A Few Fall Pictures

Some things we've done the last couple months--in pictures! :)

This is a striped wall I finally finished in the girls' room:

Here is everyone as they were dressed up for Halloween:

We had a very short time with the beautiful leaves on this tree before they all fell of and turned brown, but it was so pretty while it lasted and the kids loved playing in the leaves:

My niece Isabel was baptized this month, it was a really special day and we are so proud of her for being baptized. Dave was asked to give a short talk on baptism and he said he cried like three times that night. :) Special times.

The day before Thanksgiving we headed over to Dave's parents to have some pie with them and watch a Christmas movie, it was so fun and nice to spend time with everyone!

Thanksgiving was sort of different this year, all of my siblings were down in Toquerville at my grandparent's house; so it was just my little family at my parents, along with my grandma and my aunt and cousin. We got there early because Dave did the turkey, and spent all day there. It was actually so nice, it didn't feel like we spent all day (you know how when you've been at someone's for awhile and the kids are all going crazy and you know you just gotta get out of there? Never happened! Happy thanksgiving indeed!), the kids were good, my mom had special fun activities for them to do and let them help cook with her, my dad played checkers with the kids, we watched a few movies and just had a good time. I wish we spent more days like that. :)

We're Very Spiritual Here

I just really don't feel like adding a bunch of Halloween pictures because I've already added them to Facebook. Its like double the work! ;)

 I'll get around to it soon I hope, but real fast I wanted to share this funny story before Kimball stops doing it and we forget all about it! So we try to read scriptures with the kids every night, and with the two little boys that don't know how to read, when its their turn we say their part and they repeat it after us. Well, Kimball doesn't really talk so well and saying words like 'verily' and 'whosoever' and whatnot don't always go so well.

Also right now Kimball is completely obsessed with super heroes. He runs around our house all day long 'pkewing' things with his pretend guns and saying "HULK SMASH!" or "Spiderman!!" or whatever else. (I'm going somewhere with this really.)

So anyway, when it gets to Kimball's turn to "read", I'll say a word or two and if they're easy enough he'll try and repeat them. But the last week or so, if its a word he can't really say he'll pause for a minute and then say..."hulk." or something along those lines.

It goes sort of like this:

 Me: "Okay Kimball, say 'Behold'"

 Kimball: "hole"

 Me: "I give..."

 Kimball: "geeve"

 Me: "unto you..."

 Kimball: "yooou"

 Me: "a commandment..."

 Kimball: "....hulk" (everyone snickers and tries not to burst out laughing)

 Me: "that ye suffer..."

 Kimball: "fer"

 Me: "none of the things"

 Kimball: "ironman"

 Me: "KIMBALL stop it!!"

 Yeah, pretty much that. With lots of laughing involved. ;)

 Of course I want him to start talking, and I want everyone to be reverent for scripture reading but in some ways I wish he would never grow up and out of doing this. Because its adorable and hilarious and I know he's going to get bigger and start saying things like "actually" and "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" and big words like that... ;) And I know I'll miss his sweet innocent little boy self so much!

Project: Boys Room

I feel like we've been working hard to get the house all put together, but then I look around and feel like nothing's done! haha So in the spirit of having SOMETHING done, I thought I'd share some pictures of the boys' room.

It was a project in that all the walls and baseboards and windowsills and everything were painted a bright turquoise, so it took quite a lot of coats to cover it up, then I decided to pull out the carpets (they were so ugly! haha) and put down some plywood to paint. I'd seen on Pinterest some tutorials on painting plywood floors so I figured that would be better than gross old 80's carpet right?! I like it a lot better, but it took some work to do too. :)

The room still isn't done but they're at least not in the downstairs back room (or in our bed in Kimball's case...) and are all set up. Just need to add pictures to the walls and that kind of stuff.

                                     See, I told you it was a lot of turquoise! haha And you can sort of see the ugly carpet here too.

                                 Here it is with the bottom half painted white, and getting ready to do navy up top.

                         Navy up top, and all the carpet ripped out--yes I DID do that all by myself because I am an amazon woman and get things done. I also pulled out all the tack strip (and got poked in the thumb and was worried about tetanus for a couple days but we won't dwell on that...) and all the stupid stinking staples there were a million of! :)

    I painted stripes on the floor, which I really love! Just a fun thing to get to do!

And here it is how it looks right now. Well, not RIGHT now, there's probably toys on the floor RIGHT now, but that other headboard is going to get painted turquoise too (see, I DO like turquoise, just not overwhelmingly so! haha) and of course pictures and whatnot on the walls and curtains and all that. Kind of fun to get to really plan it all out and decorate and do what I want--too bad we don't have more money right or else it would be seriously fantastic!! ;)

Life

I keep telling myself I'm going to be better about blogging and then life happens and the blogging doesn't!

The last thing I posted about was school starting--that seems like a million years ago! Our house was supposed to close a few days before school started, so I decided to go ahead and sign the girls up at the school out in Puyallup. Of course, as life goes, we did NOT close in August and so I was stuck with figuring out what to do. Do I drive the kids back and forth for a few weeks (with a new closing date a month after the original), do I transfer them back to their Tacoma school not knowing if the house would even go through at all? To be honest, the whole thought of having to bring my girls back to Tacoma was making me sick. We didn't have any uniforms (we had bought them new school clothes, so excited they didn't have to wear uniforms this year), we didn't even have the same school supplies bought (we would have had to get more), etc.

It was a really rough time of indecision, not knowing what was going to happen or how everything was going to work out. So I finally decided to drive them out to Puyallup every day until we moved (if that happened), and if things didn't work out, we would deal with it as it came.

After two weeks of driving them 20 minutes out, then 20 minutes back (if there was no traffic, it usually ended up being an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon), we found out that we weren't going to be able to close on the date they gave us. We were told that we wouldn't be given any more extensions and that was that. Finally, after a weekend of being told that our "people" would do whatever they could to make it work we waited and finally found that the bank was giving us five more days. So one more week of driving and FINALLY, finally it happened. We moved. We got our house, we didn't have to tell our landlords for the fourth time "nevermind, we're not moving THIS week..." It happened. *relief*

Of course, now we get to deal with all the little things you find out about a place when you move in. I had a really bad week of thinking "WHAT HAVE WE DONE?!?!" But now that things are starting to happen and things are coming together, I'm starting to feel less overwhelmed and more excited.

The girls started riding the bus, they were really nervous but once they did it, they really like it. Bethany adopted two African Dwarf frogs from her class, so we have our very first pets! ;) We got a new washer and dryer set. Our internet is set up, our computer and television is set up. I finally finished painting the boys' room (because the previous owners had painted it bright turquoise, it took a lot of coats to cover!), and am hoping to finish painting the girls' room this week. We've made a trip to Ikea. We still have a million boxes to unpack. But its good. And I'm happy. And grateful for the little tender mercies that have kept me going: like looking at my kids playing in our backyard with the sunshine filtering through the trees--it was like heaven. Like one of my best friends moving just up the road a week before us--SO amazingly lucky. Like knowing people in our ward already and feeling like its the place we should be. And so many more.

I also missed posting about our day at the fair, but I forgot my camera so I can't even share some pictures! (You have no idea how sad I was about the camera, I almost didn't even want to go if I couldn't take pictures of the day!) :)

Back To School So My Dad Will Think I'm Cool

I'm just going to have to accept defeat on trying to catch up. If I think of all the stuff we did this summer and trying to blog all of it, I might just curl up in a ball and suck my thumb for awhile. Instead I'm going to just blog about today.

Today was the first day of school, and unlike other years, we don't even actually live in the school district we're going to. That sounds weird I know, and believe me, its a weird situation. One I'd rather not be in, but you know, I don't have control over many things. Like I've mentioned previously, we're trying to buy a house; a stupid, stupid house. We had a closing date of last week, a few days BEFORE school was supposed to start. So since things seemed to be pretty solid, we enrolled the kids in school in Puyallup. Then just a few days before we were supposed to close, we got a phone call about a hiccup in our plan. So without going into a lot longer story, we aren't supposed to close now until the 20th of September. Just over two weeks after the start of school. So guess who's driving her kids back and forth every day?? This girl. I don't even know how I feel about this anymore. Except maybe nauseous.

So today I got up early and dropped my boys off at Grandma's and drove 20 minutes out to the new school. The girls had been saying how excited they are, but this morning the nerves set in. Maddie was tearing up just getting out of the car. I was in knots. We got there and were told to wait in lines to be let in to their classes. Maddie's line is on one side of the line up and Bethany's is waay down at the other end. I felt SO BAD having to leave Bethany standing there by herself. It was just making me so upset, I was ready to cry right then. Let me tell you, I hate being the parent that cries! haha I think school is wonderful, I know my kids will love it, I love the one and one I get to spend with the littler kids, I LOVE the break from the constant bickering between all four. ;) But that first day when you have to walk away and leave them, not knowing how things are going to go, can just be heart wrenching! So anyway, I ended up running back and forth between the two classrooms, trying to get everyone settled and feeling good. I was less worried about Bethany, but just her looking up at me with those worried eyes trying to be strong and brave was again, making me a big ol' mess! :) Gosh I love that girl. Then when Maddie's teacher said it was time for the parents to go, she started crying and I couldn't even help myself, I started crying to. It was just so dang sad! And the thought that I had to drive so far away, that I couldn't even get there quick if I needed to wasn't helping. I finally got her settled down and walked out (feeling like a loser because I'm all blotchy and ridiculous), I called Dave and bawled about how hard it was.

Of course, when I picked them up they were so excited and happy and both had awesome days. Which makes me so happy, and makes me feel better about taking them back tomorrow. Why doesn't anyone tell you how hard this parenting stuff is?! ;) They really liked their teachers and spent the whole way home telling me all about the fun things they did and what they liked.

Anyway, I'll wrap this up with some pictures. Here's a couple from the Fashion Show we did with the cousins a week or so ago (this is just a few, there were many more! haha):

And here's the pictures I got from their first day, I can't believe my babies are growing up so fast! :

Sam turns FOUR!

My last post was Kimball's birthday, the next birthday is Sam's! Unfortunately we didn't really do anything big (or is it just too far back that I can't remember??) but either way, I didn't take any pictures so I don't know. This is the only picture I have from Sam's birthday:

Sweet yes, special for the day of his birth...uh...no.

Anyway the best I can do then, is to tell a little about this sweet boy.

First up, he's a talker. (Maybe he's the reason Kimball doesn't talk?!) I mean seriously though, this kid doesn't shut up. Its mostly questions he asks, question after question after QUESTION!!! I'm going to be honest, it drives me a little crazy (mostly because the questions are ridiculous and/or don't make any sense and he repeats the same questions over and over just sometimes using different words--oh, and whoever said there are no stupid questions is a liar...)--BUT this is who he is right now and I love him, so I love his inquisitiveness.

He is unpredictable. If there are friends over or someone visiting, I have NO IDEA how this kid is going to react, some days he's shy. Some days he's absolutely insane. Some days he's SOOO excited and won't leave the people alone. Other days he's sweet and quiet. I wish I could get him to settle on the non crazy days but I have no idea how it works in his brain. :)

He's can be very sensitive. If we watch any kind of movie where there's a problem with a kid and/or their mom, we'll hear a little boy softly sobbing in the corner. Its heart breaking! The other day we were watching a little slideshow I'd made of Kimball's baby pictures, and he was laughing one minute, and then the next I looked down at him and he was tearing up and said "this is making me sad!" when I asked him why he said because Kimball was so cute as a baby. :)

Poor kid has the worst allergies. He's been having a rough time this summer, itchy eyes and nose and really uncomfortable. I feel bad he has to go through that starting so young!

He likes to pinch the fatty part of the back of my arm when he's sleepy. (I hate this.) (And his dad tells him he's not allowed to do this anymore.)

He loooooves The Avengers. A LOT. We have watched every kind of Avengers cartoon you can think of. Its crazy. (But deep down, I kind of love it too.)

He's started dressing himself. He thinks that if its the same color it matches, so all orange is the way to go. Or if he has on plaid shorts that have a stripe of brown in them, his mustard shirt with a brown stripe is all good. But his most favorite outfit is his red shirt and red plaid shorts, he wants to wear them EVERY day.

He finds as many excuses as he possibly can to not go to bed at night.

He doesn't like potatoes. Including mashed potatoes and FRENCH FRIES. For real, whats wrong with this kid?! :)

Most of all, I love Sam for his funny, sweet only Sam is him personality, I mean how could you not love this face?! :

Kimball turns TWO!

Okay, next big thing since Easter...Kimball's birthday! Cute boy turned TWO! Can you believe my baby is two already?! I know, me neither! Some things about Kimball: He is almost always happy! He has a crazy loud laugh. :) He didn't have any teeth for a LONG time, so even by his second birthday he only had maybe 8 teeth! haha He can say our family names pretty well, and "no" and "me" and a few other things, but he's not very much of a talker. In fact, the most he says is "dah" for pretty much everything. :D He's pretty tough, he falls down, sure he might cry, but he is right back up and laughing and playing within seconds. Also, since he's been walking since like 8 months, he is an exceptional climber! Every time we're at a park I think it scares some of the mom's to watch him climb on the ladders and ropes and such, but he's a pro! haha And last but not least, he is such a joyful, funny addition to our family and we love him SO MUCH!