnic hosted at my parents house. Unfortunately, we had terrible storm go through the night before and it knocked down a 75 ft. Hickory tree in their backyard so we went with plan B and had the picnic at a park. Many of the families go to our church although we had several that are now attending elsewhere, come to see good (missionary) friends who are here for the summer visiting from Taiwan. Here's our group pic...In other news: that storm that went through the night before the picnic... our next door neighbors house took a direct hit from lightning!!! It was so loud it practically threw us all out of our beds!!!! They were ok, but the 6 firetrucks in our cul-de-sac at 6:00am was a little much! Also, during the same storm we found out that friends from church (thankfully were out of town) but also had their house hit by lightning. The bolt went down their chimney, blowing it off their house and came into their house. It blew out their windows and embedded glass in the walls and floor! It's difficult to explain, but it looks like a bomb went off in their house!!!! Makes me a little more nervous during lightning storms! I've always felt safe in the house. :(

We took the kids to the county fair. Mallory has really gotten brave and actually wanted to ride some big rids! Here we are on the Scrambler. I'll save you from watching the video Dan took of us. You might end up feeling as sick as I did when the ride finally stopped!

Maddy and Mal on the mini-coaster. Maddy's having a blast...Mal is trying to.

All last week Maddy and Mallory were at gymnastics camp. They had so much fun! Mallory was awarded a Great Attitude Award and Maddy the Most Daring Award. That couldn't fit their personalities any better!!!!!

Maddy finally has her round-0ff back handspring!!! I didn't get many good shots of them. They didn't want to stop long enough for me to get a decent picture.

Well, we're leaving today for our annual camping/canoe trip with Dan's parents so more pics to come hopefully by Monday. I'm going to start my no-rain dance this afternoon. Its rained every weekend her 4 weeks in a row!!!!!

Ice, ice baby

I know, I know I've been majorly slacking in the blogging department!!! It's terrible but any free time is spent training for the tri in August or reading those darn Twilight books Kasey has me addicted to! Anyway, one of the blogs I read has a link to a neat website with lots of faith based activities and ideas for families and children. I'm not homeschooling the girls, but I do enjoy getting ideas for fun things to do with them. I found this "experiment" and we tried it out this morning. The night before I gathered some beads and buttons from around the house and froze them (in layers) in a tupperware container. Oh, and added food coloring. Then the girls were given warm water and salt and were told to use them to melt the ice and extract the beads and buttons. I gave them 10 minutes or so and whoever had the most when the time was up would be declared "the winner". I will say this is probably more of a project for school age children, but Mallory LOVED it! They were really suprised that salt melted the ice. Nothing extravgant, but the girls had fun.

This is how we spent the rest of the day...and Mallory is swimming completely on her own now!!!

Happy 4th of July!

We are spending a soggy 4th of July together today. We checked the forecast yesterday and knew it was going to be rainy so we decided to do our backyard camp out last night instead. We let off a few fireworks, roasted smores and then slept out in the tent all night. The girls did great, but were up pretty early.
We were invited to my Aunt and Uncle's for a cookout tonight and had planned on actually keeping the girls up and watching some fireworks, but it's pretty chilly and supposed to rain all day so the fireworks may get canceled. I'm glad we did our fireworks last night!!!

Happy 4th of July from the Indy Laughlin's!

Weird weather...

So it's unusually chilly here in Indy today. Highs only in the mid to upper 60's... The girls asked if they could play in the driveway while I was finishing up the ironing. When I went out to check on them the were wearing jackets, gloves, hats and wait for it... belts from mine and Dan's robes as scarves! I hope the neighbors don't think I sent them out in those get-ups!!!

Myrtle Beach, SC

We are home and trying to settle back in to a routine after our wonderful vacation to Myrtle Beach. It took us about 13 hours to get there. The girls are gettting older and traveling long distances isn't quite as bad as it used to be. Thank goodness for the DVD player in our SUV! The girls watched movies a lot and even watched the entire Anne of Green Gables series...my all time favorite!!!!! Anyway, we had a great time. We stayed in a condo right on the beach with 2 lazy rivers and a pool. Maddy is our beach/ocean lover and Mallory prefered the pool/lazy river which at times made things a little difficult, but it was fine. We just tried to alternate our time each day between both places. Maddy has no fear and was amazing in the waves and boogie boarding and Mallory practiced and practiced and basically mastered swimming in the deep end! (I still stay close by just in case)

We met a wonderful family staying at the same place as we were with 2 girls about Maddy and Mal's age and the girls had so much fun playing together everyday. We swapped address and the girls hope to stay in touch. Dan and I actually sat and relaxed a bit while the kiddos played which was really nice. Sorry for the picture overload...it was hard to only choose a few. :)Father's Day

Love this pic!

Maddy could have done this all day!

Maddy took this pic of us...

I think that's Mal in the tubes, but Maddy started doing it first and called it the "double cheeseburger"

Mallory spent an afternoon with these girls (they weren't into the ocean waves either) Here they are displaying their mermaid tails

This is Maddy and friend Hayden

Love this one too!

Madison, Auburn and Hayden