The Picture Nazi & Angi's family {07.2007}

(*Also look at the fourth post down, it is new--under the car one) My brother Dan has deemed me "The Picture Nazi", because I ALWAYS have my camera with me and take more pictures in a week than most people do in a year (well...maybe it's not that bad, but pretty close--thank goodness for digital cameras). I had the privilege this week of getting to spend some time with one of Ang and my Bff's Angi and her family. We just love them. It was awesome. It's been like 5 years since I've seen them.
Well, I have some interesting stories to tell on here, this first one I'm sure that every parent has at least one, kind of similar to it, but it was pretty freaky. We live in a duplex that it right by an apartment complex, and right outside our door is the parking lot and then the street, and one day, we had the front door open, because it was hot, and Mark was working on one of our cars, and the kids were inside playing in their room, well, I was in the bathroom and when I got out, I called the kids and I couldn't find them anywhere inside of the house, well, I walked out to Mark and said, "do you know where the kids are?" He said,"No, I thought you were watching them". (Panic) Well, we started running down the street, and I went back and checked the house, and we were searching for like 2-3 minutes (the longest of our lives) and I felt a prompting that I should look around the apartment complex, and I looked on the very other side of the complex and there was Baby E and Baby R (luckily they were together), walking up the stairs, and Baby E was playing with some kids bike (he's very intrigued by bikes right now). I just held them in my arms and then of course I told them that they were supposed to stay close to us. It was so relieving. Going through something like that, makes you so grateful for many things. But especially that they stayed together and didn't go very far.
Well, another story is that Baby E has been really into Star Wars lately, so we bought him a new green basic lightsabor, and he wanted to take it to the park with us, and so I let him. Well, Riverside park is ginormous, and there are a lot of kids that go there, and I was watching him, but maybe not that closely, because it is a big playground, but I'd check back with him, pretty often, to make sure he was okay. Well, one minute I saw him playing with his green lightsabor, and the next minute, I saw this 9 year old kid, running off with what seemed to me to be Baby E's lightsabor (big kids do that kind of stuff to little kids all the time) and so what do you do when stuff like that happens? I said to the kid, "Hey! that's my son's lightsabor! What are you doing?" And he said, "NO it's not, the bottom's broken--(apparently they had been duoling their sabors a little earlier". A second later, Baby E ran by, with his not broken bottomed green lightsabor. I apologized to the kid, but you know, if I was in that same situation again, I wouldn't have changed how I did it, because I've got my kids' back all the way--and I'm always going to be that way. My parents are like that for me, and that's how I will be too. Both of my kids love star wars, Baby E and Baby R can hum the Darth Vador theme song, and Baby E can hum the Superman song too.
I am enjoying coaching U-15 coed recreational soccer right now (my third year coaching soccer--the last two years were U-19 coeds. I am having a lot of fun interacting with the kids and teaching them, and learning from them. I am going to be a pro coach, by the time I coach my kiddos soccer teams when they are old enough. I love soccer. It's a blast. There is also a picture on here, of Baby E with a kitty, when some hungry kitties came to visit us and we fed them some tuna fish. Baby E loved it so much, (he loves animals) and it was really neat that the kitty let him pet them.