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...