Love The Monkey Life

Super Bowl Party

2012-02-05T17:42:00.002-06:00

So yesterday we were in Super Bowl Oblivion...we were happily ignoring the Sporting Event Of The Year and thinking of going skiing instead. But since Joshua and I are getting OLD and we were sore and tired from our recent workouts we decided to skip the mountain today. Soooo that sort of lead to "well, I guess we should do the Super Bowl thing". Emilee invited a friend over and Joshua moved the TV antenna from up stairs down into the living room (remember...we have no cable or satellite and we just have an old fashioned antenna plugged in upstairs in the loft so Carter can watch PBS).

Then Joshua started cooking. The diet is off around here today. Round one of yumminess is fried pickles and onion rings and baked sweet potato fries!

Everyone got situated for the kickoff. Carter immediately asked to play Daddy's ipad since football is a zero on his interesting radar...and Trevor whipped out his DS. (Remember, a football family we are NOT lol.)

But Emilee and her *ahem* friend, Logan, are intently watching the game and enjoying the gazillion dollar commercials with the dog safely between them.

Home made spaghetti sauce

2012-02-01T19:22:00.002-06:00

Remember the 7 tomatoes from my veggie co-op post? Well, we don't eat many tomatoes around here since Joshua is allergic. He can have tomato paste, so we usually stick to that for pasta sauce etc. But I was faced with what is ALOT of tomatoes for our family (I still had 6 of them 10 days later)...and after the kids vetoed "baked tomatoes stuffed with rice" as one of the options...I concocted a spaghetti sauce recipe from several I found online. So if you find yourself with a plethora of tomatoes or just want to try a new recipe...here ya go!

Nicely dice one tomato and toss into empty crock pot. Dice half an onion, saute until transluscent and put in crockpot.

Then roughly chunk up several more (I had 5) and then in batches, zip them in the blender until mostly smooth. Dump into crockpot.

Add basil, marjoram, oregano, garlic and salt to taste (about a half to one teaspoon each?...I just sorta sprinkled some in today).

Cook on high for 2-3 hours. Then put 1 can of tomato paste into a 2 cup measuring cup and fill to top with hot water. Stir until blended well and add to crock pot. Add in 1/2 pound of cooked ground beef, if desired. Let simmer on high for another hour or two. Serve over hot cooked noodles and sprinkle with parmesan. We are kind of spaghetti sauce snobs...we love JoJo's sauce and we like standard from-an-envelope-with-tomato-paste recipes...so we were pleasantly surprised when the monkeys and I all enjoyed this!

And this picture is of Carter's bowl. It's included because as I snapped a pic of mine before we ate Carter slid his bowl toward me and said this...
"Mom, take a picture of mine because I'd really like to see MY dinner up on the computer later!"
LOL...here ya go, Boog!

Winter Finally Made It!!!

2012-01-31T12:59:00.005-06:00

We got a wonderful blizzard about ten days ago, winter has finally arrived in Idaho!! Here's Carter enjoying a day off of school since Mommy decided it wasn't worth it to go and drive with the other crazies out on the roads...

Carter's two little best friends from across the street joined us outside for some white fun!

THIS is what a sledding picture should look like...it's a far cry from the one in my "Make Lemonade" post a few weeks ago!

This blizzard was MUCH anticipated as ski season has been sadly postponed until now due to no snow. Our resort has never in it's 70 year history opened this late so needless to say, us skiers were DYING to get up on the mountain. So the very second we could, we loaded up our skis and headed up Saturday! The weather was amazing and the kids (and us) picked up the knack right away! And we had so much fun we even headed back up Sunday, even though Joshua and I's aching muscles told us we might not want to go for two days in a row very often lol (the kids of course were absolutely fine and ready to go for more!).

A few pictures from the weekend...

This is a beautiful shot Joshua took from the chair lift of the Valley below...

The lines were long to get on the chair lifts cuz surprisingly EVERYONE else was dying to get in some skiing, so this was Carter's "resting" pose while we waited. Yup, head down in the snow and bum up! He was cracking up all of the other waiting skiers with his flexibility.

And here are the two favorite videos...

Karen and Carter heading down the cat track on the "big hill"

And here's all three monkeys skiing down Carter's favorite hill. Trevor is in the grey plaid coat and Emilee is in the full black jumpsuit. This is the only video we managed to get of Trevor because he's so darned speedy and tricky. He's either heading down a black diamond (and there's no way Joshua can hold a camera and live through getting down the hill himself) or he's zooming along the regular trails and I just can't catch him. Also, please notice the VERY TEENAGE activity Emilee is partaking in as she cruises down the hill!

Bountiful Baskets

2012-01-21T17:25:00.002-06:00

So I joined a produce co-op and picked up my first order today! I got a ton of fruits and veggies, fresh from local farms for about half of the cost of Walmart...all of what you see about cost me $16.50! You know how excited a good deal makes me AND this all came from local farmers...woohoo! You never know exactly what you are going to get, but it was really cool stuff...especially the "expensive" items like kiwi, pomegranetes and tomatoes.

NOW...I have to figure out what to do with some of this stuff lol! I have the veggies pretty much covered as we almost always have a fresh veggie for dinner (though the big monkeys are warily eyeballing the brussel sprouts and Carter has already declared he's not trying those EVER!)...but what to do with all this fruit before it goes bad? I'm thinking banana muffins...and maybe I'll try that applesauce-in-a-crockpot recipe I saw a while back? But (because I'd had some fruit already on hand) I currently posess 13 pears I need to do something with pretty quick. Any suggestions?! I also have more oranges that we'd typically eat with lunches and snacks. Recipes for those? Anyone?! LOL!

And if anyone is interested, here is the link. Check the "locations" tab and see if they have a delivery site near you (*ahem, Sanda!).

www.bountifulbaskets.org

You're going where?!

2012-01-16T21:13:00.003-06:00

I remember CRACKING UP when my pastor back in Oklahoma told us of his workout routine, and how he hated going to the gym in January. All of the “New Year’s Resolution” people were there, taking up the machines and overcrowding the classes in an attempt to uphold their January 1st promises. He said by February, things were usually back to normal, meaning the gym was mostly empty, and he enjoyed the peace and quiet again as he worked out. HAHAHA at all those crazy people who pound it out at the gym in January…or heck, who go to the gym ever…hahaha…sorta…

So, that said…this is not a New Year’s Resolution post. This is a “coincidentally in January because we’ve finally committed” post. Big news?! Joshua and I joined a gym. Seriously?! Yup, it was Joshua’s idea before anyone goes nuts and blames Momma's gone nuts with some “we all need to get healthy” idea. I have been rather enjoying my plan of eating fairly well and not exercising at all on purpose over the last 20 years (except for a quick stint that would get me back down my to favorite weight after a pregnancy). Geez, saying that number makes me sound OLD! But nonetheless, his idea is a good one. Everyone should be eating better and exercising more, even if the scale number is fairly acceptable.

I thought you all would be amused at how last week went for me. Get a drink and a (healthy) snack and sit back and enjoy. Here’s the blow by blow.

SATURDAY—Joshua signs TWO YEAR commitment at the gym and gets a package of workouts with a trainer for us. “Us”? OK, a trainer is probably a good idea for me to get started with, because I really have no idea what to do in a gym that doesn’t have a beam, a set of bars, a vault and a 40x40 floor.

SUNDAY and MONDAY—nothing, business at home as usual.

TUESDAY—I realize that today is my last day of “not exercising.” I meet my trainer tomorrow for my first workout. If this was his idea, how come Joshua doesn’t have to go first?! I plan a crockpot dinner for tomorrow since I assume I’ll be in no shape to cook come 5pm.

WEDNESDAY—My perky trainer, Doug, meets me at the door of the gym and says “OK, Karen, hit the elliptical for a quick 5 min warmup and then we’ll go do some strength training.” “Uh, Doug, can you show me how to turn the thing on?...” Yeah, this is gonna be good… Work me he does, for 60 straight minutes. I am completely annoyed at how my balance SUCKS when I try to do some of the exercises and he cracks up when I do back leg lifts that I point my toe without even thinking (my gymnastics coach would be proud). The arms part of the workout is what kills me. I head out to the car when I’m done and they feel like jell-o…serious jell-o. I reach up to pull the gear shift into Reverse and I realize I’m in trouble. Then I need to turn the wheel to get out of the parking spot and I think “OMGosh, has my power steering gone out?!” I think I’m going to die! Good thing there are only three turns between here and my driveway.

THURSDAY—My arms don’t feel quite as bad as I expected, bad, but not THAT bad. I decide I might as well give the daycare at the gym a whirl for Carter, so instead of coupon shopping like normal, we head back to the place of torture and check him into the daycare. He does well getting dropped off (this kind of thing has been hard for him lately) and I do 30 minutes on the elliptical. Can I note here that 30 mins on the elliptical only earns you about 240 calories burned? That just SUCKS and really put into perspective the work I’m doing vs. how easy it is to pop junk into my mouth. Nonetheless, I pick up a happy Carter (phew) and we head home. I’m rather proud of myself…I survived 30 mins of cardio without dying and have now gone to the gym twice. Oh! And I’m drinking water. This alone is something to create a banner for. Water is not my beverage of choice…ever. It has no taste and so for me, that means it has no value. Give me coffee or juice or soda or lemonade, please. But, Joshua bought me a cute Camelback bottle last weekend, yanno so I can look the exercising part. It cracked me up because it comes with this advertising sticker that says “drink 24% more water with our bottle”. That seemed terribly lame to me. Yeah, whatever, a cute sippy and pink plastic isn’t going to make me drink more water. But here I am. I’ve gone from drinking 4-8 oz per day (yeah, I know…BAD) to FORTY EIGHT ounces per day. And I am laughing to admit, I kinda don’t hate it. I’m now one of those weird people you see lugging their water bottle with them EVERYWHERE. Dear Camelback…your product really is a miracle worker. Only real noticeable issue…I am going to the bathroom A LOT and that’s just annoying haha!

FRIDAY—Meet with Doug again. He’s terribly amused at the report that I just about couldn’t drive myself home and happily sets to abusing another set of muscles on my body…my legs. Who knew backward lunges were such murder?! Certainly I did these decades ago when I was in gymnastics but I have no recollection of them being so terrible. Oh and the plank! I could kill the person who invented this one. And what makes it all the worse is I’m wearing 5+ year old tennis shoes that are a nice shade of green from mowing the lawn because it’s not like I used them for anything such as exercising. And these sad, old shoes have no traction so they slip. I can’t hold the plank for more than a couple of seconds because my darn shoes are skating out from underneath me. Doug makes fun of my shoes and gives me homework…get GOOD shoes this weekend. Yes, sir lol. I make it through the workout though and it’s time to go. We’ve been in the upstairs section of the gym and Doug says “let’s go” and heads down the stairs back to his office. I follow…until about stair number three when I realize I have NO muscle control in my legs and I’m about to splat on the landing below. I grab the handrail with BOTH hands and arm-crawl down the stairs. Doug wonders what took me so long and happily books me two more sessions for next week. He tells me my homework is two more cardio sessions and one strength training between now and then. I pick up Carter from preschool and have to run a couple of errands, one of which is right next to my favorite Starbucks AND I just happen to have a birthday giftcard waiting to be used so I stop in. I am reading the menu, trying to decide what to get. Vanilla latte…java chip…hmmm. And then I see “make it skinny”. Oh man, here we go. I’ve now done three workouts and suddenly this little voice in the back of my head is making me think about choices. I go with the skinny vanilla latte. Conclusion? “Skinny” isn’t worth it. I didn’t like it much and would rather have not had it or rather have wasted the calories on the real deal.

SATURDAY—Joshua meets with Doug for the first time…ha, finally he gets a turn! Me, I’m barely walking because Friday’s leg workout was murder! Going up or down the stairs, sitting down or getting up from sitting bring me close to tears. BUT…as soon as Joshua is done at the gym, we trade kids and Emilee and I head to the gym and to put in 30 more mins of cardio together. Shocked yet?! I am!! Oh yes, and I should note here that Emilee sailed through this like it was nothing, even putting in a couple of minutes of top speed work. Darn young kids *wink*! Today is also the day I notice I’m STARVING! What is this deal about working out that makes you need to eat more? And I buy shiny new workout shoes. Man, these better make the plank easier!

SUNDAY—Joshua is SORE! Poor thing, I know how he feels and as much as it’s amusing to make fun of him like he did to me, I hate to see him hurting…and I’m still sore too. BUT…are you ready?...we both suck it up and head to the gym first thing in the morning! We get on side by side ellipticals and put in 30 mins. This was by far my favorite day. Joshua and I always walk/sit/stand with him on the left, me on the right, due to his hearing loss in his left ear. We even rearranged our wedding that way (bride is supposed to go on the left) so he could hear me. It caused many questions but hey, it’s how we do things! So it was great to have him on my left as we worked out, kinda just felt right. I love this guy and doing this together was AWESOME!

MONDAY—Today the kids are off school and it was so tempting to just stay home and be lazy, but I got myself up and went to the gym to do a strength training workout on my own. I went with my list of things to do, did it, and didn’t even kill myself or an innocent bystander with some crazy exercise machine or flying dumbbell!

Tomorrow is my rest day and then I am going to start all over again. Proud of me yet? I am really quite proud of myself. Six days in a row I’ve gone to the gym after about 7300 of not. And I'm kinda scared to say it out loud, but I think I'm enjoying it. I've been a tad bored lately, with not much to focus on, and this is kinda nice to look forward to (after the part where I can't walk wears off). And I’m proud of Joshua. He doesn’t like exercise either, but he’s keeping at it…and all the more difficult for him, he’s doing it on the road under crazy hotel conditions and at weird hours. I’m really excited to think that if we EVER get any snow Joshua and I will be able to tear up that powder like never before!

Make snow-ish lemonade...

2012-01-07T11:45:00.002-06:00

All of us snow skiers are in mourning right now, of our ski season quickly slipping away due to the complete lack of snow. We got a dusting last night...not enough to even start to make a dent up on the mountain...but the boys decided to "make lemonade" of the situation and they are out there having a blast!

Nine Couponing Tips

2012-01-04T13:53:00.004-06:00

Alicia asked me for ten couponing tips and I came up with nine so I thought I'd share with everyone. These are the things that are working for me and my family right now. I am not nearly as into the couponing thing as others (like stockpiling 50 of every item and having a binder of 2000 clipped coupons) but this method is keeping my family fed and clean. This isn't the only way to do it, but maybe you can glean some ideas you want to use from my ~~craziness~~ system :-).

#1 Get your SUNDAY PAPER and clip the coupons for products you will buy no matter what (ie. we always buy Head and Shoulders shampoo and Cheeze Its crackers). Even if its not on sale, using these coupons will save me some money when I buy them anyway. Keep the ads for later (see "Shop at Walmart"). File away coupon inserts by date in manilla folders for easy reference later.

#2 CARRY CLIPPED COUPONS in a small/medium coupon (index card) divider at all times.

#3 Keep an eye on the COUPONING BLOGS. I have loaded four couponing sites into Google Reader, which serves as a sort of email system for incoming info on coupon deals. There are probably 100 posts per day and I can scan them all in less than 15 minutes, just looking for key words like "Walmart deals" or "free shampoo at Walgreens this week", depending on what our family needs. Google Reader is also fantastic because you can save a post for later (like if you want to go back and print later or keep the list of Walgreens deals handy for later) because otherwise if you are reading directly off of the couponing blog, that post is buried within a day and it will take a ton of time to go looking for it when you want it. You also never know where you left off the last time you read on the blog, but Google Reader only shows you new posts you haven’t read yet. Here are the four links to the blogs I read. The first two are national sites and the second two are more regional to my area.
www.moneysavingmom.com
www.swaggrabber.com
www.fabulesslyfrugal.com
www.discountqueens.com

#4 SHOP AT WALMART. I know, this has it's issues, but for our family it is what is working right now. Walmart hands down has the generally cheaper prices in our area. Winco is a close runner up but doesn't accept competitor coupons so it falls to second place (it's also farther from my house). Here's the key to Walmart...they are price matching and accepting just about any coupon on the planet, especially from other stores. I scan the ads each week and just take them all into Walmart and they will match what Albertsons or Walgreens has advertised. (The exception here is for stores like Walgreens and CVS that issue "store cash" type coupons...Walmart won't honor that deal.) So instead of running around like crazy to half a dozen stores, I just hit Walmart with my stack of ads and do all my deals in one trip. They also accept Kmart and Albertson's "doublers"...which means you can stack a cents off manufacturer coupon with the "doubler" and get a super deal without schlepping to those stores. AND typically Walmart's base price is LOWER than that of Kmart or Albertsons anyway so you get an even more super deal.

#5 Keep an eye on WALGREENS REGISTER REWARDS (or CVS ECB deals) and hit that store when there's something free or what you need.

#6 Know your UNIT PRICES. I have a spreadsheet of about 50 commonly purchased food and sundry items that our family uses and what the unit price is at Walmart, Winco and Costco. It helps me know if a “sale” is a “good deal” (because for example…Albertsons might put hamburger “on sale” for $3.79 but my spreadsheet tells me that the normal price at Costco is $2.69 so that’s not a “good deal.”)

#7 If you have a COSTCO MEMBERSHIP, use it for key items. Milk and eggs are cheapest in my town at Costco. Cereal and crackers are cheapest when a fantastic coupon deal is nowhere to be found. Ground beef is also cheaper there, and sometimes chicken and pork. Again, know your unit prices because sometimes Costco is ALOT more expensive...bigger is not always better!

#8 Use the store LOYALTY CARDS at places like Albertsons and CVS. Put the key ring ones on your car keys so you'll always have them. The deals you are shopping are usually better when swiping the card and there are frequently quarterly perks that cash out etc...so swipe those cards no matter what!

#9 My last tip on saving money is to set a BUDGET. We have a weekly budget and no matter the deal, I don’t go over it. I see it as my job to get the most I can for the least I can, but it would defeat the “savings” idea if I went nuts and got “good deals” but still spent an insane amount of money. I make sure that my shopping fits within our budget, while keeping a balance of healthy food in the house. I also utilize this budget with cash only. It's impossible to overspend cash, but it's pretty easy to do it while swiping some sort of card.

Merry Christmas 2011

2011-12-24T17:38:00.005-06:00

It's been crazy and busy leading up to Christmas here...and we've been loving it! We went to our local botanical gardens which goes all out decorating with lights for Christmas. It was freezing, but it was beautiful and our friend, Lindsey, snapped this GREAT pic of the 5 of us! (Nice pictures with all 5 of us in it AND smiling are so few and far between nowadays.)

And of course, Santa was there at the botanical gardens so we had to pop in and say HELLO. Emilee graciously posed for a picture with man in red...

And Carter wanted NOTHING to do with Santa haha! He was gung ho until it was his turn and then he sorta flipped out and all we got was "Mom! YOU tell him what I want for Christmas, I don't want to sit on his lap!" So here's what the camera guy snapped...

(I carried him up there and plopped him in Santa's lap.) I'm coaxing "come on, honey, smile for the camera." Carter is thinking "get me outta here." Santa is wondering "why does this kid hate me?!"

Mommy and Santa smile while Carter continues to will the torture to be over

Very cute picture after Trevor sitting with Santa...

And my FAVORITE PICTURE...the one that made us spend the crazy amount of money on the CD when we were just going to go for the sit on his lap and skip the pic plan. The look on both Trev and Santa's face was just priceless. Santa is intently listening and Trevor is sharing his big Christmas wish.

And a few more Holiday fun pics.

Carter made a herd of candy cand reindeer to share with his classmates.

Joshua and Emilee cooked a whole bakery's worth of bread, as is Joshua's Christmas eve family tradition.

And we decorated Christmas cookies.

I'm off to get the hyper, Santa-anticipating monkeys snuggled into bed. We hope you all have a wonderful Christmas!!!

trip to CA

2011-12-15T11:28:00.002-06:00

Here are just a couple of odd pictures from our Thanksgiving trip to CA...

Joshua got home unexpectedly so we left for our trip to CA half a day early. This meant that I was not completely packed (ie. missing a few smaller detail last minute items...like FOOD). The first leg of the trip involves 5 hours of NOTHING. I had heard about this "nothing" and sorta just thought it meant there's not alot along the road, but there will be some drive thru where we can grab a bite to eat. Uhhhh nope..."nothing" meant ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. About three hours into the "nothing" the kids were starving and we finally spotted a scary run down gas station with a C store. We eagerly stopped and after passing on most of the items for sale because they were expired we made a pathetic dinner out of frozen microwaved hot pockets, mac n cheese, peanuts and a yogurt for Carter. I snapped this picture because the remnants of our meal cracked Joshua and I up. Our dash board looked like that of some hill billy jalopy!!

This would be Carter and Trevor (hiding under Blankie) NOT wanting to get their picture taken at about mile 500 into our trip.

Going over Donner Pass was a bit yucky driving-wise, but our whole family was tickled to see the snow!

Our monkeys have participated in several Guinness Book of World Record titles...so we couldn't pass up the opportunity to visit The World's Tallest Thermometer on our way home.

decorating the house

2011-12-15T11:16:00.002-06:00

Joshua got the lights up on the outside of the house the weekend before Thanksgiving since we'd be gone on his traditional decorating day of the Friday after. He's pretty serious about his house lights and he had to start over this year since it is our first whole Christmas being in our new house (yes, this means scale drawings etc to make sure that the lights are exactly spaced and never error his red-white-white pattern from any side of the house). And can I also mention how stinkin' HIGH our second story roof is? We've never had a house this high to decorate and I chewed my fingernails the ENTIRE time he was up there!

But with a little help from Emilee up top and Trevor handling technical issues down below, it came out amazing as usual!

it's that time of year...

2011-11-30T13:23:00.006-06:00

The Thanksgiving decorations are put away and the first snowflakes are starting to fall...

So, that means it's time to decorate for Christmas!!! Joshua decided that this year he was tired of my fake tree and wanted to get a real one. And as luck would have it, in Idaho you can buy a permit for a few dollars and head up into the forest and cut one down yourself! I have to say I was pretty leery of the adventure. The Forest Service Website cautions you to bring 4-5 days of food and water with you, practice your survival skills and 4WD driving, and to alert family and friends as to your whereabouts and return time so that in the event you are caught in an avalanche, someone will know to come looking for you. UHHHH, SERIOUSLY??!! So friends and family alerted to our plans via facebook, up the mountain we headed in search of the perfect tree.

We hiked along some easier paths...nope, not that tree...

And STRAIGHT UP some hills (this picture does NOT do justice to the incline we went up on this hill)...nope, not that one...

Two hours later we finally found a spot to cross the creek that was seemingly keeping us from ALL of the awesome trees and we found THE ONE!! (Snapshot in front of the tree before we cut it down)

Trevor sawed...

And Emilee caught it while Carter yelled "TIMMMM-BERRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!"

And the biggest monkeys hauled it back to the truck.

And here's the result of our family adventure. We returned home without getting stuck in an avalanche (yay!) and trimmed it to fit in the living room. Then we strung it with lights and decorated it with our cherished ornaments. It's not cookie cutter perfect like my fake-y tree (boy has that been an adjustment for me) but I rather like the silly story and experience that came with it!

Happy Thanksgiving 2011!

2011-11-24T05:00:00.000-06:00

We are in CA celebrating Thanksgiving with my parents and brother...thankful for family, good health and being together. We wish all of you much more of the same!!

Fall Sports

2011-11-23T05:00:00.000-06:00

Em and Trev both got involved with sports this fall. I apologize for not many pictures...but my camera seems to stink at motion/indoor pics so I have very few grrr.

Trevor ran for his school Cross Country team and did FANTASTIC! It was a first for him, and he did so well. They ran a 1.5 mile course and he consistently bettered his time. By the end of the season he was running it near 10m30s, which is close to a 7 minute mile (I know I'm not running THAT anymore lol).

Emilee played Y volleyball this fall and had a blast. A couple of her new school friends were on the team which made it that much better!

And because Carter is just a tad to young to be on a team sport, we'll applaud him for his amazing bike riding skills at a mere 4 years old!

Camping

2011-11-21T17:51:00.009-06:00

In August, we went camping at Lake Cascade and it was awesome! It was only a couple of hours from our house, in the mountains directly on the water. The weather was beautiful and it was a perfect place to play with our new boat. Here's our campsite.

There was of course many a marshmallow roasted...

And Joshua made us cinnamon rolls the old fashioned way in a cast iron dutch oven

Roasting your own hot dogs was a hit...

And chilling in Daddy's lap was also much sought after...

Our campsite had it's own private beach area and it was wonderful because the monkeys could head down and fish or play in the water any time they wanted!

Video of Carter catching the first little fishy of the trip

Em and Trev drownin' their worms...

Trev catchin' one...

Daddy and Em both pulled in a catch at the same time!

Trev playing lego boats on the shoreline and Carter throwing rocks in the background...

Trev brought his bike so he could ride around the campground and somehow it found it's way to the lake...and Carter worked on a serious rock collection.

We spent most of our days on the lake, enjoying the clear water and gorgeous views. This is me, in my favorite spot, chillin' in the bow...

Carter got the biggest kick out of steering while we were pulling Em and Trev on the wakeboard or tube. He'd drive straight for a while and then use every ounce of 4 year old strength he had and crank the wheel to the left and look back to see if he'd tipped them over.

Carter wasn't a big fan of the tube, but we got him on a little bit and pulled him around with Em and Trev.

This picture has a FUNNY story. We were fishing in a quiet spot, and we could see this stream feeding off the mountain into the lake. And every so often we could see these red cojo salmon jumping out of the lake trying to swim up the stream. Joshua was kinda going nuts SEEING these fish, KNOWING they were there and not getting a single bite. So I turned around and I see him emptying his pockets and plunk, he jumped off the back of the boat and started to swim over to where the fish were. His face was hilarious because he didn't realize how cold the water was until it was too late. And did his efforts get him anywhere? Nope, spawning fish have NO interest in eating so all of Joshua's cold efforts were in vain.

Swimming FUN!

2011-11-12T09:47:00.005-06:00

Like I said before, we spent almost every day at the pool this summer. It was a wonderful, lazy, relaxing way to tick away the fun days of summer. Carter started sleeping in for the first time in his life, so we adopted a schedule of late mornings, quick lunches, SWIMMING, easy dinners and sometimes heading back to the pool for the evening too. This is the first summer that I honestly wasn't itching for school to start because the kids had started to drive me nuts with the "I'm bored" thing. We really had an awesome summer break and I hope we have that again next year!

I honestly didn't take too many pictures because I was either IN the pool playing, or later in the summer when Carter was swimming all by himself, I was on the side RELAXING and just enjoying watching the kids play...so most days I forgot my camera. But here are a few favorite pics and videos...

Trev chillin'

Em jumpin'

Handstand contest

Once Carter got the hang of swimming, he was either underwater...

Taking a breath to go back underwater...

Or getting out to jump off the side and be back underwater...

Cannonball!!

A video of Carter jumping in

And one of him diving to the bottom of the 5ft

The big monkeys got free tickets through a reading contest at school, so we also got the chance to try our local waterpark once this summer. The consensus was that it wasn't nearly as cool as the one in Oklahoma, but we still had a nice day.

All three going down one the only slide Carter would agree to try

Em and Trev sliding down at the same time

This is Em and Trev going down a SCARY ride. The video doesn't do it justice...it's HIGH and a sheer drop. Both of them said they'd never ride it again lol, but I'm glad they gave it a shot!

Swimming lessons

2011-11-03T09:12:00.026-05:00

The monkeys took swimming lessons this summer and the entire experience was FANTASTIC! I was very adamant that all three kids become more "water safe and water friendly" because I intended to spend as much time as possible at our neighborhood pool (having this pool was one of the main reasons we bought this house). Emilee took one session, got some pointers to refine her strokes, and then was promptly told "outta this pool...you are too good for us, you need to be on a swim team!" Wow, girlie, who knew?! Trevor took two sessions and made great progress. At the beginning of summer he was "safe" around a pool, meaning I knew he could fall in and return to the side...and he could sorta do the front crawl. But by the end of the summer his strokes were improved and he was a MUCH stronger swimmer! And Carter started the summer refusing to get his face wet...and by the end of his second session could actually swim from one end of the pool to the other unassisted!! AMAZING progress!

Here are a few pictures...

Bunny of course had to join us AND specifically watch Carter's lesson...

Em and Trev having a "tread water with your hands out of the water contest." Trev is forgetting the hands up part lol...

Working on dives off the side...

I love this picture of Em pushing off the side to start a lap of some stroke...the water just looks super cool!

Another cool pic of Trev mid-stroke

And some video...

Trevor doing freestyle...

Em doing butterfly (her shoulder strength is amazing!)

One of the first days of lessons. The teacher had gotten Carter to get his face wet and started introducing freestyle arms and kicking.

They also got right to introducing these little ones to dive from the side {{ughhh I can't get this video to load correctly for some reason, check back later, I'll try to fix it}}

Carter's first jump off the diving board

Eventually he got up the courage to jump alone, and and Trevor took a jump!

A dive later on in the lessons

And Carter's shining moment...jumping off the board and swimming the whole length of the pool alone! He came so far from not wanting to get his face wet 4 weeks before! And this was our goal, so that we could all safely enjoy our neighborhood pool.

Happy Halloween!

2011-11-01T14:29:00.005-05:00

We hope everyone had a wonderful Halloween yesterday...we did!

We had a much anticipated pumpkin carving party on Friday night...

And here are this year's carved pumpkins. Left to right...Trevor's "BOO" mouth jack-o-lantern, Emilee's cross, Karen's spider, Joshua's bats-over-the-moon and Carter's bunny. Yes, when asked how he wanted to carve his jack-o-lantern face, he replied "in the shape of Bunny!" So a tribute to his best stuffed friend was rendered. Emilee free handed her cross...go, Girlie! And Trevor carved his whole entire face all by himself this year!

And here's the front of our house. The skeleton with a beating heart was a hit around the neighborhood and Joshua and the kids loved adding spiderweb this year to our display. (I on the otherhand, just about lost my mind taking that web down today...ooooh my what a sticky mess!)

The three monkeys...Emilee went for the "80s look", Trevor searched many a store for a GREEN skeleton costume, and Carter has been adamant since August that he was going to reuse his Fisherman costume I made two years ago. I tried to steer him to a "new" suggestion, but when his mind is made up, it's made up lol. Oh well, they sure made for three cute trick-or-treaters!

And here's Em with her two friends that joined us. Amy was a mime and Ali went along with the 80s theme.

Chicken enchilada soup

2011-10-21T05:00:00.000-05:00

We had this super yummy recipe for dinner the other day that I sorta invented from several recipes I found online based on what I had on hand. I love that the weather is getting cooler and it's time to have soups and such for dinner! The crock pot is SO easy and fast...and it's waiting for us, ready to serve when we get home from sports and such. This fit perfectly in a 4 quart crock pot (with a bit of room to spare). If you have a larger crock pot, feel free to increase the measurements by half or even double it and you'll have some to freeze too!

2 or 3 chicken breast pieces, frozen
1 can pinto beans, rinsed and drained
1 can black beans, rinsed and drained
1 can hominy drained
1 can green chiles
1 small onion, diced
2 cups chicken broth
1 cup enchilada sauce
½ t salt
1 T minced garlic

Put all in crockpot on high for 3 hrs, then low til dinner (if chicken isn’t frozen then low all day is fine). Mid afternoon pull out chicken breasts, shred with fork and return to crock pot. Top with shredded cheese and sour cream, serve tortilla chips on the side and enjoy!

It's a bird...it's a plane...

2011-10-19T08:39:00.002-05:00

Have you ever seen an airplane and wondered who the heck was in it? Since they are so high up in the sky and you can't see in the windows and they cover such great distances, it always seems so mysterious as to who is inside. We live very close to the airport and when the planes are landing west-->east we can see them flying by in the north sky from the big grass park area by our house. Well, twice now Carter and I have known the exact time that Joshua was landing here in Boise and we went outside and actually saw HIS plane flying by the house on final approach. I don't know what it is, but it's crazy exciting to look up and see a plane and know Joshua is on it. So these are the pictures I was able to snap two weeks ago as he flew by the house. The first one shows the plane coming out of a counterclockwise turn and then you can see it straightening up in the next couple. The last picture is right when we lose sight of the plane just before it's about to touch down. Click on them and you can see the plane better.

Update on Regular Fish

2011-10-12T08:28:00.002-05:00

Sorry, I've kind of slacked on an update. Here's the good news...he is still alive! The even better news? I think we actually FIXED him! After 10 days in the hospital, he was still not looking awesome, but he was eating again and swimming happier. I also switched his water conditioner and took the coral out of his bowl (this was to eliminate any other variable that might have been making him sick or providing a place for bacteria to grow). Now, his fins are healing (not clumped together and curled in knots) and his color is better (no more brown ick on his pretty blue skin). I have to crack up at the lengths we went to to save this fish...and I'm so relieved it worked!!!

Now, I bet you are wondering what the heck is all over Regular Fish's new bowl (yup, new bowl, cuz I cracked his old one trying to sterilize it when he was sick...so he is living in an old vase right now)?? Well, Halloween is upon us and Carter was VERY excited to be decorating around the house and outside, and the other day he declared that Regular Fish needed some decorations too. He wanted to draw pictures on 8.5x11 pieces of paper and tape them all over his bowl, but I convinced him that wouldn't work as we wouldn't be able to see Regular Fish and he wouldn't be able to see us. Soooo we were out shopping and Carter spotted some gel clings and lo and behold...Regular Fish has Halloween "decorations"!

Best part of the weekend!

2011-09-25T19:44:00.002-05:00

This weekend we jumped in Joshua's truck and headed out of town with him...half because Joshua needed to do some work stuff between here and Salt Lake City and half because it would be fun family time to get out of the house...yanno--two birds, one stone.

Well this is my favorite part of our weekend out of town. We got to our hotel after dark on Friday night. It wasn't the nicest of hotels we've stayed at (with all of Joshua's frequent stayer club deals, he usually can put us up in SUPER nice hotel suites for nothing...but we were stuck with Reese, so read...dog = lesser accomodations haha). Anyway, we parked around back and walked around a central garden area toward our room when we were VERY surprised to see a full volleyball court! Joshua chuckled at the odd sight...you don't usually see a volleyball court at a Holiday Inn or Hilton...and the kids started jumping up and down saying "looky looky!!" (they had lots of pent up in-the-car energy). And then Emilee chimed in with a shocked tone of voice "Hey!! I brought my volleyball!!" There I was unpacking suitcases and I see Joshua grab Emilee's ball and head out the door, all the kids in tow. Tickled at the spontaneity, I followed. So our family spent about half an hour playing volleyball in the dark in the garden of an odd hotel...and we had a BLAST! We played Em & Trev VS Dad & Mom for a while...and then switched to Dad & Em VS Mom & Trev. Who knows what the score ended up being, but we had a ton of fun running around in the sand chasing a ball we could barely see! And Carter, not to be left out, just hung out on the court with us making "sand angels" and running all over while we played over and around him!

The other hilarious part of this volleyball court was it was meticulously groomed when we got there...meaning the gardener had used a special sand rake and made super straight and pretty lines along the length of it. It looked like one of those sand zen gardens that people play with on their desk to de-stress...only super sized! Anyway, I can't imagine too many people play in this volleyball court...so we all got a good laugh out of imagining the gardener's face the next morning when his perfect lines were all replaced with crazy footprint marks.

(If you click to zoom in on the picture, you can just barely make out Emilee in the top left corner about to serve her pink and white volleyball...Carter is wearing orange running around near here, and Trev is waiting for Daddy's volley at the top right.)

Suzy Homemaker

2011-09-20T22:16:00.003-05:00

Today I dabbled in a world I've always wanted to play in...canning!

The other day I offhandedly mentioned to Emilee's best friend's mom (Meg) that I would love to try canning sometime. She looked at me sort of surprised and said "Really? Well, come on over, I'll show you how!" They own several acres and have all sorts of animals and farm type things going on at their house...all three of my kids love to go over there and visit since it's quite the opposite of our "city type" living. They have an abundance of peaches ready to be picked right now so Carter and I excitedly accepted their offer and headed over this morning.

We got started picking about 20lbs of peaches...here's Carter eating a peach with one hand and holding up a just picked "perfect" peach with his other.

One of the many steps to canning...sorting the peaches and getting them ready for a quick dip in boiling water, followed by a dip in iced water, so you can peel them.

After peeling, they need to be pitted and cut and sprinkled with Fruit Fresh.

Then they need to be packed into the jars. This step is a tricky one I learned AFTER it was all said and done, as some of my jars came out not as tightly packed as they should be. Oh well, they should still taste yummy!

Next step is boiling the lidded jars...this takes 45 mins...and the time waiting is best passed by heading over to the canal that runs through Meg's front yard and floating the toy lego boats that were built by cute 4 year olds while Mommy was chopping peaches.

45 minutes is up and SUCCESS!!

The jars are done and set out to cool.

I had a blast today trying out canning...a huge THANK YOU to Meg for sharing her peaches and her time with us, and letting us make a mess out of her kitchen! And also to her daughter, Amy, who helped a ton with the peach peeling and with keeping Carter entertained!

And this picture wraps up my Suzy Homemaker Day. Not only did I hit the farm, pick and can peaches today...but I also put a whole chicken in the crockpot, ate some for dinner and pulled apart the rest to freeze for enchiladas later. And THEN I put the leftover bones/meat back in the crockpot, filled it with water and added seasonings and vegetables and now it's going to cook overnight making homemade chicken stock to freeze for later!

I'm feeling like a VERY accomplished housewife today!

Ooooh, Regular Fish...

2011-09-19T09:04:00.002-05:00

Three guesses as to what this picture is all about...

We wanted to spice up Regular Fish's living arangement...nope!

We were drunk and put Regular Fish in the wrong spot after cleaning his tank...nope!

Aliens came overnight, bypassed our home security system and this is how we found poor Regular Fish...nope!

This, my friends, is what a fish hospital looks like. Yup, you read that right. Regular Fish is in the hospital. I've been scouring the internet to find out what's wrong with him (since taking him into the vet is LAST on my list of things to do). Seems he's either caught a nasty fish disease called Velvet or we have accidentally contaminated his living quarters with a mystery poison...either way, he's sick. Over the last few weeks he's developed a brownish ick all over his body and he's lethargic and won't eat much and he buries himself under his coral thingie and acts dead. So some nice (crazy) people on an internet message board devoted to betta fish suggested that he needed to be treated with salt, tannins and quarantined in a small space to save his energy and allow him to recover. Yup, people, we are still talking about a fish here, not a human or even a dog...a fish! Previous to this, my only fish treatment has been something like this..."oh look, Swimmy is dead, guess we gotta flush him..." But not now. I guess we spend alot of time paying attention to dear Regular Fish, so now that we've noticed he's not well, how can you ignore that? So I mixed up a special concoction of water conditioner and salt and moved Regular Fish to a wine glass (cuz that's all I could find of the appropriate size) and he's been "in the hospital" for about a week so far. I will say his attitude (betcha didn't know fish had attitudes, did ya?!) is much improved. He isn't "acting dead" and is swimming around more. He is finally eating happily twice a day instead of just staring at his food in a trance and not touching it. But the brown ick is still all over his once beautiful blue body. I'm sort of at a loss. The one issue I've had in his "treatment" is that I haven't added "tannins" to his water yet. Supposedly fabricated tannins (yanno, like if you buy it in a jar at the pet store) are expensive and don't work. And to get natural tannins...well you have to find an oak tree that you are positive hasn't been treated with pesticides, collect up some fallen dried leaves, crush them and steep a tea out of them which you then add to the fish's water. Is anyone rolling their eyes yet?! Not only am I thinking "are you serious?!" but in my pet fish mommy defense, we don't have ANY oak trees around here. Pine trees abound and that's it. So admist housework and running the monkeys around to all of their sports practices and games, I haven't had time to drive hours into the hills around Boise and try to find an organic oak tree. Ughhh...

So, for now, that's Regular Fish's health update. I'll post again with any good or bad (ooooh let's hope not for poor Carter's sake) news.

Happy Birthday Emilee!!

2011-09-15T07:53:00.002-05:00

A quick shout out to our favorite (and still not quite awake when I snapped this picture!) girl...who's 14 today!

Happy Birthday, Emilee...we love you!!

First Day of Preschool

2011-09-08T08:51:00.002-05:00

Carter's first day of preschool was yesterday and it went great! He's back at the same preschool he attended last spring but this time in the "big 4 year old classroom"!! Over the summer Carter has been pretty clingy to me so I was worried that dropping him off in his class might involve a few tears (from him, not me haha!). But we've been talking about how much fun school is and how awesome it will be to play with friends again, hoping to calm his "leave Mommy to go there" worries...and it seems to have worked! I dropped him off without any issue and when I picked him up he was all smiles!! This year he is going MWF mornings...now to figure out what to do with myself with the house so quiet!!

Boating!

2011-09-04T09:30:00.006-05:00

Second time out at the lake, Emilee got right up on the wakeboard!

Trevor of course had to take things up a notch and went for one-handed and a little hot doggin' feet action...

Then Emilee got back on and gave one-handed a try!

Reese had his fun too. We anchored the boat near a shore area and the kids swam in and played on the beach with Reese. As you can see, even foo-foo dogs can play a decent game of fetch the stick!

Trevor is our current lego maniac and his newest theme is building boats. He brought a couple out to the lake to see how they'd hold up under real conditions....

His creations did well!

This one even got tied off to the dock...so cute!

Back out at the lake and Emilee is one handed AND "outside of the wake"!!

The boat also came with a kneeboard, which we have no experience in...but Em and Trev gave it a try and quickly figured out how to have fun on it!

Trevor again is leading the way with trying new tricks...he catches some pretty awesome air jumping the wake!

First Day of School!

2011-08-30T08:38:00.003-05:00

*YAWN*
Well after a wonderful summer of sleeping in and and playing hard, today we had to get up EARLY and out the door...school is back in session! Both Emilee and Trevor are together at the same school for the first time in a long time. This year they are both attending our local middle school; Emilee in 8th grade and Trevor in 6th. Usually I am soooo ready for school to start, but this summer was awesome. We didn't end up stir crazy and driving each other nuts so it is hard to swallow shifting gears from a fun and lazy summer to back to the school grind. I will admit though, as I see the fall merchandise hitting the store shelves, I am ready for the leaves to turn, to decorate for Halloween, and anticipate the first snowfall (read: skiing soon!!). So backpacks were packed and locker combos are memorized. Here's to a great first day of school, guys!!

(Sorry the pic loaded kind of small...click on it to see a bigger version.)

Albertsons part 2

2011-08-15T21:49:00.002-05:00

I went back to Albertsons today and couldn't not share how well I did!

Remember yesterday...
10 boxes of Hamburger Helper = $10.00
minus (2) 80c coupons, doubled...-3.20
tax 51c
paid $7.31
received $5.00 store cash on next trip and $2.00 store cash on next trip

(Not pictured, I also bought a $2 thing of cream cheese we needed to make jalapeno poppers for dinner using the $2 store cash.)

Today...
10 boxes of Hamburger Helper = $10.00
minus (2) 75c coupons, doubled and (1) 80c coupon, doubled...-4.60
tax 46c
used $5 store cash from yesterday
paid 86c
received $5.00 store cash on next trip and $2.00 store cash on next trip

1 gallon of milk $3.09
3 bottles of V8 Fusion $6.00
minus (1) 75c milk coupon, doubled and (2) 50c V8 coupons, doubled...-3.50
tax 43c
used $5.00 store cash from transaction #1
paid 72c

1 gallon of milk $2.79
bubbles (needed a filler item and Carter gave a super nice "puleeeze!" 50c
minus (1) 75c milk coupon, doubled...-1.50
used $2 store cash from transaction #1
tax 17c
paid 26c

So I paid $9.15 for just over $70 in groceries. Not my best but pretty fun nonetheless!!!

PS. Carter wants to make sure you all notice that Bunny was peeking up over the milk jug. Carter was sitting in that chair while I lined up my picture and refused to be photographed, but he decided that Bunny should be in the pic.

Coupons...wherefore art thou been?!

2011-08-14T21:58:00.002-05:00

It seems like FOREVER that I've had an exciting coupon blog post. With the economy in the state it's in (don't even get me started that we are supposed to be well into the "recovery" phase), sales and coupons have been bleak for months. Couple that with me ignoring what sad deals there have been lately to have summer fun with my monkeys...it's been No News around here. BUT -- insert dorky fanfare here -- today was a fun coupon day!

First off was JCPennys. I got some mailer the other day for a $10 off minimum $10 purchase. THESE coupons are seldom but AWESOME because you can go pick up a thing or two or three on clearance and get them pretty much free! But today my mission was little Carter. He needed new tennis shoes and I've been trying to find something to fit his teensy little feet for weeks. I decided to see what JCPennys had rolled out on this week's new sale and SCORE! We found a pair of $25 tennis shoes on a 50% off sale!! Take off $10 for my coupon and I paid less than $3 for a very nice pair of shoes for our littlest monkey! Woohoo!!

Then we headed to Albertsons. Hamburger helper is on sale this week for $10 for $10. You also get a $5 coupon good on your next shopping trip printed off when you buy 10. AND a second $2 off your next shopping trip is also printing when you buy 10. Also, this weekend is double coupons...so I took two 80c off 4 boxes manufacturers coupons and doubled them. Cash paid including tax was $7.31. But when you figure in the $7 in store cash I got, it cost me THIRTY ONE CENTS to get 10 boxes of hamburger helper!! Woohoo number 2!! If I can get my hands on enough coupons, I just might go and roll my $7 store cash and get another ten boxes and another $7 in store cash! Our family doesn't eat much Hamburger Helper...10 boxes will probably last us well into six months...but I was thinking about all the upcoming food drives and what a nice donation that could be for 31c.

California...are you guys getting these doublers yet?!

May I Introduce...

2011-07-31T05:00:00.003-05:00

"Regular Fish"

Yes, that is his name, capital R, capital F...Regular Fish.

I've been taking our dog, Reese, to the vet ALOT. It's probably a blog post in itself to explain all of the things wrong (but thankfully getting better) with the dog...but I'll betcha if I put pen to paper about it, I'd convince myself to leave the side gate open and not worry if the furball came back. Ok, I seriously wouldn't leave the gate open...well maybe HAHA...but darnit, he's drained our savings account of ALOT of our fun money the past couple of months with all of his ailments. So no blog post on the dog...Oops...I digress. So I've been taking Reese to the vet, which is at Petsmart, which means that Carter requires a tour by the fish tanks to dream of one day having a pet of his own. (Remember, Emilee has birds and Trevor has hermit crabs...) Well recently, Em and Trev offered to pitch in together and buy Carter a fish and the necessary supplies (not that I in ANY way wanted another pet in the house, but the sibling love thing did tug at my heart!)

So after being carefully selected from dozens of betas at Petsmart, Carter happily hung onto the little cup of blue water and his new pet for the drive home...

So how'd he get THAT name, you ask? Well on the drive home we all were asking Carter what he'd like to name his fish. Bob, maybe, or Nemo. Nope, he wouldn't hear any of our suggestions. He would say "he's just regular fish". We thought that he was not exactly finding the right words and just telling us he didn't want to name him Bob Fish or Nemo Fish...that he just wanted to name him Fish. We kept trying to suggest cute names for his fish and he kept telling us "just regular fish". So one of us said, "OK Carter, Fish is a nice name, we'll call him Fish" and he gave one more try at getting us to understand him. "NO!! His name is Regular Fish!!" AH! Duh, sorry Booga! And so it stuck hahahaha!

Regular Fish gets a weekly bath and here's Carter poised and ready to help scoop him out into the hold cup while I scrub his bowl. And of course, what is an important event like cleaning the fish tank if you don't dress up in your finest suit and tie all by yourself?!

PS. I have to add a last comment here...do you know how HARD it is to photograph a fish?!?! I seriously spent three different photo sessions trying to get a decent pic of this fish. He is soooo wiggly and swimmy! Every time I'd get in close to take a shot of him when he was splayed out nicely to the side, he'd get excited that I was close to the bowl and turn to face me and dance about! And the curve of the bowl was NO help in focusing the camera. The monkeys thought I was nuts as I danced around the kitchen island, going round and round trying to snap a shot before Regular Fish jetted off to another corner of his bowl. Seriously, all you fish owners...try to catch a nice shot of your water friend and let me know how you do! :-)

4th of July!

2011-07-30T05:00:00.000-05:00

This year we decided to do fireworks at home so I gathered up several coupons (you knew that was coming, right?!) and hit the deals at the local fireworks stands. We ended up with quite a collection that required some serious organizing...

The monkeys were hilarious. They knew the name of almost all of the 40ish larger fireworks we bought...The Unicorn, The Witch Doctor, The Pyro Tower, The Star Blaster, The Jade Flower...

Of course you always want to catch pictures of these pretty sparkly displays actually going off, but they NEVER turn out...so here's the next best thing...my four favorite people, smiling in anticipation of the fun about to be had!

Hope everyone had as much fun on The Fourth as we did!!

Their first time in Idaho!

2011-07-29T05:00:00.000-05:00

Joshua's Grandma, Aunt and cousins came to visit us in late June. We had a great time visiting with them and showing them what we love about Idaho. I know I've said this before, but we LOVE Idaho weather...and that means it's beautiful in the evening to hang out on the back patio and light the chiminea. And of course, when the fire dies down a bit, you MUST make s'mores!

Two of Carter's favorite things in the world are chocolate and graham crackers...so you can imagine the bliss of this picture...

I've also said before that the reason we originally moved to Idaho was the Snake River Gorge. So there was no question that when Grandma and Aunt Cindy wanted to "see the sights of Idaho" we took them straight there.

Eeeeks, don't lean too far over, guys!!!

Woohoo, we had someone with us so ALL FIVE of us are actually in one picture!

Kudos to Cindy for thinking of taking this shot where you can see the river too!

This is a super fun spot too. I don't think it has an official name as it's just sorta there, and unless someone tells you about it, you'd never even know when you drove by. We call it "That Place On That Road Where You Can Pull Off By The Concrete Barrier And Walk Behind The Water Fall."

Say CHEESE, Lexie!

I snapped this one when Cindy, Tyler and Lexie were posing for Grandma's camera...

We also took them to Shoshone Falls, which is sometimes called The Niagra of the West because it is actually higher than Niagra Falls.

One more family picture...

Last stop on our trip was Carmella Winery. Joshua got his love of wine from Grandma so it was a must to stop and let them do a little wine tasting together. CHEERS!

We had a wonderful visit with you guys...come back soon!!!

EASY dinner!

2011-07-28T05:00:00.001-05:00

What do you do when you have a bunch of leftover rice and leftover chicken staring at you in the fridge? You make EASY fried rice!!

You can make this dozens of ways, but here's what I had on hand and how I threw it together.

Saute shredded or julienned carrot in some oil (throw in any other veggies at this step). Add 2-3 eggs and scramble into veggies, breaking apart well as they set. Add in meat (I also threw in some shrimp with the chicken) to warm. Then throw in 3-4 cups of rice and stir and toss to warm through. Add some soy sauce to taste. SERVE!!

SUPER EASY dinner!!

Ice Skating!

2011-07-27T05:00:00.000-05:00

Emilee and her friend, Allie, enticed me with a coupon...you know how I love my coupons...so I took the monkeys plus one ice skating and we had a blast!

Carter took right to it with the help of the little skater thingy.

And like normal, the only picture I got of Trevor was one of the back of him as he zoomed by...almost too fast to catch!

Here's a video of Carter and I cruising around the rink, and you can catch a glimpse of Trev in there too.

And then later in the day Emilee enticed Carter to give up his skater thingy and just hold her hand so here's them taking a lap...

Since we had a friend with us, I actually got to get in a picture with my kiddos...

And here's the monkeys with Allie...

picture fun

2011-07-26T05:00:00.000-05:00

Had a little fun with a photo editor...took these pics...

And did this...

A Water Family Again

2011-07-24T21:47:00.010-05:00

OK, here I go again!! I started last month, promising to catch up my blog with a daily post and I got pretty far, but then we had company and swimming lessons and summer just pulled me away from my computer! But I was so excited to share today's post that I'm back, and vowing again, that I'll get a daily post up until I'm all caught up. Cross your fingers with me haha!!

So our most current family news is that we bought a boat!! We had a Bayliner for several years back when we lived in California and LOVED going to the lake. But the economy in CA and then our decision to move sadly led us to decide to sell it back in 2005. But things have fallen into place and hip-hip-hooray, we are boat owners again! So here's some pictures and video from our first weekend out on our new boat!

We got out on the water and everyone settled into a comfy spot to sit back and enjoy the cruise...

Daddy loves to drive the boat FAST...and looky what happens when two siblings who normally can't stand each other get a tad scared at top speed...

Of course everyone wants a turn as captain...

The boat has a tower to wake board off of...which means there are nice sturdy poles to hang on to so Joshua and I stood up and enjoyed the feel of the wind while a smaller captain was handling the wheel.

You also have to drop anchor somewhere quiet and drown a few worms...man do our kids love to fish, for a little while at least.

I LOVE wakeboarding so I was first out on the rope and after just a couple of crashes, it all came back to me and I was up and having fun. Even got brave enough to try with just one hand!

And check out which monkey got the hang of the wakeboard first!! Go Trev!!

We also hooked up the tube and pulled that along for a while. Here's Trev hanging on for dear life as Daddy teased him with 360s and such, trying to toss him out!

And here's a Emilee and Carter getting a bit of a calmer ride...

Emilee gave wakeboarding a very good try, but didn't quite get it just yet. She's sooooo close!

Say cheese, girlie!!

And yes, Reese had to go along too...

And per Joshua's Boating Regulations, all furry passengers get tossed in the drink...

To Portland!

2011-06-29T16:35:00.003-05:00

Joshua and I got back from Cancun on Tuesday at midnight and Wednesday just after lunch we loaded the kids up in the car and headed west. Joshua needed to do some work stuff in Seattle and Portland, and his grandmother and aunts and cousins live a bit southwest of Portland so we went on a working vacation. And his grandmother's sister, Auntie Mare, happened to be in town for a visit from Florida. We hadn't seen her in 9 or 10 years and she's a blast to hang out with so it was the perfect timing for a visit!

Carter warmed right up to Auntie Mare when she started chatting with him about his favorite game on daddy's iPad. Most everyone knows the game as Angry Birds, but Carter calls it "Pigs and Chickens." I caught this pic of him smacking his head saying "awww mannnnn!" when he didn't win the level. Auntie Mare got the biggest kick out of his reactions and the way that he can run that iPad better than most adults.

Joshua also enlisted Auntie Mare to teach him how to play Gin. She plays tournaments so she was an excellent teacher and it was quite amusing to watch the elder generation instruct the younger in the ins and outs of the srategy.

And while Daddy was learning to play cards, Carter and cousin Lexie played with nerf launchers in the front yard. Our kids don't get to spend too much time with their second cousins so it was really fun to watch Carter and Lexie pal around.

I'm quite tickled with this pic of Trevor and Andy playing catch. My camera is pretty slow, so it was awesome that I caught the nerf football mid air.

This next picture is mostly for Andy. As he hung out with our family that weekend, he was quite amused with Carter's attachment to his stuffed bunny rabbit and how Bunny has a personality all her own (puppeted by Carter, of course). Andy was cracking up at conversations like the following happen quite often...

(Carter is making Bunny do some crazy gyrations or making Bunny make loud obnoxious sounds that start to drive the rest of us nuts.)
"Carter, please stop making Bunny freak out."
"Mom, it's not me, it's Bunny doing it."
"Bunny, calm down now or you'll need a time out. Carter, you might want to remind Bunny the proper way to behave. I'd hate for her to end up in time out."
Carter whispers something in Bunny's ear and she calms down, at least for a while.

Well, this is what happens when Bunny doesn't heed our warnings to stop bothering siblings...time out on the dash of the car while cruising down the interstate.

Slighty road weary gazes, hopefully soon to be perked up after a quick run through the drive through of Carter's favorite restaurant "King Burger"!

The long drive home from Portland isn't terribly fun...all five of us and the dog packed into the cab of the pickup...but time passes a bit quicker when Daddy shares his iPad for a fun game of Pigs and Chickens. Brother and Sister try to jump in and give pointers, but Carter can pass levels that even Daddy can't so there's little need for their help haha!

Mexico 2011

2011-06-29T05:00:00.000-05:00

When the OKC part of our trip was done, we headed off on official "vacation"...back to Mexico! We went last June for our 15th wedding anniversary and when the topic of "where to go" came up this year, it was unanimous that we wanted to go right back to Mexico. Back to the beautiful resort we stayed at last year, and most importantly back to our favorite private pool, personal butler/bar tender and palapa bed to nap and relax on.

One of the nicest perks of Joshua flying so much is the "status" he's earned with the airlines. What that means for me...well, we almost always are upgraded for free to First Class. Here's Joshua and I all comfy in the "nice seats" posing for a fun pic...

In Joshua's last meeting in OKC before we flew off to Mexico, his boss handed him a little gift...an iPad2! It's meant to replace his laptop and be used for business travel, but while on vacation, it's awesome to play Angry Birds on a BIG SCREEN!

Here's one of the gazillions of Grand Riviera Princess logos that decorate the resort...

If you remember last year, our trip was almost cancelled by Hurricane Alex. Here's a stormy sky and choppy sea shot from 2010...

And here's the difference a year and no hurricane makes. Beautiful blue sky and calm tropical waters...

I pulled this picture from last year's album. THIS is why we go to Mexico...to laze around on these palapa beds and be waited on by our private butler. Might be too low-key for many people, but the quiet and relaxation here is exactly what we need!

The first two days we were there, it was pretty rainy. I shot this video laying on the palapa bed. It's crazy how HARD the rain was coming down, but the temps were beautiful and we were dry on our bed so we just stayed put and enjoyed the odd peace of it.

Each time the maids tended to our room, we were treated to new "towel art" and fresh flower decorations. This one was my favorite. If you look closely, you can see she went so far as to make eye lashes out of some spiky greenery...

The main courtyard lit up at night with all the beautiful water features...

Each night there was a different show of some sorts. This one was really cool...a native Mexican folk dance performance.

One of our yummy dinners. We loved this awesome salad they served all over the resort, with the leaves all stacked up and sticking out of a hollowed out cucumber! Oh yes, and don't forget a mojito and a chocolate martini!

We made sure we got reservations at the sushi restaurant this time!

Say "Mexico"!!!

One last picture before we checked out and headed back home to our monkeys!

Thank you, Joshua, for working so hard so that we can enjoy awesome vacations like this!! I love you!!

Culinary Class

2011-06-28T05:00:00.000-05:00

Joshua and I got the chance to spend ten days away in late May/early June. The first part of our trip took us to Oklahoma City. Joshua had some annual meetings to attend, and the spouses were invited along for some fun! His company treated us to a fancy dinner along the river, a spa getaway and our choice of daytime excursion. We chose to go to a cooking class at Trattoria Il Centro in Bricktown. It was soooo much fun!

One of the best parts of our cooking class was that Joshua's good friend from work and his wife went with us! Carter named them Mr. and Mrs. Curvy a long time ago (a close toddler mispronunciation of their true last name) and it's stuck so may I introduce our dear friends, the Curvys, all dolled up with us in our aprons...ready to rock the culinary world!

The first thing we learned was how to make pasta from scratch. So here's Joshua starting to massage the eggs into the semolina and flour...

Mrs. Curvy getting a tad bit goey in the process...

Mr. Curvy jumped in to help...the guys almost have it ready to be put through the pasta machine.

Say "pasta!" :-)

I got sidetracked and didn't take any pics of the finished product, but we learned how to properly run the pasta dough through the pasta machine and then how to make raviolis and tortellinis. It was sooo much fun to make and really easy. We are currently in the market for a pasta machine so we can enjoy this at home with the monkeys!

Then we got to learn how to make fresh mozzarella. THAT was fun and interesting! Here's Joshua stretching out the cheese over and over again, before you then make it into the mushroom cap shaped balls that you see in the grocery store.

Finishing Up School

2011-06-27T05:00:00.000-05:00

The school year finished up with a bang (and my Mom and Dad were here to help with alot of it)! Both of the big monkeys did very well with end-of-year marks.

Trevor's school Science Fair was right at the end of the year. Trevor chose to do his project on how temperature of kernels affects the popping time and quantity of popcorn. Out of FIVE fifth grade classes, Trevor got second place! We are beyond proud of his hard work!!!

And here's Trevor receiving his 5th grade diploma after receiving Presidential Honors for his good report card. He's off to middle school in the fall!

Emilee's seventh grade class celebrated the end of the year with a masquerade party...

And Emilee received Presidential High Honors for her high grades! We are quite tickled at all of her hard work!

And the last hoorah of her 7th grade class was a performance from Science class entitled The Internal Organ Hall of Fame. It was quite a treat to watch as the students all took on the personality of an organ and tried to explain what they do in the body. Here's Emilee posing with her best friend, Amy, after the show. Very fitting of best friends to be the kidneys...

And here are two video clips I took during the performance. This one has the main jingle with most of the students...

And this one has Emilee and Amy in their duet...

Spring Portraits

2011-06-26T05:00:00.001-05:00

Here are the monkeys' spring portraits...man, aren't they all getting BIG??!!
Trevor is just 11, Emilee is almost 14 and Carter is 4.

Trevor turns ELEVEN!!!

2011-06-25T05:00:00.000-05:00

May 25th was Trev's 11th birthday and he had a great birthday! We had his party the weekend before. He decided to try out a new place we'd heard of...an indoor trampoline park! So here's a couple of videos of the jumpy-ness!

Trevor's awesome launch into the pit...

Carter's new trick, backwards and head first (yikes for Mom haha!)...

Joshua reliving some of the old glory days of gymnastics...

And Emilee flipping into the foam...

The rest of Trevor's birthday was topped off by Dad and Mom giving him his first cell phone! He was quite surprised and all smiles!!

Happy Birthday, Buddy...we love you!!

Licking Learning Legos

2011-06-24T05:00:00.001-05:00

So Carter is quite busy these days...

He ALWAYS wants up on the counter to at least watch me cook, and loves when he can help...especially if it ends with something tasty like a spatula of cake batter!

I've stumbled upon a homeschool website that shares free printables of preschool material. I had no idea how Carter would react when I tried to present some organized learning to him...but he LOVES IT! He calls it his "home school" as opposed to the learning he does at "preschool" and came up with that name all on his own. He askes me quite frequently if he can do homeschool...some days I'm worried about running out of printer ink haha!

And his other current love is building with legos. I am pretty surprised for his age that his attention is being kept and he's using him imagination so well. He will literally sit with a box of basic legos for hours and just tinker around and build. This is a picture of his "dad ship". I think this title comes from hearing "mother ship" in some sort of alien reference. He has no real idea what that is...but when he heard there were Mother Ships, he also thought there should be Dad Ships!!

Joshua

2011-06-23T05:00:00.000-05:00

Joshua usually tries to stay on the back side of the camera...but I wanted to share a few pics I managed to get him in!!

Emilee and Joshua enjoyed a rousing game of basketball at our neighborhood court a while back. They were formidable opponents and the game was quite fun to watch! Emilee gave Joshua a good run for his money, but in the end, Daddy dunked a few more baskets than she did.

Joshua has been doing more driving lately than flying...so he's had the chance to stop by a few cool attractions.

Mount Rushmore...

And Old Faithful...

April Outside

2011-06-22T11:39:00.002-05:00

There's going to be a daily post for a while here while I catch up the past three months...enjoy!

Our tree out front bloomed just beautifully and the monkeys obliged Mom for some poses...

As soon as Mom's pics were done, they were off on bikes. Since Carter has learned to ride with no training wheels, it's his constant request to be riding. Joshua and I even bought bikes so we could all ride together. And to my surprise, I love it too! It's perfect fresh-air family time!!

Simple Family Saturdays

2011-05-14T10:31:00.002-05:00

So I was going to start this post with "we go to this place where there's water..." but I decided to do a little Googling so I sounded a bit more educated about where we live lol! So let's try this slightly more informative introduction...

There's a very nice park and waterfront that we found one day while driving around after going to a new fish market to get fish for sushi. Turns out, thanks to Wikipedia, that it's the Boise River, which is a tributary of our beloved Snake River. There's a very nice play structure the kids love to burn some energy out on, and then there's the ducks and geese. What classic family fun it is to feed these webbed footed friends!

They will eat pretty much right out of your hand...

Em made fast friends with this hungry guy...

Carter much preferred feeding the quieter, slower ducks than the pushy geese...

When the geese got closer, Carter opted for climbing into the safety of Daddy's lap. This shot caught the cracker mid-air when this fast goose snatched it from Joshua's hand.

Poor Carter had really had enough of the geese. You can see him staying very close to Trevor and asking where the nice ducks went lol...

Easter!

2011-05-14T10:06:00.002-05:00

Catchin' up this morning...

It's really starting to sink into my head lately how the kids are growing up and time is flying. For the 14th time, we dyed eggs as a family...

And sleepy monkeys came downstairs to see what the Easter Bunny had brought...

And we headed outside to hunt for eggs...

Emilee is still happy to join in looking for treasures...

And for some reason, this was a particularly important egg to Trev...

We had a very nice, quiet family Easter day. After church we hit Home Depot and got some pretty flowers and bordering and spruced up the front of the house.

And remember that very important birthday watering can? It came in very handy after all the flowers were planted!

Climbin' and flyin'

2011-05-14T09:56:00.002-05:00

Carter continues to amaze me. We went to a birthday party at a bounce house place and there was a rock wall in the corner. None of the other preschoolers wanted anything to do with climbing it, but Carter was all over it. The lady harnessed him and up, up he went!!

As soon as spring sprung, Carter was out trying to fly his kite. God bless the Dollar Store and these kites that actually work for a buck!

Happy Mother's Day!!

2011-05-08T13:02:00.004-05:00

Joshua surprised me with a trip to California to surprise my mom for Mother's Day! He's at home wrangling the monkeys and I got to spend three days with my Mom and Dad. The best part of my trip was heading over to the coast (ooooh beach-in-Idaho, where are you? lol) and spending the day with my parents AND brother, David, and enjoying the gorgeous ocean and sun. I know having my brother and I together with her and Dad meant the world to Mom. It was a very nice and relaxing trip...thank you, honey!

Now I'm at the airport, headed home to get Mother's Day hugs from my own monkeys. Hope they were fairly nice to Daddy while I was away :-).

Happy Mother's Day to all the special moms out there!!

Is it November yet??!!

2011-04-29T19:29:00.005-05:00

I am SOOOO sorry it has been almost a month since a post! Life just keeps getting away from me and "extra" computer time like this is scarce.

This is *sniff* our last skiing post for the season. We had the.best.time.ever skiing as a family! It was the best investment and just so awesome that all five of us LOVE it...yay for family time! So here's the last videos and pics of the season. They are a combo of the last two trips we took up. I took the monkeys by myself one day over our Spring Break, and then we went one last time as a family the following weekend.

Carter was so excited to ski that he hung onto his skis ALL the way up to the resort. We couldn't get him to let go for ANYthing!

Em skiing alongside of Carter

Em waving from the chair

Trevor taking a quick rest at the top of the "big hill"

Em snapped a pic of the boys and I

I made a collage of my fav shot of each of the monkeys and I on the chair lift

Here's Em cruising down the "big hill." You can also see what I was talking about a while back about being worried about Carter falling off the "cliff" that's on one side.

This is a clip of Carter and I rounding the 180 degree switchback on the "big hill." It can be tricky for adults to make, and here Carter zooms around it like nothing haha! And then we catch up with Em, who was waiting for us.

Carter and Emilee cruising...

Emilee took the camera for a while (we are working on her keeping the camera steadier) and caught a clip of Carter and I (and Trev is in there for just a second too)

Trevor LOVED going down the black diamond runs. NO FEAR in this kid, I tell ya! He convinced Joshua to go down a run that was part black diamond and part blue square (one level easier than black diamond). This is a clip of the two of them coming down the bottom half of that run. The video makes it look pretty easy but believe me, it's FAST and DIFFICULT. (You might want to watch it twice so you can pick out who Joshua and Trevor are cuz it's easy to spot them at the end.)

This one is Carter and Joshua skiing down the "big hill." Joshua had Carter playing a game of "point which way to go" and then had him practice coming to a dead stop (if you turn up your speakers, you can hear Carter make the "errrrrrrt" screech to a stop sound).

Last but not least, a video of Trev skiing. It shows him pretty calm, meandering down the hill. That's usually not his style, but you probably won't see any of his crazy black diamond antics any time soon. I REFUSE to go up on those hills with him and when Joshua goes, he's more focused on getting down in one piece than filming :-).

Til winter 2011...

Look Ma, No Training Wheels!!!

2011-04-01T22:00:00.002-05:00

So we noticed lately when Carter rides his bike that he barely taps his training wheels side to side...a tell tale sign it's about time to try taking them off. So this morning Joshua took him out to give two wheeling a try. It was a little rocky...

But after a pep talk from Daddy, he tried again after dinner and viola!!

Yup, just four years old and riding a bike with no training wheels...GO BOOG!!!

Miscellaneous Monkeys

2011-03-30T19:44:00.003-05:00

Carter came downstairs one afternoon and ever-so-adorably inquired "Can I paint...on a towel like a picnic...with black paint...so I can make a road picture for Trevor??" So Emilee graciously obliged overseeing the project and even had a little art-fun herself.
After literally years of begging us to let her get pet birds, Emilee finally saved enough money and convinced us she was responsible enough...so please meet "Snow" perched on Em's finger (notice the HUGE smile on this teenager's face...we don't see this quite enough anymore).
And both birdies in their cage ("Apple" is green and "Snow" is bluish white).
Just showin' off Trev lookin' mighty handsome!! The reason for the attire? He had a school project that was done presentation style to a panel of judges. He loved the part where he had to wear a tie...and his team did super during their presentation!
Since Trev was posing for a pic, Carter wanted to get in one too!
After a decent snow in early March, the boys went out to play and Trevor made Carter a "snow chair." Don't ask exactly why he did it because all I could get from Carter was "because I need somewhere to sit in the snow!" LOL!
Two goofy shots after getting new sunglasses...

Brad, Jamie and Braeden's Visit!!

2011-03-26T19:57:00.005-05:00

Our super awesome friends from Oklahoma ~ Brad, Jamie and Braeden ~ picked beautiful Idaho as their family's destination vacation this year...so we got to spend a week with them in late February! We all had a great time...the kids played, Josh and Brad played haha, and Jamie and I visited!

You all know that Joshua LOVES to cook...so right off, Joshua and Brad headed to the fish market and then came back and made us sushi!! Brad jumped in and learned too...I think Jamie wants sushi back at home!

One of our favorite outings back in Oklahoma with the boys used to be going to the mall...so we headed to my new mall and let the boys run some energy off.

And as if one night of sushi wasn't yummy enough, we voted for a second! More lessons for Brad and more YUMMY sushi for us!!!

Nice job, guys!!

Took all the monkeys to the park for some sliding fun...

Joshua and Brad headed up the hill to ski for a much needed man-break. Joshua had an absolute blast spending time acting crazy with Brad and just getting away from the ridiculous stresses of work.

A toast of duck farts to friends forever!!! Love you guys!!!

HE GOT IT!!!

2011-03-12T19:41:00.003-06:00

I am so excited to share these videos with you guys! Carter finally "got it" today when we were skiing!! I think for these little ones, picking up the knack of skiing is kinda like learning to ride a bike, and once you've got it, you've got it! Poor Joshua has been toughing it out "teaching" Carter to ski...but it's HARD! PHYSICALLY...VERY...HARD!! Keeping a 4 year old upright and balanced and not crashed into a tree...and then untangled from your own skis while YOU don't fall or run him over is just darn HARD! And I've felt super bad watching Joshua tough it out with all of this. And just as I finished up on some medium runs with Em and Trev, I came over to the small hill that Joshua and Carter were on, and I was surprised with THIS!

I am soooo proud of Carter that he "got it" and I'm so happy that Joshua's back gets a rest!! Go BOOGA!!!

Oh and one other thing...isn't his new helmet CUTE?!?! It's got silly monsters and dinosaurs on it and it's perfect for him!

And I did want to share that Em and Trev and Joshua got to go for their first NIGHT ski last night too! Joshua didn't get any pictures...BOO!...but they had a blast and with the extra practice in, the big monkeys are now officially outskiing Mommy! :-)

Oregon!

2011-03-11T21:44:00.004-06:00

Back in February, Joshua needed to do some interviews for work in the Portland area and didn't have much time in his schedule to fit them in. So we loaded the five of us up in the van and decided to make a working/family weekend out of heading to Oregon. Here's Em and Trev's favorite part of the "work" Daddy did that weekend. We happened upon one of Joshua's drivers dropping a load at the truckstop, so we parked and did a secret survelliance (Joshua does this often to make sure his drivers are following proper safety procedures...and then the drivers who pass get a bonus on their paycheck!).

Em and Trev keeping watchful eye...

The driver did great!

The awesome part of needing to go to Portland for work was that alot of Joshua's family lives there. We got to spend some time with his much-missed grandma, aunts and cousins. Some of them had never even met Carter! Before we all left California and scattered, a favorite family past time used to be playing Scatergories...so they were quick to break out the box and jump into a game!

A pose with Grandma...
And one with Grandma, Aunt Cindy and Tyler and Lexie!
On the way home, we got to stop at a tourist attraction...Multnoma Falls. It was BEAUTIFUL!! It is 600+ feet tall and just awe inspiring!

This is the widest shot I could take, getting the most of both sections of the falls in...
Joshua and the kids made the quarter-mile hike from the base to the bridge. I stayed down so I could get the picture haha! The little group on the bridge is Joshua and the monkeys...
Zoomed in on them on the bridge...everyone is waving!

Happy 4th Birthday, Carter!

2011-03-11T20:31:00.005-06:00

Our littlest monkey turned 4 on Feb 27th...
Super excited to see what's in the package...
Woohoo! It's Woody! Buzz has been lonely...
Carter asked for some very simple birthday gifts this year. He wanted THIS pink watering can, some fireman boots to wear with his fireman costume...
And a golf set for the backyard...
Fore!!!
We went to a local "fun zone" to celebrate Carter's special day. He posed at the top of the climbing contraption...
Carter had the MOST fun rolling the skee ball (and he got a TON of tickets for prizes)!
Daddy, Emilee, Trevor and Carter had a blast playing a racecar arcade game...
And then we headed outside for a FULL SIZED race! GO TREV!!
Brad and Em before the race...
Daddy teaching Carter "woohoo" arms-up for when they go around the tight turns...
Emilee is winning, Brad!!
Daddy and Carter trying to catch up...
Happy Birthday, Carter!!

Carter's dinner

2011-02-23T19:44:00.002-06:00

Carter's birthday is Sunday and here's the conversation that happened today in the car on the way to preschool...

"Hey, Boog, what do you want for your birthday dinner?"
"Huh? What dinner?"
"It's your birthday on Sunday and I thought I'd cook you your favorite dinner...what do you want?"
"Oooooooooh!! Yes!! My BIRTHDAY!!! Ummm hmmm, I don't know."
"Well, hun, what do you like to eat?"
"Toast! Yes, I like toast!! Let's have TOAST!! Hooray, it's my birthday and we will have TOAST!!"

Seriously, Carter?! You crack us up!

Videos!

2011-02-18T15:09:00.003-06:00

I've finally gotten a few videos uploaded to share! And in the process I think I've made better friends with YouTube so maybe I'll feel motivated to get video uploaded more often!

Here's two from our first time skiing. The first is Carter and Joshua skiing down the hill. Sorry I don't do a perfect job of keeping them in the middle of the frame. It is so starkly white out on the slopes that the glare makes it impossible to see anything in the viewscreen of my camera. So this is all a "point and hope" deal...and considering that, I guess I did pretty well!

And here's Trev navigating down the hill...

And this one is yesterday morning in our driveway, "sledding" down the icy slope!

Snowy sunrise and fun!

2011-02-18T13:50:00.003-06:00

It has been very UN-white here for us in Idaho. For a family who LOVES the snow, we got unlucky this winter and have largely missed out on the snow (a big blizzard hit Idaho the week before we moved here, and two blizzards have hit Oklahoma since we've left). So it was terribly nice to wake up to the above picture yesterday morning!

Trevor got dressed, ate his breakfast and packed his backpack as fast as he possible so he could get outside and play (shovel sidewalks) before school. Emilee and Carter weren't far behind him. I'll betcha the neighbors were thinking crazy things about the new people who've moved in and were outside playing at 7am before school!

I actually caught a nice straight-on smile from Carter...man, those have been hard to get lately!

The mountains in the background are nice and white again. The past two weeks the snow line had creeped up mighty high, putting a risk to ski season ending early.

Immediately after school Trevor headed back outside to play. You can see how much snow had melted just in about two hours of sun around lunchtime. But Trevor still managed to create this huge snowball from the patches that were left along the basketball court and beside the fences. (Don't ask me about the serious look on his face...I sent Em out to snap a pic of his snowball and this is what she came back with haha!)
And I had to crack up when I called him in to dinner. He said "OK Mom, I have to get my basketball first!" I thought he'd run real quick to the court, grab his ball that he'd obviously abandoned to make the snowball, and then come in to eat. So when he'd been gone several minutes, I looked out the window to try and see where he was. I saw him hacking at the snowball with a shovel.
"Trev, come on, get your ball and come in to eat!"
"I am trying, Mom!!"
"Uh, Trev, where is your ball?"
"INSIDE the snowball!!"
LMBO!!!!

Carter's getting big!

2011-02-18T13:08:00.002-06:00

So I was completely caught off guard last week when I discovered that aparently preschool registration season was in full swing. We intended to put Carter into preschool in the fall, for his last year before Kindergarden...but doing anything about this was FAR from my thoughts at the moment. I thought I had plenty of time to worry about finding a program for him, sometime in the next few months. Well I started noticing flyers and billboards giving notice that it was registration time. I called a couple of preschools to ask a few preliminary questions and they were already full for fall...yikes!! Suddenly I felt like I had about 2.3 seconds to figure out where he was going to preschool this fall, or he might not be able to go! I was able to arrange two tours/interviews and went armed with questions and fingers crossed. Carter and I went to the first one and loved what he saw! He immediately started asking me if I could drop him off there! I told him "no, hun, you can't start school until the fall." As we walked out to the parking lot from that first school's visit, Carter stopped, looked up at a tree and said "look Mom, the leaves are falling...it's fall!!" Smart cookie, eh?! We went to check out the second school (the one I ended up chosing) and he again so super excited at seeing all the kids and fun activities. The director took us around to look at the classrooms and we were supposed to just peek in the door and see what the students were doing. Well Carter walked right in and went and sat at a table full of kids and starting doing their actitivy like he totally belonged there!! I immediately told the director that I was sorry and started to walk in to grab him and she said "no, don't worry about it, let him stay for a few." So we chatted and Carter sat there for the longest time, visiting with the teacher and students and doing the counting activity with them. It was ADORABLE! I finally pried him away and we started to leave, paperwork for next fall in hand. Carter was tugging at me saying "Mom, please drop me off, I want to stay with my friends!!" and the director wispered "yanno, we just happened to have a student drop from our three year old class, it's two days a week, since he's obviously so ready for this environment, would you be interested in that spot to start him now instead of waiting for fall?" HAHA, so between Carter and the director, I got convinced to start our big boy in preschool! His first day was Monday and he was sooooo happy!

Here's a picture of us on the way, complete with new "big boy" hairdo!

Here he's posing, backpack on, in front of his preschool's playground before class.
And a pose at the classroom door...
This is one of the little things I already love about his school...the parents are greeted with a note like this each day when we pick our monkeys up.
And, to make a make the first day of school all the more special, it was also Valentine's Day...so here's a picture of Carter showing off all of his goodies and cards from his new friends!
So after two days, Carter absolutely loves going to school!! Of course the only bad thing about having school two days per week is that there are FIVE days he CAN'T go! "Moooooom?! Do I have school today??!!!!" :-)

LaVerne Came To Visit!

2011-02-14T17:42:00.005-06:00

One of my most wonderful friends, LaVerne, just came for a visit for ten days and we had such a great time! She is just an amazing lady and the kids and Joshua and I loved having her! We took her “up the hill” on her first weekend here so she could see some snow (there’s none at her home in central California so this was a big deal for her). She can’t ski, but she enjoyed hot chocolate in the lodge and watched us play on the mountain. She also hung with Carter for a bit when he pooped out and the four of us got to explore the bigger hill for a while.
Posing for a couple of look where I was shots!

Here’s Joshua trying out the new “learn to ski harness” we got Carter. He wears the harness like a backpack and the adult can steer him and keep him from skiing uncontrollably down the hill with two leashes. It is sooo much nicer than trying to ski with him between our legs or use ski poles to give him balance. He did soooo well with it! It’s adorable and hilarious to watch him sliding down the hill with his knees bent and his little arms out like an airplane.

And I got some shots on the lift with Em

And then Trev

And then I caught this picture of Joshua and Trev going up the lift when I was skiing down the hill.

And since we had someone else there to snap a shot, all 5 of us got to be in a picture together!

That night after a long day at the snow, Carter was watching some TV before bed and LaVerne crawled on the couch with him and passed out.

In the evenings after the monkeys were in bed, LaVerne and I got to enjoy some adult time. We had a couple of drinks in front of the fireplace and our favorite snack, fried zucchini. Years ago when we were next door neighbors, from time to time, one of us would make fried zucchini and then call the other to come over and enjoy a surprise treat…it sure was nice to have LaVerne here to enjoy times like that together again!

LaVerne had been dying for a Hot Toddy all winter to warm up with, so one evening I googled how to make one for her!

Miss you already, lady!!

Lovin' my laptop

2011-02-14T17:25:00.002-06:00

I am the proud owner of a brand new laptop…THANK YOU, Joshua!!!

I just had to share the sad before and after of this. My old laptop was in pathetic shape; it sorta looked like it was in a computer Intensive Care Unit.
BEFORE...

The fan was broken so it had to be hooked up to a fan cooling pad 100% of the time (or else within minutes it would be HOT and shut down) and then the screen died (some part broke that cost more to repair than buying a new machine) so my laptop had to be hooked up to a second screen. (At this point it in no way resembled a laptop by definition of being portable and on my lap.) And then the sound started going weird so we had to hook up external speakers… You get the picture…
AFTER...

So my dear husband came to the rescue and found a screaming deal for me on a new one. And now I am on the couch, happily typing and surfing away hooked up to NOTHING but my wifi connection! Woohoo, it’s the little things!

Carter's Letters

2011-02-14T17:15:00.003-06:00

The other morning, I was doing paperwork at my desk and Carter was playing with some toys on the floor near me. He was chattering at me, and I was saying “uh huh” and nodding my head, not paying 100% attention to what he was saying. Then at one point I heard “and that makes a T!” I stopped what I was doing and turned to look…Carter was making letters with some toys. I asked him what else he could make and he showed me this…

The kicker is that we really have not been working on letter recognition much. He hasn’t been very interested when I have brought it up, so I didn’t think he had caught on to much beyond “his ‘C’”. But not only did he show me 5 or 6 letters, he was able to create them sort of abstractly with sticks. It was really cool, too, because when he ran out of letters he could make with two sticks, he went and found another so he could form this.

And then he found one more so he could make this...

Smart cookie we have here!!

Albertson's, oh how I've missed you!

2011-02-03T16:07:00.002-06:00

I haven't had an Albertsons to shop at in 5+ years. In the couponing world it didn't used to be amazing, but their loss leaders were frequently fun so I enjoyed stretching our budget there. Well, here in Idaho, they run a "doubles" deal where they print three coupons in the weekly ad and you can stack them on a manufacturer coupon to "double" it. For the first time this week, I jumped into the doubling game and had FUN! All of the items in the above picture cost me $4.79 before tax. The 8 cans of soup, the frozen lasagnas, the hot dogs and the tortillas were FREE. The cheese slices were 50c each, the salad dressings were $1 each (not an amazing price, but we needed it) and the popcorn/soda was $1.29 all together as a combo deal. Normal price on all of this would be $35ish at Walmart and ALOT more if I bought it not on sale at Albertsons. Sorry, CA friends...I checked with my dad and it doesn't look like you get these special "double" coupons :-( ...maybe you should move to Idaho!!! :-D

gorgeous in glasses!

2011-01-24T20:54:00.003-06:00

I finally captured Em for a few and snapped some pictures of her...in her new specs!! Yup, the big annoucement is that she has joined the ranks of Mommy and now has reading glasses. Don't they make her look just darn adorable? (Ooops, not sure if teenagers want to be called "adorable" haha?!) She picked out a super fun frame too in brown and blue accents with polka dots and stripes...hopefully you can see the design when you click on the above picture and zoom in!

The Monkeys Hit The Slopes!

2011-01-23T21:03:00.003-06:00

One of the best parts of moving to Idaho is the SNOW! And one of the best parts about the snow is SKIING! We got to go up and try out our local ski resort today. We are by no means accomplished skiers...Joshua and I skied as teens. Then we took Em and Trev twice when we lived in Idaho 5 years ago. And Carter's never been. So we are very happy on the bunny hill. And this resort is awesome...it has two magic carpets and one slow lift in their beginner area. So it was the perfect place for our family to hang out!!

Soooo first thing was first. Carter, meet Mr. Ed, ski instructor extraordinaire! Carter got to go to ski school! "Bye, Mom! I'm going with my ski teacher, see you later!!"

And much to my horror, the first thing Mr. Ed did was take Carter up on the CHAIR LIFT...no, not the nice slow safe magic carpet, but the darn chair lift! But as expected, Carter did awesome and Mr. Ed was a great teacher!! He had our littlest monkey sliding down the slope like a pro.

Since our baby was handling the chair lift, we also hopped on and took a few runs. This is Trev and I heading up.

Trevor looking mighty cute. For it having been 5 years since he skied, he did amazing! He was stopping and turning like it was nothing!

And I barely have a picture of Emilee because she was doing so well too. She just took off and acted like she'd been skiing forever.

After ski school was over for Carter, Joshua took him back up the lift and cruised down the hill with him a few times. Applause for Josh, cuz controlling yourself and a crazy little one is HARD!

Three tired and smiley monkeys!!

(I will try to get a couple of the videos I took up tomorrow!)

YUMMY, who knew?!

2011-01-22T08:58:00.003-06:00

Things have been pretty quiet around here...we're just settling into our new Idaho routine...so I don't have a ton to share yet. I could post some pictures of me cleanin' this big ole house haha! I'd forgotten a bit how much work it takes to keep up on 2800 sqft of baseboard! Oh, and there IS a post coming about Monkey #1...but I gotta get her to sit still (read--chill out her social life) so I can snap a few pics first.

Anyway, I did want to share an AMAZING recipe we tried last night. Now it should first be said that we are a typical American family...requiring MEAT (and quite a bit of it!) at every dinner. BUTTTTTT, being mindful of health factors and budget, and thinking just a tad outside of the box lately has lended us to considering trying "meatless" meals. Joshua saw a friend share a recipe on Facebook for vegetarian enchiladas and we thought we'd give it a try (and what made me jump was I had ALL of the ingredients on hand!). So here it is...

2 or 3 large sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed
1 can of black beans, rinsed and drained
1 small can of diced green chiles
1/4 of a red onion, diced fine
1/2 T cumin
1 T chili powder
14 oz of canned chile verde sauce
8 oz of shredded cheese
10 flour tortillas
sour cream and/or cilantro to garnish

Preheat oven to 350. Cook the sweet potato (place in pot, covered with water, add a pinch of salt, boil until tender 12 mins, drain). In a large bowl place red onion, black beans, green chiles, cumin, chili powder, 1/2 the cheese and cooked sweet potato and mix well. Place about 1/3 of the chile verde sauce in the bottom of a large baking dish. Assemble the enchiladas by placing about 1/2 cup of the filling in a tortilla and roll up. Top with remaining chile verde sauce and remaining cheese. Bake for 20 mins and serve topped with chopped chilantro and sour cream if desired.

You can adjust how spicy they are by playing with the cumin, chili powder and onion (my kids panted a bit last night so I'll be cutting it back some next time). I also made spanish rice to go along with it. We always have three things on our dinner plates...a meat, a carb/starch and a veggie. Last night, there were only two...it looked like we were missing the vegetables. And Joshua joked "guess we can skip the veggies tonight, eh?!"

jammies and recipes

2011-01-12T18:48:00.003-06:00

Just sharin' a cute picture of the boy monkeys! I *love* the "Carters" brand...first of all for obvious naming reasons, and second because they have a size span that allows both Carter and Trevor to having matching outfits. This time it was some neat rocket ship jammies (Carters brand is also awesome because they don't have any terrible gory/killing/dark character prints that dominate many of the other clothing lines), in footsie version for Carter and grown up two piece style for Trev!

Now, may I present today's accomplishment...

I made these Pretzel Rolls from scratch today! I got the recipe from this blog *http://fabulesslyfrugal.com/2011/01/pretzel-rolls.html* that I just started reading for local coupon deals. These rolls turned out SOOOO GOOD!! The recipe was a bit outside of my normal easy mix/bake zone...but I went for it and they weren't hard at all!!

Also, I don't have a picture to include, but I wanted to share the following recipe. I have to say I honestly don't recall where I got it from (copy and paste culprit) so I can't give proper credit (insert apology to mysterious cook). I've read for a long time about stretching your budget by doing meatless recipes and lentils sounded like some weird gross thing from some far away place I didn't frequent...but I gave it a try and THIS DISH WAS AMAZING!!! Josh and the kids were equally hesitant, but they all give a HUGE thumbs up to how darned delicious this turned out. You can serve this with a nice baked bread and a salad and call it a meal. I also added the leftovers of this into enchiladas I made a couple of nights later and it was YUMMY!

• 3 cups broth (chicken or vegetable)
• 3/4 cup lentils
• 1/2 cup brown rice
• 3/4 cup chopped onion
• 1 teaspoon italian seasoning (I just used some rosemary and oregano because that's what I had on hand)
• 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder (I use more)
• 1 cup grated cheese (cheddar or a blend is preferable)

Directions
1. Preheat the oven to 300 degrees.
2. Mix all ingredients except the cheese in a baking dish (I use an 11 x 7).
3. Cover with foil and bake for 1 hour 10 minutes.
4. Then remove the foil, add the cheese, and bake for an additional 20 minutes.

happy birthday!!

2011-01-12T17:24:00.003-06:00

Joshua and I celebrated our birthdays the last of December, just like every year lol! Emilee put on her baker's hat and made the cake with JoJo and then did all of the decorating herself...didn't the cake come out amazing?!

Mommy is 34...

I had to run to pick something up at the grocery store on Joshua's birthday and the checker asked me, "so what are you doing for New Years tonight?" I replied, "it's my husband's birthday and he's making us sushi!!" Oh, you should have seen the look of horror on his face that I was forcing my husband to make us his birthday dinner lol!! We are all super lucky that Joshua is so talented in the kitchen and that THAT is how he wants to spend his special day!

And this picture is literally why we were so happy to buy this house. The first thing we said about this kitchen was, this island is perfect for making sushi!!
Digging in for the best bites...

Showing off Joshua's creations on his new birthday sushi plates...

Daddy is 37...

Christmas in Idaho

2010-12-28T22:57:00.004-06:00

As we made our drive from Oklahoma to Idaho, the scene out the window started getting pretty in Utah. Part of why we love this area of the country is the landscape...and of course, SNOW!!

Monkeys on a road trip!

The sign says it all!!

The boys visited Santa (yes, Trevor STILL believes!!).

Even thought we didn't have our furniture delivered, we started to make our new house a home by getting the tree up and decorated (thankfully Joshua had the foresight to bring all of our Christmas stuff out on one of his previous trips!).

Adorable monkeys in front of the tree Christmas Eve

EVERY year, Daddy reads The Night Before Christmas before bed...

Stockings and Santa gift on Christmas morning!

We took a drive and found some snow to play in on Christmas afternoon. Snowball fight!!!

Brothers coming up with strategy to attack Daddy.

Snowy hilltop Christmas picture with my love!!

friends and performances

2010-12-28T20:51:00.004-06:00

Now THIS is the kind of meal we enjoy...with a full table of friends and family! We had a wonderful Thanksgiving with Joshua's cousin and new wife, and with our neighbors. And of course everything Joshua cooked us was YUMMY!

Trevor was in Jump Rope Club at his school and they did their semester end performance right before we left for Idaho.

This is a video of part of it, Trevor is in the front center...

We had a cookie decorating party at one of Joshua's coworker's home (really, they are just great friends!). I've never actually done this before and can I say...it's FUN! I will be making this something we do as a family and hopefully with new friends next year! Thanks, Mr. and Mrs. Curvy!!

Emilee's first holiday performance for choir this year was at our local mall. Here's a great picture with Emilee and her dear friend, Anna and Anna's aide.

And here's part of a song they sang. Emilee is very close to center, and she's playing the rain stick (a big honor!).

And this is Em with her choir teacher at the formal Christmas performance. This wonderful teacher will be deeply missed and I'm so grateful to her for the two years she's spent working with Emilee.

Emilee's choir singing Carole of the Bells...

Goodbye for now

2010-12-28T15:23:00.005-06:00

We made a trip to Texas in November to get in one last visit with our dear friends, Gabby and Charlie, and their boys, Mason and Ethan.

We actually all got into ONE picture for a group pose at the Children's Aquarium (and this is quite a feat with nine people, including two VERY fast moving 18 month old toddlers!)

Carter's favorite part of the trip was petting the stingrays. Yup, it's the dead of freezing winter at an outside exhibit, and Carter has his shirt off because he's SOAKED from leaning too far forward into the tank haha!

Spending some time in the hotel lobby hanging out and playing...

Hope we see you guys all soon!!!

fun at the lake park

2010-12-28T15:16:00.004-06:00

We headed outside to get some nice shots for our Christmas card...

I was so happy to get an AWESOME shot of each of the monkeys. You know how some days you can only get a great shot of one or another, but not all? Well I scored this time! Emilee is gorgeous...Carter is hilariously adorable...and Trevor just looks super handsome!!

Then of course we needed some fun shots of feeding the ducks and climbing trees!!

Merry Christmas!!!

2010-12-24T14:41:00.003-06:00

Merry Christmas, everyone! Sorry for the delay in update, but we've been BUSY! The quick news is we DID get our stuff and we've been unpacking and trying to get half settled so we can enjoy Christmas tomorrow. We wish everyone the best holiday, filled with all of the Hope of the Season...and I'll be back soon to catch up on the MANY posts I want to share!

Love, Joshua~Karen~Emilee~Trevor & Carter

Someone just has to be making this stuff up...

2010-12-15T22:19:00.003-06:00

So I have another installment of "Nothing Goes According to Plan For Our Family...EVER". But I do have to say something else first. Please continue to stay tuned for all of those missing posts from November and December I promised you last week. I did NOT get to work on them as our family blissfully *cough* sailed along the 1400+ miles that it is from OK to ID because my computer decided to flip out and not recognize any camera SD cards I put in the slot. Soooo that little (big) project will have to wait until I get my USB cable from the movers and I can attempt to extract my pics and movies that way. Oh, the movers...funny I should mention that...

Ok hang on though. I should update. We are HERE! We made it to Boise on Monday night. It was a L.O.N.G. drive lasting FOUR "just a tad too long" days. But Joshua and I, the three monkeys, the dog and the hermit crabs (along with toooo many suitcases) pulled into our new hometown and headed straight for our house. Our wonderful realtor met us there with Welcome Home gift basket in hand and adorable "Idaho" key chains swinging from the house keys. We got to show the monkeys around their new digs and seeing their excited faces made us feel alot better after the rough day we all had saying goodbye to dear friends on Friday.

We snuggled into a hotel and spent Tuesday running a few Home Depot-ish errands, killing time waiting for our furniture delivery which was to be Wednesday or Thursday. We were supposed to hear an update from our truck driver Tuesday, but he didn't return Joshua's call so Joshua called the company directly this morning and was met with this brief message, "Well, the driver has quit and we sorta don't know where he or the truck or the trailer with your stuff is. We'll let you know something when we know something."

Seriously!!! What secret magnetic chip do we have that just attracts this stuff to us?! I think people have started to doubt our stories, because at this point, I would doubt my stories if I wasn't living them lol!

So we have been left for the better part of today, wondering where our stuff was and if we'd ever get it. Trevor being our technical and methodical monkey, wanted to know exactly what that meant per our moving contract. "Well, son, if our stuff is truly lost, the moving company cuts us a $50,000 check and we start over." Trev just sorta wandered away pondering that and I attempted to push THAT amusing scenario out of my mind.

And if I hadn't lost my internet access this afternoon, that would have been the end of today's update for you. But luckily, a bit more time elapsed before I was able to get back online and hit "publish"...so here's some relief from the cliffhanger.

This afternoon, Joshua got another call. They are pretty sure they've found our stuff, and they are working on coordinating a new driver to get to our stuff and get our stuff to us. This still leaves several days of us WAITING in this hotel, but at least it appears our stuff is not GONE. Now let's just pray that it gets here before Christmas Eve as I have some VERY important cargo that needs to go under the tree in the back of that semi.

Headed home...

2010-12-10T06:33:00.002-06:00

Quick update...

Today we start our 1400 mile drive to Boise. Our belongings all left on the moving truck on Wednesday and will be delivered in the middle of next week. We've been in a hotel since Tuesday (doing the school day routine from a hotel has been interesting!) and check out today. Thursday and today have been cleaning, painting etc of the house to make it look as nice as possible for the new buyers (please Lord, send those people our way soon!). After the big monkeys finish their school day we are outta here!

Also today, our fingers are crossed that we will hear that our new carpet in our new house has FINALLY been installed. (Our home is basically new as it was a builder's model home, but the carpet was in terrible shape and our awesome realtor negotiated a great deal for us to get the carpet replaced CHEAP!) Ooooh I'm so excited to have fresh, new, beautiful carpet!!

It's been a long week of tough goodbyes and I'm ready to start this new chapter in our lives and maybe, possibly even enjoy a tad of this Christmas Season because unfortunately it's been totally overshadowed by all the moving chaos.

I have lots of updates to give on activities and such from the last few weeks. I'm going to try to work on several new blog posts while we are driving.

2010-11-23T16:25:00.004-06:00

We got to take a quick trip to California last month while the big monkeys had a four day weekend. We packed A LOT into our two and a half days there and my parents were even able to meet up with us! We enjoyed the 8am quiet and beautiful weather at Santa Monica Pier. We took a walk down the pier and the kids got to play in the sand and on the swings.

Then for the educational portion of our trip, we visited the Reagan Library in Simi Valley. The highlights were the life sized replica of the Oval Office…

And most importantly, Air Force One. It was just awe inspiring to see this gigantic airplane perched on three seemingly small pillars, three stories up in the air.

We got to have dinner with a cousin of Joshua’s that he hadn’t seen in DECADES. What a wonderful family!

And then for the icing on the cake…DISNEYLAND!

It was Carter’s first trip and Em and Trev’s third. First things first…autopia!!

And because in a three year old’s mind, Disneyland is where Buzz Lightyear lives, we helped Buzz defeat the evil Zurg…

Everyone but me (someone has to take the picture, right?!) on the bow of the Pirate Ship…another “must do”!

We were also able to ride the submarine, Dumbo, It’s a Small World, the carousel, Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion. Because the lines were awesome, for a quickie one-day visit, we were able to hit a BUNCH!

A family picture in front of Pumpkin Mickey!

A pose with JoJo and PaPa at the hotel...

And a very worn out littlest monkey waiting for the plane to take him home…

It worked!!

2010-10-31T13:42:00.003-05:00

Happy Halloween from all of us! Halloween in weird-o Oklahoma was celbrated on October 30th, because aparently you can't trick or treat on a Sunday (don't get me started)...so I've got all of our Halloween pics to share up and ready!

We had a great family weekend! We carved pumpkins...

And for the first time ever, roasted the seeds. I want to share the recipe because it was EASY and sooooo YUMMY! Melt 1 T butter in a bowl and then add 1 T olive oil, 1/2 t garlic salt, 1/2 t seasoned salt and two shakes of worcheshire sauce. Mix and then add 1 c of cleaned pumpkin seeds. Pour out in one layer on a cookie sheet and roast at 300 degrees for 45 mins, stirring every 15 mins.

Trevor's pumpkin...

Emilee's pumpkin...

Carter's pumpkin...

A cowgirl, construction worker and fireman all ready to go...

Friends all dressed up...

Trick or treating our awesome neighbor's...

Our front door decorations...

And so for the explanation of my post's title. Carter, in true "Carter fashion" cracked us up house after house this year. Each time he came back to Joshua and I standing on the sidewalk after going to someone's door, he exclaimed "IT WORKED!!!!" He was aparently amazed that each and every time he went to a door and said "trick or treat" that someone gave him a piece of candy. It was hilarious and we are going to remember "it worked!" for a LONG time!!

Here we go again!

2010-10-24T18:27:00.004-05:00

Fifteen years ago this month, Joshua left for truck driving school. Shiny new Class A Driver's License in hand, he and I hopped into his new big truck on Christmas Day and headed out to criss cross the United States together. It was amazing...we were newly wed and got to be together 24-7 and earn an income. While traveling, one of our very favorite parts of the country came to be the Snake River Gorge in Idaho.

Five years ago this month, we decided to escape the downward tailspinning economy of California, and move our family to the state we had fallen in love with so many years before. Joshua got a job with a great company in Idaho and we settled into our new life. We got pregnant with Carter and expected we were snuggled in for the long term there. Of course, most of you know the somewhat comical and oftentimes exhausting story of us then bouncing from Arizona to Texas and finally Oklahoma over the past few years.

Well, here we go again!! Because the bulk of the area that Joshua now manages for his company is in the Pacific Northwest and Oklahoma is definitely "central," we are moving back to our beloved Idaho so that Joshua lives in the middle of his territory. We are very dissappointed to be leaving the amazing friendships we've made here in Oklahoma, along with our cozy home and wonderful church. But if we have to leave, we are very excited to be headed back to Idaho. We are 100% an outdoors family, and the weather there will let us do all of the activities we've missed so much over the last couple of years. Skiing and camping and hiking and boating and just riding bikes and playing at the park during the summer await us!

So...forgive me as blogging gets even more sporadic than it has been lately...another season of chaos is beginning! If all goes as tentatively planned, we'll be moving the weekend of December 10th. We have our house on the market (read: crazy amounts of time spent keeping it looking in "model home" shape), I'm starting to pack for the move, we have a quick trip out to Boise in 10 days for a house-hunting trip...oh yeah...AND the holidays are right around the corner haha!!

quick coupons!

2010-10-12T14:35:00.002-05:00

I haven't had time in forever to put up a coupon post...but today was sooo exciting that I had to snap a quick picture! Between CVS and my local "double coupon" grocery store, I came home with all of this for less than $7.00!!! Just two gallons of milk cost $7 nowadays...so I am a pretty darn happy coupon crazy person today!!

Late summer catch-up

2010-10-09T20:17:00.006-05:00

Life has gotten away from me again...so here's a catchup post from the last two months. There will be an interesting update post coming soon too!!

We got a chance to get in another cute photo shoot in early September. This one was my favorite!

Emilee played her first season of volleyball and did soooo well! It's terribly hard to catch great shots of this sport though, as things move very fast. But here's two (albeit a bit blurry) of Em serving and of her diving to her knees to hit the ball over the net.

All five of us got the chance to go to our awesome children's museum a couple of weekends ago. The favorite section for all was the space section. Em and Trev, and then Joshua and Carter, got to climb into this Apollo replica and perform a mock space mission. (The lady seated outside acts as Mission Control, and then who ever is inside communicates with MC via the headphones, mics and cameras...look on the monitors and you'll see Em, Trev, Carter and Joshua.) Emilee and Trevor were very serious and carried out everything that MC asked...and Carter was adorable as he actually talked back and forth the with lady!

We also got to explore our city zoo recently as Joshua's company picnic was there this year. This was a must-have picture...this turtle was HUGE!

And we took the opportunity to snap a family shot with all of us in our matching orange shirts.

It's terribly hard to get a camping trip in here in Oklahoma. The summer is horribly humid, so humid for most of it that you can't be outside from about 8am to 8pm. Then, on days it might be a tad less humid, it's VERY windy (like blow a tent over windy). OR it might be severe weather with rain and tornadoes...

BUT we managed to find a window of nice weather over Labor Day weekend and we jumped at the chance to pack up the tents and fishing poles and hang out in mother nature!

Fishing is the activity of choice while we are camping and we have a wonderful lake about 30 minutes from the house that we like to head to. As soon as we got to the campground, Joshua and the kids hit the shore and put some poor little worms on hooks. This is Carter patiently waiting for his little bell to ring that signals something is on his line...

And look at the reward for his patience!

Emilee hooked several over the weekend...

And Trevor reeled in his fair share as well!

Carter usually catches twice as many as anyone else out there...and this weekend he also brought in BIGGEST! It was hilarious to watch him reel in this HUGE fish on his little tiny two foot pole!!

Our awesome friends, Brad, Jamie and Braeden came out for part of a day and hung out with us!

One final picture around the campfire...

LC Switch Blacklight Show

2010-09-22T21:04:00.001-05:00

Wanted to share Emilee's church youth group performance from tonight...the kids did AWESOME!! (If you watched America's Got Talent this season and loved Fighting Gravity, you might recognize it!)

THIRTEEN!!!!

2010-09-15T06:51:00.002-05:00

OH MY! Today, we officially have a teenager in the house! Mommy began the day's celebration by getting up extra early and making "13" shaped pancakes. Also note in the picture that she's wearing a very heavy fleece jacket, and yes it is still 90+ degrees outside. Her birthday gift from us was a North Face jacket, and she's so smitten with it, we can hardly pry it off of her no matter how hot it is lol!

Happy Birthday to our bestest girl ever! We love you, Emilee!!!

Monkey Firsts

2010-08-26T13:30:00.003-05:00

Sharin' our first day of school pictures...

Em up bright and early, ready for the bus to take her to 7th grade (which means she was "too cool" for mom to drive her as tradition has dictated on the first day haha)
Trevor, ready for all the fun and excitement of 5th grade, his last year of elementary school!

And Carter's "first" for the week was first time sleeping in a big boy bed! We said goodbye to his crib and moved him to the bottom bunk of Trevor's bed. We also *sniff-from-mom* said goodbye to afternoon naps since bedtime was becoming too much of a battle. So he's really, totally, officially a big boy now!!

Just for nostalgia fun...a pic of Carter 7 months old in his crib
and Carter today all snuggled into his bed for his first sleep as a big boy!

Monkey Teeth!!

2010-08-24T20:53:00.002-05:00

So it's been a pretty eventful couple of weeks teeth-wise around here...

Trevor got top braces last week
Emilee got full braces today
And Carter had his very first visit to the dentist, complete with full cleaning with the "buzzy toothbrush."

Say cheese!

2010-08-20T12:53:00.005-05:00

We got professional pictures done this week. I've really been wanting to get the kids in as they have some important outfits I wanted to preserve for posterity. We found Emilee this shirt that says "Total Girl 1997" a while back. We were so excited as she was born in '97 and she just loved the shirt. And Trevor and Carter finally got their first official matching outfit from their Grandma Cathy (it's so hard to find them matching things as they are in two differnt sizing zones)!

Here's our very grown up and beautiful girl...

And here's two crazy cute brothers...

And these shots were "just because." Target has had this motorcycle out in the foyer for weeks to entice parents to come in for a shoot. And thought it isn't my cup of tea exactly, Carter had been dying to get his picture on the motorcycle. So here's Rough Tough Biker Carter :-)

Summer is comin' to a close...

2010-08-16T21:06:00.006-05:00

Since a "back to school" post is almost due (like TOMORROW!) I need to catch up with how we finished up summer vacation. These are not going to be in perfect order cuz I'm just gonna load 'em up quickly...

I don't exactly have an explanation for this one...except Carter was cracking us up with his method of looking through his viewmaster and I just had to share.
Carter has TOTALLY gotten into going to Lowe's Build and Grow workshops on Saturday. It's so cute to watch him use the little hammer and create a neat project.

The boys and I went to an indoor play land to let off some "it's too hot to play outside" steam. Carter loved the slide
and Trevor had a blast on the zipline!
So we had gotten our monthly coffee shipment and I'd opened the box and walked out of the living room and then heard "MOM!!!! LOOK AT MY TOWER OF COFFEE!!! TAKE MY PICTURE!!!" It's hilarious as he's been really annoyed when I pull out the camera lately and this pic is of his own prompting.
So my garden was a rough go this summer. We had ONE of about seven squash plants actually take off and fruit (and then unfortunately it met an accidental demise). And finally our pepper plants are starting to produce something. It's putting truth to the rumor that we'd heard that they love extreme hot and dry, as that's exactly what we've had for two straight weeks. My beans never really got anywhere, and my tomatoes are FINALLY starting to turn orange...
Emilee went to volleyball camp this summer and here's a pic of her working on her overhand shot. Stay tuned for more volleyball as her competitive school season starts next week.
Art stopped by for a visit as he drove through town with a load and took us out to lunch. It was great to see him!!

Carter and I enjoying a train ride at the local amusement park.
We were invited to a friend's birthday party at an ICE SKATING RINK. It doesn't seem like that big of a deal except it's been like 932 degrees outside for weeks (ok, mabye really only 105-110, but you catch I mean it's been HOT)...so it was AWESOME to go into a chilly ice skating rink and bundle up and have cool fun for an afternoon. It was also Carter's very first time on skates and he did great! They have these funny walker type thingies for toddlers and he loved hanging onto that while I zoomed him around the rink!
This is one of our family's favorite activities to do together...fishing! We are ZERO so far for the season, but we are having fun trying!!

Fourth of July!!

2010-07-25T06:45:00.000-05:00

My parents took Emilee and Trevor to a local 4th of July sidewalk chalk art festival. Each family is given a square to decorate and this is what they created, a scene of a family watching a fireworks display.
We had a BUNCH of people hang out with us over the weekend. Gabby, Charlie and the boys came to town to visit. My parents were still here. And Brad and Jamie and their son, Braeden hung out too! We all went to the town parade on Saturday morning and this is a shot of some of us as we waited for it to start.
Mason and Ethan enjoying some lunch...
Having four little monkeys under the age of four was B-U-S-Y! I tried to get all four of them in a cute picture...nope, they were all moving WAY too fast in too many directions lol. Here's the best I could do...
Joshua, always happiest in the kitchen, held a sushi making class with Charlie and Brad. I didn't get a picture of the end product because we all gobbled it up so quickly! YUM!!! Good job, guys!!

Obligatory wiggly firework picture...why do we always take 50 shots of the fireworks when we know they will come out like this lol?!
Hope everyone had an awesome 4th!!

Mexico pt. 3 --- vacation relaxation

2010-07-25T05:41:00.004-05:00

Since we booked our trip in February, the theme of anticiaption has been based on the Zac Brown Band song "Toes in the Water, A** in the Sand". So we decided that we definitely needed an official picture to represent our trip...
Our favorite evening place to hang out became The Piano Bar. Alot of the resort was "party scene" style and the four of us much preferred the quieter, more laid back atmosphere here.
And we even brought along Uno and played cards one evening.
Enjoying coffee and room service breakfast on our patio.
I have to share this dish. One night we tried the French restaurant and this was the soup of the day...cream of something with "corn fungus". It actually tasted pretty good, but as far as marketing goes, major fail on the title.
FAVORITE dish dinner from the next night...SUSHI!!!!
These covered bed thingies were THE BEST! We spent quite a bit of time just doing absolutely NOTHING (read...napping!), enjoying the shade and the breeze down by the pool.
And our bar tender down at our private pool made this to-die-for drink called Purple Rain...oooooh yum!!
Our last night there the resort threw a fancy dinner gala for only the two top levels of guests (we were level #1...soooo worth what we paid for it!). One last pose all four of us!!
The guys' favorite part of the dinner were these get-ya-in-trouble-in-a-hurry chocolate martinis (seriously, have you ever seen this many martinis before lol?!) My favorite part that I didn't get a picture of were the lobsters...ask me how many I ate at dinner that night? Four, yup I ate FOUR delicious lobsters!!
And I'll wrap up with these last two funny pics. We were walking down the main pathway one evening headed back to our room and suddenly Joshua hops up on one of the statues and struck a hilarious pose!!
And may I introduce you to Bob. He lived under Brad and Jamie's stairs that led up to their room and would come out to sunbathe in front of the bottom step. It was amazing to see such a creature just hangin' around the resort...but let me tell you he scared all of us many times when we'd come around the corner to head up to their room and we'd darn near step on the poor guy because we'd forgotten he might be there.
Brad and Jamie...thank you for coming with us to Mexico! It was soooo much more fun this time to have wonderful friends to share our adventures with! And Joshua, I sooo appreciate all of the crazy hard work you put in that allowed us to afford such an amazing vacation! You are the best husband anyone could ask for and the five days we got to spend doing nothing but focusing on each other meant more to me than I'll ever be able to properly say. I love you!!!

Mexico pt 2 -- zipline and cenote swim

2010-07-15T13:00:00.000-05:00

I need to mention the second most exciting part of our trip (the first most exciting is just that we got to GO!)...our awesome friends, Brad and Jamie, came with us!! When we went to Mexico eight years ago, we said to ourselves that if we ever came back we HAD to bring friends...so we were so excited that they decided to come too!!

We went on an excursion our first full day in Mexico. We decided on a zipline tour and cenote swim. Here's Jamie and I while we were waiting for our shuttle, partaking in a margarita at 9am...not cuz we are alcoholics, but basically, just because you can lol!

We took a shuttle ride into the jungle. Joshua snapped this picture of us all geared up right before we started zip-ing!

The four of us posing with some jungle friends...

This is one of my FAVORITE pictures of the trip. We all had the opportunity to "do it upside down" and here's Joshua having a blast at it! (And it's worth mentioning here that these ziplines are 100+ feet in the air...there was alot of excited/scared/crazy yelling going on lol!!)

Me taking things a bit more seriously...

After ziplining we hopped in these Pinhauzer trucks (read: old OLD jalopy-ish jeep thingies with questionable trailers haha)
(This is Bruno, our HILARIOUS guide, standing on the hitch between the truck and trailer as we made the ten minute drive to the cenote...no, there are no OSHA safety standards in Mexico aparently!)
(Joshua and I cracking up at Bruno on the drive)

And this was our destination, a "cenote," which is a tropical sink hole filled with fresh water with rock cliff sides. It was really beautiful, especially the waterfall you could swim under off to the right hand side. The tour company set up a zipline you could ride down and land in the water. The swim was so fun and refreshing!!

Me just as I was about to hit the water coming off the zipline...

Check out this video of Joshua showing off a pretty cool back zipping dive maneuver!!

Mexico!! pt1

2010-07-13T13:19:00.005-05:00

Hurricane Alex. Ughh. Two days before we were supposed to leave for our trip, we found out about a storm tracking directly for the Yucatan Penninsula. For a bit, it looked like our vacation was in serious jeopardy. But we got up EARLY Sunday morning, and our flights weren't cancelled (yet) so we headed to the airport. We made our connection in O'hare just fine, but sat on the tarmac for about an hour while a storm unrelated to Alex blew through.

Passin' the time listening to music...

Once we got back in the air, we got to enjoy the perks of first class with a yummy breakfast (and don't miss Joshua's kahlua to go with his coffee haha). I still wish that Joshua could travel less, but since he has to be gone, I have to admit that I'm lovin' flying in the "front of the plane"!

We were pretty worried about landing in Cancun, as the eye of Alex was forecasted to hit almost exactly as our plane landed...but we made it in just fine. Here's an amazing view of the Hotel Strip of Cancun from out the plane window as we were descending...

We got through Immigration MUCH easier than last time that we traveled to Mexico, were picked up by our shuttle and arrived at our resort just a bit later. We stayed at the Grand Princess Riviera and it was AMAZING!

Our room was upstairs

It was absolutely gorgeous, right down to the swan towel sculpture on the bed.

This was Joshua's favorite part of the trip, hands down. It was an ourdoor shower inside our room! Kind of confusing, I know...but there were double doors that led out of our main room (you can see them behind the bed in the picture above), onto a balcony of sorts and it had a shower. It was all enclosed of course, but you could hear the birds and feel the fresh air as you showered. I'm pretty sure in the 5 days that we were there, Joshua showered about 15 times lol!!!

And this is the view from our balcony out over the private pool and decorative lagoons and landscaping.

K...that will have to do for part one...more to come later!

2010-07-09T21:45:00.002-05:00

These three pictures are so important to me that they have earned their very own post! While we were in Mexico, Joshua arranged for us to have a private professional photo shoot on the beach. While this is normally a very romantic and wonderful idea, for Joshua to make this gesture to me is PRICELESS. See, Joshua HATES getting his picture taken and can't stand when I drag him in for things like family Christmas photos. He just isn't a photo loving guy. But on his own, he came up with and arranged for us to have these pictures done while we were on vacation. He said he wanted to replace our engagement picture that has hung on our wall for 15 years with something new. The photo shoot was a ton of fun and will be one of my favorite memories of our trip. And even though it was crazy windy, we got some amazing shots (kudos to our photographer)!!