Cousins!

We were so lucky to have my cousin, Jen come visit us all the way from North Carolina! She got to meet Brayden and I got to meet her daughter, Amelie. We hadn't seen each other since Carter was about 4 months old - so this was such a wonderful treat, and to top it off we got to stay in a great house in Sunriver and go to the Nature Center thanks to Luke & Amelie's Grandma :) It is the middle of March and it snowed in Sunriver, Dillon & Luke are playing outside in the picture above while it was snowing quite a bit, click to see the snow falling! Now they are off to Honolulu this week...snow to sunshine, can you imagine?!

Amelie snuck in a snuggle with Dillon.....Here we are all buckled in the minivan on the way to their Great-Great Uncle Paul and Aunt Maxine's house in Redmond.....


Amelie got a new pair of heels (matching purse & sunglasses too), here she is guarding them from Uncle Paul. Those of you with little girls are sure to fully understand this! Here Dillon & Luke are playing the same organ that Jen & I played when we were kids :) What a great time!

The Entertainer

These were all taken within a 15 second time frame :)

Sure Signs That You Live With All Boys...

There are lots of them sitting at the table... You have little army men perched atop the closet doors and door mouldings throughout your hallway... You not only have fish, but there are frogs & snails living with them too...

You have a rocketship sticker on the back of your cell phone... You have (at least) one VERY messy room in your house, and you purposely stuck fake bugs all over the walls of that room...

You have the ultimate Cars collection... And they thought the picture looked way cooler when the Cars were all crashed up...

They very well may fight, argue, and tease each other all-day-long sometimes, but they still Love each other at night and take turns sleeping on the top bunk and bottom bunk.

I've heard alot of wonderful quotes lately, here is another one...

Meditations from a Simple Path by Mother Teresa

"People are unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives.
Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you may win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.
The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, people may be jealous.
Be happy anyway.
Honesty and transparency make you vulnerable.
Be honest and transparent anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.
People who really want help may attack you if you help them.
Help them anyway.
Give the world the best you have and it may never be good enough.
Give the world your best anyway.
You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God; it was never between you and them anyway."

Just Hanging Out On Top Of The Fridge

All of our boys love to climb and be up high on something (anything) they just can't help but climb on things, so after climbing on Daddy from the floor up to his shoulders a few times Jim sat Carter and Brayden up on top of the refrigerator which they love. Dads always think of the really fun things, don't they? Well, Brady didn't want to get down. He even closed his eyes to "hide" so he wouldn't have to get down, and its funny because one of the phrases he can say now is, "Can't get dooown!"

Dillon sounded out and wrote his first sentence. The boys earn quarters and when they save up enough to buy something they want, we go shopping - Dillon's first written sentence states: "Go to Target" HA! He was so proud (we all were) that he wrote a sentence on his own that he decided to tape it up in a laminating fashion so it wouldn't get ripped by Brayden.

I don't know what it is, but we just think their eyes look so pretty outside playing in the snow, you'll have to click to enlarge to see what I'm talking about :) Brayden decided to pull up a chair and help with the dishes....Its hard to see, but there is a bird feeder right outside that window and there are icicles behind it. Those icicles grew to be longer than the bottom of that bird feeder before we realized that we had better take them off before they pull the gutters down....

A silly thing... The boys had baby washcloths tied around their hands and they were pretending that they were shooting balls out of them, but not just any balls. Dillon said he was shooting "Fire Thunder Balls" and Carter upped the anty and said that he was shooting "Super Thunder 698 Balls" I wonder what Brayden will come up with when hes a little older?

Things I want to remember

Resolutions? I'm terrible at making them and keeping them. I always want to exercise more, eat better, lose more weight, be a better mother/person/wife/friend/family member....blah blah blah. Not to say that I haven't improved myself in any of these areas, because I have, but the only formal resolution I ever made and kept was to recycle and that was 7 years ago and I'm proud to say that is still going strong and that even my children know they can't just throw everything out, its simply a rule and a way of life. Anyhow, instead of making resolutions set into stone that eventually turns into sand and blows away, I find it more meaningful to go through the little things I write down or copy, and keep throughout each year. Just like the recycling, I look at these to be rules and a way of life too. I love writing as much as I love to read, so here are just a few that I narrowed down and wanted to share.....

Things important to me (in no particular order):

~ Give people more than they expect and do it cheerfully.
~ If you don't like hearing the truth (even in a nice way)about yourself or a situation....change it.
~ Marry a man/woman you love to talk to. As you get older, their conversational skills will be as important as any other.
~ Don’t believe all that you hear….or spend all you have….or sleep all that you want.
~ When you say, “I love you,” mean it.
~ When you say "I'm sorry," mean it.
~ Never laugh at someone’s dream. People who don’t have dreams don’t have much.
~ Love deeply and passionately, you might get hurt but the only way to live life completely is to feel all that you can feel.
~ In disagreements, fight fairly…you know what is fair, now act like you know.
~ Don’t judge people by their relatives.
~ Talk slowly but think quickly.
~ When someone asks you a question you don’t want to answer, smile and ask, “Why do you want to know?”
~ Great love and great achievements involve great risk and that no matter the risk, it is still worth taking.
~ Say “bless you” when you hear someone sneeze.
~ Be the best listener that you can, if you aren’t a good listener to others, they won’t be there to listen to you when you need someone to just listen.
~ When you lose, don’t lose the lesson. Failure is not a negative word. Failure is how you learn. At the end of the day if you can’t think of anything great you did that day, think of your failures and the risks you took and you will find greatness in yourself all day.
~ NEVER tell a child that something, anything, is too hard for them to try. They can figure it out for themselves once they’ve tried.
~ Be humble.
~ For God’s sake, recycle and reuse all that you can. If this is too hard for you to do, then what is it that you consider easy to do?
~ Do nice and thoughtful things for others without them needing to know who or where the nice deed came from.
~ We are not “raising children”, we are raising our children to become adults so teach and demonstrate to your children the little life lessons that you learn, they may be more important than their fundamental basics of ABC’s and 123’s. Our future is in our children’s hands, so teach them well.
~ Know and believe that you are capable of doing a bit more than you think…probably a lot more than you think.
~ Show great respect to others, don’t just say that you respect them, show it.
~ Don’t purposely decide to look down on others. Nobody is better than the other, we just do the best that we know how to do, and when we know better we do better.
~ Each person has a lot to share and teach others, positive or negative, acknowledge it and grab it while you can. It will only make you a better person.
~ A quote right off a magnet on my fridge, I share this with people that I know will appreciate what it says:
“As you go on in this world always believe in your dreams. Keep looking forward to the future…to all you might be. Don’t let old mistakes or misfortunes hold you down. Learn something new everyday. Be interested in others and what they might teach you. Believe in yourself. So long as you are true to the strength within your own heart…you can never go wrong.”

Kitty Love

Brayden loves the kitties and is very sweet to them...well,ok, most of the time. Here he is snuggling with Milo. The next day, Brady was sleeping a little over his usual nap time and when Jim went to go get him up he found Missy is his crib sleeping with him and she was all curled up with the little doggie that looks just Maddy :)

Bathroom Babbles

I'm trying to make a much better effort of writing little things down, here is a funny one :)
Carter, 01/08 3 1/2 Yrs.

Carter was moving his eyes all around in a funny way and asked if I could do that too. I said, “No I can’t do that right now because I’m wearing my contacts.”

He says “Yeah, you just wear different eyes than me. Why do you wear those eyes?”

“I wear my contacts because my eyes don’t work as good as your eyes do and I don’t see as good as you do. But when I put my contacts in my eyes work as good as yours and I can see just as good as you do.”

He says to me, “Yeah, my eyes work really good because I ate carrots and you didn’t.” Even though I know he knows I ate my carrots too, I forget about it and tell him, “Its good you ate your carrots. I’m older than you and maybe when you get older your eyes won’t work as good either and you’ll have to wear contacts too.”

“Yeah, you’re old, huh?”

“Yes, honey. Now get off the toilet and lets wash our hands.” ....Oh, the conversations that go on while wiping.

We had our first family snowball fight and made our first snowman complete with pine needle hair last week. I had to snap a picture of Jim outside wearing jogging shorts and boots perfecting our snowman while it was snowing quite heavily. I love that he did that :) ..........Dillon and Carter spend a fair amount of time balancing on their heads and this is a pretty common sight to see around our house..........and I had to take this picture of Brayden eating his breakfast at the table, he looks like such a big boy at 20 months old now!

Christmas Eve & Christmas Day

Where did Dillon go....I love this picture of him reading labels under the tree!
What a fun Christmas this year, I love how its so exciting and just plain joyful for the boys! Santa made a quick stop on Christmas Eve right before bedtime and brought the boys Spiderman and Superman sheets and blankets to sleep in that night before he came back around on Christmas morning :) We thought we heard sleigh bells while we were getting ready for bed.....?!! Carter kept saying "Santa was so, so sneaky!" Dillon just couldn't wait until it was time to wake up on Christmas morning that he was getting up every 15-30 minutes from 4:30am-on.....which meant that I was awake from 4:30 on too, but what a blast! And I must say, that it was so warming to have a truly white Chrsitmas.

We hope that each of you had a wonderful Christmas too! Send pictures if you have some to share :)

Its Winter!

Here is Dillon after his Christmas program at school last night the kids were all so cute! He is standing in front of his locker...Lucky kids, I didn't get a locker until I was in 6th grade!

I took this video this morning right before we left to take Dillon to the bus stop. Wow - listen to the wind! I had to stop walking with the boys down to the bus stop because its gotten too cold for Brayden and he just cries ALL the way home (poor guy!) so I drive a few blocks down there everyday. We have two of the sweetest girls who live next door and two more really great kids down the street and since we're sitting down there in the comfort of a nice warm car I invite all of them in while we wait for the bus. So I have two girls sitting in my front seat and 5 kids piled in the back of the minivan...its so funny when the bus comes and all the kids pour out of the van running to catch bus! I'm just glad they can all stay warm :)

Boys With Grandpa

This is a picture of the boys with my Dad before he left for Baja for the winter. He brought them matching "Blue Marlin Excavating" sweatshirts (Its his excavating company's name). I know that some of you, especially if we grew up together, have never even seen or met my Dad, so I thought this would be a good picture to share. He is a lucky guy to spend the winter in Baja, then he'll be off to stay at a ranch in Maui! Him and the boys adore each other and they have so much fun together....they can't wait until Grandpa David comes back to visit :)

Oh Christmas Tree....

We had our wonderful family friends over for Thanksgiving who included one of Dillon's very best friends, Aiden. I thought it would be a great idea to put up a tree before they had to leave for home and let all the boys decorate it as they please. When we used to have a living room and a family room I would put up my fancy-pretty tree in the living room and let the boys decorate a tree in the family room with all the fun ornaments that they love...but as nice as my fancy shmancy tree always looked, I always liked the boy's tree so much more with all the fun wooden ornaments, and Batman, Buzz and Woody ornaments, and the nutcracker guys on it. So now that we don't have a family room anymore we just have the one tree and it was adorned with all of our most fun and favorite ornaments, tastefully done by two 6 year olds and a 3 year old. Until one night when Carter wasn't feeling well and decided to get himself so cranky and angry that he pulled our 8 foot tree down. Yes, he pulled the whole thing down and we had to start all over again restringing lights and rehanging all the nice fun ornaments that hadn't broken in the fall...the boys really wanted the snowflakes this year :)

I had to include a picture of how our tree looks now, just because this has got to be the 6th year in a row that we can't string lights low or hang any ornaments within a baby or toddler's reach! It looks so funny. I can't remember what its like to have a fully decorated Christmas tree! I wish you all better luck with your own tree this year...

Doing Tricks

On Sunday the wind was blowing and the snow was flying so we stayed home in our sweats and drank hot chocolate. Dillon did some great headstands, Carter did one handed headstands, and Brayden showed off his new ability to stand on one foot :)

Gotta Have Art, Gotta Give Art!

We are in the spirit of giving and sharing and I make it a point every year, as young as our boys are, to find a little cause for us to donate to that they participate in. During this time that I'm keeping my eye out for our special cause this holiday season, we put our old couch on Craigslist to sell and it got me interested in looking at the "wanted" section. I found a post from a kindergarten teacher from one of the schools here in Bend. She said that most of the kids in her class are below poverty level and she was asking for donations of crayons and paper or whatever people could manage. She told a story about how all the kids were coloring pictures and it was time to go home so she told them they could take it home and finish coloring the picture there. A little boy then asked her if he could take two crayons home so he could color. He didn't have any crayons at home, and I think that was what prompted her to ask for help. We all know that TEACHERS DON'T MAKE NEARLY AS MUCH AS THEY DESERVE and she was spending her own money buying clothes and art supplies for each of them and she needed help. I LOVE the idea of the boys helping other children who are about their age (especially since their own arts & crafts cabinet is overflowing with things to do and their Grandma happens to be a retired teacher of 31 years. This was the THING for us to do this year!) So off we went to the store and made small individual "packages" for each of the 16 children in the kindergarten class complete with a little package of crayons, colored pencils or paints, and a couple of Christmas tree ornaments to take home. We are delivering the basket tomorrow, YAY!

Monster Trucks and Saying Things

The Monster Trucks were so much fun for the boys, a must do if you have boys.

The boys have been saying funny (sometimes embarrassing) things lately and I had to share a few...

Carter, almost 3 1/2:

I try to do all my shopping while Dillon is in school so I have one less kiddo with me at the store so I took Carter and Brayden to Fred Meyer and we were looking at the bread. A man who worked there was talking to the boys telling me that he has all boys at home too. He was Indian and spoke with an Indian accent and Carter was very polite to him. After we walked away Carter says a bit too loudly with question in his voice, "That man talks crazy, he talks crazy." Oh dear.

After getting out of the bath I was helping Carter get dressed, we were face to face and he has a sweet way of looking right in to my eyes and holding a gaze. I said to him "I love you soooo much" he said right back to me looking now at my cheeks "I love you too, Mommy...." voice trailing..."but your cheeks are cracking." I thought that maybe I had some new wrinkles that popped up after such a stressful summer, moving in the fall, and losing Maddy. I went to the mirror to see what he was talking about - no wrinkles, just some teeny tiny broken blood vessels on the apples of my cheeks that contribute to my rosy complexion. Thanks for noticing, sweetheart.

Dillon and Carter got to go see monster trucks with Daddy and Nana and they had a blast. The trucks are really loud so the boys wore earplugs. A man was sitting in the row in front of them kind of off to the side and Carter says (loud enough for the man to hear, maybe due to the earplugs) "That man doesn't have any hair!" Leave it to Carter for blurting out the obvious...

Dillon, just turned 6:

Dillon and Carter were lucky enough to come across a $5 bill that neither Nana nor I wanted to claim for buying a gallon of milk, Dillon asked for it and I said "If Nana doesn't take it then you and Carter can split it, that will give you each $2.50." He thought for a minute and looked up at me and said, "Well, how about if Carter gets $2 and I can have $3?" I wonder what profession Dillon will take when he grows up, he always comes up with stuff like that!

Dillon had a couple of toys behind his back and said to Carter very sweetly, "Now you have to choose, Carter, one of the toys and you can have it forever." Very carefully, with great thought, Carter choose a hand. "NOOOO, Carter! (now irritated with his brother) You're supposed to choose this hand! The other one is mine." Dillon said, and tossed the toy to Carter with a 'how could you not know that' sort of look. Choices, choices....

One of the funniest things that Dillon does is getting Brayden to come down the hallway to his room with him. Dillon has an imagination that leads him to believe that scary things lie ahead when going down the hall and turning the corner to his room so if he can get someone to go with him he feels more confident. He will try to ask Carter very extra nicely in a sing-song sort of voice to come to their room with him, to make the prospect sound more appealing I guess, but Carter gets a bit annoyed and never goes. So now Dillon rounds up Brayden the brave 18 month old who is carefree going into a dark room, alone. So every time Dillon wants something out of his room I hear him holler, almost in baby talk, "Baaay-bee! a D-D's room, a D-D's room - binky?, Want a binky? Come on baby!" and off runs Brady protecting his big 6 year old brother from the dark, in promise of him finding a hidden binky.

Brayden, 18 mo:

He is not speaking in sentences yet, but he has a few new words he has added to his vocabulary.... He says Daggy for Daddy, Mammy for Mommy, Carger for Carter, D-D for Dillon, Kitty, Goggie, P-fishy (he always makes a p-sound before saying fishy), Giggy for binky, Football, Right Back, Bye, Night Night, Gamma for Grandma, Nana, Tina (though he won't let her hear it) Cracker, Tunky for tummy, Coat, Backpack, Guy, Horsie, Quarter, and everytime he sees a school bus he calls out "D-D!" for his oldest brother :)

Snoozing with a Sucker

We went on a gorgeous walk yesterday with Nana around Mirror Pond and Carter fell asleep in the car with a sucker in his mouth!.....Here he is snoring, snoozing, & drooling in the driveway when we got home ;)

Carter's Maze

Jim found some mazes to print out online the other night. Dillon has been enjoying the fun of doing mazes for a while now and can do some good sized mazes by this time, and Jim sat down with Carter to teach him how to do a maze too. He laid the paper on the desk then went into the other room and then Carter came up to us with this maze that he had completed all by himself! You can even see where he went looking to the exit and realized that it was the wrong way, then back tracked and found the way out. Not bad for a 3 year old! :)

Digging for Candy, The Ugly Witch & The Empty Bucket

Daddy was digging too....he is so thankful that the boys don't like peanuts or peanutbutter.

We trick-or-treated at Nana's house first, nice make-up job, huh?
What happened to all the candy?