First things first...I have been a very bad blogger. I have been very busy and for so long I only felt like writing about my dad that I didn't write for fear of making everyone cry on a daily basis. So here is a brief update of the Ellers.

Michael: Has gone thru two girlfriends. Likes the ones that don't have phones because they can't "bug him all the time". Boy, is he in for a few surprises. He will probably spend the rest of his life trying to figure out why what bugs him makes the girls so happy.

He is obviously in a competition to see who can make the most noise in the mornings and I am sure is in first place. As you recall from my previous post about Michael in the am he was rather "slow" to say the least. He has conquered that and now has plenty of time to play a little diddy on his keyboard, slam doors, clink his spoon against his cereal bowl and kick the counter with his big size nine shoes. These are all things that not being a morning person I find hard to tolerate. I mean really...I can understand the whole spoon and bowl thing, I will even give him the door slam because he doesn't do it on purpose BUT the keyboard......PLEEEEZE!!!! Nobody and I mean nobody but perhaps Stevie Wonder wants to wake up to the sound of a keyboard at 7 a.m.!! Of course he looks at me like a have three heads when I say thru clenched teeth "do we really have to play the keyboard before sunrise?".

Baseball has officially begun. Well, games began last week but this week we LOST OUR HAT. That is how I know it has really started. Every year at the first of the season he loses his hat , we all spend hours looking for it and then find it somewhere obscure. At this point he gives me the goofy look and says "oh yea I did take it in the bathroom with me and I remember not wanting it to fall in the toilet so I laid it in the shower." I then proceed to tell him that unless he is using that hat as a compression on a possibly fatal gun shoot wound he better put it in his bag immediately after the game. And with that my friends , baseball season has truly begun.

ASHLEY

We just finished Les Mis and it was amazing!!!!!!! We spent weeks at the school with her rehearsing and me feeding the 80 kids and helping the ladies that can sew make the costumes. I feel so blessed to see it go from kids on stage in jeans and t-shirts reading the script to characters on opening night. It is labor intensive , emotional taxing and stressful but she loves it and we are already speculating about what they will do next year.

In 9 short days Miss Ashley Elizabeth Eller will officially turn 16!!!!!! She is so excited about her freedom and being able to drive alone. Personally I think she just wants control over the radio volume. She has been driving with me and I can only listen to Carrie Underwood scream so many times at a high volume before I lose patience.

While Michael may be the record holder for a.m. noise Ashley is the record holder for making glasses disappear. One day as Steve and I were in the kitchen contemplating how after being married for twenty years we had no glasses and were being forced to sip water out of our hands we decided to raid Ashley's room. She had seventeen glasses half full of water in her bedroom. If that isn't impressive I don't know what is.....Apparently there is some secret teenage code about walking down the stairs with things in your hand....like laundry , glasses, etc..