for crying out loud

it's nearly time for me to plant my pumpkins again and here i am just beginning to blog about our carving from last year... well, the way it goes down here at our home is that dad and mom cut off the tops, then each child cleans out their pumpkin as well as they can, then they draw a face on the pumpkin with a sharpie and mom or dad cut them out...and usually everyone is happy. took a while for me to do them all by myself but we survived. anson has come a long way as afar as pulling out the "guts" of the pumpkin...he used to stay far away from that part but did really well this time. and good o'l dax was a fairly content casual observer. that will so not be the case this coming year- i'm pretty sure..













happy halloween!

wow, i'd made it all the way into october...totally forgot. anyway, the most important thing that happened with our family that month, besides getting to listen to general conference (which is honestly one of my favorite times of the year-it totally inspires me to be a better wife and mom and member of the church. good thing its twice a year! once a month would be even better :)) is our nearly annual trip to the Oregon Coast! We loaded up the van and drove to Seaside this year. and lucky for us we scored a helping set of hands for the trip!!my cousin, formerly known as colby lynn barney accompanied us and was such a fun addition...all the kids adored her, as did I! What a trooper is all i'm gonna say about that. now, even as i write this I just remembered that we only drove a few hours thursday night after school and stopped and slept. in pendleton? is that right? i totally can't remember and this is why you, no not you, I should write things down/blog right away because my memory is terrible. Well, it was a quick stop at a super 8 and not terribly eventful (i hope) and then we were on the road again the next morning. we did drive through portland then headed over to tillamook and went somewhat out of the way and will always go out of my way to go there for "the goods." unfortunately they were out of cheese curds..what the heck? so i "sampled" the cheese. a lot. yummm! and of course had a double scoop of chocolate peanut butter and cookies and cream ice cream in a cake cone-my very favorites!!!! thank you aunt michelle for taking a couple pics at the beloved destination






all in all it was a success and a dirty one at that...after coercing the kids back into the van for a bit longer we finally arrived at the resort and probably had dinner and definitely got in the hot tub/swimming pool and probably walked along the beach for a bit because thats the crown jewel, right? i know there's some pics of the pool from that night but the beach pics happened the next day





it was too cold to get out of the hot tub to take pics of anson and eden in the pool so...their loss! okay, honestly, the rest of the trip is kinda a jumble so i'll briefly share the highlights: breakfast all together at pig'n pancake-yum, some shopping at all the tourist traps, especially the candy store where i spent way too much money on salt water taffy, but it was good...i even got enough that eden was able to take 100 pieces on the 100th day of school-oh yes she did. kids/tucker/colby braved the ocean-wackos! anson is seriously in hog heaven on the beach!





and to be fair to the kids we spent some time and money in the arcade...they loved it. anson got a serious kick out of the roller coaster simulated ride (we NEED one of these at our house)







good times on the merry go round, in the toy store and the arcade, the pool and the beach...that is all these people need for a great vacation. i do remember that gma and gpa wood watched the kids one evening so colby, tuck, michelle and i could just hang out, shop, walk around which was super great and as a somewhat post script g&g wood went back to tillamook after we left to come home and picked up a big order of cheese curds for us-totally awesome!!!

I never meant for this to happen

I never meant to have this humongo gap in my posts-never! It just sorta happened. and the guilt has finally eaten away at my conscience and so yet again we will try this. ohhhhh, i've missed so much and will therefore be playing catch up for a while. Selfishly I will enjoy going through the archives of pictures and I will pick and choose the ones worthy of saving for posterity. because I'm the mom-that's why...and because i really want one of those neat-o books that you can have printed off from your blog. hardbound. to keep forever and ever. and if i continue in my normal timely manner we just might get to christmas in july and who doesn't love that thought? And mostly i'm doing this because Barrett started a blog overseas and i love reading it and am sad when he doesn't have something new posted (so i can only imagine how he feels when he sees our last post from september staring right back at him...)! And if anyone is out there reading this and is interested in reading about captain bishop's experiences, just let me know in the comments and i'll send you a link........So, now where was i....

the top 5 reasons I love Mother's day...

thank you, you beautiful and charming people! I love you forever...

the more recent past...

Irrigation day=happy day in our home. Luckily it's on Saturdays this year (may be on Sunday's next year and that could be a new trial in our life) but until then the kids love to get their swim suits on and run and ride and splash around. Two weeks ago our dear neighbor, Jen, brought over a toy for the kids...uuhhhh, hello. Major hit! Dax was asleep and Anson wasn't interested but Bo and Eden had a good o'l time pushing each other around. Even the cars driving by would slow way down and smile and wave and cheer. Totally wore each of them out. It was cool. Too bad it was probably the last warm irrigation day of the year...more next summer for sure!






And just a little sneak peak at a cute crack because I can





Also, this same evening the Boise Zoo had a military appreciation night where families could get in for free and had the place to ourselves for a couple hours. It was seriously great! The last few times I've been to the zoo has been for a field trip at the end of the school year when it's 90+ degrees with a million kids running around crazy. This night was cool and reasonably calm with WAY less people-so nice. We joined up with our friends, the Dopp's, and had a good time darting from cage to cage seeing almost everything there was to see. After the kids last trip down the giraffe slide we were walking past a patch of grass where a worker was holding what I thought was a pretty good sized snake. But, oh no, I tell you. It was a "legless lizard". I have never heard of such a thing but there it was. The difference is that the LL jaw doesn't unhinge so it can only eat baby mice not big ones, and it has a shorter body and long tail whereas the snake has a long body and short tail. Just a little FYI. The kids were fascinated, seriously.


Here's Anson wanting to touch it one more time and Eden is most assuredly asking the nice zoo worker where the LL poop comes out. A-Mazing!





Good times, I tell you.

In the past...

A couple weeks ago both Anson and Eden's schools had their fall fundraiser. For Anson's school they did a carnival and I was given the opportunity to make 100 carmel apples. That means I unwrapped nearly a thousand of those individual carmels over multiple hours, swatted away way too many little digits who were trying to sneak my hard earned carmels, and said,"I promise you can have a carmel apple tomorrow at the carnival" soooo many times I was a broken record. You can bet that we got to the carnival on time so that we could eat dinner and hunt down the clown selling the apples.

Never again, for a long, long time!

The kids enjoyed the games, the bounce houses, the dunk tank, the food and the face painting. Success!!








Eden's party was the following evening. Rock of Ages, it was called. Each class dressed in a different era and learned a dance from that era to perform for the families. Kindergarten and 1st grade were 50's. Eden did rousing rendition of the peppermint twist, and I mean it. She was great! I also saw some rockin' costumes that night. Cracked-me-up! Luckily we have an amazing friend named Carol who we called a couple hours before the show to borrow some dress ups-she totally came through for me. Eden was very excited!! Unfortunately the gym is tiny and only one grade could be in there at a time so we didn't get to watch the other dances but like I said, the costumes were sweet.
So, they had a good dinner but not nearly as many games/activities. Which was okay with me as we didn't stay out nearly as late or spend as much $. We all got a snow cone, played on the playground because you can never run around nearly enough on that school play equipment, can you? I took one picture of Eden with her friend and classmate, Conner. So cute! At this point she had taken off the scarf that was around her neck and maybe even the one that was in her hair because they were making her sweat-y. Her words, not mine.

Guess who?...

A couple weeks ago I got this piano book out to show a friend and low and behold we woke up this morning and Anson sat down on the bench, opened the book and began to teach himself how to play-totally AWESOME! It's a very beginner book that just teaches how to position right and left hands from middle C. Nonetheless, he got through most of the book before church then came home from church and finished then went through it again. It was amazing! This kid has mad skills teaching himself how to do things with hardly any assistance from adults, ie. the computer, riding his bike, and now the piano. Now I'm not saying he's a savant or anything, just a smart little whipper-snapper that makes me proud! I'd post the video of him playing but I don't know how so you just get the still pics...