six

Another year of partying!!! This year our theme was baseball and we had 16 kids at our house!!! HOLY COW it was loud. They were all really good kids and they even helped pick up before they left. Lots of lightsaber fights and a little round of wiffle ball in the back yard. They had a blast trying to get the pinata open, it finally fell off the string and Thad ripped it open. Lots of screaming and a big sugar rush came after that.

This was the first year that I did not go all out. I had nothing planned except the pinata and lots of playing. It worked out really well. I was actually able to just visit with friends. Noah was super excited all day and literally was counting down the time until his friends got here. I did notice that once he had opened his presents he wanted nothing to do with playing...he just wanted to open the gifts up and play.

I asked him what his favorite gift was and he first said his bumblebee transformer, then it was his new webkinz, but he finally decided his favorite gift was this picture frame his sister had made him with his picture inside. AAAWWWWWW....how cute is that. What a little softie. He has such a tender spirit and worships that ground that Sydnie walks on. SO CUTE.

Now we are into recovery mode here...lots of playing with new gifts today and we already logged his frog into webkinz and set up a whole new lily pad room for it. he named it hip hop. now he is building legos and I am ready to take a nap. ha ha. Another year down, another year of good memories.

Meet Wally

our newest addition to our family tradition!!! ha ha.

My friend had heard of this cute little "game" to play during the holidays that helps to keep your children behaving and adds lots of memories in the process. It is called Elf on the Shelf. Your family elf arrives each Christmas season and sits on a shelf to watch the kids and report back to Santa. The kids cannot touch him or he loses his magic and each night he leaves the house to report back on good or bad behavior. So that means that every morning he is in a new spot. That is the fun...where will the elf be?

My kids were a little skeptical last night...but this morning they both woke up and ran around the house to find Wally. They had such a good time and it was fun to listen to where they thought he was and hear there little feet running around.

I cannot wait to see where Wally will appear tomorrow morning. If I remember to move him tonight!!!

Here is more info on our new little friend: http://www.elfontheshelf.com/

Let the Elfin begin....

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1342209796

Conversations.....

This morning as we were coming home from dropping off his big sister....

noah: "she always wants a hug from me."

mom "who?"

noah: "ailany, she just always comes over for a hug from me"

mom: "ohhhhh...do you think she has a crush on you?"

noah: "she hasn't said that, but I am thinking she does"

this just cracked me up because we seem to have a little romancer on our hands. He has been telling all of the girls that he has a crush on them and trying to hug them....even second graders!!! I told him that he can't tell the girls he has a crush on them...then they will run away screaming. He just has to keep it to himself or tell his mom!!! ha ha. We could be in for a fun couple of years with this little guy.

I wish...

I heard there were some flurries of snow north of here this morning.....

I really have nothing new to say.........we have been trying to lay low and get noah's bday party planned. Saving my energy for all the celebrations to come in this month.

We have started basketball for both of the kids....which is not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Practices on mondays and saturdays. Sydnie has gotten so much better. She really is loving it this year.

We are babysitting tonight...so two extra kids and an extra dog. Lots of laughter, fighting and noise here today. Hopefully we all survive until tomorrow morning.

Sydnie has a speech tomorrow talking about her Christmas Traditions. We made a tree out of scrap paper and cut out some pictures in the shape of ornaments to put on it.

That is really about all. seriously not much going on in the old noggin lately. actually i think of stuff to say and then forget by the time i sit down at my computer.

This week will be a busy one...finishing Christmas shopping, Christmas parties at school, making our gingerbread house and noah's party saturday.

Decorating!

So to continue the holiday spirit....we decorated our tree on sunday. Thad put the lights on in the afternoon and after dinner we blasted the Christmas music and started the festivities. The kids pretty much run the show and they put all the ornaments on the tree, so of course they are all down low and stuck together.....but the fun is what matters. Sydnie told me this year that she is going to wear her santa hat every time we decorate the tree so that she can get in the Christmas mood. We gave the kids their special ornaments, which sydnie loved and noah hated.

I tried experimenting with flash last night...i really like the top pix where the flash was off and the soft glow of the lights looks beautiful. need to play around with it some more to get the hang of it. i really do like pix with natural light, rather than the harsh flash.

we also watched polar express the night we got our tree....it was a great time to relax and be with family. Good tradition to start.

A Hunting We Will Go............

What a perfect day to get a Christmas Tree. As we drove up the hills in to silverton the snow started falling and by the time we hit Reinhart Tree Farm it was snowing full on. The trees surrounding the farm were dusted in a lite snow. So pretty. Good thing we came prepared....all bundled up. I could barely move I had on two coats and a scarf up to my ears....ha ha. Of course yet again, thad walked up to the first tree he saw and said...."this is it, our tree, it's perfect." We were joined by my mom and dad, brother and niece and thad's SIL and kids joined in the fun as well. This year the tree farm added a beautiful "fireplace" along with a great toy train. The kids look forward to the cider, cookies and candy canes. We always take a picture in front of our tree, but this year noah was being cranky so after about 10 shots we were done and just lucky to have him in the picture...can you tell by the looks on our faces. ha ha. Another year, another perfect tree, more great memories.

Christmas Traditions

So last year I started a Christmas Traditions album and never really finished it....so this year I have been working on it and really thinking about what traditions we have in our family.

Old Traditions:

*we get our tree the saturday after thxgiving

*we go to a tree farm and cut our own down

*the kids get a new ornament every year

*we listen to Christmas music while decorating

*we make a gingerbread house

*we go see christmas lights one night

*we make goodies

*pick two names from Angel Tree

*we watch Christmas movies

*the kids get new pajamas to sleep in the night before Christmas

*we always have a special meal for our family Christmas morning

New Traditions:

*watch Polar Express the day we get our tree. Since the tree has to dry overnight...this gives the kids something to look forward too that evening. We can drink hot cocoa and turn on all the Christmas lights.

*waiting tree - this is the first year that we have had one...so the kids are really excited to start today.

what are some traditions that you do as a family? do you look forward to them ever year?

Reporting Back

so I am here today to tell you that dinner was not that great of a success. The kids walked in the door from school and could smell the broccoli and saw it pureed and could not understand why I would do that. So as I was dipping the chx in the green egg mixture, they saw and pretty much had their minds set against it. So I served them their mac and cheese and chx nuggets and they did not really love it. Interesting. Thad thought they were okay and so did I. I really liked the "buttered noodles". So all in all I think that we will be able to incorporate a bunch of stuff from the book into our everyday life style. I did not try the sweet potato pancakes this morning, becuase I did not want them to turn orange from all the squash yesterday. Tomorrow morning will be the day.

Beautiful

Let the deception begin....

So my mom saw Oprah a couple of weeks ago and Jessica Seinfeld was on telling everyone about her "idea" to puree food and hide it into kids food. She loved the idea so much that she ran out and bought the book for me. I have not been too excited about it, because my kids love their veggies. Once upon a time they cried when given certain veggies, but for the most part they are really good eaters. I have looked at the book, but not given it a lot of thought until last night.

We had this great dinner of porkchops, squash, steamed broccoli and bread. The kids freaked out about the squash.....this is not new. They used to love squash, but lately you would think it had arcenic in it!! So I finally picked up the book and read...decided to make some whole wheat french toast this morning, with the deceptive ingredient of squash mixed in. They wolfed it down...not even a mention that it was whole wheat bread!! I laughed inside as I schemed a dinner with healthy ingredients without the knowledge. So this evening I will be trying her famous Broccoli chicken nuggets and butternut squash pasta, served with some fresh veggies as well.

I am not entirely sold on it yet....we will have to see if the recipes continue to be hits. I am super excited to try the banana bread for snacks. It took me about 30 minutes to find flaxseed meal in the grocery store today. I am excited to put that on everything they eat!!! lots of good stuff in there. So not to go all granola on ya...but maybe just maybe this will be the start of some good stuff in our house. If you are interested in checking it out here is the website......http://www.deceptivelydelicious.com/site/

Thankful for

Thankful for Guitar Hero - where is the johnny cash?


thankful for a sense of timing and long steady notes


Thankful for training mode - lil' guitar hero

Thankful for laughter and a fun grandpa

Thankful for cheesey little girl smiles

Thankful for this....him and I together

Thankful for them...and a beautiful week at the beach

Thankful for her....crimped hair and a sunkist smile

This week has been so great. Our family was able to go away togethr for 4 days to Depoe Bay. Lots of swimming, hot tubing, movies, crafts and sunshine. We watched Home Alone....forgot how snotty the kid is at the beginning and of course there was a few swear words...which we forgot about so we had to have the talk with the kids about not saying those. Overall good times. Then we headed to Randal and Jenn's house to have a little sleepover the night before thxgiving. We played guitar hero. the girls watched private practice, while the guys watched a guy flick. The kids has so much fun waking up in the morning...noah kept opening ryen's bedroom door to check and see if she was awake. Those two are peas in a pod. Ryen had to be doing exactly what noah was doing at all times. They both drug out blankets and rolled around on the floor with them. when we sat down to watch a little tom and jerry....noah layed out his blanket, then layed down with ryen right beside him...her hand laying on his arm. so cute.

so let's talk about guitar hero....so thankful we do not have an up to date game system or I would be ignoring everything to master the hero!!!! loved it so much. by the end of the day and about 15-20 songs I was finally ready to move onto medium mode....I know, I know I should not have started on easy....but hello, have you played this thing!!!??? We were late to thxgiving dinner with the family because randal and i were battling each other. So he decided to pack it up and take it over to mom and dads. we finally talked dad into playing it.....he did pretty good. but he really wanted some johnny cash to play (easy guitar picking is his style). My mom just kept complaining that it was too loud and she was getting a headache from "that type of music".

Oh how the holidays bring the family together!!!! well that and a little video gaming!!!

Happy Birthday Princess!

Ryen turned 2 and had a great little party last night. She was hysterical...once she saw her elmo cake, she sat down at the table and was begging people to give her a fork....fork, fork, fork. Finally they sang happy birthday and she dug into her cake. Then it was present time. She was so preoccupied with her two boy cousins playing with her toys she did not want to open her presents, until she found the princess shoes! gotta love it. Of course her mom, jenn, blames me for her love of princesses, because I gave her a backpack about a year ago with all the princesses on it. I guess the rest is history...and to make it worse we gave her dress up clothes last night and a crown and a wand. SUPER COOL!!! So much for not having a girly, frilly little girl. I think it is instinctive in all girls to want to dress up and be a princess with high heeled shoes and a crown. I see many hours of dress up for ryen in the future. Now she just needs that cute little disney princess throne for christmas and she is all set!!! wahahaha....that is my evil laugh. my plans to turn ryen into a girly princess are working!!!!

The Stormtrooper and the Kitty....

love this look...."give me candy"


the dynamic trio

how can you not laugh at this one

even better...my kids are goofballs

and the OSU Cheerleader. So this post is a little late, but our usb port was down for a couple of days. Had a ton of fun on Halloween. The kids came home from school, immediately got dressed up and of course played on webkinz until it was time to party with the neighbors. They had a great time playing halloween twister and eating eyeball pizza. We finally headed out once my parents arrived and they decided to bring a little ghoul along....cousin Ryen. She is almost two and was a little overwhelmed by all the people and scary porches...but she loved hanging out with the kids and uncle thad. We decided to carry on the tradition of the candy fairy again this year...the kids came home unloaded their buckets and chose 15 pieces of candy to keep, the rest went in the bucket and left on the living room floor for the candy fairy to come take. They woke up the next morning and ran downstairs to find a little toy and some webkinz trading cards!!! I think sydnie finally figured out that it was me, but she is choosing to pretend that there really is a candy fairy!!!

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.