We interrupt this blog to bring you an important update!

Just a shout out to let you all know that on Tuesday, September 7th, 2010, Steve Cannon was promoted from manager to director! He is so excited! We are so excited! It is very rewarding for him to finally see that all his hard work is being appreciated and recognized. Congratulations, honey!!! We took him to Rita's Ice to celebrate! (A special thanks to Bob, Steve's boss, for not giving up and pushing until the promotion came through!)

If that was not enough excitement for one night, Nicholas started cub scouts and earned his bobcat badge the first night. The Cannon's are on a roll!! All in all you could say it was a GREAT day!

What A Summer! - Beachy Keen!

Okay, I am going to do my best to sum up the most wonderful week in pictures for you. I must tell you now that the pictures are not in chronological order. I have just put the pictures out here for you to enjoy and hopefully when you are done reading you will have a good idea of just how much fun the week was and why we all want to go back and do it over again!

One handsome family - more family pictures to come later.

There is nothing like the waves and sea birds to get you to relax and have a good time. I could definitely live at the beach and visit the ocean every day for the rest of my life and be completely happy!

Sean helped the nieces and nephews build a habitat for all the jelly fish that they were catching. Yes, there were a lot of jelly fish, but they did not keep us out of the water. You just had to know to dodge the ones with brown stripes (the ones with stingers).

As always, Sarah and I had fun being "twins" (if only in name) for the week. She is so much fun to just hang out with. I miss you, Sarah!!

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this picture of Nicholas and Naomi walking down the boardwalk after a fun day at the beach. The bikes and beach wagons and beach grass and beach houses.... It is all so beautiful and sums up the whole experience.

This is a picture of "Camp Cannon" from on top of the stairs coming down to the beach.

You have already seen the family picture we got while at the beach (Thank you Dianna and Marva!) Here are some of my other favorites.

What a gorgeous crew! No wonder all of our kids are all so cute!

I love this picture that Melonie captured during a quiet moment in the middle of the family photo shoot. Thanks, Melonie!

It was quite a process getting all of us to the beach at the same time, in white shirts, but we did it. Afterwards we let the kids play in the waves for a bit.

Life guard Sean!


These next two pictures sum up the water action while at the beach. Boogie boards were a hot item. You had to get them away from Randy, Bradden and Steve! It was fun to watch the three of them ride the waves in, stand up and yell "Yah! Let's do that again!" and run back out to catch another wave.

Burying cousins was a favorite past time!

A rare photo of Steve and I. One of us is usually behind the camera.

Me and the kids enjoying some time building in the sand. I love the way that the personalities of the kids comes out in this picture. Naomi is right in the middle of things, Jeremy is working on a project and Nicholas is having too much fun to sit still for a picture.

Steve's pyramid was a hit! Jeremy built a sphinx for it as well but I didn't get a good picture of that. People would walk down the beach just to see it. Word got around fast.

Naomi had a blast playing with everyone. She was right there to lend a hand with digging or fetching water for your creation.

Although all the adults were watching the children we still managed to lose Sage and Nicholas within a half an hour of each other. Thank goodness for excellent lifeguards! Both kids were found quickly. The rest of the week we doubled our efforts and made sure that the kids were all accounted for at all times.

We celebrated Steve's birthday with the whole family as well. This was the highlight of the week for him. Naomi and Steve getting into the wacky, festive mood of the party.

Groovin' with Hyrum.

A Cannon family party would not be complete without all the nieces and nephews piling on top of Uncle Derran!

A trip to the beach would not be complete without tie dying. Here is Naomi in her pink creation.

The brothers had a beard-growing contest. This is the before picture. It was so hot they all wanted to shave by the second day!

Nice melons, Randy!

It took them several tries to get it done, but here it is in all it's glory.

Nicholas's version of the wave hairdo. Although it is quite handsome and fashionable it will be extremely difficult to duplicate in that the wave that did the styling will never come along again. Believe me, they all tried over and over again to get this look. The waves were awesome!

Top Gun volleyball scene re-enactment! ZOO-WE-MAMA!! I like this version even better!

Back at our house for one last cousin sleep-over before everyone flies back home.

It was an awesome week that we will never forget. We miss everyone already. Our door is always open for visitors if you want to come and get some Carolina sun on your face and some beach sand between your toes! Thanks to everyone for being part of what is undeniably the best week of the summer!

What a Summer!!! - Part Two

The kids in front of Dale Earnhart's car.

The kids and I started off the month with a trip to a Kannapolis Intimidators game. We had a great time and great seats. The weather was a little bit on the hot side, but that only added to the fun of being at a game with all our friends. The pool felt incredibly good later that day. Life is good!!!

This is what Steve works on most of the year and rather intensely during May and half of June - The Premier Food Services Trade Show. He makes sure all the vendors are lined up and have a spot on the show floor. He organizes the booth assignments and makes sure that everyone has what they need. He arranges for all the awards... He is the guy that makes sure the trade show is a success each year. It is tons of fun, but he comes home completely exhuasted. Just seeing everyone having such a great time is his reward for all the hard work.

While Steve is off doing his thing the kids and I were in a painting frenzy, but we did take time off to go the pool several times and catch another Intimidators baseball game. June was a complete blur. I don't think we even got the calendar changed that month before it was over!!

July came in with a bang!! Normally when you heard the word "library" you think things like quiet, peaceful, relaxing, books. That has now changed for Nicholas. On one of our library visits this summer the boys went off to find their own books while I took Naomi over to the children's section to help her find her own. That is the usual way things are done since the boys are now old enough to wander freely around the library and make their own selections. Today was drastically different! Naomi and I were picking out some Fancy Nancy books when my mother sense starts tingling. I look up to see Jeremy guiding Nicholas towards me. Nicholas has his hand on the back of his head and there is blood dripping down his arm. I immediately take him to the restroom and try to find out how bad it is. While I am trying to find the source of the bleeding Nicholas tells me the whole story. He was trying to find a book, Jeremy surprised him from behind, he fell backwards and hit his head on the edge of a nearby table. It is a good thing that I remembered that head wounds bleed A LOT because, otherwise, I would have been completely freaking out at this point. After about 5 minutes I finally stopped the bleeding enough to see the one inch long, to the bone, cut on the back of his head. We were off to the urgent care where the doctor ended up using three staples to close the wound. No pool for at least a week! Needless to say, Nicholas and I hung out at the house while Steve took the other two to the pool in the evenings and on weekends. Truth be told, I was kind of relieved to not have to brave the crowds at the pool on the 4th of July. It was a nice, relaxing day at home with just Nicholas!!

July flew by in a whirlwind of preparation for the beach trip! We finished painting, cleaned and prepared for the family. It was a great month and before we knew it we were on our way to the airport to pick up Grandma!!! The next post will be the whole beach and nothing but the beach!!!

What a summer!!!! - Part One

That was the fastest summer I have ever experienced! Last time I checked it was Memorial Day and the pool was just opening. We have kept ourselves very busy and have had a great three months. I am going to have to divide it up into parts because there is just too much for one entry.

May started with the boys taking their end-of-year tests and doing VERY well. It was a great way to end our first year of homeschooling. I think it was a success. The kids have learned a lot and they are all getting along much better as well.

Nicholas got into some poisen ivy and I have never seen him so miserable. I didn't even take a picture because that would have been adding insult to injury, although the rash was pretty impressive. There was not much on his body that was not itchy. Poor kid. He is on the look-out for poisen ivy now and avoids anything with three leaves.

Naomi got her cast off in time for the pool opening and her final gymnastics lesson/performance of the year. I was so proud of her. She is really good and the teachers put her in with the older girls and she held her own.

We also went camping as a family with Jeremy's scout troop up in the Appalachian mountians. It was a really fun weekend, but I can honestly say that I have never been in such a rain/thunderstorm. It was right above us, really loud and dumping buckets. Thanks to Steve's forethought, we all came through relatively dry. On the one sunny day we were able to hike up to the falls that were not too far from the campground. It was really fun to watch the kids play in the water and enjoy the sun. All-in-all it was a great weekend getting to know the other families in the troop and watching Jeremy interact with the other scouts in his patrol.

Jeremy took archery lessons and loved it. He is really good at it as well. It is so much fun to see the kids find things they love.

We started our painting project over Memorial Day weekend. Little did we know that we had only seen the tip of the iceburg! Once I started painting I realized that we couldn't just stop now that we had started because I had make a clean spot and the other walls now looked completely dingey. Our small project grew overnight. How long could it possibly take to paint the hallway, stairs and front entryway (20 foot ceiling) and all the ceilings downstairs anyway?!!!?? Let's just say that it looks amazing now and we are blocking out the pain of 6 weeks of constant painting. I am concentrating on the fact that I no longer have hand prints going up the stairs. The orange crayon train track Nicholas drew down the entire length of the hall when he was 2 1/2 is gone. The bannister rungs, baseboards and doors are all white again. It is stunning and it makes me smile even on the worst of days!!

P.S. I tried to fix all the formatting issues, but they just don't want to be fixed - so enjoy in spite of the cranky blog formatting god.