Tuesday, September 11, 2012

April/May 2012

April and May...love these months. Spring is in full swing and the whole summer is before us! We took lots of walks, caught lots of butterflies,went to the zoo, *I* ran a 1/2 marathon (!!!) and a 5 mile race,  family came to visit and we went on a fun homeschool field trip!

^My crazy kiddos and our neighbor's boy on a walk.


^Hubs and Skylar made a 'butterfly nectar' and went out to catch butterflies. You cant see it very well but he has a Painted Lady butterfly on his plate. She was THRILLED.


^Tootin' my own horn here. That's from my 1/2 marathon. Sub 2 hours!!!

^Ran the BoysTown Memorial Day run (that's my sweet little fam behind me, minus the photographer)  =) You can see that full race report on my fitness blog http://fitgirlwannabe.blogspot.com/


^My bro, his wife and his sweet little girl came to visit in May. They live a few hours away and we dont see them NEARLY enough. If they had a motorhome I would have invited them to take up residence in my driveway as well. I might need to start thinking about a bigger driveway...


^Took a trip to the local P.O. I think there might have been 20 kids in that mail truck!

^They bought stamps and sent some letters to family.


^At the end of May the older 2 girls got to ride thier bikes to the OTHER park in our neighborhood

^They rode around the park, too!


We love this park too but not as much as the one at the other end of our neighborhood. THIS one is pretty always in full sun where as the other one is shady until noon!

That's a light recap of April/May 2012!


March 2012

March was a fun month for us. We got do things like work in the garden, go on a bug hunt with an entomologist friend of mine, celebrate Easter, and hub's grandma came to visit!

^Josh helping in the garden

^Dying Easter eggs. Fun.  And MESSY....


^This is the park that is about a 5 minute walk from our front door. It was completed RIGHT around the time we moved in 6 years ago and I think we've gone a THOUSAND times since we 've lived here


^Its all fun and games until someone gets STUCK in the swing and momma ALMOST has to call Daddy to rescue us. True story.

^My beautiful (and speedy!) friend, Jody, met my crew (and my neighbor's boy) over at the aforementioned park and took us bug hunting. My 3rd daugher is PASSIONATE about all things insect-y so this was a dream come true for her (Jody is an Entomologist).



RANDOM picture.  This dog was at the park during the bug hunt and I was IMMEDIATELY head over heels in love.  I ADORE big dogs.

^Hubs Grandma and Grandpa also came to visit in March. Grandma Dona is a true gem and we all love her so much. And Grandpa Jerry is just a hoot to be around. I tried to convince them to leave their gorgeous acreage in Oregon and live in their motorhome in my driveway. I dont think they were going for it.

That was a brief recap of March 2012!




Saturday, September 8, 2012

1 yr anniversary!! Of not blogging.


Hello friends! Cant believe its been a whole year since I've blogged!
What to do when you've taken such a break....catch up! The next 2-11 posts will be catching up from beginning of the year til now (got a new computer at the beginning of the year so I only have pics on there from this year =)
^Early this year we decided to do some room swapping. We moved around 3 rooms: our dining/school room, our living room (which was really a computer room) and our 'fireplace room' (which is what our kiddos have called it since we moved in even though we no longer have a FP in there)  =)  The dining/school room became a library (see below)


 the living room became an ACTUAL living room (see below)


and the 'fireplace room' became our school room! (see pictures below)

^view as you walk in the room

^view of the far wall

^ view of computer wall

ANYWAY, so back to that original picture. That is our shelf of 'learning' books. I had them all categorized according to different subjects (science/nature, animals, history/geography etc). However whenever the girls took books out, they couldnt remember where they went, so they either left them out (and guess who had to reshelf them?), or they would put them back in ALL the wrong spots which drove me BATTY, so we decided to color code the books.





^ This little sign comes in handy so they can find what they are looking for, or to know what color sticker will go on a newly purchased book. However, after almost 6mo of use, some of the stickers are starting to fall off, so we may need to make more or use a better sticker. For these we went el-cheapo and just colored on address labels and cut them into strips! Ya know, the whole 'where there's a will there's a way'  =)

The month of February was also my 2nd daugther's 10th birthday, where does the time go?!

^Shes the one in the top right with the blue shirt.

She wanted snow for her birthday and she got it!



Valentine's Day was also fun with gifts from one of the moms whose baby I watch

Such happy faces!

Saturday, September 3, 2011

Last 2 months in pictures

I am warning you, this post is PIC HEAVY, but here is a little glimse at the last 2 months for us...

*click on any pictures to enlarge*
Here are the chicklets checking out the fireworks we bought....
Josh was very unsure about the whole thing (and after the first ka-boom, high tailed it for the front door)

The girls had fun lighting some fireworks this year


But still spent a lot of time like this...


We suprised them by taking them to a 4th of July parade this day (their first parade ever)...


They were amazed at the crowds




I felt so bad for these 'seasoned' gentleman. It was slightly less hot than the surface of the sun and they had to walk the .7 mile parade route wearing 10 pounds of clothes!

They also decided to shoot their rifles off right in front of us. I think I lost 50% of my hearing that day, what with that and the fire trucks and amulances deciding that our little piece of real estate was the PERFECT place to let loose with their sirens. Lovely. I dont think Destroy Boy will EVER want to go to a parade again, he was slightly fascinated and majorly tramatized by the whole thing.


The girls LOVED these. They saw them and quickly dubbed the drivers 'Mario and Luigi'
These were also a big hit



I also learned this day that our city has roller derby league. Interesting.
And if you want to advertise effectively for your gym. Have a spinning class take place. On a float.



The girls could NOT believe all the candy that was thrown to them. I had to go thru it and try to find the 'yucky' ones as it was quite apparent that some of it was left over from last Halloween. Classy.


We have been going to the library quite often on friday afternoons


See that red thing on the wall? Yeah. We almost had an incident involving THAT, and that little boy in the blue.







We found about 10 of these guys in our garden last month and brought them, and a boat load of dill inside. After we were inundated with sniffly noses and itchy eyes, the 'pillars and thier abundance of dill went back out to the garden. I dont know where they scootched to as we didnt see even one coccoon!


Random playdoh creation by daughter #3.


Random playdoh creation by daugther #2 (this is suppose to be Susan from Chronicles of Narnia whic has been a bit of an obsession here lately)


They went to their first carnival this past month too. I have not been to a carnival in a sweet forever and my jaw hit the floor when I saw the prices. THREE dollars to ride the ferris wheel?? And i think I may have vicariously smoked a pack of cigarettes while there. Bleh.


I told you the whole 4th of July thing traumatized this boy. This is how he spent a lot of time at the carnival

He gave his hands a rest though to ride on this little kiddie train. He was in HEAVEN.


I also ran another race on Aug 27, you can read about it more HERE on my fitness blog


What's that?? Could it BE??


Yep. I won an age group award!! Must not have been many 30-34 year olds out there that day....
I pulled out the stamping supplies a few weeks ago and let the girls go to town. They LOVE doing this. The anti-messy part of me cringes everytime.



This is my posse measuring Noah's ark on our street for school. You can see big sis there (in the helmet) wearing my Garmin for measuring purposes. It's multi-talented, that watch!


We like to throw a little school in every now and then for good measure =)



My oldest had 'Narnia schoool' one day and she printed out a Narnia coloring page and read a Narnia book to them. I think she may have had a worksheet or something for them to do too. Too funny.And THIS is how I have discovered I can cut my onions up without crying. Dont be hatin'. Not everyone can rock Ariel the Mermaid goggles QUITE like an Asian.