The Missed Marlett Family Happenings

Well, needless to say, much has happened while my computer has been on its little hiatus. Instead of doing countless blogs for the next million days, I thought I would just put a few of my favorite pictures in one extended post. Buckle your seat belts! :)This summer, I got a couple new pieces of furniture for some of the blank spots in the living room. Ava "helped" Brian put together a book shelf.

After we tackled the living room, I decided that the patio could use some updating and also got some patio furniture. This was the pile before...
...and one of the chairs after. The complete set has two of the above chairs, a love seat, and a table. Just add some throw pillows, and there you have it. I really love the set. Too bad it has been molten lava hot and we haven't used them too much yet. Rest assured, in the fall, they are going to get some good use. I'm counting on it! :)

What's summer fun without LOTS of swimming?!? I am very proud of both of my kids and their new swimming accomplishments this year. Chance is very comfortable with swimming now, and Ava has recently discovered that she can swim without her life jacket (limited, but coming along nicely!)Ava spent some time hanging out with her cousin this summer, which she thought was fantastic because she loves to go to people's houses.
We went to a couple birthday parties this summer. This one happens to be at the splash pad in Norman. The kids really love that place.
Probably the most exciting news of the summer...Nevan came home from the peace corps. It was very unexpected. The kids thought they wouldn't see her for a couple years and they were very excited to find out they were wrong. We all went to pick her up from the airport.

Here she is!!!
Since Nevan has been home, we've spent a lot of time hanging out with her. In this pic, we were at our favorite frozen yogurt place.

Chance decided to show us how he could jump over the shrubs. Quite talented. lol

One night, we helped clean up the church sanctuary for the 40th anniversary celebration. Chance is holding a large stack of communion cups. Apparently, no one actually throws those away...I really liked this picture of Chance and Brian. I don't know what it is about a full moon that instantly makes me want to take lots of pictures. Reason #365 why I need a better camera. Then, perhaps, the pictures may actually look as good as it does in real life. I can never quite capture the moment.
Surprise~ We swam some more!

Brian and I went to see Howie Mandel at a local casino. He was so funny. I haven't laughed that hard in awhile. Very fun evening.

An awesome man at our church volunteered to teach some kids to golf. Chance hesitantly decided to take him up on it. I must say that Chance may have some hidden golf skills in there somewhere. George said he had some real potential. I'm interested to see what he can do with a few more lessons under his belt!

Chance is also wanting to perfect skateboarding. Now that it has gotten a little cooler, we have gone out in the evenings to let him practice.
He skateboards and we all watch! :) No skateboarding for the rest of us. That could be quite dangerous.
Last, but not least, Brian and I had an amazing night out with some of our closest friends to celebrate our friend, Shanon's, last round of chemo. She has been battling breast cancer since January and she has been amazing! We are all so glad she is done with chemo and can put that phase behind her. It was great to hang out with my friends and have a nice, relaxing evening.

Well, there you have it. Those are a few of the things we have been up to the last month and a half or so while my computer as been absent. There is a lot more to come. Stay tuned... :)

Hello All

Just to inform everyone...I have not dropped off the face of the earth. I have been having MAJOR computer drama. I am not going to give you the long version because I am tired of reliving it, but very long story short, a series of events occurred that caused us to have to wipe our entire computer and then when we got it back, it still hasn't been right. For awhile, we couldn't get the Internet to connect, then the computer crashed again, then the Internet wouldn't connect AGAIN. Now that everything is in working order, I have to hold my breath and hope that I can reinstall all of my camera software so I can upload pictures. UGH! Let's hope this all goes smoothly because we all know that I am computer challenged. Let's also hope it happens rather quickly because my memory card is filling up at a rapid pace. GASP. Did I mention that all of the computer craziness has been happening during the busiest part of our year?? Between Ava's birthday, all of Brian's back to school activities at the college, and our own kid's back to school stuff, I kind of feel like I'm loosing my mind. Hopefully, everything is close to returning to normal. I say this as poor Chance is laying sick in my bed on the FIFTH day of school. Yeah, it's gonna be one of THOSE years. Last year he had perfect attendance...this year, not so much. Look for a substantial amount of updates soon...if I don't loose my mind first! :)

4th of July...OR Sould I Say 5th?!?

I was really disappointed that it rained on the 4th of July AGAIN this year. That is one of my favorite holidays. I remained optimistic for the better part of the day, but when it was still raining at 6:00, I knew that my plans were not gonna be happening. So, what did I do instead?? Went to the grocery store...BLAH! (On the plus side, no one was at the store and I love empty aisles!) I will say that the 5th of July was MUCH better. We have friends that live right by the city park where Moore shoots off their fireworks and they invited us to come over and watch with them. Can I just say, THAT was amazing! I have never been that close to the fireworks before...we always watch them from quite a distance. They were right over our heads...beautiful! I should say that we had quite a good time even before the fireworks began just hanging out with our wonderful friends and eating snacks in their backyard...we even shot off some fireworks of our own. It was a fabulous evening. It more than made up for the sad day before. Should we really let Brian play with fire?!? I don't know... :)

Celebration is in Order!!

Hello, blogger friends! I missed the date in my absent-ness lately, but I wanted everyone to know that this blog is now officially a year (well, technically OVER a year) old! YAY! When I started this, I prayed that it would not be a fad because I loved the idea, but sometimes good intentions are just not enough. However, I'm proud to say that I did it! This is not a perfect blog by any means, but I overcame the first obstacle and just got it out there. I can be a perfectionist at times, and the perfection can be crippling because it hinders me from starting MANY projects. My thought usually is that if it won't be exactly what I want it to be, then I just won't start it in the first place. Well, I am glad to say that I made myself blog somewhat consistently over the past year. There are times that it is just a couple pictures and a sentence or two...or sometimes, I even bore myself, BUT there are times that I have actually made myself laugh or just captured a really good moment. Regardless of the post, good or bad, I have managed to get some pictures out there and at least somewhat record a memory or two. I'm sure as the kids get older, I will look back at this with appreciation. I hope to get better about this as I go along. I would love to take time to make myself be the writer I know I can be. Perhaps even add a little more emotion and thoughts into the mix? Maybe even talk about even more than just my family?!? Who knows? I just wanted to let everyone know that it has been a year. I feel it's been a success and at this point, I think it's gonna stick. I'm looking forward to recording the next year AND improving my blog! :)

Duda/Ethridge/Marlett Zoo Day

I mentioned that my friend, Jamie was in town a couple weeks ago...well, not just Jamie, her entire family. They were only in town for a week, so we took advantage of all the time we could get with them...pretty much a different activity every day. This so happens to be a day that I remembered my camera. Well, let's face it, I generally have my camera in tow when we go to the zoo. It may well just be the place the Marlett's are photographed the most (only excluding our house...haha).
It was a really great day for the zoo. It was mildly hot (it was July), but honestly, not THAT bad. It also wasn't too crowded, which was also a bonus. Me and crowded zoos do NOT get along. Enjoy all the pics...we all had a great day!

Best Night Ever!

A couple weeks ago, I was lucky enough to get to see the midnight opening of The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. It was an absolutely amazing night for about a hundred reasons.

#1~ It was my dear friend, Amy's, birthday...a reason to celebrate.
#2~ Our friend, Jamie, was in town...which was completely AWESOME!
#3~ We got to eat at the Melting Pot...all FOUR courses!
#4~ We had balcony tickets for the event, which means that while everyone else spent half their day waiting in line so they wouldn't have to sit in the front row, we had reserved seating in the best seats in the house.
#5~ This goes without saying...We are a bunch of crazy Twilight fans...and we were getting to see the movie we had been anticipating for months....this was a crazy good night!!! :)

I would just like to point out the obvious and say that I know it's ridiculous that a bunch of 30 somethings would love these books/movies so much, but don't knock it until you try it, because we are not alone, my friends. :) I absolutely LOVED this entire night from start to finish, the only thing that made me sad was that it ended. We had all looked forward to this evening for MONTHS! This was, by far, my favorite movie of the series to date. I loved the emotion...I must say that by now, I have seen it far more than once (that's all you're getting) and it makes me tear up every time. I think it may even get worse the more I see it. Thanks to Amy for letting me be a part of this wonderful evening. I love my friends! Sorry for the lack of pictures. I was having too much fun to think about my camera too much. I did take a couple, so I threw them in here because I know that it is very odd for me to have a post with no pics.

Amber and Jamie in the balcony anxiously waiting for the movie to start.
A very small fraction of my Melting Pot friends...sorry to the heads I cut off and the ones I missed altogether!

Swim Party

Shortly after we returned from Mississippi (I told you I was behind!), we went to a really awesome birthday party for our friend. It was his 40th birthday bash...and it was so much fun. It was the perfect combination of fun for the kids and the adults. As you can see, there were LOTS of kids and plenty of people for us as well. It was easy to be able to keep a close eye on the kids and still be able to carry on conversations with everyone else. The evening included swimming, great food, frozen drinks, lots of awesome friends, birthday cake...and even limbo! A good time was had by all.
If you look closely in the picture above, you can spot Chance and Ava in there somewhere...I promise. It's like Where's Waldo!
Token pic of me...they make the cut occasionally.

Brian is back there somewhere talking to someone. :)

Chance was very brave...He slid down the slide even though it was in the deep end. He was swimming like crazy by the time the evening was over.
Here's a couple pictures of Ava with her buddies.
Chance found a frog...his favorite. There were a couple frogs found before the evening was over...there may of even been a frog race or two. (See below...)
Ava loves LIMBO!
This was a happy picture of Ava jumping on the trampoline seconds before she jumped right off the side because she was trying to look at her picture. She got tangled up in the springs and ended up on her head. No pictures of that. We're glad she's okay!

One final shot of Ava in the water... night swimming is the best.

Here is a short video of Chance showing off his sliding skills...


Ava's video had to be broken into 2 parts because seconds before she slid down, she got squirted in the eye with a water gun (amazing accuracy!)...I thought we were going to have to abort the video, but she recovered, so I kept shooting...


Here is the rest of the video. She cracked me up because she thought I was taking a picture instead of video, so she would not slide because she was looking for the flash. I had to convince her that I knew what I was doing.