The Ditto's

playing catch-up

2012-01-20T18:25:00.000-08:00

Well, obviously I have one big new years resolution to make, and that would be to take more pictures. I can't seem to find any pictures of Christmas eve or Christmas. We must have been having so much fun, we forgot to take any. Let me just start by saying, i'm lucky if I can remember anything about Christmas week, it was such a whirlwind of events that I felt like I needed a vacation to recover.
First off, we started off our celebrations with an early birthday party for Malia. She had three girlfriends come over and we planned a few games and a movie. I'm not sure why I even try to plan games, these girls were CU-razy and had the attention span of toddlers. (except malia:) So basically we just let them do their own thing. ( This first picture I had to post, mainly because I wanted to immortalize the "cole squint." He doesn't like to wear his glasses, so we see this face a lot when he's trying to see something.)

Malia was most excited to receive some Barnes and Noble gift certificates! Malia is an amazing 11 year old. She is mature, responsible and smart. Claire adores her and Malia is SO good with her. We are so lucky to have her as our oldest.
Christmas eve was spent at Grannie's house with all of the other Ditto's in the area. There were 10 adults and 12 kids. We had a great Christmas eve program, complete with lots of food, a talent show and a white elephant exchange. Late that evening we headed home to spend our first Christmas ever at our own home. Yes that's right. Since we've been married (12 years) we have always spent Christmas at someone else's house. I was a little worried about doing it on our own, I thought it might be boring. I was wrong. It was pretty great. We took our time looking at what santa brought the kids. Took a break for cinnamon rolls and orange juice and then opened the rest of the presents. It was relaxing and pretty much perfect. It was so great having Christmas on a Sunday, I loved going to church and being reminded of my savior. Christmas afternoon we headed back to Grannie's for a delicious meal and plenty of games to follow. It was the perfect Christmas.

The week that followed was a bit of a whirlwind, but fun! It was all out playtime for the kids and their cousins. We went to sky high (trampoline place), watched movies, played games,ate, had more birthday parties. Brent spent his birthday skiing with his brothers. I spent my birthday hanging out with my sis-in-laws followed by a small party at home. It was a fun week.

Yesterday Malia had her first piano recital. She started piano lessons in November and has picked it up quickly. She did really well, she must have learned her mad piano skills from her mom. :)
Monday Brent and I took the boys on their first skiing trip. The girls opted to stay with Grannie. The boys LOVED it. We wanted to start them out really slow, but after three trips down the bunny hill they were begging for something harder, so off we went. They never did quite pick up the concept of "downhill traversing" (impressive huh?) or going back and forth down the hill. They just basically zoomed down. I had a hard time keeping up with them. There were lots of crashes, but they loved it and keep talking about when they can go back. The only downside of the day was that it was freezing! About 10degrees on the top of the mountain. I had so many layers on I felt like the pillsbury dough boy, but it was fun to ski again. It had been years for me.
I included this picture because of the view behind Jacob (and because of jacob of course) We went to Silver mountain which has the world's longest gondola ride to the top of the mountain. I have to admit, I was a little nervous and kept trying not to think about the cable snapping and falling to my death. It was a long way down. In the background is kellogg idaho where we boarded the gondola.

Today we enjoyed our first SNOW DAY! I was wondering if those even existed here? We have over a foot of snow at our house and we were all praying for a day off. The kids had a great time playing in the snow today. And I enjoyed watching them from the comfort of our warm home :)

An Early Christmas present

2011-12-08T13:52:00.002-08:00

A few years ago (like 5?) we got an old table from some friends. Brent did some work on it and wa-la, it looked like it does in the photo below. It was a great table, but after we moved into our new home, we found that the table was a tight fit. Also the wood veneer we used was started to peel up in some places. And i've always dreamed of having a farmhouse table with benches. So the table underwent a second makeover. This time Brent actually cut the whole table down the middle lengthwise and put it all back together. I don't really know everything he did, I just know that I lOVE it! See bottom pic for final product.

My invisalign story

2011-12-04T17:02:00.001-08:00

I can't believe i'm posting this picture, especially after Claire told me last week that I have a lot of nose hair. Leave it to your 4 year old to get up close and personal.
Well, last week I received my first invisalign tray. Invisalign is like "invisible braces." My teeth have been shifting a bit and I have some wonky teeth, so I figured why not? Let me tell you, I was regretting my decision last week. The trays fit so snugly that the first night I was in tears trying to get them off. I finally gave up and went to bed hungry (you can't eat with them in) Then I found that the tray was cutting into the bottom of my tongue, so I spent two days trying not to move my tongue and talking like a crazy person. I am happy to report that I can now get both trays out in a minute or less! And the pain under my tongue is gone. My teeth are sore, but I am trying to focus on the end result. The picture below shoes the "buttons" that they put on my teeth, they help keep the trays on and put pressure on certain areas so the teeth can shift. I've been pretty self-conscious of them, but as my brother-in-law Kelly said, "they are hardly noticeable..they just look like you have some stuff stuck in your teeth." Luckily I know he was kidding, right? I'm hoping to take some pictures along the way so I can see the progress. only 11-16 more months to go...

The Tree hunt

2011-12-04T16:53:00.000-08:00

Last year around this time, we were reminded that we now longer lived in the Christmas tree capital. All of the sudden I was expected to fork out 30-50 dollars for a tree I would have paid $15 for the year before. Luckily we found a place to cut down our trees for only $10. There is a paper company in the area that owns a lot of land and for $10 you can get a day pass and go cut down a tree. So I convinced all of the family to join us. The tree's are always slightly charlie brownish...but that's part of the charm, right? Our tree this year actually turned out pretty great, although it's big!
Below: We like to give our kids things like saws and knives to play with...
Logan proud of his tree conquest
Claire loved Christmas tree hunting. And loved it even more that her cousins were there.

All done!

Thanksgiving in Oregon

2011-12-04T16:48:00.001-08:00

This year we spent Thanksgiving in Oregon. I always look forward to heading home. As we were driving I kept saying things like "look how green that field is. it's like green velvet." I'm sure Brent got tired of my comments, but he put up with me. It was great to see all of my family. One of our highlights was going to the indoor waterpark in McMinnville. The kids had a blast and I went down so many waterslides I left dizzy. Brent and I also took advantage of no sales tax and did most of our Christmas shopping on black Friday. It's so nice to "almost" be done. The weekend went by way to quickly, before we new it we were heading back to Idaho! I have to give another huge thanks to Birch and Sara for watching our dog while we were away!!

Cupcake wars

2011-12-04T16:46:00.000-08:00

This year we had our second annual Ditto Family cupcake wars. Claire and I made Oreo cupcakes and Mayan chocolate cupcakes. I tied for first place with my Oreo cupcakes. Although the mayan chocolate cupcakes were my absolute favorite. I love anything with a cinnamon/chocolate combination. Now I have to start thinking of next years cupcakes so I can retain my spot as co-winner.

A few more halloween pics

2011-12-04T16:39:00.000-08:00

Halloween

2011-11-14T13:39:00.000-08:00

How is it November already? This time of year always seems to fly by. For Halloween this year we headed up to Logan and Julia's house. Since we have three neighbors, we figured that trick or treating might be better somewhere else. Logan and Julia have the perfect trick-or-treating neighborhood. We had some halloweenie type finger foods then headed out to hit the neighborhood. We all split up and I took a few of the younger girls. We around 1 block before Claire decided that she had enough candy and didn't want to stop at anymore houses. She was the first one back...the boys came home when there load became too heavy to carry. We have A L O T of candy. Malia dressed up as a baby, Claire was a witch, Jacob was a zombie and Cole was a wizard. Of course, we took no pictures so I snagged this one from my sis-in-law...

October was busy, and I can't even really say with what...scouts, young girls, Relief society, spinning class, basketball, house projects, etc. The kids are enjoying school. Malia recently started piano lessons and I also signed her and Jacob up for basketball. We've all been healthy and are happy! Can't wait for Thanksgiving, and to head to Oregon for a few days!

Finito!

2011-10-10T14:31:00.001-07:00

finished, finito, terminado, i am DONE with my rock path. Who's idea was that anyway. Here's the story. When we started landscaping our new home, we were a little overwhelmed with the amount of rocks in the dirt. Everytime we took a rake to the ground to smooth it out, more rocks would pop up. I was missing my nice fertile Oregon soil. But instead of moping we decided to take our lemons and make lemonaid, or rather take our rocks and make a path. I think it was Brent's idea to take the rocks and make a pathway, figures since it was ME and completely me that hand laid each rock on this path. And although it's far from perfect, I have to say that I am pretty proud of it. And I have to say that this picture makes it look much, much smaller than it really is.........

AGW-all girls weekend

2011-10-04T16:33:00.000-07:00

After several years of Brent and his brother's getting together for ABH and leaving the girls at home to fend with the kids. We finally decided that we deserve a weekend too. So this year was our 3rd annual AGW. I hosted it at my house. We were all there except for Tavia, who hopefully will join us next year. The goal of AGW is to relax and eat and do everything girly, relax some more and eat some more. I think we accomplished that. We started off our weekend with massages at a day spa, followed by some shopping. That evening we went to an italian villa (seriously) where we had one of the best, most elaborate cooking classes by one of Annie's friends. Sharon used to live in Italy and she spoiled us with food and more food! We ate so much we nearly split our pants. We learned how to make quite a few new dishes and had a great time.
Saturday, we spent the morning making crafts and eating of course. We made these cute felt flowers that can be pinned onto a dress or put on a headband. I made a big mustard colored one, because i am obsessed with all things mustard lately.Saturday afternoon we went to check out the town of coeur d'alene. It was a warm Saturday and the town was hoppin' We stopped for frozen yogurt, and found the perfect gift for our new italian hostess Sharon. We walked to the waterfront and people watched for awhile. Along the way we stopped for some photo ops.
Trying to look sexy, blayre seems to be the only one who has this down.
Then we tried to recreate this shot....
Not sure if I like this one...
or this one..I think i'll leave the cool jumping stunts to Brent.
Proof that Mom was there, she tried to slip behind the camera many times. This time we made her stop and smell the flowers.
We spent Saturday afternoon at church attending women's conference. Yes, we are totally righteous like that. We left uplifted by Pres. Uchtdorf's talk, which by the way I just found out I have to speak on in sacrament meeting next week. Good thing the talk was AMA-zing. My arms look humongous in this pic. ugh
After conference we went to the resort restaurant in coeur d'alene and had a smooshy, squishy..ah a GOOEY. They are famous for these and now I see why. One of the first times in my life that I couldn't finish my dessert. AND i was sharing. I can't tell you how much I love these girls. We had a great weekend, laughing, relaxing and eating. Here's to another great AGW

First day of school

2011-10-04T16:08:00.000-07:00

The kids were in a new school again this year. Three different schools in three years. Basically Cole has gone to a new school every single year of his school career. The kids were pretty nervous this year. The school they are going too is pretty scary looking from the outside. It's old and the grounds aren't too impressive, but we kept hearing good things about the teachers and staff.
Malia started fifth grade. I swear she's 10 going on 20. She got the teacher she wanted and made friends quickly. She is enjoying school and especially wednesdays when they have a zumba instructor come and teach them all sorts of crazy dance moves. She is also in "starburst" or talented and gifted. So one day a week she is pulled from her class to go to starburst. They get to do some pretty fun stuff and she is in it with a few close friends, so she is enjoying that.
Jacob is enjoying school as well. He is into playing 4 square at recess. He is such a good boy and his teacher already loves him.
Cole seems to be enjoying school as well. The first day of school he came home and wouldn't talk to anyone or eat his dinner. He was GRUMPY. I was sure that he was being bullied at school or something. :) Turns out he was just adjusting to being on a schedule again and he was fine the next day. He is my boy who is content to eat and play alone at recess. Although this makes my mommy heart sad...he doesn't seem to care. He is just happy doing whatever he's doing
Claire has one more year with mommy. I love spending time with her. I am dong a co-op preschool with some ladies from church. So claire goes twice a week to that. She loves her "school" and looks forward to mondays and wednesdays. She loves to help me clean the house, watch movies and play with skipper.

catching up-Cavanaugh 2011

2011-10-04T15:29:00.000-07:00

It's become a Ditto family tradition to head to Lake Cavanaugh in Northern Washington every summer. For the past few years we haven't made the trip, but this year we did, and we were so glad we did. My sister-in-law's family owns a cabin on the lake that they so graciously let us use. The lake and surrounding area are beautiful and the kids have a great time playing with their cousins. One of their favorite things (and the dad's favorite things) is to jump off the dock, showing off their favorite new pose or seeing who can catch a football while doing a triple sumersault reverse dive. Cole loved jumping off the dock!
Jacob....not so much. We couldn't get this guy to do much. He is definately our cautious boy. This picture is Brent and I trying everything in our power, ie. bribes of candy and money, to get him to jump off the dock just once. We thought if he tried it once then he would realize that it's not that scary. By the end of this conversation, Jacob was crying and Brent wanted to push him off the dock. Luckily he had me around to convince him that that wasn't the best parenting method for trying to get your child to do something. In fact they say that about bribery, but whatever...

Maybe he'll jump next year :)

The boys had a new toy to try out this year. There was a catamaran that they were all anxious to try. They had a quick lesson by a neighbor and then they were off. Brent took me out once and it would have been totally relaxing if I hadn't seen once of these completely tip over the day before. (But Brent convinced me that those people didn't know what they were doing.) I did learn that they can be a fun, relaxing ride...unless you run out of wind. Then you sit in the middle of the lake and pray for more wind. Luckily our prayers were answered.
Of course it's not Lake Cavanaugh without lots, and lots and lots of skiing
Malia spent a lot of time with the kids in the paddle boat. She was their guide.

Claire had a great time playing with cousins and even was brave enough to hop on the jet ski with mom and dad. Luckily Daddy didn't dump her like he does me...
And we can't forget that on this trip, these two became engaged. Yep, Brent's youngest brother Andrew proposed to his now fiancee Erin on a paddle boat ride to the middle of the lake. We tried to convince him to take the catamaran, but when there's no wind...the paddle boat it is. And when you are in love it doesn't matter. We are so happy for them and their upcoming wedding!

ABH - Ross Lake!

2011-09-26T19:09:00.000-07:00

Every year my bros and I get together to spend a few days together roughing it in the wilderness. Normally we go on a 3 day hike somewhere, but this year we decided to do something a bit different. We spent 3 days canoeing in the beautiful Ross and Diablo Lakes area in northern Washington.

On our first day we had to travel about 14 miles. Since we did not get off until about 10 or 11am that first day I was wondering if we would make it to our desitination before dark (the park ranger had her doubts). We were pleseantly suprised to find that we could travel pretty easily at about 3.5 mph...even faster than we can hike. So we made it to Cat Island in plenty of time to set up camp.

The second day we went on a hike up to one of the mountain peaks in the area. We had a beautiful view of the surrounding mountains and Canada. We also met a guy at the top of the peak who lives up there 10 days at a time to watch for fires. I think he was very glad to have some company. Later that day we found a sweet 45 foot cliff to jump off. When we were at the top looking down it looked like a 100 foot jump! Luckily none of us sustained any permanent damange from the plunge.

The scenery was beautiful and the company was great. I always enjoy haning out with my bros. Besides the mosquitoes it was practically the perfect guys weekend.

Silverwood

2011-08-21T15:38:00.000-07:00

Last week I had the opportunity to go to BYU's education week. It was AH-mazing! I left there on such a spiritual high that I was sure I would be the perfect mom for at least a few weeks. And besides one yelling incident today (dang!) i'm doing pretty good. Can I say again how amazing it was?

While I was gone Brent took the kids to The silverwood amusement park. They earned free tickets during the school year for reading. We had never gone and the kids were looking forward to the day I left for my trip, because it meant they were going to play! They had a great time, they spent about 10 hours at the park. Luckily some friends took Claire so there were no 4 year old tantrums involved. I have to admit i'm a little jealous that I didn't get to go...maybe next year. Malia and Jacob rode the big wooden roller coaster. Brent said that Malia was white as a ghost when she got off and Jacob was not feeling quite as brave when HE got off.

Malia on the ferris wheel
Jacob on some elephant thingy
Cole...please don't judge the hair. He always wants a "summer" mohawk. Except he doesn't want to take the time to spike it up...therefore it's a summer big patch of awkward hair on his head. It's coming off tomorrow!
The pool area. I guess the water was freezing, but that didn't slow them down. Again...feeling jealous. My spirituality was more important right?

Baseball

2011-08-21T15:20:00.000-07:00

Both of the boys wanted to play baseball this summer. I, being the awesome planner that I am, signed them up for different day so that we wouldn't have any game conflicts. This also meant that we were at the ball field monday through Thursday every night for 6 weeks. Oh, the things we do for our kids. Cole was still playing t-ball, where watching a game is kind of like watching paint dry. BUT, he had fun and i'm sure he learned some pretty awesome ball skills? Jacob was in the next level up, he is really starting to love baseball and is getting pretty good. Looking foward to many more years of ball with these boys.

SUmMeR SoFtBaLl

2011-07-17T17:48:00.000-07:00

This year my sis-in-law and her husband were awesome enough to start up a softball team. They were able to get their work to sponsor us (Go Call Realty!) I was really excited, but it had been a good 10 years since I had played on a team, so I was a little rusty. But I can tell you that I looked forward to every single Friday when we had a game, it became the highlight of my week. The team was mostly Brent's family and then some friends. It was a great team and we had a lot of fun together. And can I say that my husband rocks, he's a pretty dang good outfielder! We ended up second in our division. The tournament was this weekend and since we opted NOT to play on Sunday, our two wins yesterday had to be turned in as losses, :( But we still had fun! Hopefully it can become a yearly tradition!

Wildflowers

2011-07-17T17:37:00.000-07:00

Planting a lawn has been a challenge to say the least, but one of the things I love most about our property is this patch of wildflowers. Claire loves to go down and pick the flowers and there is nothing she loves more than having her picture taken!

SUNRIVER

2011-07-17T17:17:00.000-07:00

This year was our 9th? annual sunriver trip. As usual it was fabulous and we lucked out with some AMAZING weather. Our trip was extended a few days longer due to the death of my uncle Jim from Bend. Jim spent most of his life in a nursing home after he was in a logging accident when he was younger. We grew up visiting him in a nursing home. It was a sad day for my grandpa (jim was his only child) but I imagine Jim is so happy in heaven!

The rest of the trip was amazing. We had perfect weather, we swam everyday, rode bikes and played tennis. Our tennis fun was cut a little short when my brother in law Garrick tore his achilles and was down for the count. He ended up getting surgery and is recovering from that.

According to my sister, when all is said and done he should be better than ever and hopefully will play us again next year!
Claire rode her first "big girl bike" on this trip. She LOVED it and wanted to ride everywhere.
The kids loved playing bingo together. Besides that, i'm not sure what else they did, I hardly ever saw them. (jk...sort of)

I went on my first white water rafting trip. My only complaint was that it was too short!! I loved it though.
Not much I can say about this one...
The boys taking a break from one of their bike rides.
:ast but not least, Brent's solution to not having a bike rack? DUCT TAPE. yes he duct taped

our bikes to the top of the van and it worked beautifully. He's such a macgyver type. It was yet another fun filled trip!

house projects

2011-07-17T17:07:00.000-07:00

People often comment on the amount of work required to have some "land." I definately agree, it's a lot of work, but we are loving every minute of it. The last month has been spent trying to get a lawn to grow. Much harder in the idaho panhandle than in Oregon's Willamette valley! Brent has been working on building the kids a playset. This picture was taken in the beginning stages. It's looking pretty good now, we even snagged a free slide from my sis-in-law who happened to have one. Brent and I build a little rock retaining wall by hand and i'm working on a cobblestone path. Every day the kids have to fill me a bucket of rocks and every day or so I try to spend an hour on the path. Im sure it will take me all summer to finish. But that's what's happening around our place right now!

Maybe you can take sewing lessons?

2011-06-17T17:00:00.000-07:00

My latest projects...let's just say I was not too successful. I bought a lot of fabric to make some roman shades for the windows in the picture below. They were a pretty pintucked white fabric, I followed the instructions carefully, put up the first one and it looked horrible. It fell all kiddywompas and looked horrible. So in frustration I made some "valances" for now. Brent tried to be helpful and said things like "I'm sure we can make them work" and "maybe you could take sewing lessons." Hmmmmm.... Thanks for trying honey.....

So I gave up on the sewing project and turned to something i'm actually semi-decent at. I cut out some vinyl for the space above the t.v. I'm happy with how it turned out. I added more to the swirls on the bottom picture (just in case you are super observant and noticed they are different.)

Subway art

2011-06-12T16:02:00.001-07:00

Now that we are mostly settled in, i've started trying to spruce things up a bit. I've seen these subway signs online and thought it would be fun to try and make one. It was a p.a.i.n. to make and a lot of the words are crooked, but that's what gives it character, right? However crooked it turned out, I still love it. All of the words represent our family in some way.

I received a new calling today, 1st counselor in the RS presidency. I haven't been in relief society since we've been married...almost 12 years. But I am actually really excited. The RS president is really cool and I'm excited to serve and get to know that ladies!

A star in the making

2011-06-11T21:58:00.000-07:00

Malia was pretty excited when she tried out for the school play and landed the part of Wendy in "Peter Pan." Mom was pretty excited that all rehearsals took place during music, (during school hours) Malia even had a solo, which she rocked, of course. It was the cutest play and Malia remembered all of her lines. We were pretty dang proud of her!

She is blessed with my rosy cheeks. :)

Better late than never

2011-06-03T12:18:00.000-07:00

I was looking back on my 2010 blog posts and realized that I never posted any pictures from Jacob's baptism. I want to have these pictures put into our yearly book, so I figure it's better late than never right? Jacob was baptized in Spokane with lots of family around to celebrate the day with him!

What a good looking bunch....

Now that Jacob is 8 he's started getting involved in scouts. Scouting is like a whole foreign world to me. When I go to meetings I have no idea what they are talking about half of the time. They have their own special lingo. I guess that's what happens when you have 4 sisters and a brother who just wasn't that into scouting.

Livin' it up in the country

2011-05-25T20:55:00.000-07:00

You know you live in the country when "lost dog" signs are replaced by these:

Our new home!

2011-05-14T21:36:00.000-07:00

I think i've worked harder the last few weeks than I have the last 6 months. Moving is hard! We are slowly getting settled and feel so blessed to be where we are. For those of you that don't know, let me recap... the last 11 months we have been living with Brent's mom, the first six months we were trying to sell our home in Oregon. We finally decided to rent it and found a great family that is doing a lease-to-own, and they have been wonderful. Another blessing! We found this piece of land last spring, but were having a hard time trying to figure out how we could build on it. It's tough to get financing on new construction and most banks want 20% down, which we didn't have. We finally gave up on the idea of building and moved on. We made an offer on another home, an old farmhouse. But after the inspection we were scared off. There was a lot of work that needed to be done and a lot of upkeep needed. The same day we had the inspection, the realtor for the land called and told us that he found a builder who was willing to buy the land and build the home, and we could buy it from him completed. We decided to go for it. Building began in mid-January. I've thought a lot lately about this past year and how some might consider it a trial...but in so many ways we were blessed. My kids were able to get to know their granny in a way they never would have. My girls especially grew close to her and developed a special bond. I noticed Malia would always ask granny to play games at night...she never asked me! We are so thankful to Debbie for letting us stay with her for so long and for her patience with us!

So here's the outside of the house:
I took this picture because it's the only other house you can see from ours. It's so private and peaceful

Brent in the backyard. We will be doing the landscaping so for now we have a nice dirt patch. The house is on a hill, but there are some great flat spots where we plan on having a volleyball court and hopefully someday...a field big enough for some softball.

The view from the back porch
My living room.
The kitchen, we are planning on putting beadboard under the counter...yet another project. Also our bar stools from our old house are too short. The kids can barely see over the counter. So for now, we are eating at the table. This picture was taken before I put up my kitchen decorations. I think it looks much better now...I will post more pics of the inside as soon as the rooms are done.

Signing tomorrow!

2011-05-05T10:19:00.000-07:00

The day has finally come! We sign papers tomorrow!! We aren't sure if we will be able to move in this weekend or next week, because technically the funding won't go through until Monday. It will depend on our builder and we should know by this afternoon. Luckily most of our stuff is still packed in storage, so there isn't tons of packing to do. We've kind of slacked on our picture taking lately. Here are a couple pictures of the counters that Brent installed HIMSELF last night. He got home at about 2:30 in the morning. The pics are from his phone and not the best quality, but you get the idea. I LOVE the counters! We have to give a huge thanks to Than Norman who helped Brent cut them out and gave us a great deal. I've spent a few nights the last few weeks painting, I have all of the downstairs/kitchen area done and the upstairs living area done. It's funny because I was looking for a nice neutral yellow/beige/creamish color. I looked in magazines, online, and had several samples up on the wall...but I couldn't find that perfect color that I was imagining in my head. Then i was at my Sis-in-laws house and in her bedroom was the color that I was looking for. She happened to have 5 gallon container of it in her basement (which felt completely full!) That she was done with and so she gave it to me, and it's PERFECT. I love it. I'll try to get better pictures during the daytime. :) We can't wait for you to all to come visit!

House pics

2011-04-21T19:02:00.000-07:00

We are entering the final stretch! We locked in our interest rate yesterday and everything is ready to go. We finished tiling in all of th bathrooms (except the master...we had to order that tile), The doors are in, the back porch is done, the front porch is almost done, Brent and I are laying the wood laminate tomorrow and saturday, cabinets arrive monday....we're almost done!! It's hard to believe..
I still can't upload my pics, but I had Brent send me some via email. The first pic is of the rock fireplace going in. I'm sure this fellow would love to know his backside is on the internet for the world to see. The second one is our shower. All of our cabinetry is white and the tile that we chose for the master is a dark bamboo looking tile. So I chose to do white subway tiles in the shower. This pic is before it was grouted. I really love subway tile and love how it turned out! We will try to get more photos this weekend!
In other news, Malia started soccer and hates it. Oh well...now we know.

quick update

2011-04-15T09:58:00.001-07:00

I've have a backlog of posts, but with the new computer, I haven't figured out how to upload my pictures off the camera. We don't have the right cord and the memory card no longer fits into the computer. So...I've been putting off posting. One of these days i will post about Claire's 4th birthday and our trip to Oregon for spring break. But I really want to include pictures.

Things are continuing to go well with the house. Things are starting to get busy. I feel like i've been to home depot, lowe's and the tile place, a million times this past week. The outside of the house is all painted. The interior is being painted today. They are just painting it white and I will do all of the "color." In order to save some money, Brent and I are laying tile and laminate wood flooring. We are going to start the tiling this weekend. We are excited to see the final touches going in. (By the way..we picked the lighter granite.)

On another note, Malia started soccer for the first time. She has her first game tomorrow and is pretty scared. She's also sporting a 101 degree temperature today. So hopefully she doesn't miss her first game. Well, that's a quick update, hopefully i'll figure out this picture things pretty soon.

Help ME!

2011-03-30T16:04:00.000-07:00

I need help! I am notoriously indecisive and I am having such a hard time making a decision on what color granite. The dark granite actually has some green in it, which worries me a little but I keep reading that it is so dark you really can't tell and it looked okay in the warehouse. I am worried about it showing more dirt/crumbs. We narrowed our choices down to two and i've attached two pictures of the same granites in other houses. We will be having white cabinets and the floor will be a darker brown laminate wood. Cast your vote!

The latest

2011-03-17T14:39:00.000-07:00

Is anyone else ready for spring? One thing I will miss about Oregon is that spring comes much earlier than it does here. The flowers poke out of the ground and the trees blossom and you feel so happy to see those early signs of spring. Here, everything is brown, brown, brown. I can't wait to see some signs of spring...Sorry to complain, just missing the color a bit today. I guess i'll just have to be a little more patient.

So, Our computer died, like really died. We had to take it in and pay mucho $ to have our information extracted from it. Then we had to pay mucho $ for a new computer. Why does it seem like this stuff happens at the worse times? So, sorry to keep boring you with house photos, but this is where i'm documenting everything, so... things are moving along quickly. The plumbing is done, the windows are in, the back deck has been started, the electrical is happening this week, the fireplace is in. I just can't imagine that this project will take another two months. But what do I know about home construction? Tomorrow Brent and I are going to look at flooring and masonry. Also our home teacher is in the granite business and said we could buy a slab really cheap and then he would have Brent come to his shop and help him cut it. (and not charge us) So we are excited about the possibility of having granite, not something we had planned on. So here are the latest pics:

2011-03-03T18:43:00.000-08:00

Some updated pictures of the house. Things are moving along quickly. The workers are out there in the rain and snow getting things done. The second story is now all framed and they are planning on putting on the roof tresses tommorrow or saturday. The new completion date is now May 15th.

Front of house:

Back of house:

So grown up

2011-03-03T18:37:00.000-08:00

Wow, Malia came home from young girls on Tuesday with some pictures they had taken at a previous activity. I look at these pictures and am amazed at how fast she is growing up! Such a beautiful girl!

Searching for some sun.

2011-02-26T20:40:00.000-08:00

We've had a cold week here. I was hoping the snow was over, but we had a good snowstorm and single digit temperatures. I'm still not sure why people love this weather, I feel chilled to the bone most of the time and I can't wait to soak up some sun. There was one day this week where it was around 20 degrees, but the sun was shining through the window. I actually found myself laying on the wood floor in a little strip of sun...trying to soak it in. Wasn't to effective.
Well, this week the main story of our home was put up. The walls are framed in and they are getting ready to start the third floor. We walked through the home before the walls were put up and it looked so small. I'm hoping this is just a building optical illusion! It's the same size as our last home (bigger once basement is finished) so it should be fine right?
Had to post this picture of claire dressed up as a nurse. Her hat was so tight her little eyebrows looked furrowed the whole time she was wearing it.

Lastly I tried two new recipes recently that I loved...check out www.domesticdittodiva.blogspot.com for the recipes! (cinnamon roasted almonds and truffle cupcakes! Yum!

1st lost tooth.

2011-02-16T16:21:00.000-08:00

Cole lost his first tooth last night! It was literally hanging by a thread but he hasn't let me touch it. I finally forced him to let me look at it, and it popped right out. He was so excited. Having an older brother and sister, he doesn't believe in the tooth fairy anymore, but she made a visit anyway! Check out those dimples!

Happy Valentine's day!

2011-02-14T13:23:00.000-08:00

First off, let me apologize for the randomness of the post. It's a little bit of everything. Second...Happy Valentine's Day! I love valentines day. The kids were up early this morning excited for their class parties, I made them a valentines breakfast and their valentines day presents were these jelly beans. They all get to share. :) (In the cute jars my sis. gave me, thanks Kelly!)

We are anti-spongebob and barbie valentines around here. :) Every year I say that I will never make homemade valentines again, but every year we do it again. This year they all wanted something different. But with the help of Dad, we were able to make them in a night. Jacob's is a cell phone, he taped a piece of gum on the back for an antennae, Cole's is a playing card guy holding a sucker and Malia made butterfly's. And No, Cole is not entirely naked, he just refuses to wear pajamas.

I had to snap a picture of Claire helping Grannie cook. Grannie is so patient as Claire always insists on helping and talks non-stop the whole time. Claire had no idea her face was covered in flour, but proceeded to give us her diva pose.

Saturday we went to look at the house progress. They are starting to frame! We walked around the property and relished the fact that before too long it will be ours!!

Below is a picture of the colors we are considering. Hopefully these folks don't mind me posting their house on the internet.

My weekend project

2011-02-07T16:08:00.000-08:00

I've been itching to do/make something lately. So I found this little desk on craigslist for $5. It was a pretty quick project, I just sanded it down and then painted it red and replaced the knob on front ( I had already taken the old one off in pic) Not bad for a days work. :)

vintage inspired stairs

2011-02-04T09:53:00.000-08:00

A friend showed me this great blog that is right up my alley. I fell in love with these "crate stairs" and really want to do this to the stairs leading down to our new basement. Brent thinks i am
cu-razy! I can just imagine these stairs leading to a cool, vintage inspired game room. Let me know what you think? (hopefully this link works!)

http://funkyjunkinteriors.blogspot.com/2010/04/paint-ed-wooden-crate-stairs-for-so-you.html

Update: I should add that Brent was NOT for the stairs, therefore the compromise is that I can do it and leave it there until we finish the basement. At that point he can cover it up with his lame-o carpet. And that folks, is how compromise works!

Fondue'in it up

2011-02-01T19:47:00.000-08:00

Even though we live near a lot of family, we still don't see them a lot. So we made up an excuse to get together by having a fondue party. My sister in laws brought a cheese fondue, chocolate fondue and white chocolate fondue and I made a crab fondue. It was soooo good. I swear I could have eaten that whole pot of crab fondue by myself. It was a good excuse to get together and we stuffed ourselves! Logan was especially excited to eat!

And it wouldn't be a blog post without an updated picture of the house. The foundation has been poured and the basement walls have been poured as well. It's been really cold the last few days, but luckily hasn't snowed. Brent drives out to the house during his lunch break and sends me pics of the house from his phone. After years of commuting an hour each way, we are looking forward to living 7 minutes from work! This view is from the back of the house.

Groundbreaking!

2011-01-25T12:12:00.000-08:00

Yay!! It's actually going to happen. The builder broke ground this morning on our new home. He called Brent and asked if we would be okay if he finished the house ahead of schedule. He's thinking April or May depending on weather. Uh...sure!! The picture attached is our home, except the garage will be on the other side of the house. We are still debating colors, but I guess we have some time before we have to worry about that. This is a picture that we took from our property. This will be our view out the front. Originally the builder had the house on an angle so that the side of the house was pointed towards the mountains, but Brent and I really wanted to have this view, so we've rotated the house so it faces the mountains. We are so excited!

In other news, I had to give a talk Sunday. My first one in almost 6 years. I'm not sure how I managed to stay under the radar that long? The topic was "teaching by the spirit." I feel like it went really well, despite the fact that I was a nervous wreck and my hands and voice were shaky. Ugh...
Cole finally got his new glasses last week. He better not lose these ones or else....
Brent signed up for the Coeur d'alene triathalon this summer (august) anyone else interested in joining?? You can come stay with us! He tried to talk me into signing up, but I think my racing days may be over? That and it's a hundred bucks and i'd rather buy a cute new outfit :)
And that was our week....

Best big sister award

2011-01-20T15:46:00.000-08:00

I love this girl! Sure she gives me a hard time sometimes. She rolls her eyes and let's out big sighs...kind of like (ok exactly like) I did as a teenager. But she has such a big heart. Every week she brings home her library books from school and every week she has a couple for herself and one that she has picked out for Claire. Today was library day and the first thing she did when she got home was pull out Claire's book and offered to read it to her. She is such an amazing big sister. No wonder why I feel like I have it so easy! Malia is doing the hard part, like playing babies, playing doggie, playing kitchen. Even though she is probably wanting to do something else, she is always willing to play with her little sister. Love ya Malia!
House update: Septic has been approved (whatever that means) and permits have all been finalized. So now we are only waiting for decent weather. Basically we could start anytime, but realistically it will probably still be February. Pray that it will not be an unusually cold February in these parts!

A whole lotta nuttin'

2011-01-10T15:35:00.000-08:00

I realize that committing to blog weekly may result in some boring blogs. I didn't sit down and do this last night, because I couldn't think of anything to blog about. That still hasn't changed, but here's to another typical, non-exciting week!
I signed up at the YMCA for the "new year, new you" program. So last week I met with a trainer who tested me in different areas. The results...i'm strong and overweight. (obese, if you listen to the experts) (I did manage to pull out 100 chest presses, the most done up to that point) So the goal over the next 8 weeks is to become strong and not overweight. They'll set me up with a trainer and customize a workout plan for me and hopefully in 8 weeks i'll improve in all areas. Can I just add that I hate the gym in January. It's so crowded...is it bad to say that I can't wait until everyone gives up on their resolutions and clears out?
Progress is happening on our house! We are only in the permit getting stage, but the builder called today and said that he is about 2 weeks ahead of schedule. He's staked out where the house will be on the property and now we continue to wait for all the permits. Hopefully the weather will let us start on time.
We never did find Cole's glasses...we went to get him a new pair last week. If he loses these ones, he's buying.
I've been released from nursery and called to teach the CTR 6 class. (Cole's class) I'm not sure if there is a reason that I keep getting called to be Cole's teacher?? I've only taught one week, but I LOVE it!
Also...just found out that I will be having a new niece! Congratulations Deyce!

Our happenin' Holidays

2011-01-02T21:05:00.000-08:00

Every year for Christmas, Brent gets me a book that contains all of the years' blog posts. Sort of a family journal you might say. Well, this year, the book was pretty thin! Looking at it made me vow to do better at blogging, so that next year I can get a nice fat book! My sister suggested blogging every Sunday night and I think I might just take her advice.
The holidays flew by this year. For Brent's work holiday party, we took a holiday boat cruise on Lake Coeur d'Alene. The boat takes you out to "santa's island." Santa is waiting to greet you. They have light displays along the lake as well. I just had to throw in the picture below. I was giving Jacob a nice big "public" kiss and you can see how much he loved it! Christmas was spent in Albany. The downside of the trip was that it rained the whole time, and not just rained...poured! Despite the close quarter, we had a great time. The kids were so excited for Christmas. After opening their (surprise!) jammies Christmas eve, the kids were sent to bed. Jacob claims he never even fell asleep that night. We were up early at 6:30 am to open presents. The kids posing in their jammies, claire is such a little diva. Cole looking cute in his new glasses that he has already LOST! Dangit.
Bowling the morning of Malia/My birthday. Bowling with a bunch of little kids can be Chaos, but after about 10 minutes we figured things out and had a great time bowling. Of course Brent won, surprise.

The boys asked for Legos and more legos. They spend hours putting them together. Christmas morning Cole opened his presents but seemed pretty unexcited about things. He was sprawled on the floor by his stocking with his eyes closed. 15 minutes later he was throwing up in the toilet. Poor guy, luckily he felt fine afterward and was able to do some major lego creatin' the rest of the day.

All of our stocking are in Storage, so last minute we ran to the dollar store to get some stockings. Of course they were out. So we used WINE BAGS for stockings. AWESOME!

Malia holding up her new camera/video camera. She spent a lot of time playing with this over the break! She also loved playing with her cousins. She was a little teary pulling away from Grandma's house.

Sunday was Brent's birthday and we were able to go up to Keizer and go to church. After church we went to visit some friends and enjoyed spending time with them. We got home in time for dinner (lasagna, of course) which I burned. Happy Birthday Brent! I'm afraid this birthday won't be going down in the excitement hall of fame. Maybe next year :(
My birthday was awesome. We went bowling in the morning, then my sister and I went to bath and body works to stock up on some smellies. Then we went home for Malia's requested lunch of burritoes. That afternoon some of my sisters and I headed up to Keizer to take a spinning class from my old gym. I loved that class! That evening all of the adults went out to a restaurant and just enjoyed each other's company. The picture below is what we returned to in Spokane. Snow, and lots of it. It's so cold here, I think it will take me a long time to get used to this!

After we got home, Brent and I were able to go on a Birthday date to Spokane's riverfront park. I purchased a groupon that allowed us to go to an imax, play mini-golf, go ice skating and ride the carousel. It was great, despite the frigid temperatures. I even grabbed the gold coin on the carousel and won myself a free ride. That worth at least a dollar or two! :) It was a great vacation and the kids are already whining about going back to school. Me, I'm ready to get back to our normal routine and hit the gym. Happy new year!

O Christmas tree, O christmas tree

2010-12-09T18:18:00.000-08:00

I've been spoiled. Living in Oregon you can find a beautiful Christmas tree for a bargain. I figured here in Spokane, land of the evergreen tree, it would be the same. I was wrong. I called a u-cut Christmas tree farm and they wanted $50 for a tree. Costco wanted $40. I couldn't bring myself to pay that much. So we went and got a $10 permit and cut down our own. It looks like a $10 tree too, but the experience was worth it. We found two great sledding hills, this is the first one we found. We did some sledding, drank some hot chocolate and then decided it was time to hunt down a tree. We spent so much of our time sledding that it was getting late in the afternoon and we didn't have a lot of time to hunt for the perfect tree. So rather than stay with the whiny 3 year old, I went in search of the tree. I found one, which took me about 20 minutes to cut down (would have taken Brent about 5 min). But I got it down and back to the truck. It was a great day, minus the whiny 3 year old. Next time she stays home!

Malia having a snack. :)

Claire posing in front of our Charlie Brown Christmas tree. It's a little sparce in places :) Claire calls this her "Miley Cyrus" pose.

Cole showing off his new glasses. Yep, both boys now have glasses. They were so excited to pick them up. Although I give it a week before the novelty wears off. I think he looks a little like Ralphie Parker in "A Christmas Story" (see pic below)
We are headed to Oregon for Christmas, we are looking forward to seeing old friends and spending time with family. Merry Christmas!

Brent czech'd out

2010-11-18T20:29:00.000-08:00

Last week Brent was able to fly to the czech republic for work. Just a little perk of working for a great company ;) I was excited for him to go and "czech" out the countryside (sorry had to do it) Unfortunately he was pretty busy with work, lame-0. But he had a few hours on his last day there to take some pictures. The first picture is actually in taken in Prague. The bridge he is standing on is called the "Charles Bridge" It has these really cool old statues on it. They started building it in 1357! I didn't take this next picture, but thought it gave you a better idea of what the bridge looks like. It looks like a bridge that would be used in some mission impossible movie, where a guy is murdered and then thrown over the edge of the bridge. Really, doesn't it? Looking at the rest of the pictures makes me want to be a world traveler. I'll add that to my "someday" list.

For the love of Pete!

2010-11-15T20:44:00.000-08:00

There is craziness happening in Spokane. Neighbors are putting up Christmas lights, stores are decked out with Christmas decorations, and this morning on the way to school the kids said "mom play some Christmas music." I informed them that none of the radio stations are playing Christmas music and just to prove my point I changed the station. Guess what was playing on that very station...here comes santa claus! Today Claire seemed to think that when it got dark, Santa was coming. I had to break it to her gently (about 20 times) that Santa would not be coming to the house today. Seriously...can we have Thanksgiving first?
On another note...just an update on our house situation. We found a house a few weeks ago that we fell in love with. 5 acres, charming updated cape code farmhouse, barn, playhouse, tool shed...it was perfect. We looked at it twice before we made an offer, which was quickly accepted. All was going well until the dreaded inspection. Holy cow...there were all sorts of hidden problems. Plumbing leaks, electrical issues, some strucural issues, etc, etc, etc.. the list goes on. We could ask for an allowance from the sellers or have them drop the price, but the phrase, "money pit" kept running through my head. Scenes from Tom Hanks "money pit" movie were flashing through my head. So today we backed out of our offer based on the inspection. Suddenly a brand new house sounds very appealing! :) One of these days things will work out, right??

Oh Halloween, how I love thee

2010-11-02T14:41:00.001-07:00

Yes, I love Halloween. I love the decorations and the costumes and of course the candy. This year we headed up to the south hill to do some trick-or-treatin' with the cousins. We had a yummy dinner and then hit the road. I tried to take a picture of the boys but they were so hyper they wouldn't stand still. Behind them is their cousin George dressed as some cool ninja guy...He kind of blends into the background, that camo really works! The little girls were princess, of course. And Malia was a flower girl. And once again I left a child out of the pictures, sorry malia! They had a great time and came home with a nice haul for mom and Dad to snack on for the next month!

BFF's

2010-11-02T14:36:00.000-07:00

A few weekends ago, My SIL julia, kicked her husband and kids out of the house so that us moms could have a "girls weekend" (more on that later) Her family came to Grannie's house. (where we are living) So Claire had lots of time to play with her BFF.. aka. cousin jane. I sat down to look at the pictures on my camera and discovered that Malia had a photo shoot with the 3 year olds. Too cute, I hope they do stay friends forever!

1st annual cupcake wars

2010-10-18T12:45:00.000-07:00

If you are an avid food network viewer like myself, you'll know what cupcake wars are. Its a show where some of the best cupcake makers from the U.S compete in a cupcake bake-off. The reward is to have their cupcakes featured at some big gala or event. They have to come up with unusual, creative flavor combinations. So, here at the Ditto household, we decided to have our own cupcake wars. The cupcakes featured were: Malia-cookie dough cupcakes, Me-"elvis" cupcakes, or banana cupcake, peanut butter frosting and bacon bits on top, Debbie, coconut cupcakes, Julia-chocolate peanut butter cupcakes. And the winner is (drumroll).....Malia's cookie dough cupcakes, they were brown sugar cupcakes with a cookie dough center, and cookie dough frosting. They were yummy and the first to disappear. My cupcakes won most creative, or in other words...nice try. They were yummy, but a little too unusual for this crowd. Which consisted of the majority being under 9. The bacon bits freaked them out a bit. I'll have to save this recipe for a more "refined" group. :) We had a great time making them, and made ourselves sick eating them. We'll definately be doing this again.

Dora vs peyton

2010-10-15T13:49:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite cereals is the new "wheaties fuel." I like a little sprinkled on some yogurt in the morning. When it first came out I was trying to get Claire to eat some for breakfast. She wanted nothing to do with it....until I told her it was Dora the explorer cereal. Yes, I lied, and nevermind the tough jock guy on the front of the box. (Is that peyton manning??)...anyway, She ate every last bite. That was a good 10 months ago. Today we went grocery shopping and she shouted, "mommy, buy Dora, buy Dora, pointing at mr.tough guy. I wonder how long it will take her to realize that this cereal has nothing to do with Dora the explorer.

The not so eventful anniversary

2010-09-21T09:25:00.001-07:00

Brent and I share our anniversary with Jacob's birthday. So we celebrated Jacob's birthday Friday night with family, by having a burrio bar and costco's enormous chocolate cake. It was a fun, crazy evening. Jacob is turning 8 and will be getting baptized on Oct. 9th. I will be happy to have my camera back by then! More pics to come.
So Saturday Brent and I decided to celebrate our anniversary by going to silverwood amusement park. I had gotten a free ticket and since it is the end of the season, prices were discounted. The only problem is that the weather was pretty yuck...drizzly, cold. But we're troopers and headed up anyways. On the way up I stopped for some motion sickness pills and popped a few of those (roller coasters make me nauseous otherwise) So we get there and learn that our free ticket is only good for kids under the age of 18, we also learn that half of the rides are closed down due to the weather. So we decide to scrap the idea. I'm feeling a bit tired anyway. So, we head to downtown coeur d'Alene to walk around and check things out. By the time we get out of the car I am SO sleepy, the kind of sleepy where you feel almost sick from trying to stay awake. We walk around for a little bit before I have to ask Brent to park himself on a bench, so I can lay down on his lap and have a snooze. I'm starting to question if I have MS or mono or something....I shouldn't be this tired. We checked out a few stores and then headed to a yummy mediterranean restaurant called "the white house" for dinner. SO yummy, but my mother-in-law claimed we made the house smell like garlic for the next 24 hours. After dinner we went to check out our "dream property", went to Cabela's and then headed home, where I fell asleep at 8:30 while Brent watched football. Pretty exciting eh?? It wasn't until the next morning that I realized it was those stupid motion sickness pills that made me so tired! I seriously thought something was wrong with me...so I'm chalking it up as the lamest anniversary ever. But the good news is...we still love each other!! And Brent loves me even if I make him park himself on a bench so I can take a snooze in downtown Coeur d'Alene!
*Update on the house situation*
We have found a couple who are planning to sign a lease to own agreement with us. They are leasing the home for two years with the option to buy after that. They put down a larger downpayment up front and then a portion of the monthly payment goes toward the purchase price of the home. At the end of the two years if they decide not to buy, we get that money. Hopefully they will though :) They want to be in this Saturday, so we are headed down Thursday to do a frantic pack-up and move out.

New school, new shoes

2010-09-12T22:17:00.000-07:00

Guess who left their camera in Keizer last weekend. Guess who didn't realize this until it was time for "first day of school pics." I'm so lame.
School started last week for the three older kids. They were all nervous about starting a new school. Heck, I was nervous. But they all came home happy after the first day, and the next day and the next...I think it will all work out. :)
So the week before school started I took the kids to wal-mart to pick out one new school outfit. Gone are the days of several new school outfits...it's been reduced down to one. Well, Malia found a pair of shoes that she really wanted, that I refused to buy for her. They were only ten dollars so I told her she could earn the money herself and buy them. Heck, when I was in school I had to buy ALL of my own school clothes. I got up at 6am in the summer to pick strawberries to buy those school clothes. Nevermind that she's only 9. Around the same time she learned how to finger knit at the YMCA youth zone. She spent hours finger knitting scarves and then decided she wanted to sell them door to door. I would rather have a root canal than sell things door to door, but being the good mom that I am, I agreed. I found myself hiding behind bushes and trees to avoid being spotted by neighbors. Bless those neighbors...they were good to Malia. She was selling her scarves for a quarter, but several people gave her a dollar. Soon she had enough for her shoes...plus a new pair of earrings. I have to say I was pretty proud of my little girl. Lesson learned: when your child wants something bad enough, they will figure out a way to get it. (which hopefully doesn't involve stealing)

summer happenin's

2010-08-17T20:16:00.000-07:00

This summer has been a bit of an emotional rollercoaster for me. I've never been one for change. So moving out of my home, that I love has been hard. Waiting for the house to sell and wondering if it will ever happen. Everyone who's been through it can attest..that it's no fun. But in the meantime, we are trying our best to just have fun this summer. Luckily i've moved close to some amazing family and it's been fun to get together with them. Last week I signed the boys up for soccer. Neither of them had ever played. The last day I thought I would show up early and take some pictures...here's what I found. (You may have to click on picture)

Every picture I took had Cole standing around, picking his nose or pulling his jersey over his head. Soccer is not his thing. We're still searching for "his thing". Jacob on the other hand loved soccer and was quite the "Star."

Malia took a hip-hop class at the YMCA. She is now ready to dance at weddings, birthdays, etc. Just give us a call to book a show.

Friday night we went camping at Lake Coeur d'Alene with the other brothers (refers to all of Brents family in the area...which in case you are curious, consists of a mom, three brothers and a sister) The kids had a great time playing with cousins, but we had to pack up early the next morning and head to Schweitzer mountain because brent's work was having a "get-together" there. We rode the chair lift up to the top of the mountain and looked around. Amazing views. We ate at an overpriced restaurant, hiked and picked huckleberries. Again the views were amazing...but if we could do it again I think we would have stayed in Coeur d'Alene and waterskiied with the family. Oh well, you learn! That evening we ate our huckleberries with waffles and whipped cream. Yum! One thing I can say about huckleberries is it's a lot of work for little reward. I'll stick with blueberries.

When looking through all of the pictures, the best ones were all taken by Malia. I may have to hand over picture taking duty to her permanently.

Summer fun

2010-07-02T16:01:00.000-07:00

Who needs a swimming pool when you have a cooler??

Cole Turns 6!

2010-07-02T15:47:00.000-07:00

Cole turned six last week, we celebrated his birthday in Spokane. It was great having all of his cousins around. We started out the day with his birthday breakfast request of sausage and pancakes. For lunch we headed to chuck-e-cheese, skipped the pizza and just played games. I've finally learned that's all the kids want anyways. Instead of a cake Cole requested Doughnuts. We had a small barbeque that night and opened presents. His only request "legos". Cole is my quiet mellow boy. I'd describe him as a lover not a fighter. :) And although he's quiet he's my most mischievous. For example, last month I asked him to empty the dishwasher. I was in the other room and heard some strange, i'm not unloading the dishwasher sounds. It was Cole taking a large kitchen knife to one of my kitchen drawers. He was making little notches in the wood. Curious or just trying to get out of EVER doing the dishes again? Probably a little of both. Cole's really loves to build things. Someday he'll be Brent's best helper in the garage...doing whatever guys do in the garage. Can't wait for that day.

Spring in (quick) review

2010-06-14T14:40:00.000-07:00

Malia played on a 10 and under softball team this year. They were a very young, inexperienced team. Which meant quite a few losses. But, she had an amazing coach who made each game fun and she learned a lot. She even had her first slide into home plate. (even though I had to bribe her with $5) She did it! It was one of the wettest springs in Oregon history so we had quite a few games cancelled. But with each game they had, they improved.

Jacob on his 2nd to last day of school. Camping out in the front of the school and wearing pajamas.

Cole on his last day of Kindergarten. The teachers sprayed shaving cream on the tables for the kids to play with. On to bigger and better things in ALL DAY 1st grade next year!

Giving one of his teachers (mrs. Morrow) a final hug.

Cole's field trip to enchanted Forest. It POURED! But the kids didn't seem to mind..I on the other hand was counting down the minutes to when it was over. :)

Claire playing with her dollhouse, she has quite the imagination and set up this little house on her own. She keeps us laughing!

So for those of you wondering. No, we still have not sold our house. We will be heading to Spokane and staying there with Brent's mom until our house sells. Please keep praying for this to happen quickly. Luckily we have a "house sitter" to stay here and to make sure everything is taken care of....on to the next adventure in our lives.

Is it the end of May already??

2010-05-21T14:36:00.000-07:00

Brent hinted that I should update the blog. I agree i've lost the blogging bug, but I'll try my best to update occasionally. Mostly their is nothing too update...but here goes.
It's been almost two months now that i've been a "single mom." Brent is loving his job at ALK abello. He loves the people and the atmosphere. I'm thankful for that. I can't say that i'm loving my job right now :) but i'm trying my best to remain positive. I feel like 80% of my life right now consists of cleaning, and more cleaning. Trying to keep the house clean enough to show it, with four kids, is a full time job. The other 20% of my life is sitting at baseball games. (freezing cold ones I might add) We have had one of the coldest, rainiest springs here in Oregon. Just so I don't sound totally pessimistic, I have amazing friends who are always willing to help. Friends who have brought me dinner, taken my kids so I can have a break, and just called or stopped by to say hi. I'm so thankful for good friends.
I've been trying to keep myself busy with other projects. I made a dress for myself, and the pillows pictured below. I also made some decorative fabric balls (pic below), I just need to find something cute to put them in.
The newport marathon is coming up in a few weeks. Brent is running with his brother and another friend and his training is going great. I on the other hand have not been able to train, so I am planning on running as far as I can and then walking the rest. Definately not expecting to beat my time from last year...just trying to complete it this year. We are looking forward to a fun weekend on the coast.

Jacob is doing great in baseball. He is a good little infielder! Cole is...well in his first year where no one can catch or throw. They are just cute to watch!

We miss you!

2010-04-27T10:39:00.001-07:00

In October we had a new family move in across the street from us. We became fast friends. Our kids were the same ages and loved playing together. Jorie became a great friend and helped me out with babysitting and was so easy to talk to. Unfortunately (for us) they had another job opportunity come up in Las Vegas and they had to move. Even though we only knew them for 6 months, we felt like we knew them forever and were so sad to see them go. Here's some pics of the kids right before they left.

Cole and Madelyn, they were in the same kindergarten class and loved playing together
Jacob and Caden were also in the same first grade class, as well as the same primary class. These two were best friends

All of the kids including Claire. We love these guys, and miss them so much!

Randomness

2010-04-11T14:12:00.000-07:00

I apologize ahead of time if this post is totally random...my brain is just functioning that way right now. I haven't posted anything for a month and it's been a crazy month. We took two trips to Spokane. The second time we left Brent behind to start his new job, while I returned to Keizer with the kids. More on that later. While we were in Spokane we celebrated Claire's 3rd birthday. And being the 4th child...these are the only pictures I have of the celebration. I have given up on trying to make cute cakes and luckily 3 year olds are easily convinced to have a "KRISPY KREME CASTLE!" Seriously, who would not want that? We were able to celebrate with lots of cousins. Later that night we took the kids to raptor reef, an indoor waterpark, to finish off the celebration. Of course they had a blast, and of course....I took no pictures. :)

Jacob was chosen to have his artwork displayed in the district art fair. This was his second year in a row to have his artwork picked. He was very proud of this, and luckily this year we made it to actually see his displayed artwork (unlike last year....don't ask)

So the kids and I are on our own. Malia, Jacob and Cole are all playing softball/baseball. Seriously, I don't know how my mom did it. Three kids to practice, on the same night, at the same time??? It's craziness. Things were pretty good until yesterday when I started feeling pretty sorry for myself. Brent is off doing fun stuff, while i'm here...blah blah blah. Let's just say I had a little mommy meltdown. But here's the crazy part. After church today, my neighbor who lives two houses down (she's a member) asked to come over and talk to me. Basically, her granddaughter, who is 19 is coming to live in Keizer after living a few years back east. This young girl used to babysit for me before she moved and she was great. Anyway, the grandma has foster kids in her home and they are all boys. So basically, she needs a place for her granddaughter to sleep in exchange for babysitting/cleaning. A free babysitter, sounds like heaven. I'm sitting here amazed at what a blessing this will be. A blessing for me and for my neighbor....Heavenly Father is definately looking out for us. (Now, if we could only sell our house......)

Bittersweet...

2010-03-11T11:32:00.000-08:00

Well, most of you have already heard our announcement, so this won't be anything new, but just in case you haven't heard...Brent received a job offer for a company in Post Falls, ID (just outside Spokane). He starts in 11 days and he is so excited! He is excited about the company, they are growing and offer things like a bonus program, retirement contributions, and shorter hours! Things that he does not get now. He will no longer have to commute 2 hrs a day, YAY! And how do I feel about this you ask? Honestly, I have mixed feelings. I've lived in Oregon pretty much my whole life (except for college) My parents live in the same house my Dad built when I was a toddler. I'm not big on change. I have the best friends i've ever had, here in Keizer. I'll be leaving family, but moving closer to family. I do know that this is the right decision, I guess i'm just SCARED, to have to go through the process of getting to know people and starting all over in a new place. So Brent starts his job on the 22nd and I will stay here and attempt to sell the house. Brent will be coming home every other weekend, but otherwise i'm on my own. I am praying that the house sells quickly, or else they may have to commit me to an insane asylum. Either that or i'll gain a hundred lbs from all the brownies i'll be downing on those Friday nights he's gone :) So please pray that we will sell quickly!

One happy mama

2010-03-11T11:20:00.000-08:00

Okay, i'm posting this, not to brag, but because this blog has become my journal and I want to remember this. Last night around 6 I received a call from the school. I thought it was strange to be getting a call from a teacher at that hour. Anyway, it was Jacob's teacher and she started out by saying, "I just wanted to call you and tell you how much I love Jacob and enjoy having him in class." She said Jacob was a great example to the other kids. She said that she has never taught someone that age who had such a big heart. She went on to give examples of things he had said or done in the classroom. This is the same boy that I was yelling at 10 minutes earlier for hitting and kicking his brother and I was feeling frustrated! By the end of her phone call I was almost in tears. Honestly, it is the best compliment in the world for a mom to hear such great things about one of their kids and I can't tell you how happy it made me to know that he is actually learning the things we are trying to teach him. And I thought it was so sweet of his teacher to take the time out of her day to call me and let me know what she thought of Jacob. It made me one happy mama!

Home projects

2010-03-05T15:49:00.000-08:00

Here's a few sneak peeks at the projects going on around the house. The first pic is the new tile we put down in the kids' bathroom. We are also planning on tiling the countertops with a dark tile (you can see it in the corner of the pic) I also painted the cabinets white.

The master bath...this was quite the project. We had to rip out the old tile and patchup the sheetrock. We tiled it to match the counters that Brent did last fall.
The downstairs bath. It's so small, it was hard to get a picture of the whole thing, so you get it in pieces. The last picture is of some vinyl I did above the toilet, I was feeling too cheap to buy any artwork :)

Hearing test

2010-03-03T16:59:00.000-08:00

Cole had his hearing test today and luckily they found that he had fluid behind his ears. His hearing loss is significant enough that it could affect him in school. (He compared it to plugging your ears constantly, or to being underwater) I had a hunch this was the problem, but you know how you always have those "what if's" pop up in your mind. So the next step is to take him to the doctor, who will probably prescribe antibiotics, if that doesn't work, he may need tubes in his ears. So...i'm relieved. It's fixable!

Update

2010-03-02T12:26:00.000-08:00

I can't believe it's been a month since I last posted. This past month has been a busy one. We signed Jacob up for basketball for the first time and he loved it. He said he loved it even more than baseball. He has his last game Saturday. I have a few weeks off before all three older kids start baseball/softball. It's going to be a crazy spring hauling them to practices and games.

We have also been busy doing some home improvement projects. We redid our little downstairs bathroom. Tiling the floor, new sink and toilet. We retiled our bathtub (to match the tile on our counters) tiled the kids' bathroom floor and are getting ready to do their counters. It's been a lot of mess and a lot of work, but everything looks great. I'll post pics when everything is done.
Training for the marathon has started. We have had two Saturday group runs. I feel like I haven't been quite as motivated this time around...hopefully I can do this! Brent is a running machine and seems to have no problems running the scheduled distance, plus some.
The last few months I've noticed that Cole seems to have a hard time hearing me. I feel like i'm raising my voice just to ask him something. I always feel like i'm yelling at him. So about a month ago I asked the doctor to check his ears, he said everything looked good. I brought it up to Brent a few times but he said Cole probably had selective hearing. One day Brent had Cole and Claire stand next to each other and we conducted our own hearing test. We had Claire raise her hand, then had Cole raise his hand. We repeated this a few times and then changed it up. We asked Claire to lift her foot and she did. We asked Cole to lift his foot and he raised his hand. He continued to raise his hand each time, even though we were asking him to do other things. Brent finally turned to me and said "you're right, he can't hear us." So I set Cole up with a hearing test through the school. He took it today and failed. Tommorrow he goes in for more extensive testing. So we should know more tommorrow. I'm really hoping that it's something simple like fluid buildup or something "fixable." I'll post the results tommorrow....

My attempt at being a fun mom

2010-03-02T12:20:00.000-08:00

So the kids and I decided to make homemade Valentine's this year. We found some cute ones in family fun magazine. We made flowers with a lollipop center for the girls and owls for the boys. It took us a good part of an afternoon and after cutting hundreds of hearts, and other shapes I was starting to realize why all the other "smart" parents spent 2.00 to buy spongebob valentines. :) And even though it took FOREVER...the kids thought it was pretty cool that they brought Valentines to school that they had actually made. And I felt like I racked up a few "good mommy" pts.

blackmail photo

2010-02-04T13:14:00.000-08:00

This is what happens when your children get bored on a Sunday afternoon. The boys thought it would be fun to dress up like girls. I'm not quite sure what the white cotton balls over their ears are...but it was pretty funny.

Question...please help

2010-01-20T08:10:00.000-08:00

Okay so about six months ago we took away Claire's pacifier. It seemed to be going well,
then I notice that every once in awhile she has her thumb in her mouth. Now it seems that she is sucking her thumb more and more. Last night we went to check on her before we went to bed and there she was sucking her thumb. So, do we give her, her pacifier back? I have two boys that suck their thumbs/fingers and to this day we are struggling to get them to stop. Not quite sure what to do here?? Any suggestions.

Fun in the snow

2010-01-18T09:14:00.000-08:00

Last Saturday, REI was having a free snowshoe day up by Mt. Hood. You could rent snowshoes for free, plus they had hot chocolate and bagels. My sister called and wanted to try and go up, since she was interested in purchasing some snowshoes. So we decided to make a fun day out of it and bring the whole family. I had a friend who was nice enough to lend me some snow pants and coats for some of the kids. It ended up being pretty warm and most of the kids ended up taking their jackets off and playing in their t-shirts. We started off on the "bunny hill", letting the kids go down that a few times and then informed them that we were headed off to a real hill. They grumbled, but ended up flying down the steep, long hill and loving it. Claire was the first one to decide she was done, I think the rest of us could have stayed another hour or so, but when a 2 year old is done, we're all done. On the way home we stopped at Calamity Jane's. This is the same little restaurant that Brent and I ate at on our honeymoon 10 years ago. We had the best burgers and the worst dessert ever! I think the hot fudge sauce was rancid, (That's probably why it was on the daily special board) but it's the first time i've ever sent back a brownie sundae!
Brent and the kids spent a good portion of our time there playing "I spy" with the dollar bills stapled all over the ceiling of the place (see pic below). It felt good to get out and be active and we all had a great time.

Jacob's "snowman"

This is how Claire was transported to and from the car, and the way back to the car, she was DONE and yelled and cried all the way back to the car, we were getting quite a few stares. I think people thought she was injured, Nope she's just 2.

A Spokane Christmas

2010-01-10T16:04:00.000-08:00

As usual we had a great time in Spokane for our Christmas break. The only downside would be that the kids were expecting snow for Christmas, being Spokane and all...but Santa did not deliver. Luckily our trip was filled with so many other fun things, that we really didn't notice the lack of snow.
I have no pics of Christmas morning, but just imagine it being AWESOME! We only took video this year. Jacob got a lego set, Malia got a koaroke machine, Cole got some Legos after we took "santa's" gift back to costco. (Jacob asked me why I had the receipt if santa gave it to Cole...oops) and Claire got a radio flyer bike. She can't reach the pedals yet, but hopefully by summer. :) It was a great day just relaxing and playing with cousins.
The day after Christmas was Brent's 35th! During the day we went bowling, which was
CU-RAZY with 21 children and a smattering of adults. Luckily that night we got a few babysitters and headed out on the town, adults only. And we needed it after that bowling trip. We went to a little place called "scratch" in downtown Spokane. It was great, we pretty much had the place to ourselves and we all ordered yummy desserts. These are the times that I look forward to the most on our trips.

On the 28th, Malia and I celebrated our birthdays, and where else but the happiest place on earth, none other than Chuck-e-Cheese. Somehow I managed to escape this trip without one of those sensory overload headaches that I usually get at this place. It really wasn't too bad. The most important thing is that Malia had a great time. Here she is sporting her new snow white pillow from Grannie, check Claire out in the picture. She's pretty sure that pillow was really for her, and she thought that for quite awhile!

Claire...right where she belongs. She is princess after all.

and what other things did we do to entertain ourselves?
We had a how long can you hold a handstand contest. I opted to sit this one out. (Brent won!)

The kids had so much fun with their cousins. Claire and her cousin Jane were so cute together

We played "make-up artist" with Grannie. She was a great sport.

We had a few minutes of quiet time amongst many minutes of loud, craziness.

Many games of rook, went to see Sherlock Holmes and ate at Chili's, Brent went to see Avatar with his brother, went after Christmas shopping and scored some deals at downeast basics,
and had many great conversations with family I love. Thanks guys, we had a great time.

ghosts of girlfriends....gross!

2010-01-10T08:38:00.000-08:00

Last night Brent and I watched "The ghosts of girlfriends past." It was yet another movie in which Hollywood has taken a very cute storyline and ruined it. The first half of the movie was so crude and raunchy. I think the word sex was mentioned every 10 seconds, and not in a good way. We finally looked at each other and decided to fast forward to the end. The end of the movie was great, I have to say it even brought a tear to my eye. But afterwards I was left thinking "that COULD have been a great movie." I hate when they take a great story and ruin it with dirty-ness (is that a word?) and crudeness.
On another note I'm still working on our Christmas post...one of these days!

Beauty and the Beast

2009-12-21T12:58:00.000-08:00

My good friend Amy Jo was performing as Mrs. Potts in Beauty and the Beast. Brent and I decided to take Malia for an early birthday present. The show was amazing! The set was elaborate, the singing beautiful...we all loved it. Here is a picture with Gaston after the show:

The family with Amy Jo, she was amazing!

Brent insisted on getting a picture with the feather duster lady...you know the very demure, flirty one. I'm thinking that ms. feather duster lady is trying hard to force a smile here. I think she was ready to go home.

Belle and the Beast. It was a great day. Thanks mom for staying with the rest of the kiddo's.

Out of the mouth of babes

2009-12-13T21:52:00.000-08:00

Today in my 5yr old sunday school class, a little boy said to me, "you have big lips, they look weird." I tried to explain to him in 5 year old language, that some ladies pay a lot of money to make their lips bigger. That big lips are beautiful." His reply...."they still look weird." 10 minutes later he told me my hair looked like snakes. Gotta love 5 year olds!

The Nightmare before Christmas

2009-12-10T08:32:00.001-08:00

You would think that I would have learned my lesson by now. I mean, I have been alive for 30+ years. You would think that I would learn to NOT commit myself to something, until I know exactly what i'm committing too. Our little ward Christmas play has turned into the Nightmare before Christmas. I thought I was committing to a "Small" ward play..I would make a five minute appearance, say my lines and be done. Little did I know that this play would last for an hour, consist of 200+ lines (for me), include costumes and props and involve hours and hours of rehearsal. The real problem is we are NOT READY! Half of the people don't know their lines , we don't have costumes and i've yet to see any props. The show is in exactly a week from today. Yikes. Our sweet director has really tried so hard, I don't feel like she's getting the support she needs. But one things for sure, For those of you in the area, it should at least, uh shall we say...entertaining. I wouldn't mind so much if we just had the one performance for the ward Christmas party. But we are having two performances, the first one open to the public. I hope the public doesn't find out. This is the last time I volunteer for something without knowing
exactly what i'm getting myself into. I can't wait until this is over, so I can focus on other things. Wish us luck, we are going to need it.

3 birthdays and Christmas

2009-11-17T10:45:00.000-08:00

Christmas and 3 birthdays within 4 days of each other? I can't decide if this is a blessing or a curse. On the down side, it's very overwhelming financially, you get lots of presents and then nothing for a whole year, all of your friends are out of town for your party. You get "combined" Christmas and Birthday presents. Your birthday presents are all wrapped in Christmas paper,no pool parties, you are so sick of treats, that a birthday cake doesn't sound so appealing. On the up side, you get lots of presents, there is usually family around to celebrate with you, there is a lot of chocolate left over from santa to sneak from your kids' stockings, I get to watch those sappy Christmas movies that always make me cry, no school...and it IS the best time of the year...right? So what do you think, a blessing or a curse??

Tougher than nails

2009-11-04T14:16:00.000-08:00

Malia had a minor surgery on Monday. She went to the periodontist for a
soft tissue graft. Basically the gum tissue below her two bottom front teeth was very thin, so they sliced off a piece of her gum on the upper part of her mouth (sounds gruesome, but that's pretty much how it happened) and grafted it on top of the thin tissue below her bottom teeth. The whole surgery took about an hour and she was sooo scared. I kept telling her to just keep her eyes closed and think about fun things. Afterwards she told me that she watched the whole thing. I have a friend who had this procedure done and she said it was very painful, so I was expecting the worst. The doctors said to keep her drugged for the next few days. But she woke up the following morning and said it didn't hurt very badly. She hasn't taken any medication since. She must have a high tolerance for pain. She was such a trooper and never complained once. She was back at school today and is doing great.

Halloween happenings

2009-11-01T08:53:00.000-08:00

Every year the kids' school has one fundraiser. It's a jog-a-thon and if they raise a certain amount of money they get to go to an "after dark party." The kids have gone every year until this one. We knew they probably wouldn't be raising enough to go and they were pretty bummed. So we told them we would take them bowling and have our own after dark party. We found a great pizza place called "Christo's" in Salem that makes fabulous pizza, the real stuff! We ate there and then headed to the bowling alley. The kids loved bowling and I have to admit that I came in third behind my 5 year old. (But he used the bumpers way more than I did!) Still embarrassing.

I'm realizing this morning what a lame parent I am, as I sat down to post some pictures from Halloween and realized that we have NO pictures of Cole in his ninja costume and in Malia's pictures she's not wearing her snow queen crown and cape that I spent half a day handsewing Sparkly ice crystals too. The crown makes the costume! I'm going to make them put their costumes on today for a "pretend it's still Halloween photoshoot." We had a great Halloween, I was so glad it was on Saturday this year. We invited a bunch of families over for a wild dinner and wild it was...about 50 people all together. (most of them kids)Luckily it wasn't raining so we could send some kids outside. We had plenty of fun food and had a great time hanging out. My friend Ann made these caramel dipped marshmallows that were AMAZING. I've added the recipe to www.domesticdittodiva.blogspot.com. Luckily I took a spinning class in the morning because I had my share of these little treats! After we ate half the people left for the church trunk or treat, while the rest of us went trick-or-treating around the neighborhood. We feel so blessed to have such great friends here...

October update

2009-10-29T09:34:00.001-07:00

So i've been feeling a little "blah" about the blog lately. Haven't felt like writing much because sometimes I feel like i'm just writing to myself. But then I reminded myself that this blog also serves as a sort of family journal, so it's time to get the ball rolling again. October has been pretty busy. I can't believe how fast it's flown by. The kids are anxious for Halloween. (pics to follow) and we are planning a big Halloween dinner for some friends.
I've also been busy getting ready for our upcoming craft fair the first weekend in December. Last year I did a lot of "last minute" preparations and i'm trying to avoid that this year.
Some other news is that Brent and I managed to get ourselves the leads in the church Christmas play. Scary! (for everyone else) Malia really wanted to read for a part, so we went down to the church and I read with her. A week later the director lady called me and pleaded with me to have a role in the play. Not because I was great, but because it turns out that no other female adults tried out. I've been regretting my decision a little when Malia came to me and said "look Mom, you have 231 lines, the next biggest part only has 100) Yikes...this brain of mine is not quite as sharp as it used to be, and memorizing 231 lines could be a challenge. Brent reluctantly took the male lead part when he realized that I would have to kiss another guy on the cheek. Can't have that in a church play. :) (maybe that's not the real reason...but kind of close) Anyway, i've been a little worried about the whole thing.
Jacob had some exciting news last week. His school was holding their annual jog-a-thon fundraiser and they have a big assembly where they draw names for prizes. The whole school is entered. Jacob won the grand prize. A 16-in-1 game table. Foosball, pool, darts, etc. The kids were so excited, it was like Christmas around here.
Well, i'm off to the kids' school...Happy Halloween!

Diaper free

2009-10-09T12:01:00.000-07:00

Well it's official after 8 1/2 years, 102 months, 3102 days (please don't check my math) we are DONE with diapers! Claire is officially potty trained. I think that's cause for a celebration!

AGW-(all girls weekend)

2009-10-02T12:06:00.001-07:00

This past weekend was fabulous. I flew to Spokane to spend the weekend with my sis-in-laws and mother-in-law. It was a perfect weekend from start to finish. Friday we went to a consignment sale at the fairgrounds where I found some good deals on clothes for the kids. After that we headed home (MIL's). My MIL (Debbie) had invited one of her fabulous cook friends over to teach us how to make homemade pasta, foccacia bread and molten lava cake. I think this was one of my favorite things that we did. It was fun to just be together and eat yummy food.
(See our new food blog http://www.domesticdittodiva.blogspot.com/) That evening we went shopping, I found a 5x8 rug for a great price and decided to try and haul it home on the plane. I have to give a shout out to southwest for being the best airline around and for letting me check in the rug even though it was over sized. I *heart* southwest! I did get plenty of weird looks carrying that rug in and out of the airport.

Friday night we went to a great little restaurant and ate good food. That night we sat around the kitchen table and made crafts. I'm trying to look sad in the restaurant pic because I was the only one with no food, but I did get a free dessert because of it!

The next morning we slept in, went for a walk and then headed to the spa. We had a foot massage, back massage and a mud hair treatment. That evening we watched the RS women's broadcast. (Where I was happy to learn that they changed the name of the enrichment meetings to RS meetings...pretty easy to remember. :) Sunday we tried our hand at sewing some bag for a humanitarian project. Unfortunately with me behind one of the sewing machines, our goal of 20 was reduced to 10...but i'm sure those ten kids will be happy! (As long as they don't get one of the two bags I sewed)
It was a great weekend, with great friends and fun. I often wondered this weekend why we hadn't done this before? It was hard to come back to a week of babysitting. But I am happy to say that I only have 4 more hours to go! Thanks girls for a great weekend!

The gift that Debbie had waiting for each of us in our room.

I'm not sure what we were doing in the photo below, I just thought it was funny.

Jacob turns 7!

2009-09-20T18:20:00.000-07:00

Jacob turned 7 on Friday. We started off the day with his requested breakfast of pancakes with a face. Cole made fun of my first pancake for Jacob,saying that he had to eat a "girl" pancake. Oh the horror! I shortened the hair the next time.
Then it was off to school. Jacob's class celebrates all September birthdays on the last friday of the month, so I went in during lunch (lugging a baby carseat and all) and brought him a birthday cupcake. Jacob suddenly became the most popular boy in his class and everyone wanted to sit by him and his special guests. After school we had a small party with 4 of his friends. I had some games ready to go, but they really just wanted to play. They ran around the house and had a great time. Jacob wanted a lego cake. I was going to make one that looked like a lego, but he kept saying "mom, do whatever you want." So I took the easy route. And honestly this cake could be submitted to that website for the worst cakes ever made. It was supposed to be a chocolate mousse layer cake and ended up as a chocolate volcano of some sort. Makes me laugh just looking at it, but it was dang delicious! And that's the most important part.

Jacob had a great time. I can't believe how fast he is growing up. He's such a sweet boy, except when he's tormenting his little brother. But according to other mom's, that's his job?? His teacher had everyone in his class write him a birthday card and they all said such sweet things. It was such a boost for him since this school year has been a little difficult so far. So i'm thankful to his teacher for that.

That same day Brent and I celebrated our 10th anniversary. I woke up to a nice note and a new pair of slippers. Saturday my mom and dad came up and we hit the town Ditto style. That involved dinner at an italian restaurant, a few new clothes at the mall and yes, grocery shopping. I know, we are party animals. (We consider our cruise last spring our 10 year gift.) It was just so nice to be alone with no kids, and not in a rush to get back. It was a nice, relaxing evening. I am happy to say that we are still madly in love and I couldn't wish for a better man to be married too.

A day at the Kroc center.

2009-09-20T17:56:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we had the honor of attending Dr. McDonalds patient appreciation day at the new Kroc center. The Kroc center is a new community center they just finished in Salem. It has swimming pools, a rock wall, fitness area, gym, theater, and many classes offered. It's kind of like an upgraded YMCA. It officially opens next week, so if you have spent a pretty penny at Dr. McDonalds (like we have) then you were invited to attend this event. The kids were really excited to swim. Remember when you went swimming as a kid. You could pretty much do anything except for running on the cement and holding your friends head under water for too long. Well, rules have changed. We found out that 1. kids are not allowed to wear there life jackets in the lazy river, or in the large pool area. I guess they would rather have those kids drown than wear their life jackets?? 2. You can only lay down on the slide, no sitting up. Because some genius built a metal support bar that you may hit your head on if sitting. Malia was too scared to lay down, so no slide for us. 3. None of my kids were allowed to get in the hot tub. 4. You are not allowed to toss your 2 yr old up into the air, no matter how many excited squeals are coming from her little mouth. 5. You cannot wear your goggles on the slide, they may injure your eyes. But you may put them around your wrist and slide down. We were only in the pool for about 40 minutes and had the whistle blown on our little family at least 4 times. Toward the end of the 40 minutes we were all huddled in the one area of the pool that did allow life jackets, looking at each other like "well, what CAN we do?" Seriously can't they just post a sign that says "swim at your own risk" and let us actually enjoy ourselves? And what's this new rule about NOT allowing kids to wear life jackets. When we questioned the pool manager about this she said kids are not allowed to wear life jackets in the lazy river because they might get caught in the current. Well I would rather have them caught in the current with their life jacket, then without. People are so stinking scared of getting sued these days that no one is allowed to have any fun.
Needless to say we won't be getting a membership. I do have to say that the center does offer tons of classes that I think the kids will love, and luckily the cost is the same whether your a member or not, but I don't think we'll be doing much swimming.
And since i'm already venting I have to add another short story. A while back I was leaving the gym and a Mary Kay representative was doing a drawing for free products. Well, I actually won. Yay! $10 in free products. So she called today and then the truth comes out. The $10 in free products is only good if you have her come to your house to do her 30-60 minute shpeel. Well I've heard the schpeel and I don't want to hear it again. If I don't do the schpeel it's $10 off $30 or more. Sounds like some false advertisement to me. I just wanted my free products, but since I wasn't willing to listen to the whole rundown and do a self-applied facial and have a "glamour" makeover, I get nothing. Lame....okay enough venting from me, I'll try to be more positive on the next post.

The frazzled housewife-yep that's me!

2009-09-17T19:17:00.000-07:00

This week has been hard, really hard. But I can't complain because i've gotten myself into this mess. "This mess" consists of watching a 6 mo old for 9 hours a day, for three weeks. I'm sure you're asking yourself "what were you thinking?" I've been asking myself this question myself lately. I was thinking that babies sleep a lot, I was thinking it was the nice thing to do, I was also thinking of the $$. (Which by the way, is not much) well, it's NOT WORTH IT! This baby does not sleep a lot. He's a 20 minutes sleeper, but The hardest part of the situation is Claire, who is experiencing some baby jealousy. In the past two days, Claire has unraveled rolls of toilet paper, saturated her hair with hand soap, smeared doo-doo on her bedroom wall (maybe I shouldn't be potty training right now?), spilled dish detergent all over the floor, opened a bottle of nail polish and painted her hands, Cut up one of my library books and lastly, CUT THE BABIES HAIR! The sad thing is that I am almost ALWAYS in the same room as the baby, I ran upstairs to put away some laundry...was up there about 10 minutes and that's when it must have happened. I didn't even notice at the time, the baby's mom pointed it out to me and she was not too happy...and I felt like the worlds biggest shlup. I still do. I'm surprised that she's bringing him back tommorrow. So basically, I'm exhausted and I vow to never (unless you are my family and I love you dearly) watch another child under 1 for a long, long time. This is reaffirming my decision to stop at 4~

Back to school!

2009-09-16T10:17:00.000-07:00

Things have finally settled down at our house. The kids are all in school finally. Malia and Jacob started last week and Cole started yesterday. I thought Cole would be nervous on his first day, but he sat down at his seat and didn't seem to care that I was leaving him. He is so excited to be in school. This past weekend Brent took all of the kids to a rocket launch. Basically it's a big field and people pay a small fee to launch their rockets. It's an all day event with rockets of all different sizes. The kids thought it was awesome and i thought it was awesome to have the whole morning to myself!
I don't think I would be a good mom unless I posted my kids' 1st day of school pics! How cute is this guy, he's so excited!

Jacob on his first day. He's in a 1st/2nd grade blend this year and seems to be doing well. He had a rough few days as most of his good friends went into the charter school (we have a charter program within our school, it's a lottery pick to get in, but I didn't even try, since I have loved the teachers outside of the charter) He only knew a few kids in his class and they were girls. So it's been an adjustment for him. But Brent insists it will make him stronger. :)

Unlike Jacob, Malia has almost all of the same kids in her class as last year. She loves her teacher and is surrrounded by good friends. I've seen a definate improvement in her behavior since school has started. She loves to stay busy.

My Wife the Computer Genius

2009-09-15T21:31:00.000-07:00

Yes, Deena can truly do it all. Not only is she a decorator, but she can also solve any computer problem.

A few nights ago Deena was working on the computer when a virus started showing up and locking the computer down. This happened at night just before bed and I didn't have time to fix it, so I thought I'd fix it the next day after work....I never got the chance.

While I was at work the following day, Deena was busy troubleshooting the problem at home. She used our other, much slower, computer to look online at how to fix the problem. Once she found a suitable solution, she got busy implementing it. She found an anti-virus program, downloaded and installed it and killed that nasty virus.

Now our computer is running like new again! Is there anything my wife can't do...or figure out how to do? My next project for her is to change the timing belt on our car. I could get used to this...

Is it time for school already?

2009-08-31T09:21:00.000-07:00

I just finished a really long post, clicked post and everything went blank, i'm starting from scratch...so you are getting the condensed verion.

Wow, it's been a long time since i've posted anything. Summer has just flown by. Since I last posted we have been able to do some fun things. We took a trip to the zoo and enchanted forest. Picked lots of berries, swimming, etc, We played a mean game of rook with our friends the Parmenters and finally went up to Spokane for the Harvey Family reunion. We stayed at this great campground called Bear paw campground. Each family had there own little cabin. It was perfect, we were right by the river and had a pool, tennis course, volleyball, horseshoes, Koob, basketball...it was just the perfect place for a family reunion. After the reunion Brent flew home, Jacob went home with his cousins to Yakima, we kept our cousin Alysee, and we hung out in Spokane for 4 days. The kids had a great time playing with their cousins and I had a great time hanging out with the girls. On our way to Yakima to pick up Jacob we stopped at one of the greatest waterparks in Moses lake. (of course No pictures to document this) I was so thanksful that my SIL Blayre came along to help with the four kiddos. We had a fabulous time. If you are ever near Moses Lake it's an amazing waterpark. It's just in the middle of nowhere. I was really proud of Malia, she was brave enough to go off the high dive. Of course there was an ice cream bribe involved. That night we stayed in Yakima. While we were there my SIL took these pics of the kids.

Overall it was a great trip. The week after we got home Brent left for his annual's "All brothers hike." (that's another post in itself) While he was gone I kept myself busy doing some redecorating. And as requested here's some pics.

The after pic: I found this great bed at a garage sale. It was a steal! I painted the nightstands, replaced the curtains and painted the walls "pebble grey." I love how it turned out. Claire's room, my SIL took these pictures of Claire. Did some digital scrapbooking magic to them and had them sent to Costco for me to pick up. Thanks Sara. She did all the work and i get to enjoy them. Just how I like it. :)

Our big project was putting in these new french doors. Before the space was a large dining room/living room area. We hardly ever used the dining room, it was just wasted space. So we decided to turn it into our office.

I did a lot of new vinyl projects. This is one that I think turned out well. It's so fun to be able to change my decor with the vinyl.

We are all ready for school to start. Still another week and a half. I'll have three in school this year, i'm so looking forward to that!

Summer fun

2009-07-26T15:26:00.000-07:00

Summer is flying by, I can't believe it's almost August. We've been keeping busy. I'm horrible about remembering to take pictures, but here's a few i've gotten. We went to the beach a few weeks ago with some people from church. It was overcast, but not windy, that's all you can ask for at the Oregon coast.
At the beach we were at there is a huge sand dune that people like to climb up and then run down. It's pretty step (and high). I had to capture Malia doing what she does best, being dramatic. She literally crawled up the hill because it was "too hard" (insert really whiney voice) to walk. Of course she was thrilled once she reached the top. I love this picture. The kids chilling on the trampoline with their cousins. Malia was so sad for these guys to head back to California.

For the 4th of July we had a barbeque and had some friends over. It was a great night. The weather was perfect and we had great food. I had to get a picture of our friend Marty using his blowtorch to light the kids' fireworks. (So Marty-like)

Luckily our friends brought a few exciting fireworks (aka: illegal) so we had a little more variety to our fireworks display.

The rest of our summer has been filled with swimming lessons, tennis lessons, bike rides, and trips to the park. Nothing too exciting. We are looking forward to a fun family reunion in Washington in August. The kids and I are staying an extra week while Brent will return to work.

Sunriver!

2009-07-01T10:48:00.001-07:00

We just returned from our annual trip to Sunriver. I think it was one of our best trips. The weather was perfect! The week flew by and I was left wishing we could stay just a few more days.
While we where their we celebrated Coles 5th birthday. What could be better than spending your birthday surrounded by family...and having a bakugan cake. This is my attempt at a bakugan cake, Cole loved it.

Cole got a new remote control monster truck, it's super fast. So fast that Cole can't really control it, so Brent has to drive it...hhmmm???..was that present really for Cole??

Cole is my mellow boy. Rarely does he have temper tantrums. He's completely happy playing playing by himself. He loves cars and legos. He is so affectionate and is always the first to give me hugs and kisses if he see's that i'm sad. I love that about him. He's also our daredevil and bets are on the table that he will be the first kid in the family with a broken bone. He also loves cheese. I know that's a random fact, but I say that because for his birthday he asked for a block of cheese. There were MANY things on his list and the block of cheese didn't make it to the gift table. A few days after his party he said sadly, "mommy you didn't get me my cheese." So sad, maybe for Christmas.
Back to our trip:

We spent time at the park playing baseball

Going for bike rides

swimming...lots of swimming!

Claire is our water baby and threw a fit everytime we told her it was time

to leave the pool. And wow, can she throw a tantrum!

Family hike to Benham falls. Malia was unseperable from her cousins. I think I saw her once or twice this whole trip.

It was a fabulous trip, already looking forward to next year!

tball and softball

2009-07-01T10:43:00.001-07:00

Well we made it through softball season. This is the first time that i've had two kids in a sport at a time, i've always had a "one at a time" rule. I have a whole new respect for my mom, who had 6 kids involved in multiple different sports. And i'm just beginning. This was Malia's first year playing. I was impressed with how much she improved. She didn't have a super passionate coach (saying that nicely) but I think she had fun anyway. Jacob loved tball, it was fun to see how much better he was this year compared to last. You could tell he was one of the older kids. He loves everything about baseball and had a great year. Next year I may have 3 playing, Yikes!

2009-06-21T18:50:00.000-07:00

The other day Jacob had a friend over to play. After they had been playing for awhile the boys asks "Hey Jacob, do you have a playstation?" Jacob, having no idea what a playstation is, replies, "yeah, my ROOM is my playstation." I had a good laugh over that!

Much ado about nothing

2009-06-08T22:29:00.000-07:00

Today was just one of those days again. We decided it was time to take away Claire's pacifier. She usually spends half of her day whining for me to find her paci. Last night/morning she woke up at 5:30 demanding her paci. I stumbled into her room and looked EVERYWHERE, under her mattress, her pillow, pulled the bed out from the wall and looked there..I never did find it. I had to go downstairs and search for one. Not something I wanted to be doing at 5:30am. That's when I decided it was time to banish the paci....forever! So you may want to stay away from the Ditto household for a few days, as there will be a lot of whining, screaming and crying going on. (and not just Claire) I was also frustrated with the boys today. Cole who is my mellow one, threw a tantrum at a friends house and tried to hit me. Then at Malia's softball game tonight they decided to pull their pants down and try to get pee on each other. Luckily I didn't witness this...and I hope they managed to be far away from people. But I was SOOO mad. I'm sure in 20 years i'll laugh at their 4 and 6 year old antics. But today it was not funny. I sent them to bed without dinner. I think most of my frustration is just me feeling blah...I haven't exercised in over a week, because I pulled something in my foot during the marathon and it was hurting pretty bad. But it's slowly been getting better, So tonight I went to the gym and had a good workout. It's amazing what a good workout can do for a grouchy mom!
The one highlight of the day was a discover the boys made in the back yard. Malia built a birdhouse at school last year. It's sitting on our table in the backyard. Today the boys lifted up the opening in the side of the birdhouse and a bird flew out, it had built a nest inside and there are 6 little red and white eggs inside. It was pretty cool and Jacob declared today "The best day of his whole life" ( until he was banished to his room without dinner)

Marathon weekend

2009-06-01T10:54:00.000-07:00

Well my big day has come and gone and I'm still alive. Friday night the kids and I headed over to Depoe Bay where we were renting a house with 5 other runners and their families. It was a great house with 8 rooms, so there was plenty of room for everyone. Brent came over after work. Saturday morning came early, we had to be out of the house by 6:15. We were all a little anxious. This pic is taken right before we left:
Natalie and I started the race doing about a 10 minute mile. We stayed together until about mile 15 before we split up. I felt really good until about mile 19, then I could feel myself losing steam. But I kept running. About mile 22 I was getting really tired and started to run/walk. My goal was to finish in 5 hours and I finished in 5 hours 12 minutes. The last mile I was so tired that I was feeling super emotional, I had a hard time not crying as I crossed the finish line. Here's a link to my "finish line" pictures. (hopefully the link works) Overall it was such a rewarding experience. I'm so glad I did it, and might even consider doing another one...gotta beat that 5 hour mark!
http://aep.exposuremanager.com/g/nm09_55&gallery_page=&gallery_all=&view=1&photo_page=3
This is a pic of what happens when you decide to wear a different sports bra on race day, then the one you'd been wearing while training. As my friend Linae said "Deena, WHAT WERE YOU THINKING!" Lesson learned.
After the race we went to get Burgers and Milkshakes. For once I felt like I could chow and not feel guilty! That afternoon we went to the beach for a while, but being Oregon, it was cold and windy. So here I am trying to comfort two little girls who were ready to go home.

Malia and Jacob didn't seem to mind the cold!

It was such a fun weekend, spent with great friends. Thanks to everyone who called and emailed to wish me luck, and to my mom and Dad and Sister Kelly for coming to the coast to cheer me on. It meant a lot to me!

Complete randomness

2009-05-27T14:09:00.000-07:00

The boys are obsessed, and I mean OBSESSED with these little toys called bakugan's. Every cent that they earn goes towards buying these little things. I don't get it?
These are my latest two vinyl projects for the house. Can you have too much vinyl? Some may say yes, I say no, as long as it's done tastefully. :) I was bored and decided to make a few things. The birds are in the kids' bathroom and the tree branch (may have to click on it, it's a little dark) is in the kitchen. Makes me want to do more!

Three more days until the big marathon, I have butterflies in my stomach just thinking about it!
We had an offer made on our house, but it fell through when we countered. And no you didn't miss anything, we do not have a house on the market. These were some people we knew...I have such mixed feelings about moving. Makes me realize how much I love our house and friends here!

While the boys are away the girls shall play

2009-05-20T16:16:00.001-07:00

Father/son campout was last Friday. The boys look forward to this every year and so do I. They were so excited and thanks to the photography skills of my hubby I think we really captured their excitement here!

Okay all kidding aside, they did have a great time. I think this picture was taken 30 seconds after they woke up. It was a short trip but they were able to fit in S'mores and some baseball, What more could they want?
Friday night I attempted my 20 mile run, the longest I run before the actual marathon next week. In case I haven't mentioned this before....that's REALLY far and my body is just now recovering. As soon as I got home I took the girls to subway and then we went home to watch "The spiderwick Chronicles" We ended up making it halfway before it got too scary for Malia, so we turned it off and read some books in bed. The next morning we had doughnuts and hot chocolate for breakfast. At 10:30 was the iris festival parade. Our towns annual festival, the kids love the parade, but mostly the candy thrown to them during the parade. It was a great weekend with lots of sun!
I just had to throw this pic in because I thought it was cute. I found Claire cuddling this doll and singing to it, she sure can be cute when she's not screaming.

Writing festivities

2009-05-20T16:09:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday we attended a writing festival for Malia. One child was picked from each grade, at each school in the district. Malia was chosen for the 2nd grade at her school. She was so excited to go get her award. It was fun to go see the book that she had written "The Beatuful Angel" (I guess the teacher doesn't spellcheck for them) The awards part of the night was loonng. They had a guest author speak, as well as having 10 children from the district read there books to the audience. After that they gave each award individually. Luckily our school was towards the front of the alphabetical line-up and we made a mad dash for the door as soon as Malia received her award. We are proud of her, good job Malia!

The best day of the year!

2009-05-12T15:00:00.000-07:00

Mother's day is my favorite day of the year. I share my birthday with Malia, which I love, but I think of it more as "her" day now. So mother's day is my day and I have to say I had a great one this year.
First off, Brent was in charge of the gifts for all of the women in our ward this year. He wanted to do something different, so I suggested dipping oreos. I found some online that were crazy expensive and decided that we should do it ourselves. Brent offered the help of the men in the ward but I said NO WAY, I want these to look nice. So I dipped 400 oreos, Brent helped me bag and tie them. It really didn't take too long and they were yummy! You can't go wrong with dipped oreos, unless your my crazy friend K who doesn't like oreos, weird. (jk, you know i love you!) Ignore my slightly sunburned face in this pic.

The leftovers...

My mother's day was awesome. Brent and the kids made me breakfast in bed. Crepes with 3 different fillings, sausage and pineapple. It was really good! Brent got me a new mp3 player so I don't have to borrow his anymore, a new workout tshirt and a few other small things. The kids made me fun art projects at school. I told the kids that my only wish for mother's day was to have no fighting. That lasted until about 9am, oh well. Besides teaching my 5 year olds at church, I had no other responsibilites. Brent made lunch, dinner and a dessert. (caramel brownies!) He put the kids to bed and cleaned up the kitchen. It really was the perfect mother's day. Thanks Brent!

just one of those days

2009-05-01T09:27:00.001-07:00

Ever have those mornings where you wake up to this?
and this
and this
and this...........
When is mother's day again????

Future author?

2009-04-27T12:49:00.000-07:00

Our school district is having an "Excellence in Writing" awards night. One child is chose from each grade level at each school Malia's writing was chosen out of all three second grade classes at her school. She will get to attend the awards banquet where she'll be given an award (and a free book... her favorite part). She really does have a talent for writing and we love listening to the fun storylines that she comes up with. Congratulations Malia!

Marathon training

2009-04-27T12:29:00.001-07:00

When I first started this marathon training I did a lot of reading, looking for advice and tips. One mans tip was to "not bore your friends and family with your training schedule." I understand where he's coming from, but at the same time this is something i'm doing with my life right now, so i'm going to ignore his advice. I guess if it bores you, don't read it. :) This race training has been such an empowering experience for me. My first "long" run was 5 miles and I told Brent that I didn't think I would be able to make it. Before that, I was only running 1-2 miles max. But I did it, then I did 6, then 7...and on Saturday morning I went out for my 17 mile run. This was by far my best run. I finally started using some "energy gel" packets during my run, they taste absolutely disgusting, but I had so much more energy then previous weeks. It helped my confidence to finally have a long run where I didn't have to stop and walk. It makes me feel like I can really do this. On the downside I got stung by some stinging nettle while making a "pit stop." One of the hazards of long-distance running that you don't hear about. :) That stuff hurts! (on my legs!) I only have two more long runs before our schedule cuts back on distance before the actual race. The group that is running is renting a house on the coast so we are looking forward to a great weekend with friends, food and lots of running! I really didn't think I could EVER run a marathon and it's exciting to think that maybe, just maybe I can.

A night on the town

2009-04-23T11:04:00.000-07:00

Last night I received a phone call from a friend. She said, "can you be ready in five minutes and be gone for the rest of the night." Without even running it by Brent I said, "sure." because i'm spontaneous like that. :) Later I realized it was Brent's basketball night, but being the amazing husband he is, he missed it for me. So my friend picked me up a few minutes later and we headed to Portland to see Grease. It was AMAZING! I haven't been to many shows in my lifetime, but I love them and think they are so exciting. The music (of course) was fabulous. How can you not love grease! The actors/actresses had amazing voices. I kept getting goosebumps, that's how great they were. The show featured Taylor Hicks (American Idol winner a few years back) He had a cameo appearance and then after the show performed one of the singles off his new album (...now for sale in the lobby....) It made me laugh when he started singing, and it was a really great song by the way, and then halfway through he stops and says..."this song is currently on my new album, blah, blah, blah, you can buy it in the lobby following the show" then he continues on with the second half of his song. I just thought that was funny, and a little tacky. I'm so glad I was available to go, thanks Lori!

just an update

2009-04-17T13:20:00.001-07:00

It was a sad day in the Ditto house yesterday. My kitchen-aid died. This is not the
first time we've had problems with it. Only the first time the problem was caused
by us. Brent didn't realize that frozen butter and kitchen-aid's don't mix. $80 later,
he now knows. Yesterday I was making bread and I just had the liquid in the bowl, went
to turn on the mixer and it just froze and made this horrible sound. My hand mixer also
died a couple of weeks ago, so i'm left with nothing but muscle power. I'm hoping Brent
can fix it, but he tried last time and had no luck. My dream is to have a bosch, but have you
seen the price on those things?? crazy.
We are also having neighbor issues. We love most of our neighbors, and are trying to like
others. Mainly one. They have not like us since them moment we moved in. Seems we are
always doing something wrong. Whether it's been scooting over their garbage can a little,
parking in front of their house or the boys riding their bikes in their driveway. This time it was letting our cat wander into their yard. Any advice on how to keep a cat out of someone's yard. That's like trying to keep me away from chocolate, it's nearly impossible. Oh well, it's a good test for me I suppose.
Jacob and Malia have both started softball/t-ball. I feel like i'm getting a taste of what it will be
like trying to juggle kids' schedules. I can't imagine what high school will be like, having all four of them in different places i'm sure. Anyway, they are both enjoying it, but we are hoping for some warmer weather here soon!

Easter time!

2009-04-17T12:50:00.000-07:00

Easter this year was pretty low key. The week before Easter I was just feeling like
there is so much that distracts from the real reason we have Easter. I'm sure this came from a conversation I had with one of the kids. Me: "Do you know the reason we celebrate Easter?" Them: (pause) "because of the Easter bunny??" Don't get me wrong, I love Easter egg hunts and doing fun Easter crafts, but I wanted to focus more on Christ and the real reason we have Easter. The kids got small Easter baskets. (Actually Cole's was a halloween bucket, he thought that was pretty cool)and we dyed eggs. On Sunday we went to church, listened to some great speakers and then went to my Mom's to have Easter dinner. It was a nice relaxing Easter. I think I can safely say that the kids are pretty clear on why we have Easter.

So the Friday before Easter I decided I wanted to make the girls matching Easter dresses. NOT RECOMMENDED! I spent most of Saturday working on them. I think I went to bed around 1:30 that night. The next morning they tried them on and Malia's look so bad, from my hurried sewing, that I talked her into wearing something else. I'm hoping I can still fix her's. Here's Claire in her dress.

This is my attempt to get a picture of all of the kids together. I just had to document it... The first one you see Claire lying on the floor throwing a fit, she was going to have no part of this picture.
Second attempt, not one looking at the camera

Third attempt, not sure what Jacob and Cole are doing?

fourth attempt, Cole has had enough

Fifth attempt, after much threatening and some bribing...finally!