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Christmas, 2011

(This is me stealthily entering the blogging world again. Pretending like I never quit and didn't cancel the Typepad account...Hi!)

Christmas of 2011 was wonderful. Chaotic, crazy, fun and beautiful. For the first time in, like, EVER... I had all of my Christmas shopping done weeks in advance. A few late nights spent shopping online in my pjs with a glass of wine = no stress and great deals. I made the conscious choice early on not to sweat the small stuff... not to buy crazy random things for people just because it was Christmas and I felt pressured to put something in shiny wrapping paper under the tree.

The kids... of course I went nuts on them. I always do (as does everyone else for the record). But one of these years they're going to be sassy teenagers who want expensive electronics and gift cards for clothing stores because nothing I pick out will be good enough anymore. So I buy Barbies and Hot Wheels galore now while I know what they like :)

Christmas Eve began at my mom's, meeting my sister and her little family and opening round one of gifts. The kids got a lot of great little things, but the big hit of the afternoon were the new Razor scooters:

 

Next it was off to Grandma and Grandpa's for round two...

... where the kids were spoiled senseless. Devyn got a total of 7 new Barbies that day (not including the 2 she got for her birthday a few days before). Trevor was completely overwhelmed by the amounts of toys, underwhelmed by the amounts of clothes (he is his father's son...) and enchanted with crawling army-style under the tree all night hunting for more presents to hand out.

As a rule, I really don't take pictures during the whole present-opening process, or at Christmas in general. I love that expression of joy on the kids faces, I love people-watching the whole family together and seeing those bonds... I don't love seeing it through the lens. But I had to snap this one:

It became tradition a few years ago for Grandpa to allow this little boy to open up a gift long before everyone else... even before dinner. It has always been a car, just a simple little piece of metal that entertains this boy for hours. Check out this post: Christmas, 2008, to see a picture of a then 2-year-old litlte boy playing with his car in the same pose on the carpet. My baby may be growing up but his love of all things cars will never change.

And now I will leave you with a few general portaits I bribed the kids for :)

Happy Holidays everyone!!

And...

The summer of chaos continues.

My calendar has had a "thing" to do on it every single day since the beginning of July. Whether it's birtday parties, school shopping, family trips, doctors appointments... UGH. I'm justalittlebit tired.

BUT! This week, Tuesday - as in less than 2 days from now, as in like 41 hours and 25 minutes - the kids are back in school!! Well ok Devyn's first day is Tuesday, Trevor just gets a meet-and-greet with his teacher/learn where the classroom is/etc on Tuesday, and he officially starts on Wednesday. But still... a matter of hours until I am FREE from 8:25-2:45 M-F. (I've been waiting for this day for like 7 years now, can you tell?) Not that I don't love my little monsters to pieces, I chose to be an at-home Mama and wouldn't trade a single day for a 9-5 job, but UGH this mama is looking forward to a break. And peace. And a house that stays clean for an hour or two each day.

Anyway. I will of course have my job to keep me busy in the morning, and starting within two weeks TWO MORE jobs to fill in the remaining hours of my freedom (because I'm awesome like that...), so it's not like I'll be sitting around doing nothin. Nope. My days will be full from 8:15 when I drop the monsters off until 2:30 when I pick them up (because yes, I am one of those mamas who still wants to be there when they get home from school and spends the afternoon with them, no day care no thank you) The normal job will most likely get switched around to nights again (9pm-1am instead of 7am-11am) but you gotta love the flexibility of working from home and picking your hours.

So, planning all this and getting the essential doctor/dentist/eye dr appointments out of the way the past few weeks, on top of still making sure the kids have plenty to do so I don't hear the dreaded "I'm bored" has meant a chaotic but fun summer. We didn't do any big trips for "summer vacation" but made a bunch of short, small, memorable trips. It's been pretty awesome.

I'm just going to start a "Summer of 2011" photo album on the right side of the blog (and hello do I ever need to update those pictures! Little Miss has teeth now for goodness sake) so anyway check back on that periodically for new photos. I've been pretty good at taking pictures throughout the summer, not so good about getting them off the camera and onto the computer, so I've got a bit to catch up on :)

Dozer Days and Waterfalls

 
This is the second year in a row we've gone up to Dozer Days in Vancouver and then taken a side trip to the Columbia Gorge afterwards to check out some waterfalls. The kids LOVE it. We even got to bring Lane with us this time, and he was thrilled!

Now anyone who knows Lane and Trevor knows that Lane is definitely the, um, louder of the two. Trevor is typically quiet and mellow, just a very laid back kind of kid and Lane is... not. Lane is a lot like Devyn, and the two of them get along great. Despite the two boys being only 8 weeks apart in age (built in best friends, right?) they don't have a lot in common and can be very hit-and-miss with whether or not they'll get along with each other and play nice.

So on this day, I expected to have to remind Devyn and Lane to mellow out quite often. Imagine my surprise when Trevor, my quiet and easy going kid, goes BERSERK every 5 friggin minutes.

I don't WANT to wait in this line! I wanna go HOME!

I don't WANT to drive that twactor... I wanna drive THAT one!

This is NOT a fun day!

I don't WANNA buckle my seatbelt!

I DONT WANNA...  everthing!

Drove me friggin NUTS. Lane and Devyn? ANGELS! I was dumbfounded. Bubba was just having a bad day. But, he did manage to make it on a few machines to drive around, and he loved every second of it (of course until it was over then it was "I don't wanna get off! No one else gets a turn!")

 
 

Lane? This place was a dream come true for him. Even after watching Trevor take a turn, he still couldn't believe he would actually get to drive one of those! He stood in line looking at the volunteer going "It's my turn? To do what??" and then once he got on he was almost star-struck... just sitting and watching, until the driver told him "you can move that, you can hold the levers and controls" then he went nuts.

 
 

Devyn? Meh.. been there done that. She was excited to go but was mostly bummed that she was too young for the "test your skills" section where they have little games set up for the older kids. She went on one of each "type" of machine (notice my detailed descriptions... I have no idea what any of these things were)

 
 

Trevor perked up a bit when he got to meet a couple of his hero's that day, real life firemen. They had a truck parked there that the kids could climb around, and T was in heaven.

 
 

 The boys, standing on the front bumper of the fire truck. About 4.2 seconds after this photo was snapped, Trevor yanked the hose out of Lane's arms and another battle started. That was the end of Trevor's Dozer Days 2011. He (happily, believe it or not) sat out the rest of the "rides" and cheered when it was time to go. Again, it was an off day for him.

So we headed out to lunch and then crossed back into Oregon and headed east into the gorge. Our first stop was Horsetail Falls, the most easily accessed of all and one that I figured would capture their attention. The problem was the falls were all at full capacity because of the snow melt, so they all had quite a bit of spray coming off of them. And Horsetail, being so close to the road and viewpoints, was flat out COLD. This is one that the kids can normally splash around in the pool at the base, but they didn't want to get close to it (neither did me or my camera for that matter) However, I did get my favorite picture of the day there:

 

And another attempted group shot:

 

We drove by Multnomah but didn't stop, too crowded. We made a brief stop at Wahkeena Falls but that requires a wee bit of a hike to see the main portion and Trevor was having another moment of berserk so we made it quick.

 

(the moment of berserk came after I told him to quit smiling like that... "Wahhhhhhh!! YOU TOLD ME TO SMILE! I'm NEVER taking a picture again!") (me: *sigh*) (PS, doesn't Lane look scared to death?)

Moving on...

Last stop was Latourell Falls. My yearly trip back to the place Scott and I were married. And every year that I've gone back its been without him ;) I swear this summer I'm going to drag him up there if it kills me and we're hiking to the top of that thing!

 

Anyway, the kids loved it, and I got some more favorite pictures of Dev and Lane (Trevor, of course, being a booger)

 

And we walked down to the base, on a trail that has seen better days and had it's fair share of "caution tape" laced through the trees, so I had a death grip on the boys and prayed the whole way down Devyn wouldn't trip. The base was cold and misty due to the high volume of water, but the kids loved it. Especially the part where mama stepped in a huge mud puddle trying to get a good picture angle and sank to my ankle in goo. Then had to wash off my foot in ICE cold water in the stream. They thought that was awesome.

Despite the goo and tantrums and cold spray from snow melt, the day was awesome. Definitely looking forward to doing this again next year :)

First Beach Trip of 2011

A little over a week ago, we had our first 80+ degree day of the year (yay, Oregon!) So of course we had to make our first official beach trip since we moved 20 minutes closer to the coast. Scott had to work, my sister had to work, but I braved three crazy kiddos on my own (no, this does not mean that I want another!) and we had a blast.

Lane arrived in a sweatshirt, jeans, and no swimsuit ("oh he won't go anywhere near the water" they said. Ha! I said) so we made a detour to Walmart to pick him up a suit. Then we headed out Hwy 26 (the quickest way) and 10 minutes into the trip came to a dead stop and saw black smoke coming from a nasty wreck a litte ways ahead. Emergency crews hadn't arrived so we did a u-turn and headed back to Banks, only to pass through and head out hwy 6 (kinda nice living at a junction like that). FINALLY we arrived in Tillamook, made a pit stop at the cheese factory for an ice cream break since the kids had been so patient, and headed back up the coast.

We only made it to Rockaway before the kids started yelling "I SEE OCEAN! I SEE A BEACH!! LETS STOP HERE!!!!!" so we never made it up to Seaside. The beach was beautiful and pretty quiet (compared to what the more tourist-trappy Seaside or Cannon Beach would have been) so we parked. The kids quickly dropped the gear and headed straight to the water. Lane included (told ya so!)

The water was, of course, ICE cold. The wind was, of course, blowing steadily and gusting quite frequently. And the kids were, of course, fearless and oblivious to the cold. 

We brought two HUGE bags of sand toys (and of course had to get more at the Walmart pit stop) and the kids wanted nothing to do with them. Sand castles were no fun when there were waves to run from.

The problem was that three kids, all running in three separate directions, was a little much for this mama. I would have all three corralled in view, and then one would disappear (panic attack!) only for me to look down shore and see Lane running full speed after a  seagull (Katie, your son needs more time at the beach...) Then I would chase him down, bring him back, and Trevor was running full speed the other direction because he saw a kite. Catch him, bring him back, and Devyn would have moved 200 feet south of where I told her to stay put! ... Put that scene on repeat about 30 times. Fun, isn't it?

So we would go up on the sand and I would push sand toys at them, saying "Play!". They looked at me like I was speaking German and went "WATER!" and would try running off. (I actually brought magazines to read... envisioning a nice quite day at the beach, where the kids would play and build epic sand castles and the breeze would softly blow away the heat... Crazy huh?) So I dug three trenches and buried them all in sand.

 
It lasted about 4.2 seconds then Trevor goes "Pretend we're zombies coming out of our graves!" and they all proceeded to emerge and chase me yelling "BRAINS!!" (don't ask, I have no idea where they learned zombie stuff). Of course they chased me towards the water so they could play in it again.

 
Repeat the scene above another 45 times and then I finally had to call it quits. The thought of three kids playing together within a 50 foot range on the beach, so I could keep them all close and safe, was just too much to ask apparently. Plus, you know, their lips were blue, so it was time warm up and head out.

We had a little time to kill before dinner, so I took them out to the Cape Meares lighthouse. They thought it was really neat, but "too short of a lighthouse to be called cool" (the words of my daughter). Then we headed out to get dinner and drive home.

All in all a great first trip to the beach :) The kids had a blast, genuine smiles on all faces all day long, this mama was exhausted but so glad we all went together.

Click on the link below to be taken to a photo album of the rest of the pictures :)

First Beach Trip, 2011

HI!!

Oh my gosh you guys!! It's been MONTHS! New Years resolutions were meant to be broken right?

So life is CRAZY busy right now. Work is... insane. The girl is out of school for the summer, the boy has three days left and then yay! for no more driving to Beaverton twice a day to get him to and from school. The house is a disaster, the yard is halfway landscaped but everything is dying because I have no time to even think about watering (let alone setting up the sprinkler system I swore I would have at this house), and my car still has sand in it from the beach trip we took a week ago.

Yes, I have every intention to blog. Yes, I want to get all of these things written down before I forget. Yes, I still have pictures from, oh, last HALLOWEEN that I haven't even put on here yet, and believe me I have every intention of doing so. But time? Not so much. I have more intentions than time.

In a nutshell? I wake up at 7 and work. Our office closes at 10:30, I usually work until 11 when it's time to get the boy from school. Then it's home, lunch, and back to work (I work 90% from home). The girl would get home about 3, I would get the kids afternoon snacks then send them out to play so I could... work some more. Dinner around 6-7, then work while Scott spends time with the kids. Put the kids to bed, work some more. Go into the office around 11pm, home around 2ish, chill time (usually one form or another of Angry Birds with a glass of wine, because I'm cool like that) and in bed around 3:30. Back up at 7 and do it again.

And it's not getting better any time soon. I finally cornered my boss a few weeks ago and said "I NEED A DAY OFF!!!" and I said it with a tear in my eye so he gave me two. Two days where I still have some work to do, but not 18 hours worth. More like 2 hours a day. Two days where I can spend time with my kids, go out and do FUN stuff, and forget about customers and payroll and all the other work-related drama that I've taken on. Tuesday is one day, and both Scott and I have that day off so during summer break this will be our family day. Saturday Scott is at work, and since the kids have been in school and this was their big day off, it's become mama's day. A day where I do nothing but be a mama, and enjoy it. We go on adventures, eat out at fun places, and I don't have to think about work until after they've gone to bed.

Week one, we went to Dozer Days up in Vancouver and then out to the gorge for some waterfalls like last year. Pictures will come soon(ish) I promise.

Week two we went to the Childrens Museum and the kids went nuts (no camera that day, just enjoyed it)

Week three we went out to the beach on a gorgeous sunny day and played all afternoon (pictures coming tomorrow!)

Week four (yesterday) we went to the Rose Parade in the morning (thanks again Rebecca!) and then the kids had "Parent's Night Out" at the gymnastics acadamy so Mama and Daddy could have a quick date night.

So yay, I get breaks from this crazy schedule of mine. Twice a week. I make the most of each day off, and try my hardest to make the most day of each crazy work day as well. The beauty of working from home, off "office hours" when I'm not tied to the phones, is that I can take off at any moment and go have a water balloon fight in the front yard. Or make popcorn for the kids and curl up to watch my favorite scenes in Tangled on a rainy day. I get the best kind of breaks.

Life is crazy, but I'm making sure that family still comes first. Blogging has slipped in it's priority position but, again, I have intentions and for now that's the best I can commit to. I've had a lot of comments recently about "do you still even take pictures?" and "you said you were going to blog more!"... No, I don't take as many pictures as I'd like to (time issue) and yes, I know I said I was going to, and I really hope I can. It's that whole "finding time" thing again. Stick with me, the blog can only get better from here :)

2011 Resolutions

I read somewhere a few weeks ago that you should wait a month before making new year's resolutions. Why? Because right after the holidays is a crazy busy time for everyone, and it's hard to start new routines and break old habits when life is chaotic. Give it a month to settle down, see how the new year feels, and take time to make resolutions that you can stick with. So I did that, and as of today I'm ready for it.

Document more: Blog, Facebook, scrapbooking, picture taking (just because, not only on special occasions)... I want to do it all. The last few weeks I've been looking over everything. Looking back through the blog, paging through old scrapbooks, scanning through pictures while uploading them (yes mom, they are slowly but surely going on scrapbookpictures.com) and I realized how much I loved doing all that. I love seeing the memories in all their different forms. The blog is like a giant digital scrapbook, I can get things down quickly... as long as I make the time to do it. Facebook is great for sharing fun tidbits that don't necessarily warrent a whole blog post. Scrapbooking? I miss it so much. I loved the creativity and the finished product, and I need to re-learn the whole process, but once I do I know I'll love it again.

Schedule more: I'm the queen of the never ending to-do list. I've always got a million things pending and half-finished (witness my half-painted hallway that I swore was going to be finished in 2010). If I just make the time to get things done, schedule a time to do it, I know it'll happen. If I set a time each day to blog, it will happen. If I schedule a time each day to run on the treadmill, it will happen. But without it penciled in somewhere, it's just another "to do".

Play more: Have fun. Go on more adventures... day trips with the kids, family trips, having a real spring break vacation (sooo excited) and hopefully a summer trip as well. Playing more at home... playing in the dirt this spring while landscaping the new yard, playing inside with the kids on rainy days and building epic forts... saying "why not?" more often just because it will be more fun.

So those are my three resolutions. Little changes here and there are going to make a big difference this year :)

2011

Wow. Still trying to come to terms with the new year. Still trying to figure out how I feel about it, what my goals are going to be, and how I'm going to go about achieving them.

I know I want to document more. I feel like the last two years life has just been flying by so fast and I have hardly taken a single moment to document it. The quirky things the kids say, how fast they're growing, etc. I know the excuse has been "busy" an awful lot but there has to be time to reflect, write things down, and preserve memories so that years from now, when they're grown and life isn't so busy, I can remember. I don't know yet whether that will be this blog, more scrapbooking (by that I mean more than the whopping 4 pages I did last year), micro-blogging on Facebook more often... not sure yet. I know it needs to be consistent, but more than that it just needs to happen.

I know I want to have more "why not?" moments. Instead of immediately saying no to the ridiculous and crazy things the kids want to do, I want to have more impulsive "sure, why not?" moments. Like "why not let them splash in mud puddles when they're head to toe in rain gear? Its washable!" or "why not make a batch of candy cane sugar cookies in January because we forgot to do it in December?" I won't deny that I'm the kind of parent that usually just says "no" because it's easier in the long run. But that gets boring, and I want to change that.

I know that I want to feel better about life. I know that will involve shedding a few pounds, getting back in shape, and feeling physically better. I know that will involve shedding the emotional drama and the people who cause it. I don't know yet how I will go about both of those, but I know the end result will be worth it.

All in all, I want to enjoy 2011. I want it to be a year I can look back on and smile about.

Poor kitty...

I was taking pictures of T-man this morning with one of his favorite Christmas presents, a "Nerf Bwaster Ball Gun" in his words.

He wanted me to get a picture of him firing it so I backed up a bit, framed in the hallway that he would shoot down towards the front door, and squeaked "WAIT! Don't shoot the cat!" Smudge had unknowingly walked into a firing zone and proceeded to plop down and bathe.

This was taken before he realized the cat was there:

 

This was taken after he realized the cat was there:

 

That look outta tell you what kitty's fate was... He got out just in time, but needless to say the cats now hate Nerf.

*sigh* Boys. 

More Pictures

We finally took some new family pictures a few weeks back. Everyone was dressed up for a special birthday party, the fall colors were beautiful, and miraculously it wasn't raining when the party was over. Too good to pass up.

We didn't get the elusive family picture of all four of us, no tripod and no where high enough to prop the camera. Next time hopefully :)

 

 

 

 

We're Home!!

And officially, almost kinda sorta unpacked!

So we moved. Not too far away, but it feels like a whole different world. We're adjusting to a new life, rearranging schedules and habits, learning new things and meeting new friends. Life is chaotic but great right now, and we're soooo excited about this new journey.

Understandably though we're a little busy. Unpacking, arranging, painting and decorating, and making the old life fit into the new house. So I'll just say a quick hello and post a couple of recent pics :) Be back soon!