Mark's Birthday!

In honor of his birthday last week, Mark took the day off from work (when you're self-employed this involves turning down all appointments for that day, not as easy as it sounds...).  We had a wonderful breakfast of French toast, Mark's favorite. 

Playing angry birds on the cell phone while waiting for everyone to finish chores.

Then it was on to the gifts!  Each of the kids bought Mark a little something from the dollar store, my parents had dropped off a gift for him, and I had 3 gifts for him so he had quite the stash to open!  He had so much fun opening gifts, sticking bows on the kids and clowning around.

The rest of the day was spent hanging out, Mark surfed the Internet quite a bit and played his flight simulator.  The kids and I played games together and read books.  Mark's dad stopped by with Mark's card and gift and spent a bit of time chatting.

Reading books to the kiddos.

Counting up all his change to see if he had enough for airplane plans yet...

Mark, shooting his airsoft pistol.  The kids were fascinated by it!

In the evening we rented Rio from Redbox and watched it while we ate some pizza.  Then came cake and ice cream, followed by sending the kids to bed.  :-)  It was a fun day for Mark!

A bad day for flying...

On Sunday we went out to Mark's parents house to celebrate his Mom's birthday.  Because the weather forecast called for perfect RC airplane flying weather Mark decided to bring all his airplanes.  The first plane he took up was his bi-plane, shown here when he first got it last year. 

After flying it for a bit he decided to do some fancy moves.  Bad idea.  The tail of this airplane has never been very stable, we bought it already built and it wasn't straight.  Mark took the biplane into a loop but when he went to pull out it went into a spin. Then it went into a nose dive straight into the ground, where it literally exploded into a million tiny slivers of wood.  Here is all that is left of the plane.

After such a poor start, I thought Mark would be done flying but he wanted to keep going.  Next he tried to fly his piper cub (the yellow one).  I should explain that Mark's parents drive way is pretty short as far as runways go, and there is a fence at the end of it.  Anyhow, he started the piper taking off only to find that the plane didn't respond to any of the controls.  He cut the engine and tried to land it but it didn't have enough airspeed, flipped over, and landed on it's wing, ripping the wing struts from the plane, tearing a hole in the wing covering and denting the front engine cover.  But at least this one is fixable.  I didn't get any pictures of this crash, I was in shock that he had crashed again.

Next up he flew the T-Craft (the little blue and white one).  This one flew perfectly, with no problems at all.  So, Mark decided to take his Extra up (this is the black one, that I gave him for Christmas) for it's maiden flight.  Mark started the take off roll, lifted off the ground, and... the engine died!  Because of the fence at the end of the runway Mark tried to turn the plane to the side.  The wing was ripped in half and the landing gear ripped off as well.  I didn't get a picture of this either.  It was simply to painful to see all that time and effort ruined in such a short time.  It is fixable, the fuselage is fine, but Mark has to rebuild the entire wing from scratch.

So, at the end of the day, Mark had 3 planes less than when he started.  What a rotten day for flying!

Our Anniversary!

This past week was our 8th anniversary!  To celebrate we had my parents watch the kids for the weekend while we spent some time together alone.  It was so nice!

The first day we spent our time just doing errands and generally enjoying our time together.  On Saturday we drove up to Monument to visit a dollhouse store, fun!  I was able to get a few mini's for my dollhouse too.  :-)

On Saturday night we went to Red Robin for dinner, Yum!

Then we headed over to our hotel for the night.  We stayed in a hotel at the north end of the springs.  Because we almost never get up to that part of town it felt like we were in another city!  :-)  We had so much fun at the hotel, they had a waterslide that we spent a lot of time on!  There was also a free breakfast, always so nice!

The dollhouse store was also a toy store.  Mark won this puzzle by completing a similar one at the store in under 5 minutes!

We stopped at Goodwill on our way to the hotel and picked up this 3D puzzle.  After the pool closed at 10 we came up to our room and worked on it till 2 in the morning to get it done!

We had such a wonderful time celebrating our anniversary!  We picked up the kids Sunday afternoon and it was great to get back into the swing of normal life.  I'm already looking forward to our anniversary trip next year!  :-) 

New Bug!!!

Mark found a new bug on Craigslist!  We went to look at it Saturday, it was all the way up in Denver, a long drive with all the kids.  As soon as we pulled up we both knew that this was the bug for us!  It just seems to say Mark all over it.  It's a little newer than the other bug and a LOT nicer!

Here are the two bugs together:

And here's a closer shot of the new one.  I love the bright yellow!  It's so bright that you almost need sunglasses to look at it when it's directly in the sun.  So cute!

Mark is loving having a nice car to drive!

Another one bites the dust!

So, anyone who knows Mark knows that he attracts bad drivers like a magnet.  And, true to form, this week Mark was in another accident.  :-(   The front of the bug is sooo smashed, it looks so awful.  Fortunately Mark wasn't hurt.    We are trying to figure out how to pay for another car, because the other driver didn't stop.  We have uninsured motorist coverage but that will not cover another car.   

Father's Day!

Our Father's Day was pretty simple.   I made french toast for breakfast, Mark's favorite. I had a small gift for Mark which he opened at breakfast.  Then it was off to church, we always leave at 8:30 to get there by 9:00.  After church we came home, changed into regular clothes, and headed out to Mark's parents house.  Mark's folks provided lunch for us, hamburgers, hot dogs, and lots of sides, Yum!  We had a nice relaxing afternoon.  Mark brought out all his airplanes but wasn't able to fly any of them because of the wind.  He was pretty disappointed.  Besides that it was a very nice day!  :-)

Sorry for the bad pictures, I forgot to take pictures for most of the day and was in a hurry for the few shots I did take... :-(

Extra 300S

For Christmas I got Mark an Extra 300S model airplane kit. He has been working on it faithfully and is making great progress! Here is how much he has done so far:

More flying

On Saturday Mark's brother and some of his kids came over for a little while to visit.  We all went over to a nearby empty field to fly some of Mark's planes.  Unfortunately, just as we arrived the wind picked up so Mark was only able to fly his trainer.  He was pretty disappointed, he really wanted his brother to see him fly his bi-plane. 

Mark's Birthday!

Mark's birthday was last Thursday.  He took the day off and spent it at home relaxing, then on Saturday we went out to my parents house for the day to celebrate.  Both of my brothers were able to come out on Saturday which was so nice.  Here are some pictures from the two occasions:

Opening gifts at home on Thursday, I think he might like this one... :-)

Flying his "trainer" airplane.  He flew this one first to get warmed up, then flew anther plane before it got too windy to fly.

Jeremiah, hanging around outside with Daddy.

Mark with 2 of his airplanes.

My mom with her grandkids, Poppi and Micah.

Micah

At the end of the day... We both look a bit tired.  Don't know what's going on with the color outside... it looks like we're in front of a blue screen!

New Projects...

For Christmas Mark gave me a dollhouse and I gave him a model airplane kit!  So, we have been spending our evenings together working on our individual projects. 

Mark's Newest Toy

    Mark was recently browsing on Craigslist and came across a lot of 4 model airplanes for $400.  He went and looked them over, then bought them!  He threw away one that was broken, fixed two of them to resell on E-Bay, and will be keeping one to add to his collection.  So, he will have made money from his new plane, can't beat that!  The plane that he is keeping is a bi-plane, an older model but very neat!  He loves it, and has already started recovering some of the wings.  :-)