Climbing the Christmas Vacation Rope

Christmas was great, everyone got to sport their Christmas jammies from Christmas Eve to the day after Christmas (this is Heaven on Earth for the boys) and everyone was thrilled with what Santa brought, but the funnest thing of all was not the presents on Christmas but the climbing rope Jim hung from our ceiling beam the day after. I will remember this next year! So glad we stuck to a budget....

Here is Dillon on his way up to touch the beam:

And here is Carter at the top. You'll have to forgive the boxed up Christmas decorations and recycling in the background...we needed to move out the decorations for more elbow room so they could swing on the rope and pull themselves on a little snowboard around the living room. Nevermind that there is actually snow on the ground outside.

And Olive is fitting in just fine, she is out from under the bed playing and snuggling with all of us and big sis Missy. She is quite a love and the best Christmas present of all :)

Falalala la la la la la...

Missy, meet Olive - FYI your new BFF.

She is around 4-5 months old (already litter box trained, YAY!) and our early family Chirstmas present :)

Her foster mom said she was found eating out of a dumpster in Burns when she was about 5 weeks old and she named her Olive for her green eyes. She is half super sweetie and half feral feline. She hasn't come out from under the bed much in the last couple of days but I don't think shes ever seen kids in her life...so you can imagine her shock. Hahaha! She'll get over it...the boys can be shocking but they're sweeties too.

Yep - thats Dillon singing right along and actually enjoying himself! I love all the shots of the kids mouths open wide, singing and full of missing teeth.

I love this time of year, the boys are festive and trying really hard to behave (re: Carter's sweet look below) and of course, Brayden is forever the silly face-maker. Goof-ball!

Is it just me or does this photo show the family-relation between him and Sierra? Ohhhh Sis, I love you , you know I do ;)

Thanksgiving & Playing In The Snow

Oregon's win over Arizona - Hey not a bad reaction for a bunch of Die-Hard BEAVERS FANS! The two different angles are kinda neat, I must say...

Even though we had two TV's going (one for the fight and one for the game), I think that this was the first time ever that a live UFC pay-per-view fight was actually PAUSED and the channel changed for a football game! I loved that the entire family came over the hill to Bend for Thanksgiving and a football/fight night, we really had alot of fun! :) The "older boys" (if that term even applies...I mean, are they really all that grown up since they've been hanging out at our house since they were Dillon's age? ;) caught some air in the snow that night - After that I took the boys to Grandpa's house for some sledding and snow fun before he left for Baja for the winter. Brady even went sledding all by himself this time, but that happened after I put the camera away. Of course.

We have free access to the cabin in the woods this winter - it would be so fun to have all you guys bring the kids and come stay with us for a weekend soon, there are a couple of snowmobiles for everyone to drive around and even a little snow sled to pull behind them. If somebody's got a snow board they could be pulled behind a snowmobile too - let me know! Wouldn't that be fun?!

October Snow

Well, we made it until October 4th before it snowed (last year it was October 10th) What a fun day!

Weekend Football

So not only is he tall, but the kid can jump too! Here is a good shot of Jimmy jumping over 48 inches on our homemade high jump....Jim can jump this too, but has to DIVE over it to make it. (see the post below) Jimmy runs a few steps and leaps over from his feet! It was the Vikings' (Dillon's team) first flag football game on Sunday, so Jim got the boys out in the yard to practice before the big game... No, they didn't win their first game but they did a great job with only 4 practices behind them, and they were up against some really tall kids...we figured they were 3rd graders and not 1st and 2nd graders like the Vikings....but who cares - it was so much FUN and nobody knew the final score anyway! We can't wait till next Sunday! Below, Dillon is the one leaning into his run and ended up pulling the kid's flag who has the ball in the green shirt, and below that, jumping up to try to intercept the ball and ended up making a great block on that play (I think I said that right) :) GOOOOO VIKINGS!

Crater Lake

We went to Crater Lake for the first time ever, for Jim, me and the boys and man is is gorgeous. Its actually only less than 2 hours from Bend and a really pretty drive, as you get closer to The Crater you feel like when the drive ends you will be at the top of the world and you kind of feel like that when you get out and look down to see the huge, deep blue lake below. Here are a few of my favorites of our visit:

This was taken from inside a little stone lookout that is carved into the side of The Crater, it looks like we were in some aquarium, but thats really what it looks like. The water was so beautiful it looked like a gel of some kind, not the freezing cold water it really is.

We walked around and explored the little village, and resort, and path along The Crater and found a place for the boys to play. These trees were just a magical place for them to be, and in the distance was a view of a far valley that felt like you could see forever! (I was really wishing that we had Tina's or DyAnn's camera there with us!) Yep, definately one of our favorite places to be...sigh....

He was so sleeeeepy.....

So we had a little fun with Brayden after he crashed on the couch one night. He crashed out in utter boy fashion with a ring of Cheeto cheese around his mouth, dirt on his face and hands and dirty holey sweats....really, life couldn't get any better for him!

If you look close, you can see that Dillon wrote "I'm Sleepy" in the paper, the boys had a blast with all the props and taking pictures of him, HA!

The High Jump

Jim is always finding ways to keep everyone busy, (even for himself) he is so creative! I love that about him...Here are some good shots of the boys making the high jump:

Ahhhh, Spokane!

We just got back from Spokane and I feel like we left our little piece of paradise behind....what a WONDERFUL time we had, thank you a million times for having us over and loving us the way that you do. You have truly been my life long family when I have not had an immediate family of my own and to be able to be with each of you and all of our children for the past week was a dream come true. What a wonderful feeling to be able to re-live so many of my childhood memories and create the same wonderful memories for my boys, and for all of us to do it together meant so much to us. We love you and miss you already!

Here are the girls with all of their grandchildren.....except of course, Brayden. Can't win 'em all I guess. Gotta love snowcones!

This was the first time the boys had been on any carnival rides and I was not surprised that they loved it! This was from on top of the ferris wheel:Look at Carter's hair after being on the spinning Sizzler :) And below was a pic from the top of the Spider, Dillon's first ride ever HA!
Dillon & Aiden in the fountain:
Well, as much as our visit was all fun and games I did learn some lessons along the way - none of which had anything to do with parenting. The most important lesson though, is that I will never be able to go on spinning rides again. Thought I could, and I DID. I was OK after the first couple of rides with the boys......and then....And then I took them for just a couple more rides on this seemingly harmless kiddie ride: (if you look close enough you can see Dillon and Aiden in the next spinning seat over)



Carter and Brayden loved it, I had a great time too - until I got off....until I got in the car to go home and told Gramma Dana "I need you to pull over" and ended up hurling in the middle of some parking lot while my children looked on from inside the car. Yep, I learned that I finally had gotten older and having children changed the insides of my body so I can't handle the rides anymore. I'm kinda bummed about it, but very glad I had that one last chance!

Oh Hi-iiii Boo! I'm in love with you!

Um, look at those two up there with their arms around each other acting like they never fight. Hmmm. The car ride there and back was, lets just say "something else", and it was nothing like the boys being all buddy-buddy like that picture above.....but we made it out alive and I'm very glad that we won't being seeing 1,000 miles of this for a while:
Yep, thats it. Thats all there was to look at. No wonder the boys went crazy! No, really, they were fine and I would turn around and do the drive all over again in a heartbeat - no doubt about it! I'll put a bunch more pics on Facebook for everyone to check out....
Can't wait to see you again next summer!

4th of July

My three favorite pictures from the 4th were all of the boys' backs while they watched fireworks. They were just so darn cute - in the top picture you can see the fireworks off Pilot Butte in front of them! But the best of the night was this of Dillon holding hands with Uncle Brandon. First of all, Dillon hardly ever holds hands with people, not even me and look how happy he is in this picture....you know you're alright if he lets you hold his hand :)

We walked and found a place right in front of the butte and had a great view, Jim was recording the video and you can hear Carter's little voice in the background :) The video is a little blurry, but really cool! There were several explosions on top and I think they were trying to make it look like it was a volcano blowing up......?

Happy Birthday Carter!

Our man is 5 today and we celebrated a little yesterday with bikes, scooters, race tracks and Sun Mountain Fun Center YAY! Everything was blue, his favorite color.....blue bike, blue on his scooter, blue cup cakes, blue notebooks and magic markers, he's quite a little artist right now!...blue blue blue!
Here is Papa and all the boys watching Jim in the batting cage at Sun Mountain, they are like stair steps all in order by size :)
Grandma had fun playing with markers one afternoon! Yes, I said "Grandma" had fun, HA!