Hey, thats my leotard

I thought I would post some photos from Christmas. Oli is getting so big she will be 4 months in a few weeks and is starting to want to sit and lay in her tummy more, p.s. Susan thanks for this outfit it is one of our favorites.

Chloe and Ashton are hugging out of sheer thrill that is Christmas morning and they finally get to open their presents. (Kevin told them if they opened any early they had to give them away, the threat worked well). This last photo they are preforming for us. My mother has been so kind and creative to have kept her favorite outfits of mine and passes them on to Chloe. Yes, that is my leotard and tights. I'm pretty sure my parents have an identical photo of my brother and I on the fireplace.

boogers in my bed

Today I told Chloe to go down to bed. When I went to check on her she wasn't in her room. (big surprise) I called out, " Chloe were are you"? I heard her tiny voice coming from Ashton's room. She was all tucked into his bed. I told her that she couldn't sleep in Ashton's room, she asked ,"why"? Before I could come up with a reason she said," Mom, cause I'll get boogers in his bed." Hey that sounded good to me, I just went with it and said," Yes" . She quickly went to her room and went to sleep.

Where does her logic come from? Some times things seem obvious to her, and no one eles.

She always keeps me laughing.

back in action

So over the last few years I have been letting my love for photography slowly fade and be replaced by several other things. One of this years resolutions is to help revive my hobbie, as such I am going to try to post some new photos every week. These are of the Oregon Beach.

Baby blessing and Christmas Eve

We decided to try to do as much as possible while everyone was here for Christmas. We Blessed Oli Christmas Eve, and then carried on our tradition of white elephant with the Elders. The girls in my family all made a craft, the kids made a gingerbread house, and got to open a gift before bed. It was a busy night. In the morning Kevin made us all Biscuits and gravy, yummmm. We had a wonderful time.

...And it's Chloe by a mile!

WE made a sled hill in our back yard (we are still snowed in and unable to leave). Here is some video of our kids sledding.

17 inches and counting

UNBELIEVABLE! I haven't seen this much snow since my childhood in Alaska. It had snowed 17 inches by 10 oclock this morning. It isn't supposed to stop until 3pm. We are all thrilled. It took all of Kevin's energy to shovel a trail to the trampoline, a sled run, our walk way, and our neighbors car out. Ashton and Chloe love playing out in it. I have yet to go out, I've been cleaning and taking care of Oli, since she isn't snow ready yet. School was closed today, we will see if the snow plough makes it to our road by tomorrow. Its doubtful.

Christmas Crafts

So This is my latest in crafts. I loved these vinyl sayings that my sister-in-law sent. I also made over 200 chocolates with Courtney Claeson yesterday. I can't believe how easy and fun it was, and now I seem like a super treat maker to all my neighbors. Ha Ha I'm fooling everyone. It also snowed 10 inches today. Finally we have some snow to play in. Ashton and Chloe saw the snow falling down and looked at me with big eyes and said," Mom, I can't believe it, Its Christmas"! I had to explain that, snow doesn't = Christmas. Boy was I the Grinch.

How Oli got her laugh back...

Oli is becoming more aware of social interactions. She is almost ticklish and will follow people with her eyes if they cross her path. But her most recent discovery is laughing. It is really easy to make her laugh (which is great for my self esteem).

on our way home

On our way home from portland we were able to stop off and see some friends. We had breakfast at a nice lodge with the Bennetts and hiked up to an awesome waterfall.

Portland

Mt. Hood looked so pretty!

This last weekend we went as a family to Portland for our nephew Bryson's Baptism. We had a wonderful time, unfortunately our camera's battery died half way through our trip. I will say this. If I had seen Portland before moving to Spokane I would probably have pushed to move there. It is so beautiful, and you can live in the forest just a skip away from the city. We went to the children's museum, to Downtown Saturday Market, and of course the main event Bryson's Baptism. We are so proud of Bryson, his baptism was just perfect. It was so nice to hang out with our family. Thanks Randy & Diana for everything. We really had a great time. Oh and I'm sure we will be hearing about how much Ashton misses and loves Kayden daily.

The unprofessional professional

During breaks off of school, I liked to grow out some facial hair. Now that my income depends on my ability to present and perform treatment to patients in a way that instills confidence, I am not sure if switching up the facial hair is a good idea. I have been debating shaving my head (so I can wear beanies without messing my hair up) but Heidi wants me to grow out the helmet strap if I shave my head. I am afraid that our income will be severely cut if I show up with a shaved head and a thin beard, although we do live near the skinheads (they might approve).

Our little Bossy

This is my super cute neice Bostyn it was the last photo on my roll but I"m posting it in hopes that her momma will let me know how her roll turned out. I have a sneeky suspicion that they turned out wrong. Either way it is okay if they turned out bad, I"m loosing my skill, I'm not practicing enough. WE love you Bostyn.

our last hike

We took this hike about a month ago but I'm just now getting the pictures up. This is the mountain behind our house. There are 3 trail heads not a mile from our driveway. All of you who are stuck in the city, eat your heart out. I love where we live.

Princess Ampire

Chloe wanted me to play dress up -trick-or-treat with her, ( it is my secret way of getting her to help me clean up the play room.) I say trick or treat and she picks up a toy from the floor and says ," oh, here for you". Then we put it in my "candy bag" until most of the toys are off the floor and she is tired of the game. First we dress up though and I asked her what she was dressed up as and she said ," a princess ampire" . odd. I'm unsure if this is the result of a song Ashton learned at school about vampires or the fact that Twilight came out this last week? Who knows. I would love to here from all of you that went to see it and what you thought. I went with a group of girls here on Saturday. I had pretty low expectations but was not overly impressed. It was a fun girls night out.

DIY wall decor

You have probably seen this on several websites. It took me a long time, due to lack of resources in Spokane Valley, but it is done and I love how much it added to my living room. I would like to publicly thank my sister Leah for the all her help and for giving me the idea. Hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

I hope my mom doesn't see this

So this is my newest craft adventure, it is called an Exploding Box. It is a miniture scrapbook. I'm posting it because it was super easy, I already had all the materials and I'm happy with the way it turned out. You can get instructions for it off sugardoodle.net in their craft section. Only problem is it is a surprise for my mom. Hopefully it will get to her before she sees this.

trip to the museum

Kevin has been working most Saturdays, so Saturday has become just another weekday. I've been trying to make it a fun activity day for the kids. Today we went to to Childrens museum downtown Spokane. For those of you in Florida it was the equivalent of Young at Art. We had a good time. They had lots of fun exhibits the kids loved it.

isn't she lovely

Olivia has really started cheez'n it up, here are a few pictures.

Neglect O' Lantern

Ashton's preschool went on a field trip to a pumpkin farm a few weeks ago. He picked out a perfect pumpkin to carve for halloween. We never got around to doing it and then we ended up leaving for Montana. The pumpkin has been sitting in Ashton's room ever since. Tonight for family home evening we finally carved it. We traced their hands and made turkeys out of them. They were mostly interested in the pumpkin "guts". Chloe took a piece of carved pumpkin and said it tasted good. I told her to go ahead and take a bite, she did. She made yum sounds for a little bit and then realized that it was gross. She spit it all over the table which I got to clean up.

She Speaks (kind of)

Oli is starting to chatter a bit. Mostly coos and grunts. She is also putting on the pounds, finally starting to look like one of our babies. We are all stuck inside due to a nasty cold so it is fun to watch her try to talk to us. She loves the swing we borrowed from Kelli and Mike (sorry about the poo pillow, don't retaliate or you are going down!).

Halloween in Montana

We spent Halloween in Montana. We had a wonderful time, Kelli and Mike were very kind in allowing us to stay. We love being able to see family more often and let our kids play with their cousins. It was unbelievably warm so we did a little door to door trick-or-treating, then high tailed it over to the church. The kids had a ton of fun and candy. Here are a few pictures.

Surprisingly everyone knew who Chloe was dressed up as. (I thought we would have to tell everyone)