I'm Flattered :), (and the latest)

Ok, so I have to say that I am flattered that some of you actually do read our blog...I don't know why you do when all of yours are so creative and fun, but thanks for caring :). But, due to laziness, and hearing that the whole "going private" thing causes more work than it is sometimes worth, I am not going to make the change just yet. In case I do all of a sudden, though, I will know who to add, so thank you.

Well I am way past due for an update on here, and since you can only add up to 4 or 5 pictures at a time, I can never end up arranging the pictures on here in order and it makes me ticked. But rather than delete the whole thing, I will just leave them out of order...who cares right?

I am hoping that if you were to make this picture bigger it would not need any editing, so sorry if you choose to look at this closer and it does :). Many of you know that we don't have a bathtub where we are living, and I just bathe our boys in a large tupperware type tub. Our boys still love our makeshift "tub", but when they get access to the real thing they have a blast. On Valentine's day, Nathan surprised me with a reservation at the Bellevue Embassy Suites, and we went and stayed there as a family last Friday night. Thank you to those that offered to watch our boys so we could go alone, but we had told the boys that we were going to a hotel with a pool, and Chase had been looking forward to it for 2 weeks. Needless to say they had a blast and we had a great time as a family. So here they are enjoying the bathtub, probably more than they enjoyed the indoor pool.

When we had first gotten to the hotel Nathan got the boys riled up and had them jumping on the bed and furniture...gotta love husbands. They calmed down enough for me to take a picture of them :)

Let's jump to a week or so before our hotel trip, when we were blessed with some beautiful, sunny weather. I found this table and chair set at DI for $8! I had been looking for something they could sit at for awhile, but I am cheap and couldn't get myself to spend $50 for some cheapo table and chairs. When I saw this at DI (I love that place, it has the best deals!), I called Nathan on his cell since he was too far away in the store to yell, and told him that I had found a steal of a deal. The DI manager heard me talking on the phone saying this, and jokingly said, I guess we should raise the price. Thankfully he was only joking and we shoved this table and chair set in our front seat (unfortunately we had taken the small car that day ;) ). Anyway, the boys loved having a picnic in the sunny weather.

Our friend's, the Nash's, were kind enough to invite us to go to the zoo with them a few weekends ago. The Point Defiance Zoo in Tacoma is awesome! First off it is in a very pretty area, and second all of the animals are soooo close! I am used to going to the zoo and barely being able to see the animals since they are hiding somewhere in their "habitats", but this zoo the animals were so close that if the plexiglass (or whatever it is) wasn't there, you could reach out and touch them. They even had this area where you could touch different marine life. The boys thought it was so cool.

Here was the tiger eating a huge slab of meat. Doesn't it look like the little girl could just pet him (or he could eat her instead)? He was seriously that close!

Here is Chase petting the sea animals. I told you I couldn't get these pictures in order!

Ok, I am horrible at knowing what animals are called, but I think these ones are called Tapirs? I am probably totally wrong, and now I am embarrassed, but oh well, you get the picture, they were close. But it was so fun at the zoo, and since it was cold and rainy when we went, we didn't have to deal with any crowds, it worked out perfectly. Me and the boys were also lucky enough to go again to the zoo a few days later with our friends the Mann's, which was just as much fun. Sorry, Honey, that you didn't get to join us that day, but thanks for working hard at work :).

"Mr. Box Boy". Chase is obsessed with boxes, and probably likes them more than most toys. He found this box in the trash, and if you zoom in, it is pretty comical what box he chose to get into. I should save this picture and embarass him with his friends when he is older.

It looks just like a boring, big box right?

Nope, Chase found this box to be just as fun too. He would lay in it forever and then just pop out. He is a funny kid.

For one of our dates a weekend or two ago, Nathan took me to a friend of ours' property and introduced me to his two new guns. The last time I shot a gun was with my grandpa in Burley, ID years ago. It was a lot of fun shooting at targets and eggs, and watching them explode. I have to say that I impressed Nathan with my skills :).

Well we did a lot more fun things since the time I last posted something on here, but I have to admit that I am almost as bad at remembering to take pictures as I am at posting on here. Oh well, I hope you enjoyed seeing a brief documentary of the latest!

Thinking of going "Private"

So I have debated about this for awhile now, and I know I put together one of the least exciting, or special blogs out there (especially compared to all of you guys), but I am thinking that I am going to change this to a private blog. The reason for the change is that I know that I love being a blog stalker, and thankfully I am harmless :), but I want to make sure that no one I don't know is checking out what is going on in our lives, and not that I include important details, but I don't want to worry if I am. So I will probably change this pretty soon, so let me know if you want me to add you to the "okay" list :).

Visiting my Fam

So these pictures are in no particular order, (I tried, but then I got confused :) ), but me and the boys went down to El Dorado Hills to visit my family for a little over a week, and we had so much fun! I still love WA, but seeing my family made me miss them more! Now I just need to figure out how I can make more than half of my family leave CA to move to WA. So above is one of the nights we all got together for dinner. Thanks, Mom, for some delicious food!

Here is the other half of the table. Not the most flattering of anyone, but who cares :).

Unfortunately I picked a bad weather week to visit. I left pretty nice weather in WA to come down to wind and rain. On Saturday the rain let up and my dad and the boys went outside to pick up sticks that were all over the place from the storm. Hanging out with "Cuppy" and putting sticks in buckets is the ultimate treat.

Here is lovely ol' Samson. Don't you love his gigantic mole on his chin? He is so ugly that he is almost cute, and definitely has a great personality to back it all up. Chase never really warmed up to him, but Kai loved "Fuff" (for "ruff ruff" like a dog says).

Here is Austin, my goofiest brother in law. I love his pose with his son Levi smashed in his legs...totally Austin!

This is adorable Makaela, who is Megan and Austin's oldest. She is soooo cute with her little voice and the funniest, most girly mannerisms. Makaela is one of the main reasons I would like to have a little girl someday.

And here is Levi in a more flattering picture. We celebrated his first birthday all together and he loved destroying his cake.

This is my newest little neice, Kyleigh. She is my brother, Adam's daughter, and she is soooo cute I couldn't get enough of her. I was glad that I was able to go down there and finally meet her!

This is Cortnie and her little gal Kyleigh. I loved getting to know Cortnie better and am so thankful that she is my sister now!

And this is my little brother Adam with Kyleigh. I love how Megan had to come and jazz up the picture :)

Chase loved playing with Uncle Adam. We didn't get to see Adam too much since he had to work a lot, but when he came over it was all fun and games. Chase and Makaela especially loved when Adam would take them for "airplane rides" around the house.

I just had to post this picture of Kai with his pouty face. I think he was mad that a cousin of his had swiped his toy.

I loved getting to hang out with my mom a lot this visit, since she no longer is having to work. I probably chatted her ears off, but I loved hanging out again.

So Megan definitely got more of the good looks in our fam, but I thought this picture was really good of her, and I LOVE how her husband snuck up behind us, without us knowing. I wouldn't have noticed his tiny face back there if he hadn't pointed it out to us afterwards.

Anyway, we sure missed Nathan while we were away, and are very grateful to be back home and back with him. I miss my family a ton, but look forward to seeing them again when we go to see Devin off on his mission at the end of the Summer. I love you guys!

Couch = Trampoline

We love our couch. Not only did we get it for free several years ago, but it matches our decor; and since it was free I let our kids get away with almost everything on it. Chase especially likes the couch and does all kinds of acrobatics on it, and jumping off of it. Unfortunately I didn't catch one of his great stunts while filming tonight, but you get the picture. I also apologize that half of the things I am saying don't come out right, and Kai keeps saying "help me" throughout it. (He does that to copy his brother, who will always put himself in a position where he looks like he is falling or trapped and will say "help me"...so now Kai says "help me, help me" too). Hope you enjoy their little entertainment. I especially like Chase's legs flying across the screen at the very end. :)

The Hunt for our Christmas Tree

So I probably shouldn't title this entry as a "hunt" because our tree ended up being an easy find. We had in mind to go up in a more mountainous area to cut down our tree, but had promised our boys that we would look at trees after their afternoon nap on Friday, and decided to go around the corner to a u-cut place that was in someone's very large backyard. However, this little u-cut place off of 36th Ave in Edgewood was very impressive, with a large choice of perfect looking, affordable trees, it just took us some time to find the most absolute perfect one in both of our eyes (I like taller and skinnier trees, Nathan likes shorter and bushier with not a hole to be seen).
Of course, me being goofy since I rarely like to take a serious picture (I am not the most photogenic so I might as well look like I am not trying to look good, haha). At least it looks like we are in a forest, huh?

Ok, I guess I am being serious in this picture, and it turned out ok. Too bad Kai has his "bobbie" in (as he calls it), and Chase is doing his "cheese" smile :).

Look at my man sporting a saw...so masculine :)!

And after, to make the experience even more perfect for the boys, they each got a candy cane...something Chase has been wanting for weeks! (You would think that I would have bought him one since they are so cheap and he has wanted one for awhile, but I am a bad mom, so that's why he had to wait until now to be given one for free ;) ).

Chase wanted to save his candy cane until we got home, (he loves to plan and is often too practical, haha), but Kai on the other hand wants things IMMEDIATELY, and will let you know by screaming if you don't get him what he wants NOW. So he was happy to eat his candy cane right away.

And since the Christmas tree place was seriously only 3 minutes away, it sure didn't take us long to get it back home and put up. What fun...I am so happy it is the Christmas season!

Last, but not least, below is a video of Nathan holding our tree for it to have the loose needles (and bugs, hopefully) shaken off of the tree. Unfortunately I didn't start recording this earlier since seconds before I started filming Nathan lost his grip and the tree fell on top of him while it was being shaken. It was hard for him to get control of it again, but he did :). I just thought it was funny since both of our boys didn't like seeing their new tree get shaken to death.

Random Video Blog

I decided to video the boys playing today, and then got to looking at what was saved on our camera. I found this video of when me and the boys went down to visit my family in March of this year, and my sisters and I were trying to keep our older kids entertained. I guess all of the little guys, each of us have our youngest boys not represented, must have been napping. Anyway, seeing Megan dancing around with them, and then Kelli videotaping it made me miss my sisters even more. I wish we could all be hanging out at Mom and Dad's again tonight :). Oh well, someday :)This isn't that exciting of a video at all, but I realized that I hadn't posted a video of the boys for a way long time, and if Nathan's mom is looking at our blog every once in awhile still, well I thought she might enjoy seeing what they look and act like now. The weather outside was nice this morning, but started getting ugly this afternoon, so we used a box I got today in the mail as a bridge for the boys to drive their cars on. It is funny that the junkiest, lamest toys end up being the most fun.

Anyway, at least I posted something, cause lately I haven't been the best :)

Dirt and a Bumble Bee

Ok, so none of these pictures turned out great...oh well, but here are what the boys ended up being for this year's Halloween. Last night was our ward's Trunk or Treat, and Chase chose to be dirt this year (even after I gave him so many clever, fun, boy costume ideas), and Kai had to be a bee since he is too young to tell me what he wanted to be. I had a difficult time thinking of how we could make Chase look like dirt, and not a poop, and you see the result. We put a little plant on his head to look like it was growing from the dirt, put cocoa on his face to look dirty, and made a sign that says "Can you DIG it? I wanted to be DIRT" and had a garden shovel that can go in and out of the back of it.

Kai doesn't look that cute here, but he sure was cute as he walked around later that night and his little chubby face was hidden back in his big bee head.

So tonight, Halloween night, we will be joining Nathan's sister's family and having pizza and then going Trick or Treating around their neighborhood. Hopefully the weather (and our boys) will cooperate! :)