The Noehren's

It's been super hot and muggy lately, so we spent most of week 7 at the pool or indoors!  We did manage to make it out for a fun date night with friends though. Somehow we ended up in Brian's lab with Drew as the guinea pig.  I'll spare him the pictures of where his shorts are also hiked way up.  All in the name of science, right?  We're such geeks.  During week 8 we had two major "first" for the kids.  Haley jumped off the high dive for the first time and loved it so much she's gone back and back for more.  Here is the approach...  ...and take off.  And Grant is tall enough to go on the waterslide!  Our good friends, The Clarks, from our Lexington, Virginia days were in town for a conference and it's been a blast hanging out every day!  Here is Amber and their adorable adopted daughter Gabby.  She is precious in every way and is one lucky girl to have the two best parents in the world!  We also went bowling and Haley...

Lately I've been thinking a lot about choices.  Life is just the collective result of the choices we make.  In the words of a song I loved growing up "I'm the one who writes my own story.  I decide the person I'll be."  So true it is!  Life may also be full of unexpected twists and turns, but by and large we are the ones in charge of where our life goes and how we choose to deal with it. The problem is, sometimes we don't always know what we want...which leads me to all of my pondering on choices lately.  I am blessed with a happy life for the most part.  I started working a few nights a week to help bring in some extra money last year when things got sour financially (remember my blog posts about the car last November???) and for the most part I have enjoyed it and am grateful for it.  However, there have been many times that I couldn't help but think 'if I am planning on working, why ...

I just realized that week 6 of summer is actually THIS week.  Oopsie.  I got a little ahead of myself.  At any rate, we did go to Kennywood this Monday, and most likely won't do anything exciting the rest of the week, so I'm going to go ahead and post it!  Before church on Sunday I thought it might be nice to get a picture of my parents and the kids.  Somebody wasn't thrilled about the idea.  Guess who...  I couldn't stop laughing and that kept making her more and more angy.  I don't care...that picture below is just plain funny.   Monday, we headed to Kennywood in Pittsburg for a day of serious fun.  I've gone twice with the kids, but Brian has always managed to not make it...until this year.  It was so fun to have him there too and to see him scream his brains out on all the roller coasters and rides!  After riding the Pittsburg Plunge last year, Grant decided to stand in the get-wet zone instead.  You can se...

While we were visiting my parents, Brian and I went to get something in the attic when we spotted something that said "Commonwealth of Kentucky" on it.  Being residents of the great Commonwealth of Kentucky, we pulled it out of the box of frames and were surprised by what we found! It was a certificate, commissioning the Honorable David G. Williams (my dad) as a Kentucky Colonel.  We read it over, laughed and took it downstairs for an explanation.  Come to find out - when he came to Frankfort for an accreditation visit for the Kentucky State University the mayor presented him, and the rest of the accreditation team, with these awards and prounounced them Kentucky Colonels!  How funny is that?  He had totally forgotten about it.  It states on the back that a Kentucky Colonel are ambassadors of good will and fellowship around the world and that they gather once a year for a "celebration of fellowship in the true spirit of Ken...

This past weekend we visited my parents in West Virginia and they were gratious enough to watch our kids for 2 days while we headed to Deep Creek Maryland for a fun overnight on our 11th anniversary!  The kids had a blast riding the PRT, swimming, going out to eat and playing while we had a blast doing whatever we wanted to do on our own timeline!  A real win/win! It was too cold and rainy to hit the lake, so we did a nice trail run at Swallow Falls.  It was a really cool forest with 300 year old pines.  This was the biggest of the 4 falls.  It was really beautiful. That night we had an amazing pizza and homemade root beer at the Mountain State Brewing Company.  I kid you not - it was amazing.  Brian loves pizza (he ranked this place in his top 10) and I super love root beer (and I rank this place numero uno!)  We literally drank nearly 3 pitchers of their made-on-the premises root beer.  Perhaps the long wait for the pizza helped in t...

This week we bowled with friends and had a great time!  The local bowling alley has a kids club where bowling is free every day - so even better!  We'll be back for sure.  Then we celebrated the 4th of July in style.  I love the Dollar Tree :)  Our day started downtown where Brian ran the Bluegrass 10,000 - the local 10K (6.2 miles).  He did great, finishing right around 50 minutes, but 45 seconds behind his department chair.  Well played move, Bri, hahaha.  We also ran into another friend's advisor who said "This is a great way to start the day - now I'm off to spend the rest of the day writing a grant."  You gotta love hard core academia.  Thank goodness Brian didn't have to work, like he has in year's past!  Grant couldn't resist an up close inspection of a parked trash truck.   Then we headed to our neighborhood's over-the-top parade.  We gave it a good effort, but didn't win any bike decorating awards. ...