Naomi

What can I say? She's just a cutie!

Weekend Get-Away

This weekend, some friends watched the kids for us and Brian and I attended a wedding a few hours away, we got a nice motel room and just enjoyed our time as just the 2 of us... well, ok, we weren't completely alone, but this little one doesn't require anything yet.

We drove up around a sky resort area and then took a leisurely drive home, hoping to shop on the way, but then there was the first place we stopped, it was 10am... they opened at 11am. So we drove for a while and dinked around, stopped at another store 30 miles away, it was 11am and that store didn't open until 12pm! So, we gave up, ate lunch and drove home. Oh well.
Oh- and that little brown spot you see in the meadow... that was a bull elk!

"Hat" Says She

Naomi is very fair skinned, so I started putting her in hats whenever we would go outside from the very beginning. Now she loves hats. She has at least 10 to 15 hats hanging in her room and I have to be careful to just hand her one, because otherwise she wants to wear them all- at once.
She pats her head and says "Hat! Hat!"

The boys find it entertaining when she wants to wear more than one hat... so they give her a hand.

Jesse's new haircut

Jesse loves to joke around. So, I "joked" with him. This is half-way through his last haircut, I said he was done and he thought it was hilarious!

July 4th

The 4th of July is probably my favorite holiday. I love the family time. Growing up everyone would go to my Grandparent's house- they had a big farm in Washington. We would have a big picnic/potluck and my Grandpa or Uncle would mow a baseball diamond in the field. The people who didn't want to play sat in the shade near Home Plate and cheered us on while we played. Then my dad was in charge of a fireworks display- people chipped in money and they got quite a lot, the neighbors would come up to watch as well.
The 4th is quite different now, but every year I remember the good times we had and I want to make it that way for my kids. We BBQ-ed souvlaki and invited 3 other families, lunch was great, but it's a little too hot here to be playing baseball (100 degrees) so as the talked turned into quotes from The Princess Bride, we decided that would be a good way to spend the afternoon. In the evening we went to our traditional fireworks stand and headed out of town to a friend's house. (We aren't supposed to light fireworks inside city limits.) The boys all had money to spend and enjoyed making noise, Naomi did really well and enjoyed them all, clapping after each one and trying to pop the snappers.
I really like taking pictures of the sparklers- here's a couple of my favorites from this year.

2008 in 2008

My New Year's resolution. We have entirely too much stuff! I belong to a mom's forum (MDC) and there are a ton of different discussion boards- one being a simplifying and decluttering forum. Someone came up with a challenge- to get rid of 2008 things in the year 2008. So I signed up. I wasn't sure how I would keep track of everything, until Brian volunteered to make me a chart.
This week we went through the boys room- they really like it when we go through their room and clear things out. They normally have a hard time figuring out what to hang on to, but if their room is messy they usually ask if we can clear it out. We emptied their whole room and put it all in the living room:

How is it possible that that much junk was in that small of a room??
This time they asked if they could limit it to keeping 10 things each. Fine with me! Only the catch was weapons and stuffed animals didn't count... I guess. (We've never counted sets of toys- like legos or baseball cards)


Jesse had "The World's Smallest Pencil" and really didn't want to keep it as one of his 10, so he took a picture of it to prove how small it was and then tossed with it the rest of the stuff.



Stephen wanted a picture of a candy cane before he got rid of it-- here we are about 1/2 way through the stuff.

In the end we probably got rid of 400-500 things, we lost count after hitting 200 in one garbage bag. We threw out 4 bags of trash school papers, (I thought I went through them all... but they would stash them away!) broken toys missing pieces, etc. 4 bags of stuff went to the Rescue Mission and 4 bags of winter clothes went downstairs. I'll go through those later.

I just estimated on my chart- and it was a low estimate, I went with a little over 300 items. So now, on my chart I have 1470 things gone! And it hasn't made a huge difference, so I think I'm going to have to do it next year too!

Now for the last couple days they have been in their room sorting legos and building new things- because they like being in their room again!

Fishy Lips!

I finally caught it in a picture!!! I love it when Naomi makes her "fishy lips" and have been trying to catch it in a picture for months- this time the boys got me in time: "Quick Mom- grab the camera!" Yay! Thanks boys! :-)

Jesse the Parrot

The other day Jesse was working with some paper and then I looked out the window and there he was, sitting on the porch and staring at cars as they drive by. Apparently, he just wanted to see how people would react when they saw him there.