Halloween

Halloween this year was so much fun! We decided to do a theme and these are the costumes we came up with, can you guess the movie? Beckett decided to throw our camera down the hall, so the pictures are not great. A big shout out to Brooklyn, for being so excited for me dress up and so I actually did it, and I had a lot of fun. She is such a hoot! I love her!

Emree was the cutest Lucy!

Brooklyn made a great Susan, and Brady loved wearing all the gear for Peter, and of course our little Aslan. We had a great time!

Kasen and Layton

Chas, being the great guy that he is kept the kids for a long weekend and I got to go to Rexburg to see my sisters new little twin boys. They are so adorable, and so tiny, my biggest baby was 3 LBS heavier than her smallest little guy. crazy! I had tons of fun visiting, holding, shopping,eating, sleeping and all of those kinds of things. It was great to see so much family and enjoy each others company, let do it again soon!

Grandpa and Initial Point

My Dad stopped by for a couple of days on his way down to Rexburg to see Kayla and her little boys. It was so nice to have hime come, he doesn't get to very often, so we really enjoy it when he does. Beckett and Tacey chillin with Grandpa. While we were in Boise we went hiking up to Initial point with my brother and his kids, it was a fun hike, but man were there a LOT of flies, yuck!!

Now I have proof that they do like each other! If they are outside they can hang out and play all day long.

Family shot at the top of Initial point, we also went down to some view points along the snake river and had a nice picnic. We saw some guy reeling in a HUGE fish, he said he'd already been trying to get him in for over an hour, so after about 10 minutes we kept on driving, would've liked to have seen the monster!

Beckett waking up Emree one morning and ended up snuggling in bed with her instead, so cute!

Hells Canyon Mule Days

David in the background, cool animals! (sorry the pictures and explanations got all mixed up, keep scrolling down.)

Some more pic's of Chas' project, bank stabilization, Beckett wanted to see how it would withstand some wear and tear.

Ta-da, in all her finished glory.

and the fish live happily ever after...

We got to go up to Enterprise to the HCMD festivities, they were awesome! I could so live in this gorgeous little town. Every time we drive up there I get a little envious, well pretty much when we drive anywhere out in the country, but really this is a beautiful spot! We got to stop by one of Chas' projects up from Wallowa Lake and see all kinds of Kokanee salmon swimming up river, it was pretty cool! I love this picture of Chas and Beckett. We went to the parade and these beasts were defintely the hit. Look at how stinking huge they are. 6' at the shoulder, these were Ezra and David. The lady in the picture has 10 of these big guys, WOW! They were impressive!

Another year, another truckload.

I finally told Brady we had to get rid of his favorite blanket, it was beyond repair. This was his sad face... I have yet to make him another one, some day!

This year whenever we would go out and get wood, we would bring the kids' bikes so they could play until Chas had wood cut for them to haul, I don't know why we didn't think of this sooner. Going to to get wood is no longer a chore, but a great time! We love having lunch from the back of the truck even in the rain. Chas has lots of memories of getting wood with his Dad when he was young, I am glad our kids will have those memories too! This is one of our favorite things to do in the fall.

School!

The kids were soo excited to start school this year. I wasn't, really.. maybe a little bit, but I do miss that they are both gone all day now. Brady is just getting big too fast, and Brooklyn, well I have started to accept the fact that she is no longer my baby girl. Being in first grade just seems so old, but he loves it and is so excited! I love you kids!! Have a great year!

Long time coming...

Well I thought I better catch this blog up as it is getting to be a daunting task, and I don't know where to even start, but here goes.

To finish off our trip over to Cottage Grove... the kids had a great time swimming in the lake, a little too cold for my taste, but lets face it I only swim if it's very warm! We always love going to Jared and Gina's and have such a great time. We all went on an awesome bike ride around the lake, that was one of the highlights. We had to do a little back to school shopping of course and stayed up late laughing and watching movies.

ER

Well after a crazy week I decided I would post about some things happening around here, mainly because I am feeling very blessed and thought I better write about it.
Last Friday as I walked into my friends house (she was watching the little ones, so I could go to Brady's class), she tells me that her husband is taking Chas up to the Emergency Room from work. At first I thought she was kidding, she proceeded to tell me she didn't know what has happening, but she would keep the kids until I could come back and get them. I am so grateful for my wonderful friends who I can always count on!!!! So I rush up to the ER meet Chas and a couple guys from work and they tell me what is happening. Vomiting, disoriented, passing out, dizziness, weakness, so I am starting to worry a bit. What the heck is going on? He was fine when he went to work! and that was only 2 hours ago. So they get us into a room quickly, which was so nice, usually it's not so quick around here. They had to pry the garbage can away from him, he wasn't willing to let it go as he was still throwing up. I tried to talk to him and get him to respond, he mumbled a bit, but that was as good as he could do. So they did CT scan, EKG and pumped him full of all kinds of things. 3 meds to try to get him to stop throwing up, and 2 different ones for the pain in his head.
OK so now I am really starting to get worried. Sitting there in the hospital makes you feel all kinds of humble real fast. You quickly realize that is doesn't really matter that you didn't get the dishes done before you walked the door, doesn't matter that there's a table full of tomatoes ready to be canned, oh well, none of that matters now. As I am sitting there while Chas is trying to sleep I really thought about how menial most things in life are, while the things that really matter are looked over. I thought of this quote, which I love "Distractions don't have to be evil to be effective." I've thought of that alot the last couple of weeks. It is so true!
Anyway come to find out Chas had some freak thing happen. They told him he had a sinus infection which did something to his middle ear which caused all the dizziness and vomiting and stuff like that. So not really a major thing, but it has made us do some major self reflection. I am so grateful for him and what a great guy he is, I won't get into all that mushy stuff, but am really glad he is ok.
Thanks to my great friends who kept my kids and made us dinner and came to the hospital to check on us. I feel blessed to have such great friends!! So here is a shout out to you!! Thank you all!!
And of course for my wonderful husband, thanks for sticking around for a few more years!!!

Don't ya wanna just snuggle them!!!!???

Two weeks is going to seem like forever before I get to go and love on these cuties! Congrats to my sister Kayla, they are so adorable!! Let us know when they both have names!!!!

I'm going there some day....

I LOVE the Portland temple, it is one of the most beautiful temples in my mind. We got to take the kids there and walk around the grounds and talk about how important the temple is and enjoy the spirit there.

McNary and Bonneville Dams

I think everyone around here thinks we now only visit our house and actually live somewhere else. I swear we have been up, over, down and around this summer and anywhere, but home. But we did have a great trip over to see Jared and Gina. We always love going there and are glad they make the time for us to visit. We left on a Thursday about noon and stopped at the McNary dam and also the Bonneville Dam on our way over. It was nice to spend a little part of our trip with just our family and do some fun things with the kids. They loved seeing the salmon swimming up the fish ladder at the McNary Dam through the huge glass windows. And of course since that is part of Chas' job at work he loved seeing it too. Then we drove on to the Bonneville Dam where they have all kinds of fish ponds, a fish hatchery and some beautiful gardens and flowers. There is a sturgeon pool, and there are some 6 foot long UGLY sturgeon fish in there. But it was pretty cool when they would swim right past you and you could see them face to face. It was an awesome place!!! I have decided some of the free stuff you can find to do is better than paying to go see something cool! You just have to do a little more research to find it.

Breakfast...

This is how breakfast ended up today, Beckett loves Cream of Wheat, and gets it all over, his hair, his face, everywhere. So instead of dripping it all the way to the bathroom, this is what happened. Gotta love that he can still fit in the kitchen sink!

Spokane

Saturday was a little cold, I think that's what the goofy face is for! Beckett didn't seem to care, but he also wasn't wet!

We went up to Spokane last weekend to see my brother and sister in law, celebrate Chas' birthday and go to the temple. We spent Friday all day at Lake Couer D'Alene and then got a babysitter and went out to Texas Roadhouse for dinner, talk about DELICIOUS!!! man it was good. Saturday we went to Liberty Lake and then to the pool at Aaron's apt. The kids got their fill of swimming and playing in the sand, they had so much fun, and it was nice to just relax and hang out.

Camping

We got to go camping with our good friends the Olsons and had a great time. We LOVE to camp and really didn't get to do it enough this summer since we have been gone so much! But we had fun, got some wood, and the kids LOVED riding around on the little 4 wheeler.

Birthday

It's official I am now over the 30 mark, WOW!! crazy!! 31 years old. I had a great birthday with friends and family. I got to go out for a couple hours with a good friend of mine who took me out to a craft store, we got a yummy slurpee, it was a nice little break! The kids spent all day making pictures and the nice hat in the above pictures. What a wonderful day, I am so blessed and really look forward to every birthday, it just means I have had that much more time to be with family and friends!! What a wonderful day.

Soccer

We had a busy soccer season. Chas was an asst. coach for Brookie's team and I coached Brady's team. So there are a few pictures of Brooklyn playing, but none of Brady, I will have to get some from somebody! Here is our end of the year Root Beer Float celebration! We had a fun year of soccer.