Best Thing Ever

This one right here....she is just the best thing ever. We have our moments were we fight already over what to wear, the "Okay, mom" moments and the stretching of the wings. But she is still mine for the time being. My pledge is to love her for who she is and to always be there to support her and uplift her. We have the mother-daughter thing...I pray that the years to come with be filled with love and respect and good talks. The kind where we really enjoy each other and want to be around one another. My prayer is for understanding on both of our parts...that we grow together and through Christ our relationship is strong. Love you baby.

Himself

It is hard to grow up. It is hard to be happy all the time. It is hard to be a kid. It is hard to sit and have your picture taken over and over. It is hard to live up to expectations. It is hard to be a younger brother. It is hard to want to be able to read and write like your older sibling.

The world will tell him to be so many different things....I just tell him to be himself. I just ask for that short time to raise him up in God's ways and then let God take over and that I do the best I can.

The Proper Terminology

So this story has a background that goes back about 5 years. My daughter loves, loves, loves animals. When she was little she would spend hours playing with her little puppies and kitties. When her brother was born she would usually run from the room while I was changing his diaper....until one day when she looked in and proudly declared "Noah has a tail!!!!" So in order to protect her innocence, I continued to call it noah's tail as well. We got a lot of miles off the whole "tail" thing.

Fast forward a couple of years when she called "it" a tail to one of her friends and they correctly informed her that it was not a tail, like a dog....it was a p_n_s. I was being urged by several of my friends to inform her of the correct language of the appendage a boy has. So that was now done...i just needed to guide her that it was not a word we used very often and we don't really talk about p_n_s's.

Last week I sat my kids down to watch "The Sandlot". Super cute movie. The kids laughed the whole movie over the giant dog. But the laughter increased dramatically when sydnie saw the dog jump over the fence and yelled "wow, that dog has a big p_n_s!!!!!" I had to leave the room and laugh...did not want to encourage yelling out anatomy. Needless to say daddy was not thrilled.........that is what you get for telling her the proper terminology!!

Punkin' Patch

Finally some nice weather that we could go to the pumpkin patch....of course we went twice in one day...i think we can be done for the year. Yesterday afternoon, noah had his field trip to EZ Orchards and it was great. We got to pick a pumpkin, apple and enjoyed a fresh apple donut and cider. The mud however was not great. Most of the kids managed to just keep it on their feet, but the mud puddles were very tempting.

Then right after school we ran down to Corvallis to my brothers and went out to the patch with his family. The only thing missing was Thad (who is working on bball stuff). Had a great time. Watching my niece for her first trip to the patch and watching noah brag about how this was his second trip of the day!!! They had this cool little rubber duck race for the kids to do...where you pump water down a piece of gutter and float your duck to the end the fastest....Sydnie loved it. It sounds cheesy, but when it is a hit with the kids it works for me. We picked our pumpkins in the dark, almost got stuck in the mud with the hayride and our bottom halves were covered in mud by the time we were done. Good memories there.

Cleaning!!

It has been a crazy couple of weeks. I feel like I have all of these "things" piling up to do and I have just been running around like crazy. I feel like I live at the school. I volunteer there two days a week and I work with two kids that need help reading as well. But when you add on PTA , well just give me a bed there!!! ha ha.

I did find time these last two weeks to paint sydnie's bedroom, a beautiful light aqua blue and then we found a bunch of hot pink stuff to go with the room. super cute......we moved her bed into her little alcove area, eventually we will hang the curtains in front of her bed so that she has to climb thru them to get to her bed. how fun is that? I loved gutting the room and getting rid of a bunch of excess. I really wanted to simplify her room so that she had her 2-3 major toys that she still plays with and then her art desk. I have had stuff in our hallway for two weeks, just sitting, waiting for me to find a home or throw it out (without her knowledge).

I also found out that a bunch of her polly pockets were on recall so we sat down and emptied out the bins, found all the pieces and boxed those up to send back. She of course discovered that she still loves her polly pockets...so they are now all over her floor.

As much as you try to keep there rooms clean and organized...they are just kids who want to have fun.

I am still here

i have been sucked into the vortex of PTA and Webkinz. I am gone all the time doing PTA stuff....(seriously did not think it would be this much work) and then when I get home from that I just sit around and play webkinz. Who needs to blog or clean or cook or do laundry. So I decided to cure myself this weekend and I have shipped the kids to grandparents and am making myself NOT play webkinz....well except for when Thad and I played last night in the tournament arena!!!! I have done laundry, fixed a fantastic dinner and started on my cheerleading scrapbook.....now that is a walk down memory lane. Oh the uniforms, Oh the 80's hair and Oh the amazing pantyhose that we had to wear......I really did just type the word pantyhose!!! does anyone even wear those anymore?

Maybe if I can get my scanner to work I will share a few pix....or maybe just a cheer....

keep it up
keep it up
keep that warrior spirit up
keep it up!!!

I know.....right now you are thinking....that is amazing. save the cheerleader save the world. ha ha. Okay I am off to finish my senior year for Varsity Football and Basketball.

Go for the Gold!

This awesome sign we made for the teachers to break through
we ended up putting it on the field and made a different sign
for the teachers to run through. (see below)

this years theme for jogathon was go for the gold...and the kids really did. My kids wanted to raise their $150.00 so that they could go to the after dark party. Put this year we threw in a pizza party for the top earning class and sydnie's class is in second place so far....so this weekend we are going to try and get a few more donations to see if we can win that pizza.

this was noah's first year and he loved it. he loved slapping high fives and everyone yelling for him. i think the funniest part was three of sydnie's friends were totally making a big deal about him everytime he ran around and afterwards came to find him after school. could he already be a heartthrob?

Sydnie did great again...she ran 9 laps again. not too bad. she was so excited to be out there and of course they played a bunch of high school musical stuff, so that made it even better. We went and found her the outfit she was wearing, just for jogathon. something comfortable and warm.

thank goodness there was no rain yesterday!!! Made for a much better day. It was really cold though.....my hands were frozen and i had a hard time using the calculator to add up all the donations. a great day and a great fundraiser for our school.

I'm Melting.....

I know that I live in oregon....but where the heck did fall go? I don't really want the fall that is rainy everyday...I want the fall with the beautiful sunshine and cooler temps. We walked to school yesterday morning with our big umbrellas and the cross walk lady told us she was glad to see that we didn't melt in the rain...we were true oregonians. ha ha. This morning though it was so nice outside, so we set off to school, walked sydnie inside, did some pta stuff and next thing I know it is pouring down rain. I know we live in oregon, it rains at the drop of a hat, but we did not bring umbrellas this morning. so we got a little drenched. I want the real fall back, but at least we didn't melt.

What I used to do

today i had to go into sydnie classroom and talk about my old job.....to 80 second graders. Last week while i was volunteering they went to listen to another parent then their teacher sat them down and talked about her job....sydnie raises her hand and asks that"if someone had a job before, but does not have it now, could they still come talk." Of course her teacher and i lock eyes and i nod.....so today was the day! I was trying to figure out how to explain my old job to a bunch of kids and could not come up with anything to great so i decided to concentrate on the fact that i worked for nike a long time ago.

get to the school and walk to the classroom and see who i have to follow!!!!! The canine Cop!!! with dog and all!!!! how do you compete with that???? They even got to pet the dog! She barked and did tricks!!!

The kids got really pumped when I told them I had met Tiger Woods and that he came to the campus to play some golf for everyone....... and that was about the extent of excitement. ha ha.

i even tried the whole mike meyers voice when i told them that i bought millions of dollars worth of product to sell!!! didn't work. ha ha. okay it really was not that bad. i got tell them how nike got their name and who started the company and all about steve prefontaine and bill bowerman and phil knight. they even asked if i got to travel around. which i did.

sydnie was beaming from ear to ear and that is what is most important. at the beginning of the year they had to say what they wanted to be when they grew up........work at nike. she graduated from wanting to be a princess to CEO of Nike....wow I grow them smart!!! ha ha.