Christmas 2009

I hope everyone had a great Christmas and has some fun planned festivities to bring in the New Year! We all had a great, but semi-crazy, Christmas this year! There were the four of us, Peter's parents, Uncle Charley and Aunt Kelsey, Aunt Betsy and Uncle Justin, three dogs and two cats. Needless to say the living room was very crowded that day!

Santa treated the girls very well this year, which must mean that they were very high on the nice list! :) Their big gift this year was a bunk bed, which both girls were very excited about coming down and seeing the bed all set up and everything in the living room. They immediately started climbing on it! Alexis was ready for a big bed and there was no way we were going to be able to fit two twin beds plus their dressers and their toys in the room they're in and still have some floor space for them to actually play with their toys. So a bunk bed was a necessity! Good thing Santa knows about these kind of things! He also brought Natalie a kid's digital camera and Alexis an ABC train puzzle. With all the stuff that Santa and everyone else got them (and still yet to give them) you can imagine how spoiled they were!

The rest of us fared pretty well as well. Peter and the girls got me a very nice coffee grinder and some syrups to put in my coffees so I can have my favorite mochas right at home and stop spending the $5 per coffee that I've gotten addicted to! Peter got some new video games and CDs that he's been wanting.

I don't know about you, but it seems that there is always a lull in the present opening. A point where everyone is tired and a bit bored. So this year I got everyone a gift to help dispel that when it happens. When our lull hit everyone got to open their gift at the same time. What was this miraculous gift? Silly string of course! Haha we had a 10 (9 1/2-Alexis wasn't too sure what to think) person silly string fight! It was so fun! Yes, it made a huge mess, but the good thing about silly string is that it may look messy and difficult to clean up, but really it's quite easy; just pick up the string and the shop vac the small parts. As long as you're careful not to step all over it and squish it into the carpet, it really is quite easy and quick to clean up! The amount of fun we all had was totally worth it! I still have to get the pictures off of Bill's camera!

Our Christmas was great! Now I'm off to put together the slide show of pictures to post above! That should be up in a few minutes! Have a wonderful New Years!

Nothing too important

Yes I realize it has been awhile since I've done an update. And no, I'm still not going to catch up on everything on this post, I have to start getting ready for work here soon. This month has been so excessively busy that some things just have to get neglected. But I just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Maybe after Christmas, I'll be able to sit down and do an actual post.

Halloween 2009

We had a lot of fun this year for Halloween. On Friday, Natalie's school had their fall festival, so we went to that! It was a lot of fun. They had a bunch of great games that they got to play and the win candy. The games were easily adjustable to be simple enough to be able to accomodate the younger kids or more difficult for the older ones. The most popular of the night was, by far, the bouncy house! The girls just loved that! They also had a bean bag toss, a bowling the monsters, hay treasure hunt, stick the nose on the jack-o-lantern, plus a few more. That was all in the gym. They also had the classrooms set up with other games like bingo, a cake walk, painting pumpkins, and a secret science laboratory where the kids stuck their hands in boxes with the icky things hidden. I made Natalie do that one and she thought it was icky.... but had to do it again later too. The local fire department also came out with a couple of their trucks for the kids to climb in and honk the horns and set off the sirens. That was a lot of fun for the girls too! There are a couple funny stories to share for the night now.

First. Mrs. Benson (Natalie's teacher) dressed up as a clown. Big frowie wig, face make-up, the works. She came up to Natalie and said hello and asked if she was having fun. Natalie came to me and asked why this stranger was talking to her. I laughed and told her to look again to see if she recognized her. So she did and after a couple minutes (she was literally just staring at her for a few minutes while Mrs. Benson and I were laughing pretty hard) before she saw something that she recognized and then shouted "Mrs. Benson!!" and hugged her. So funny!!

Second. I thought Alexis might have been a bit overwhelmed with things and turn into her shy personality. But she did great! She was running around with Natalie and her friends just like she knew them too and had a lot of fun! Seeing her interact with the kids like a kid herself was amazing for me. She grasped onto the rules of the games veyr easily and was able to play them pretty well.

Third. It was very windy that night. Very windy. We were just about done, just checking out the book fair that they had going on, when the power went out. When it originally went out I panicked for the few seconds it was out because I had left Alexis a couple steps away from me because she was nicely looking at a book and Natalie wanted to show me something. Natalie's school is old so it doesn't have any emergency lights or anything so when the power went out, it was BLACK and you couldn't see a thing. I immediately told the girls to freeze until I found them. I turned around prepared to crawl on the floor if I needed to to find Alexis, but then the power came back on. I knew it wasn't going to last long, so I grabbed Alexis and Natalie just as the power went out again. If you know Natalie, you know she freaks out easily so I started talking to her telling her it was ok that the wind just caused the power to go out and that we were going to go home now. Natalie was actually doing really well. I was very proud of her. Then the parents in the room started freaking out. "Oh my gosh, I don't know where the flashlights are!" "What do we do?!?" "How do we get out of here and make sure all the kids are with their families?!?" etc. Finally, before they could get Natalie going, I said, "There are two fire trucks outside with a bunch of firemen hanging around them. Guaranteed they have a few flashlights. Wait until they come in with one." Sure enough, seconds later a fireman walks in and asks how we're all doing. As I was leaving, I overheard one of them saying that they didn't realize they were going to actually work and have to do an evacuation. I giggled.

On Halloween, we dressed the girls up again and tricked or treated in the Sedro-Woolley business areas. They did great! They made out like bandits. Then we went and visited the aunts and uncles and grandparents (Peter's) in the area. They all thought that Natalie and Alexis were adorable. We planned on going to the mall for their Halloween trick or treating event, but when we got there it was just one continuous line around the mall. It would have taken FOREVER to get through it all, and by that time the girls were tired and hungry, so we skipped out of there and came home for dinner!

There are pictures above in the new slide show of the girls at the fall festival. Enjoy!

OWIE!!

Well, I did it! I took the first bootcamp class, and I made it the whole hour!!!! I was hurting and REALLY wanted to stop halfway through it, but I pushed myself and finished it out! Oh but I hurt now! I am so sore, but that's a good thing! Tomorrow I get to do it again, and I can't wait! Although I hope that my muscles will have loosened up a bit before then.

Now, do I let my muscles heal and take today off from working out, or do I push myself a little bit and do a smaller, not quite as intense workout?

Scared... Inspired... Determined...

I didn't know which one to title this post, so you get all of them. They're all accurate so it works that they're all in the title.

Scared: I weighed myself today and I'm just 5 pounds from being at the weight I promised myself I'd never get to. 5 pounds! Right now, I'm the heaviest I've ever been in my life, including when I was 9 months pregnant. If I don't do something now, I'm going to hit that mark that I told myself I'd never get to, and who knows when I'll stop. I don't want to become a person who can't play with her kids, or has to ride in a motorized cart at the grocery store, because she's too fat and doesn't have the energy.

Inspired: There is a lady at the health club that I work at that has met a very, very impressive goal. Last year, at this very time, she was very heavy, like over 300 pounds heavy. On November 4, 2008 she set a goal for herself, to lose 100 pounds in a year. She not only has met that, she has surpassed that! A week ago, when I last spoke with her, she had lost 115 pounds!

Determined: Now I don't have 100 pounds to lose. But I could lose 50. So here is my goal. I'm going to lose 50 pounds in 6 months. If she can do 100 in 12 months, then I can and will do 50 in 6!

Here's the thing. I didn't get to this point because I love to workout and hold myself accountable. Frankly, I'm just the opposite. I hate to workout! You'd think that since I work at a health club, and have a free membership because of that, it'd be easy for me to get in and use the facilities. But that's not the case. Part of it is that now with teaching so much and then going to the club afterwards three nights a week, plus a Saturday, I don't want to take any more time from the girls. Another part of it is that I work there. You'll always hear people who work in retail that they hate to shop in their store on their days off. It's no different for me at the health club. I already spend so much time there, I have a hard time coming in to work out. But I realize those are just excuses. No more! Tomorrow I'm going in to sign up for bootcamp this month and see if I can maybe do that for all six months. The health club has this thing where you can sign up and workout with a group with one of our trainers in a high intensity workout. They meet twice a week for an hour each time. That would mean at least two hours that I'm currently not doing now. It would have to help! I'm hoping that having something that will keep me accountalbe to showing up will help me actually show up and do the workouts! Today I went out and bought a kettle ball to do at home workouts. There are so many excercises you can do with a kettle ball that I don't think I'll ever get bored with it. At work, at the health club, I will do a 10 minute walk on the treadmill, bike, or whatever cardio machine I can get on during my break!

A friend and I have a private blog that we had started to help encourage each other to keep up the good work and lose weight. We started out OK, but we both just quit doing it. So I'm making my journey public. I think I'll post pictures there of my progress, and maybe put my actual weight there so that those aren't quite as public, but I will occassionally update this to let you know how I'm doing. But I need your help. I need your help keeping me accountable. Ask me occassionally how I'm doing. Encourage me, especially when I'm thinking that this is going to be impossible, because there will be those times. Thank you in advance and here's to me becomming a better, healthier person!

On an unrelated side note: We had a fun and adventure filled Halloween weekend! I will post more about it tomorrow and I will make a new slide show to show off costumes and some of the activities the girls did!

Excitement is...!

A post of things that have made me excited lately!

There is a Chinese restaurant in Pullman called the Emerald. It is by far the BEST Chinese restaurant I've ever been to, ever! My favorite thing there is their almond chicken and pork chow mien! They make a gravy out of the almonds for their almond chicken and it is absolutely devine! Since moving away from Pullman, I've been searching and searching for another restaurant that makes the almond chicken like that. Well, it took 5 years to do it, but I finally found one!!! It's not nearly as good as the Emerald, but still mighy delicious! I'm so super happy!

We got our family pictures done this past week. It's the first professional pictures we've had since Alexis was born. It was a late birthday gift Peter got me! They turned out awesome! We got a deal on them, where when we ordered the package we got a CD of all the pictures we took, not just the pictures we ordered, and the copy release for them, so I can go and print out ones that I didn't get to order! It's a good thing because I couldn''t just pick out a couple, I wanted them all!

I have been subbing pretty much full time this year. Most of the jobs I've been getting are from teachers that have requested me specifically too fill in for them! I even have a secretary that calls me when a teacher gives her the task of finding a sub for them! Now I just need to get in with whoever it is that does the hiring in the district.

We've been invaded!

By LADYBUGS of all things! We came home this afternoon from a full day of being gone and there are THOUSANDS of ladybugs all over the house! Mind you, there weren't ANY when we left, so this is an accumulation of just one day. I've never seen so many ladybugs in one place before! The house seriously looks like it's moving! As you can tell by one of the last pictures, not even I was immune to it as I was taking pictures! We had to all gather around the door, so we could quickly get inside with the minimal amount of invasion inside, it would be impossible to come inside without a few getting in, but I'm proud, we only let in three (that we found at the time)!

On a more positive note

My last post was a bit depressing and I've been meaning to update with a more positive post for the longest time, but I've been very busy with subbing, working at the health club, birthdays, and being a mom and wife that I just haven't had the time. To be honest I only have about 10 minutes now to do a quick update. So you get two funny stories.

Lately, Kathy has been buying gallon jugs of chocolate milk. One morning, Kathy mixed some with regular whole milk (the chocolate milk is too sweet to just drink by itself) and then warmed it up for Alexis. Alexis drank it up and very seriously said it was good "Tchosfee milk!" (Coffee milk). We all about burst with laughing so hard! Ever since then, she's had to have her 'tchosfee milk' every morning.

The other night I woke up to one of the girls off and on crying. I laid in bed for a few minutes to see if the cryer would stop (I honestly couldn't tell which one it was), but when it didn't I got up and decided to see what was the issue. I first checked on Alexis thinking that she'd be the most likely one to be fussing, but she was fast asleep. I then went to check on Natalie, but she wasn't in her bed. She fussed again and it came from to floor so I looked down, and still couldn't find her. Again she whimpered and there was a quiet "Mooommm" and again I looked on the floor. I finally found her and was laughing so hard, but as quietly as I could so not to wake up Alexis. Somehow she had rolled off her bed and then rolled underneath her bed. Being sleepy and disoriented, she couldn't figure out where she was and how to get out.

I love my silly girls so very much. Moments like these make all the rough moments totally worth it! I'm glad these silly, great moments outweigh the trying difficult ones!

I don't know what to do!

I'm to the point where I need help! I am so upset and worried for Natalie! I almost don't want to put anything here because if I do, then it's always out there, but I need some advice on whether I should go talk to a doctor or if I'm just over reacting about things.

Natalie has always been a worrier, worrying a lot more about things than she rightfully should. But lately, especially when getting up and ready for school, she stresses to the point where she cannot function! This morning it was about her socks and it took her 25 minutes to eat a small bowl of cereal because she was having a fit about her socks. The past three weeks of school, we have maybe 1 good morning out of the 5. I've tried everything, bribing (I know horrible), encouragement, punishment, ignoring, but nothing seems to work. The past couple days we've had her eat breakfast first thing in the morning so she has the blood sugar she needs to function and this has helped a little, these mornings are not as stressful as mornings that she gets dressed first, but still bad enough. I am usually so upset by the time it's time to take her down to the bus (or some mornings into school because she's taken so long that we miss the bus) that on the way home I'm bawling! I try to not to yell at her when I get this upset, because that really doesn't help things, but sometimes I just can't hold it back. I know she can do it, but she just gets so stressed about things she can't get past it.

Yesterday I subbed in a class where this boy threw a fit each time I assigned some class work because he didn't have enough time, or his teacher wouldn't like the way he did it, or something else. And then it was escalated because some kids were looking at him while he was throwing his fit. I can see this in Natalie. If she doesn't do something exactly right, or how she thinks it should be done, she stresses out!

Depression runs on both sides of our family and both my sister and Peter's sister are bi-polar. There have been many times that both my mom and Peter's parents have compared her to Kathi or Betsy that I'm certain she's got the early signs of being bi-polar. I'm a mom, so I want my kid to be healthy and perfect, and, even though I love her unconditionally, it breaks my heart to think that she's got this tough road ahead of her. I don't want to have to "label" her as bi-polar and put her on any kind of medication, but I also know, after watching my sister struggle with it, that if that is what she has, getting her help early on might be the best thing I do for her. I'm scared, worried, heart broken, sad, nervous, etc. for her and I'm to the point that I just don't know what to do. Am I being paranoid, or overreacting? Or is there something to actually be worried about here? From other people I talk to, like the lady I leave her with when I'm subbing, she doesn't act this way for others. Is this just something that she does for mom and dad? Or is it something real?

First Day

Well, today was Natalie's first official day of kindergarten! She was so excited she was up at 6 and ready by 7! Which is great, except we didn't have to leave the house until 9:15. She was so impatient to get to school, she was asking every ten minutes if it was time to leave, so I had to put a movie on to tide over the time. Even with the movie, she asked every half hour, haha.
Normally she'll ride the bus to school, but today I drove her in. We left Alexis with Grandma today, so it was just Natalie and I. On the way there, Natalie informed me that she didn't need me to take her in to her classroom, that she knew where her classroom was and she could go in by herself. I immediately vetoed that one and told her that she may not need me to take her in, but I needed me to take her in. She said I was funny. I took her in, helped her unload her supplies on the table, made her find her clip on name tag, helped her clip it on and then she went to her desk and started the morning worksheet that was waiting there. Mrs. Benson (her teacher) then invited the parents that were still there to hang around and watch the morning routine. So I hung around and watched them do the flag salute, sing a couple songs, count to 20, etc. Natalie didn't know what to think about the flag salute. We hadn't talked about that at all and I think she was a bit uncomfortable doing something she didn't know anything about. I have a feeling it won't be long and she'll be teaching it to Alexis. :) Everything else they did, she already easily knew, and everytime the did something that she knew, she'd look at me with a big smile and give me a thumbs up sign. It made me laugh, I just wish I had thought to bring a camera, oh well.


I can't believe she's a kindergartner already! It just seems yesterday she was just a baby. I always thought that when this day would come, that I wouldn't be emotional, that being a teacher I would be exempt from it. But I didn't think of it through the parent aspect of it and I admit, on my way home I cried a little. I guess it's something about the realization that she's an official KID now and no longer my baby. Before this step, you can always justify that they're still totally dependant on you as a parent. But now, you'll have to start letting them become an independent person, to figure things out on their own. I've always let her be independent, but somehow now it's different. I'm sitting here trying to word it to explain it, but it's one of those things, that until you live it, you can't know how it feels, an unexplainable feeling.

Have a great first day at school, Natalie!! Mommy loves you a lot!!!

Fun Crafts!

Yesterday the girls and I went down to visit our good friends in Seattle! It was a last trip before school/work starts for everyone! While the under 5 foot crowd (the kids) played and napped, the adults worked on a project. We made tooth fairy pillows! Small little pillows that have a pocket in them. When one of the girls loose a tooth, they will place the tooth in the pocket and then the Tooth Fairy will leave the money in the pocket. They turned out way super cute! I love them!

I DID IT!!!

I finally, successfully, pulled off a prank on Peter without giving it away by laughing and looking obvious! I found a fake $5,000 winning scratch ticket today at work. OK I admit that for a few minutes I thought I was the luckiest girl on earth....;) But after reading that "Winning tickets of $100 or more must be sent by mail to the Money Fairy, 123 NoWhere Drive, in Make-Believe Land" I figured it out. But I kept the ticket and practiced over and over again exactly what I was going to say and looking excited without looking mischevious in the car on the way home (I'm sure everyone who saw me must have thought I was nuts!) So first thing when I got home, I gave it to Peter and told him that I won. I didn't say another word. He looked at it and saw that it was a $5,000 winner and got VERY excited! He was jumping up and down laughing and yelling "We won!!!" He showed his dad the ticket and he said that it was very cool! Peter then starts 'spending' the money. He says now we can pay off the credit cards with that and put the money we have saved up as a down payment for a new car. He went on for about 20 minutes. The whole time I was very good and didn't start laughing hysterically, well maybe I was, but he attributed that to my being excited and not what it really was. It wasn't until he decided to figure out where to cash it in that he figured it out. It was hilarious when he did finally realized that it was fake. He yelled, "Ah Crap!" and threw the card down at me, because by this time I was on the floor laughing! So funny! The rest of the night you could hear him mumbling something about how he couldn't believe he fell for it! Finally, the prankee got the pranker!!!!

New Haircut!

I bet you thought it was going to be me who got the new haircut but you thought wrong! Natalie got a haircut yesterday! Many, many months ago she decided to cut her own hair, which you can sort of see in the first picture. And that's after a couple months of growing back out!
Yesterday she asked if we could cut her hair short like mine. We had the serious discussion about if we were to cut it short it was going to be short, there was no going back to long hair right away. She assured me and her dad that she really wanted it short.
So I took her to the hair stylest, constantly asking if she was sure that she wanted it to be cut short. She never waivered! And short it became! She LOVES it, and I do too!
She looks so much older! Doesn't it make her eyes just POP?!?! My little girl is getting big enough to help make these kind of decisions! Which I'm happy about, and very sad that she's growing up so fast too!

HAHA

This morning Alexis has been very independently playing by herself. When she started talking and walking out of the room, I started paying attention to what she's saying and where she's going. She was mumbling on about how she's tired and cranky and needs to go back to bed as she's walking up the stairs. Up the stairs she goes and after a few minutes she didn't come back down so I go up to see. She actually crawled into bed and fell back asleep. My little independent child!

We're still around!

I was told that I needed to do an update. Not much has really been going on, just everyday life around here.

Peter has been working for about a month now! The time has flown by! He's still driving down the Everett and Marysville, but they're saying that next week will be his last week doing that. Our budget for gas will appreciate that very much! Luckily our wonderful diesle Jetta gets GREAT gas milage so it's not that bad. He is enjoying working again and he likes his job and the people he works with! That makes things so much easier!

I've been getting to stay at home with the girls and we have been having lots of fun! If we're not playing outside, we're partying inside! I had a fun video of the girls dancing that I was going to upload, but after hours and hours and three failed attempt I'm giving up!

Natalie and I have been working on reading and spellling. She's really into spelling different words and I have been encouraging her very much. In about 2.5 weeks she'll be starting kindergarten. Although that in itself is turning into more of a hassle than you would think. The lady we had set up to watch the girls while I was going to sub backed out on us. There is a daycare right down the road from us and the school Natalie is supposed to go to, but she only takes school aged kids and doesn't really want to do kindergarten because they only go half days. She says that if she gets other mothers interested she'll reconsider the kindergarten age kids. So even if she does reconsder, we'd have to find somewhere else for Alexis to go to. All the other daycare/babysitters are out of the boundry lines for that school. So I have to figure out what other parents do, because I can't be the only mother who works, or figure out how to transfer her into a different school where I have more options for daycare. Frusterating! But Natalie is excited to start school again!

Alexis is getting bigger by the day it seems. I looked at her the other day and was shocked at how big she's gotten. She's definately not a baby anymore.... more of a kid now. Her vocabulary is getting bigger and she is talking in complete sentences now. She's very independent as well. Which sometimes causes arguments between the girls. Natalie is sometimes still under the mind set that Alexis is still a baby and needs help with everything, and Alexis wants to figure it out by herself.

Still no word on a few of the teaching positions I've applied for. Although I called on Wednesday for one of them and they hadn't called for interviews yet. And I have to turn in two letters of intent this afternoon. So there is still hope. But I'm OK with another year of subbing.

Already?!?!

Natalie lost her first tooth yesterday! My little girl is getting so big! Apparently, Natalie and Peter were playing and he knocked her over and she bonked her mouth on his foot and out came the tooth. I'm assured that it must have been loose because she didn't hit her mouth on his foot hard, that and
the foot isn't really a hard surface to knock out a tooth that wasn't ready. I was at work so I didn't get to witness the reaction but Natalie, being the drama queen she is, went into hysterics. But after explaining that it was supposed to happen and that a bigger tooth will grow back in it's place,
she calmed down. By the time I got home she was a very excited little girl and came running up to me exclaiming that she lost a tooth! Of course we explained about the Tooth Fairy. Natalie was full of questions! How does the Tooth Fairy know when you've lost a tooth? How will she get the tooth from underneath my pillow without waking me up? etc. When bed time rolled around, under the pillow went the tooth, and out came a lot more questions, which were mostly answered. I think Natalie was stalling actaully going to bed so I had to end the questions until morning time. This morning we had one excited child when she checked under her pillow to find 50 cents there instead of the tooth!

YAYAYAYAY!!!

PETER GOT A JOB!!! PETER GOT A JOB!!! PETER GOT A JOB!!!

So just in case you didn't know, PETER GOT A NEW JOB!!!! =) He got an email on Friday from Pacific Power Supply, a place he appiled to, saying that his resume was picked among others to come in for a meet and greet type of deal. When Peter responded he was told that the main office is in Everett and to ocme in on Tuseday. So yesterday, we all drove down to Everett, and Peter dropped us off at a park while he went for his meeting. Over 3 hours later Peter finally comes to pick us up.... needless to say we were all tired, hot, and hungry. But he got the job! And his first day is today! For the next two weeks, he'll be driving down to the Marysville and Everett stores (about an hours drive away) for training, but eventually he'll be working in the Mount Vernon store. They sell batteries so he'll be a battery sailesman. And he was told that currently there isn't a manager in the Mount Vernon store and that the manager from the Marysville store has been overseeing things, but if things work out, Peter will become the manager in a few months. So YAY!!! PETER HAS A JOB!!!!!! Haha I'm not happy or anything ;).

We're still waiting on the Border Patrol thing to happen. Peter talked to a recruiter about a week ago and he said that when they say 30-90 days, they are basically lying. Haha. He said that after he got the letter saying that they would call him for training, the call came 11 months later. So that adventure is not lost like we thought, but we can't be waiting another 5 monts or longer. So we'll see what happens. Peter may really like working here, and by the time the border patrol does call, may not want to pursue that anymore. We'll see.

Phew

I'M DOOOOONNNNNEEEEE!!!!

"With what?" you're probably asking. Well, there is a 4th grade position open in the Sedro-Woolley School District that, of course, I'm going to apply for. But I have applied to a couple other positions that I didn't get ANY response for, so before I turned in the required things for this position, I wanted to redo some things. I totally redid my resume, with a lot of help from the bestest friend in the world and Kathy! I also redid my letter of intent, with help from Kathy! Thanks guys for all your help!!! Since it posted on the 16th, if I weren't working, eating or sleeping, I've been working on one of those two projects. It's been exhausting! But I think they're perfect now and, hopefully, will get a response! Let's hope it was worth it! Wish me luck!!

Our busy, but fun, holiday weekend

I hope everyone had a fun 4th of July weekend! We sure did!

Saturday. of course, was the 4th and we had a lot of fun! We started out the day by having a very yummylicious breakfast of my absolute favorite.... french toast! Mmmmmmmmmmm!!!! We were going to go to the parade after breakfast, but sometimes things get in the way and we didn't make it. We were having some people over for dinner later anyway that we needed to get things ready for.

People started showing up around 4 for dinner and fireworks. We had a delicious bbq and Peter cooked enough to feed a small army! Hotdogs and brats, hamburgers, and chicken galore! Our guests also brought the side dishes so we had potato salad, bean dip with chips, and water melon and cantaloupe. It was a very yummy feast! We were all very fat feeling afterwards, hehe!

Then the time came for fireworks! Every year we put on our own show as well as watch the professional displays put on by all the towns around here. Peter's parents live on top of a hill where we can see the whole valley and on hte 4th see all the different cities firework displays! It's really cool! Anyway, we started our own display of fireworks around 9ish with the kiddy stuff that it doesn't really need to be dark for. The girls had a lot of fun playing with sparklers! Alexis was so good at being sure she held it outward from her body! Once it got dark, we got to the good stuff! It was very fun, pretty, and loud! :) We finished our display around midnight. I let both girls stay up totally expecting at least Alexis to fall asleep in someones arms, Natalie always did, but neither didn't, they both stayed awake the whole time! But they had a lot of fun watching the pretty "boom booms" so I didn't mind too much.

Peter and my anniversary is on the 6th. We celebrated it on Sunday though this year. We left the girls with Grandma and Papa and we went out. I had no idea what was on the agenda and of course, PEter wasn't telling me. He surprised me by taking me to lunch in Blaine, WA and then we ventured up to Canada and to Vancouver BC! We walked off our lunch at Metropolis, a large mall in Vancouver BC. It was three stories of stores, stores, stores! Most of them were stores that looked too expensive to even walk into because I knew that there wasn't anything I could afford in them. But the best part of the mall experience was people watching! There were a few interesting characters.... AFter we were done walking the mall (which took over 2 hours and we didn't go into that many stores), we drove around the beautiful city Vancouver! I was in high school the last time I had been there and that was 10 years ago! It was gorgeous! After our drive, we headed back to the border and then stopped at a very nice restaurant for dinner. And let me tell you, I had the best steak I've EVER had. Yummm! My mouth still waters when I think of that steak! We were going to go watch a movie after dinner and we had crossed the border back into the US, but the movie that we wanted to see didn't start again until 10:30 and we didn't want to wait an hour and a half, so we rented a movie instead and came home and watched "In Pursuit of Happyness." Such a great movie! I'd recommend it if you haven't seen it!

That was our weekend! It was a fun filled weekend! And now for some non-weekend related news and a bragging mother moment. Alexis has started counting and attempting to say her ABCs. She can count to 13 consistantly, there was one time she counted up to 18 all by herself! And she'll start saying her ABCs in chunks! Her favorite chunk is O, P, Q, R, S, T, U! She is so smart! As is her sister! We are working on reading with Natalie, and when Natalie is really focused into it (which sometimes is a struggle), she can sound out words! We may have a reader before school starts again!!!

Happy Birthday USA

I just wanted to take a few moments to wish everyone a

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!!!

Photo found on Flickr

Funny Story

So today as we are running around town Alexis starts copying everything Natalie was saying so Natalie called her a copycat. Alexis then said "I not copycat." So Natalie then said "OK then you're an echo." Alexis responds with "I not echo!" We then all start teasing her calling her either a copycat or an echo. And each time she responds with "I not copycat/echo!" Peter eventually says, "Ok you're an Alexis," to which she responds "I not Alexis." So I ask her if she's not an Alexis, then what is she? She answers, "Monster! Hahahaha!" She has such the sense of humor!

We Have a Graduate

Today Natalie graduated from pre-school! We woke up and curled her hair. Isn't she beautiful?!?

We were all excited and happy for her! OK off topic a little bit here, but I have two gorgeous girls! I know, I know, all mom's say that right? But I tried looking at them objectively (impossible for me to do) and they really are beautiful! Now back to the topic at hand....

We all got to go to school with her today and got to participate in all the fun activities! Like coloring whales with chalk. Alexis and Natalie had a blast coloring with each other! You'd think they've never colored before.

Alexis got to sit with Naatlie during their circle time. I'm blessed to have two girls that absolutely love and adore each other! I thought that it was such a sweet thing that Natalie had her arm around her sister!



They made little diplomas for all the kids and held an actual ceremony for them. This, obviously, is Natalie getting her diploma.

Natalie with her teachers Teacher Molly and Teacher Becky. Two of the greatest ladies you'll ever meet!

Pre-School Graduating Class of '09

Birthday Time!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALEXIS!!!
We love you lots!

This is a picture of Alexis two years ago. She was so tiny.


This is a picture of Alexis today (OK Saturday, but close enough!) It's hard for me to believe that so much time has gone by already and accept that she's no longer a baby. She's officially a toddler (age wise that is. She's been 'toddling' around for awhile now). Sigh....

This weekend we had a couple of friends, both of the tall and short variety, over for a birthday bbq. Alexis had a lot of fun playing with the kids that came and we had fun visiting with the adults. All in all, it was a very fun day! Be sure to check out the birthday slide show above!

Hello World, It's Me

Yes, I am still around. Just have been extremely busy it seems. But as I was talking with a friend of mine, when asked I can't come up with much of anything we have done. I've been extremely busy subbing. I've worked almost every day so far this month. And yesterday I had a great thing happen. I was booked for a second grade class but when I got there, there was another teacher already signed in for my teacher. I asked about it and the secretary said that he somehoow got mixed up and went to the wrong class, that he should be doing Special Ed. That's when the principal came out and asked what happened. When he was told, he turned to me and asked me if I'd mind doing the SpEd class instead, because, and I quote "I'm not a big fan of Mr. ____ and I'd rather him in the second grade and you in the Special Ed classroom where it's a bit more unorganized and chaotic. You'd do a much better job!" Ummmm YAY!!! And then the secretary called the Special Ed teacher and explained the situation to her and then said, "Believe me, you got the better end of the deal!" I was giddy inside! It's good to know that I am doing a good job when so many days I have to wonder.

Mother's Day was a little over a week ago and I had a good weekend. We've been wanting to plant a garden, and on that Saturday I started digging out the walkways and making the raised beds. That was HARD work and took all day! The area that we're using as the garden is extremely rocky and had a couple stumps going through it, so I had to dig out a whole bunch of big boulders, pull out the smaller rocks, and dig around and cut out some tree roots/stumps. Exhausting to say the least, but I, with some help from Peter, got it all done! And then on Sunday we got to plant everything. We planted three types of corn, early, mid, and late corn, two types of green beans, two types of peas, two types of carrots (has anyone heard of rainbow carrots before? Suppposedly, they grow a bunch of different colors, purple, pink, green, etc. It'll be interesting to see.) zuccini, yellow crookneck squash, green onion, onions, cucumber, radishes, beets, parsnips and a couple other varieties of squash. Natalie even gets her own section of the garden where she planted some carrots, radishes for grandma and a variety of flowers. Another tiring day, but it was a nice feeling to finish it and actually have some input in it!

Of course, we didn't spend all of Mother's Day woeking. Peter let me sleep in a little bit and then he and the girls surprised me with a beautiful necklace. It's a tulip to represent my first official "run" that I did a couple weeks ago. He also made me a special breakfast. It was nice!

This past weekend, Kathy and I were supposed to do another walk. This time the 2 mile "Women's Run." Unfortunately Kathy got sick, so Lynelle went with me instead. It was a perfect day for it, just warm enough to not get chilled, but not too warm that you were overheated during the walk. We finished the walk in 34 minutes 9 seconds. My goal for the next one is to run/jog most of it.

Anyway, that's the most exciting things that has happened since the last time I updated. I thought I'd include a couple videos of Alexis being silly! She has such a great sense of humor!

Our Easter Weekend

This weekend was a lot of fun!

On Saturday, Peter, Natalie, Kathy and I participated in the Tulip Run. We ran/walked 2 miles (well, with the walk from the car to the registration place and then to the starting line of the actual race and back to the car, we probably did a total of 3 miles). Peter ran the 2 miles in 19 minutes 41 seconds. And then he rounded back to meet up with us. Kathy and I walked the 2 miles but we walked it fast. Natalie wanted to run the whole thing so we'd let her run a little ahead of us and then make her stop for us to catch up. Once I saw Peter up ahead I let her run to him and the ran and finished the race, again for Peter, at 32 minutes 28 seconds. Kathy and I finished at 34 minutes 35 seconds. Natalie really wanted a trophy, but didn't finish well enough in her age group, but we were able to convince her that she got a tulip trophy instead.... it helped that Peter didn't take one so that someone else, who otherwise wouldn't get one could and they had run out by the time Kathy and I got to the finish line, so none of us got one. But I was so proud of all of us. This was my first official walk and I had so much fun! I'm already signed up for another in May!

We also decorated Easter Eggs on Saturday. Natalie and Alexis had so much fun coloring the eggs. We kept it pretty simple this year and just worked with the dye and crayons. Maybe next year we can pull out some other supplies like tape, Q-tips, etc. We colored 36 eggs and they all turned out really great! I wish I had thought to take pictures during this, but I didn't even think of that at the time.

Then Sunday of course was Easter.

Natalie was so excited, she woke earlier than her sister.... a rare occurance. Because we're mean parents we wouldn't let Natalie go downstairs until her sister was awake, so we made her wait until the time that Alexis usually wakes up before we would wake her up.

When we did wake her up, she was groggy and needed some time to fully wake up.







The girls had a lot of fun looking for the eggs and candy the Easter Bunny left for them! Even Alexis got really into it, which surprised me because Natalie didn't until she was about three. I guess having a big sister to show you how exciting it really is, helps!






Hope everyone had as great of an Easter as we did!

Alexis and the Easter Bunny

We were at the mall yesterday and of course, like every other mall in the USA right now, the Easter Bunny was there. Being that we are in a small town area with a little amount of people, and that it was noonish on the first day back from Spring Break, there was absolutely NO line. So when Natalie asked if she could give the Easter Bunny a hug (as we had anticipated), we agreed, so off she ran and gave him a hug. What we weren't anticipating was Alexis's reaction. She squealed, let go of Daddy's hand and ran to the Easter Bunny and latched onto his leg with the biggest grin possible. Which if you know Alexis at all, you know that she doesn't trust strangers, especially adults, very well. It takes her a long time to trust anyone different, even her uncle who is up almost every weekend, she takes about 10 minutes to warm up to. I think her reaction took the guy (or girl) in the Easter Bunny suit by surprise too. For the longest time, he just looked down and stared at her. Eventually, he reached down and hugged her as best he could because she was still firmly attached to his leg. I just wish we had a camera, or that they were in range of their camera. I would have definately paid to have that picture. When we were finally able to get Alexis to let go, she waved "bye-bye, Boppy (Bunny)" until he was out of sight.

Being Girly

Peter and I were lucky enough to be able to get away for the weekend without kids! We went down to Maple Valley and hung out with the two bestest friends anyone could have: The Winkeys! Saturday night Jess and Peter went to the first Seattle Sounders soccer game. Christel and I got to have a much needed Girls Weekend!

On Saturday, we left Eli with the boys while we had just a girls day off! We first went to lunch and can I say, I am in love with Thai food! YUMMY YUM YUM YUM!!!!!! Then we went and got pedicures and manicures! Oh my gosh! I've never had a pedicure before and I was a little nervous about getting one because 1. I hate feet so I don't upkeep mine very well and I knew they were gross and 2. I'm SUPER ticklish on my feet. But let me tell you, it was HEAVEN!!! I could do with a pedicure once a week. Too bad finances wouldn't allow that :). And I think I'm addicted to having my toes painted! I've been running around sockless just so I can keep looking at my pretty toes! After the pedicures and manicures, we went to the dollar store and got some fun things for the Easter Bunny to bring. Then we had to get home so that the boys could leave for their game. We had dinner and after Eli went to bed, we had movie night. We watched Twilight, which, by the way, isn't half as good as the book. And then we played a little Guitar Hero before the boys got home.

Sunday, we continued our girls weekend by doing makeovers. I have recently got my hair cut, and I hated it. I've been trying to grow it out and it's in that awkward stage, but the lady that cut my hair did a horrible job and just made it worse than it was and couldn't (wouldn't) fix it without charging me for another hair cut because "I have so much hair" it would be like doing another cut altogether.... whatever. So I've been unhappy with it ever since and have been contemplating just cutting it all off back to short. But I thought I'd try dying it to see if maybe that will help. So I went darker, which again scared me because I've never tried going darker before. So we dyed it dark and then put in highlights, and I LOVE IT!!! It's more dramatic than anything I've tried before, but I absolutely love it. Christel also used her straightener on my hair and it made it not look so awkward! So I'm totally going to have to go out and get a hair straightener.

Of course, we couldn't not do anything with Christel's hair so she got her hair highlighted too! Aren't we a bunch of beautiful women???

After that, we all just hung out and had fun! Should I be jealous that there's another beautiful woman sitting on my husband's lap? If it were anyone other than Christel, I probably would be. That sounds bad, but its just that I 100% trust those two and I know there's nothing that I ever have to worry about. And besides, she sits on her own hubby's lap too!





So thank you, Jess and Christel! We both had an awesome, relaxing weekend! We can't wait to do it again!