Sheldon has Lee on a running plan to get him ready for the physical training he'll do at officer camp (OBLC--Officer Basic Leadership Course).

I have been doing Tae Bo, but I think I will also run twice a week with Lee. Today I did 2 miles with him, one at a time. Whew! I haven't been running in a long time and I was breathing really hard and loud. Hopefully it wasn't too distracting for Lee.

So Sheldon, can I get a prize?

Tonight we went to a ward activity and dinner. It was really fun. There were hotdogs and chips, baked beans, pasta salad, lemonade, water and an easy version of s'mores. The yard area of the house we were at was awesome!!!! Okay so, this is what they had:
Trampoline
Pool
Nice swing/play set
Gazebo with bench swing
Nets set up for badmitten and volleyball
A pond
A dock that led out to a screened in porch on the pond
A "beach" right by the pond

The pictures are out of order. It is a little hassle to change them around, and I'm sure you won't mind the variety. (Right?!)

Clark roasting a hotdog


Part of the ground right next to the pond is covered in gravel, the other is the beach part. Clark is by the entrance to the dock that leads out to the screened in porch.


Cal and Clark on the playset




Dad B brought some fishing stuff. Clark was very excited about it today--the opportunity to go fishing. Some other kids enjoyed Dad's poles and assistance too--like this kid here.


Back at the ranch...Haley likes to get in cupboards and sit in them. This cupboard is pretty small, but the angle and the picture make it look bigger. But here Haley is, all snuggled up with some cooking items.


This is Clark this evening. He was sleeping under the foolsball table and the other night decided he wanted to sleep in the middle of the seminary tables--there are 4 of them to make an imperfect square. He also found an electric candle and he has been enjoying that at night. Since Clark moved over to the seminary area, Cal moved too. Over in our sleeping area we used to have the air hockey table right next to the foolsball table, but I moved the air hockey table to the seminary area to free up room for 6 people to sleep. SO, now Cal is sleeping under the air hockey table (partially under).



Clark didn't like the heat and smoke of the fire too much. And the guy crouching down is one of Daniel's bosses.


Clark is excited to go fishing!


Clark again


Lee caught a fish this evening. We think it was the biggest catch of the night. The fish looks bigger in real life. (He threw it back in the pond.)


Lee and Cal roasting marshmallows


I don't know how this got started, but this morning while the girls were waiting for breakfast, they started sucking on a mustard bottle...


Happy Dad with Happy Girls


Peek-a-boo


Earlier I posted a couple of pictures from Sheldon's seminary graduation. The next day I made a yummy chocolate cake for him--thanks to Gianetta for the yummy recipe.


Cal, Clark, Sheldon


Me and Haley


Shanna baby


Lee and Haley


Here is the fire, and in the background on your right you can see the brown, screened in porch thingy on the pond.


Shanna exploring tonight


Shanna had to have a go at the mustard too (I really need to put Frosty away...it looks like he's celebrating the 4th of July, so maybe I'll keep it out).


Cal and Grandpa fishing. I don't know what kind of look Cal is doing, but thought I would throw the picture in. The more the merrier!


A really cute picture of Clark and Sheldon--you can tell my boy is excited for cake!

Okay....drum roll please...........

We are going to........

Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri!!!

This map is tiny, but follow Interstate 44--the redline heading southwest out of St. Louis. See where the "I" in MISSOURI touches the interstate? That is where Ft. Leonard Wood is.

map from http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/us_2001/missouri_ref_2001.jpg

Although this isn't a great surprise, we are glad to find out the news. Since we never heard about where we were going yet, I decided come June 1st I was going to email the Colonel and see if he knew. Well, I didn't want to wait till Sunday and decided to email him this morning. Tonight after we got back from a ward activity Lee had a phone message from the Colonel. Apparently, we could have found out weeks ago where our assignment would be, but there are some email issues between our email and the Colonel's. He felt bad that we hadn't found out yet. We are going to drive through there sometime this summer and check it out and some possible housing choices. We may move up in the world and get a 3 bedroom, 2 bath! Well, it may end up being a 3 bedroom, 1 bath knowing our luck.


Ft. Leonard Wood (or Ft. Lost in the Woods as some military people call it) is about 2 hours southwest of St. Louis, Missouri. The towns near by are St. Robert and Waynesville.

I looked online tonight at on-base housing and it's pretty nice there. From what I've "heard" we qualify for a 4 or 5 bedroom house--on-base that is. I am going to call on Monday and find out if there are any homes/duplexes available. I really would like to live on base (I think I do anyway.) Looks like our ward will be about a 1/2 hour away. We thought that there was a branch on base, but Lee searched for a meetinghouse on lds.org this evening and didn't find one. Oh well.

Ft. Leonard Wood has a population of:
Zip code population (2000): 13,666
Estimated population in 2005: 13,755

You can look it up on www.city-data.com.

For fun I did a sibling distance search for my siblings and here is the outcome:

5 1/2 from Darrell
7 from Deb
8 1/2 from Lena
15 1/2 from Daniel, Sheldon
20 from Roger, Lois, Steph
2 or 15 1/2 or ? from Sam

Lena, it would make your trip two hours longer if you stopped at my place via Deborah's.

Check out Lee's blog too: nostrebor.blogspot.com

Today was a nice, lazy day. It rained most of the afternoon and I even took a nap! The girls are practicing thier walking. It is so cute seeing these short little bodies trying to walk. They are taking a few steps at a time, but still prefer crawling. I am glad they have been developing their motor skills at the same pace.

Tomorrow they will get their 1 year immunizations! And I will register Clark for kindergarten. Crazy!

Happy Memorial Day!

We spent the afternoon at Daniel's home. And yes, Daniel made Haley cry. We wished Amy could have been with us! We had hambugers, hotdogs, baked beans, curly fries, watermelon, strawberry salad, chips and pop. YUM! After eating Sheldon lit some fireworks for us and the kids had fun throwing snaps with him. Lee and I also enjoyed watching a few music videos. After Daniel's we did some shopping. We got back home, cleaned up, put kids in bed and are now sharing our day with you. One treat for the evening, Cal and Clark fell asleep on the way home and putting them to bed was a piece of cake. Well, they go to bed pretty well anyway, but this was ultra easy--just lay them down.

Sam and Haley


Cal enjoyed the bats


Cal, Clark and Anthon


We caught Cal in the kitchen with the Cool Whip. He was humming to himself while he indulged in his lucky "find" that was just sitting out on the counter.


Me and Shanna


Shanna has been good about going to different people. Lately when she sees grandma, she'll crawl over to her, pull on grandma's pants, and lift up her arms till grandma picks her up. It's very cute. She did it at Daniel's house today.


Grandma was patting Shanna's back and Shanna started patting hers in return


Here are some fun pictures of Daddy with his girls












Clark excited about the fireworks


Sheldon and Sam

I've had some comments about my new blog layout. On the computers I am using here it loads just fine, so sorry if it takes long to load. Also, there should be a blue middle background where the text shows up. Once again, sorry about the loading issues!

My Best Friend

Growing up and in elementary and middle school I always had good friends. Also, after I moved from Wisconsin to Minnesota at the end of 8th grade, I felt very fortunate to meet and to have good friends both at church and all through high school. And I enjoy close relationships with many people. But I never felt like I had a long-term-to-this-very-day "best, best friend".

During my first year of college I met my best friend. My second week at school we met at a dance. We even danced--though I don't remember. For a couple more weeks I thought he had some quirky ways about him. But time marched on and we started talking. We kept talking. We talked so much that he wouldn't sit by me anymore at the library so he could study. The summer after our first year of college he left for a mission for our church to Nicaragua. Nine months before he came home I left for a mission to Los Angeles. We corresponded for about 3 years by mail. I got home from Los Angeles July 3. I stayed at home for a few weeks and worked a little. The middle of August I traveled out to Utah and went on my first "post-mission" date with him. About a week later we were engaged and a little over a month later we were married in the Provo Temple for time and all eternity. I feel so blessed to have married my best friend.

My inspiration for babbling on like this came from reading one of Lee's posts on his blog. Click here to read it: It seems I've been tagged. (You can tell from the "food section" that he is definitely 'mormon'.) It was fun reading about his favorite things--and though I already knew this--it reconfirmed to me that we have so much in common. Also, check out the rest of my best friend's blog: nostrebor.blogspot.com.

Hello All! We had a good week and a good day today. Here are some re-caps for the latest and the greatest in the Robertson lives.

As a quick note, my youngest brother got an ipod touch. Yeah....it's pretty sweet. I tried it out a little the other night. (I got this image from www.letsgodigital.org)

Monday night we had Sam's graduation party--look further on in the blog for pictures that night. Plus that evening we went to Chronicles of Narnia--Prince Caspian, just Lee and I. We really enjoyed it. It was fun to see on the big screen.

Tuesday I took Clark and Cal to the library with me and we also took Anthon--Clark's cousin. Clark and Anthon went to story time and Cal looked at books . I stood right outside the room where story time was being held so Clark could see me through a window.

Okay, a little story for you about the library. As many of you know, Lee speaks Spanish to our children. While I was at the library a few weeks ago I got a few Spanish children books so Lee could read them to Clark and Cal. One book I picked was "Rey y Rey". I didn't think much of it and why should have I; I don't speak Spanish. About a week after I checked it out, Lee read this particular book to the boys. He thought the title was interesting: "King and King". But he opened it up and read it. There was a price that needed to get married so the king and queen sent for princesses to come from all over. The prince was not interested in any of them. One day a princess came with her brother. Well, the prince thought the brother was really cute, and vise versa. And yes, get me a barf bag, the prince and price got married and became King and King.

Lee of course realized what was happening and stopped reading the story. Clark was very curious though about the outcome. I don't know what Lee exactly told him, but basically he said that two daddies were bad--it's good to have only one daddy and one mommy. It's depressing that this junk has to be explained to a 4 year old! I was disgusted with the book and somewhat wished I had not checked it out. But after thinking about it, I was glad that I had checked it out. One reason, it was good to explain this to Clark ourselves, at home (albeit I wouldn't have minded doing it when he was older). Also, it gave me a chance to "complain" about the book and hopefully get it removed from circulation. I figured since they took the liberty of buying the book, I could take the liberty of sharing my opinion about the book. After storytime I spoke with a librarian and basically told her I was very surprised that a book about homosexuals was in the Spanish children's section, and that I wouldn't mind if it was removed.

After storytime we went to the bank, dropped off Anthon and then went to Aldi. Lee had been looking on Craig's list for a bike for Clark and he found one. We picked it up that evening. Read Lee's blog to find out the bike's story.

Clark's bike


That evening there was a nasty, short storm. The power went out and it even started hailing. I was almost done making dinner--chicken noodle soup--when the power went out. My parents have an electric stove, so of course the stove stopped working too. I went up to the UFROG (un-finished room over garage) and got my handy dandy Thunder Range. I got it several years ago for Christmas. I've used it at least once before. It's great! It's just like a single burner on a gas stove. I transferred the pot of soup over to it and the soup finished cooking beautifully. We also had garlic bread that evening. I wrapped the garlic bread in tinfoil and Sam started up the grill for me and heated the bread though on the grill. It was kind of fun. The power came on around 7:00 pm. I was really glad because it was the American Idol finale part I that night and I wanted to watch it! I wish David Archuleta would have won, but oh well. It was fun seeing 2 LDS contestants on the show this year.

My handy dandy Thunder Range


Thursday we went to Daniel and Amy's again. Daniel helped Lee out with our crashed computer. Daniel was able to get our stuff off of our hard drive so that we can access it. But it looks as if Windows died a quick death, along with our screen...We were hoping to have this laptop work for another 3 years! We'll see what we can come up with. On our way home that evening we bought a bed! It's the first time we've spent over $200 on a bed. We have purchased two beds since we been married, but they were both "cheap" beds and we gave both of them away. The first one when we moved from Provo and the second when we moved from Memphis. It's nice to sleep on a real bed and not an air mattress.

Friday we did some yard work and a little laundry. And I have been keeping up with my exercising. I am still doing Billy Blank's Tae Bo workout. I probably should do it more often...but three times a week is better than nothing, right?

Saturday we went to Sheldon's seminary graduation. He was asked to be one of the speakers and did a great job. Afterwards Sam treated us to dinner at Hardees. YUM!

Sheldon (in a brown suit with a blue tie) with some of the guys from his seminary class


Sheldon and my mom--his seminary teacher


Yesterday before we went to the graduation, my grandparents' piano was delivered to my parents' home. The movers had to squeeze through the front door, but made it just fine. One of the moving guys said it weighs around 900 pounds! I went shopping earlier by myself and that was a treat.

Clark was very interested in the moving truck


Sam feeding the babies on Friday


The girls love to eat!


We had a nice Sunday today. I slept in and then Lee took a nap. Church went well. I was stopped in the hallway after Sacrament meeting and asked if I could sub for the 5 & 6 year-old Primary class. It went well. The singing time person does a great job. She thinks of fun things to get the kids involved. I also found out that two boys will be attending kindergarten this fall. One of them for sure will be at Clark's school and the other boy might be at Clark's school too. That would be great if they could be in the same class!!!

Here are some pictures of the girls. They looked cute in their dresses. Gianetta got them for me for my baby shower over a year ago. The pictures didn't turn out how I wanted, but thought I would post them anyway.








Friday was the day to go and pick berries (I do it every other day, so I guess Friday was the "other day"--though I skipped going out today which I probably shouldn't have done, but oh well) and I found a conjoined strawberry! I sold it on eBay and got $157.50 for it! Read on!


I did want to mention a couple of things from our Memphis trip for Lee's graduation. It was a pretty busy trip, but we enjoyed having lots of family there. We LOVED staying at Laura's house and enjoyed visiting with her a little more. We enjoyed being with the Yorgasons one evening and seeing a lot of friends at church. I wish we could have seen and spent time with more friends though. The day before graduation we had lunch at the school in the 20/20 diner with Lee's parents. Since we haven't had enough excitement in Memphis already, Cal thought he would add his personal touch and accidentally spilled his drink on the floor. It was a big spill too. The nicest thing happened though. Joe Hauser, the vice president for student services was getting lunch at the 20/20 diner too and helped me clean it up. I thought that was really nice of him. Thanks!

After lunch I picked up my mom from the airport. We headed over to St. Jude's and looked around at some visitors' stuff. Later that day we rode on the trolley in Memphis. If you are in Memphis you should take a ride. It's fun way to see some of downtown Memphis! www.matatransit.com


Well, if you made it this far, congrats! And, I was just joking about selling the strawberry on eBay. Oh, and on Mother's Day we threw away the girls' pacifiers. They have been doing fine without them--and they are still sleeping through the night from about 8:00pm to 6:30am. Haley is really good using a sippy cup and Shanna is getting the hang of it. Haley is all weaned (it was very easy) and Shanna will be done nursing in a couple of days (though she won't like that!)