Family pic

Here's the first family pic with all of us in it. I wouldn't post it, but I plan on printing off the blog as a scrap book and I know the picture will probably be changed by that point and I'll never have it in the scrapbook. I think it's the first pic with all of us in it! Only took 6 mo haha.

Parties, Star Wars and a meeting with the general

PARTIES: Chloe's b-day party at our house, Tessa (below) turns one and Cousin Trent (next picture) turns 6! That's alot of parties for one weekend. Have to say I was pooped by the end!

STAR WARS: Watching the empire strikes back. Joel has to use his party favor from Trent's b-day (a gun) to shoot the bad guys. Funny thing is, he really thought he was the one who got them :)

MEETING WITH THE GENERAL: It is quite something to be in the military and meet a 4-star general, and even thought we're currently not active duty, we happen to live down the road from 4-star general, James Mattis' mother. Sunday evening we were invited to a lovely lawn party with him and a few neighbors and friends. He is a very nice and respectable man, and we felt quite honored to attend! Believe it or not, he used to play football in our yard as a kid!

There's the weekend recap. Add in a few trips here and there, church were John did the K-5 lesson, and all the other usual happenings, and you have one full weekend!

The birthday girl

Chloe Joey turned 7 yesterday! So old! She had a fun time with friends and family. We had a successful party with a scavenger hunt and lots of cake and ice cream :)
This was such a funny picture, I had to put it in! Here is the HSM cake that I made, not even close to Carinn's masterpieces, but I thought it was clever :)

The start of the scavenger hunt!

Here's a pic of most of the kids :)

I'm in preschool!

We bit the bullet and put Joel in preschool. He wanted to go sooo badly, after watching his brother and sister go to school for 2 yrs now. He is the youngest in his class, so he has quite a learning curve, but seems to really be likeing it so far. I think it's really weird just having Zach home with me! But, man can I get alot done with just one kid home, who is napping!

All the kids on Joel's first day of preschool.

Miss Chloe and Zach :) She is such a 2nd mother!

The Model Rocket

We had three lift-offs today of the boys model rocket. They were actually pretty cool. The 3rd broke the rocket in half and half is still in my parents tree. Hopefully it will blow down so we can use the three other engines that we have :)

Arrrr, national talk like a pirate day!

So, unknown to most of you, Saturday was "National Talk Like A Priate Day"! The boys happen to be VERY into pirates, and there just happened to be Richland high school students out doing a car wash dressed as pirates. They haven't stopped talking about the whole experience.

Open House

Here are some pics of Luke and Chloe's open house at school. We forgot to get a pic of Chloe's teacher, but Mrs. McCollougha..sp? is a wonderful teacher that Chloe had last year, and luckily Luke has this year.

finals week and some random pics

So, this past week was like finals week! Needed to have the ground completely leveled, flagstone layed and grass planted by Tues. and then I needed to get 400 intricate palancas made! Ahhhh! 4 hrs of sleep most nights, but it is now finished! On to cleaning my very neglected house! Here's a pic of Katy to the rescue. Helping me get the palancas done this morning!
Random pics I had to add....
Joel at Lowes

Pics of Zachy and John playing what they call, "the face eating game". I know, weird :), but so cute!

visual yard progress!

So, 3 months ago, we started moving dirt on what was once a car parking area (previous owners) in the back part of our yard. After moving dirt over, we put in garden boxes, then I started moving tons of rocks, since they 'car parking area", was mainly made of river rock, ....not very conducive to grass planting. After 2 months of rocks shoveling and rock cleaning and replacing for boarders and around the garden boxes, we re-leveld the dirt and layed flagstone, (there from the previous owners) and planted grass!!! Here are the pics...next is onto building up the firepit and building a pergola in the middle! Woohoo!....John thinks I'm trying to summon aliens with my flagstone design.

birthdays

Brady Boo turns 3...how did I end up with this as my only pic? I think I took the good ones on his mom's camara :)

Another absolutely increadible cake, by Carinn!

Luke's buddy Avery turns 5!

We had quite the weekend of birthday's and a baby shower. It was so fun to get to visit with friends and family! I can't complain about a weekend full of fun parties, except for the fact that the kids and I have now scarfed down WAY too much sugar, but besides that we had alot of fun!

Joel turns 4!!!

Yes, here is a perfect picture of Joel (excpet that he is cuter in person). A mohawk and something blue that he colored on himself expressing happiness about his birthday waffels! He is by far my silliest kid and has always had a way of just making me laugh. How we LOVE our Joel-Man!

Go Cougs!

So, we've had alot of camara issues, since we washed our good camara. Therefore, I've been an awefull blogger. Aug was lot of picking rocks in our "back 40" area of the "wilderness"...or our yard, John and friends climbed (or more goofed off on) Mt. Adams, the kids started school, Chloe in 1st grade and Luke in Kindergarten, and I just completed most of John's desk area downstairs. I'll try to manage to get the pics of all this on here somehow. For now, here's one I took today with Dad's camara. Zach at 5mo in his Cougar gear, cheerin' for the team's 1st game this year :) I like how he has the thumbs up sign down already :)