A "P" And An "O"

My little Doobie had his birthday celebration yesterday and that about wraps up the birthdays until mine later in October. Joshy still can't quite grasp the concept of birthdays and he was upset this morning when Jake told him it wasn't his birthday anymore. He took it to mean that he couldn't have his new toys. We tried our best to clear up that confusion and he seems better about things now.

This is his special "P" and "O" that he requested for his birthday. They don't mean anything, they are just his favorite letters. So, there you have it.

I've about lost my mind trying to load this picture correctly. I'm not sure what the issue is but it really wants to be a vertical picture so I'm just going to let it.


Gift time! A little overwhelming but he got the hang of it.










Mmmmm, P and O cake.

Joshy is THREE!

The birthdays are flying around here. Seems like we just finished up Jake's (because we did) and now Doobie is turning three. He wants a P and an O for his birthday. We weren't sure what to make of that but I finally decided to make cupcakes and arrange them on plates in the shapes of P and O. That should work. I hope.

Darrin is taking all the kids to go play on the bouncy toys at school while I bake and wrap.

Happy Birthday Doobie!

A Very Jedi Birthday

Yesterday for Jake's birthday, I had the littler ones color a giant present for him BECAUSE, I realized too late that I didn't have any wrapping paper. I did, however, have an abundance of postal packing paper, a few colored markers and two willing artists.




Jake is super into Star Wars. His daddy isn't too much better. So for Jake's birthday, Darrin found a plethora of vintage '70s Star Wars toys on ebay. Boy, were they a hit!






I'm pretty sure he had a happy birthday. Later that night when he went to bed he told me, "I can't sleep because I just can't stop staring at my new toys!"

My parents sent him a musical card that plays the Star Wars theme song. So he would open the card, lay it down on the table and while it played the song, he would fly his new space ships around to the music.

Today is the day after his birthday and this morning when I went downstairs to wake him for school, I found him AND Josh playing Star Wars in his room. I have no clue how long they were up.

I guess he likes his gifts!

Jake is SIX!

Just look at this handsome little dude. I can't believe he's six years old. I can't believe he's in school. People really weren't lying when they told me it was going to fly by. It really does.

Today I'm taking cupcakes to his school and later when everyone is home we are going to have a little family party. Jake requested his favorite, Top Ramen, for dinner. That shouldn't be too complicated.

Happy birthday to my awesome little man!

Kindergarten Nature Hike

Jakey, leading his class in the pledge to the Christian flag. SO CUTE.

Earlier this week, Jordan, Joshy and I spent the morning with Jake in his class so that I could document their nature hike (I'm the class photographer). All the kindergarten classes wandered around the school campus and collected things "that God made" and we brought everything inside for an art project. Joshy and Jordy were able to participate too and had a BLAST!


60 kindergarteners. Jakey is the one on the far right near the curb, looking up the hill. Directly above him is little Joshy, wearing all blue and carrying a grocery sack.


Oh look. Jordy found a straw that God made.


That's more like it.


Doobie found something too.


Art project time. Jakey found all sorts of neat stuff to glue to his plate. He LOVES art projects. He takes after me a little I guess.

Our First School Field Trip

This week, Jake went on the very first field trip of his school career. Well, we all went actually. Jordan, Joshy and I followed the bus (along with twenty other cars full of parents) out of town to Eagle River where we spent a few hours on a horse farm. There were hay wagon rides, bonfires and a raging river to stress me out.


Waiting patiently for the hay ride.



Doobie wouldn't get too close to the horses.


That's Jake in the middle with the hooded parka. It was a chilly day.

While Jake was on the hay ride, Jordy and Josh went to explore the river for exactly two seconds before I made them go somewhere else.

Jake, exiting the wagon Superhero style.

Having lunch with a buddy.

Showing all his friends how he beats on his baby brother.

Doobie REALLY likes S'mores. Minus the smarshmallow.

Playing in the "forest."


The adults acted as a safety line against the river. Ugh, the river!

Jakey's whole class, the class of 2022. He's front row center in the red sweatshirt.

Do It Yourself Adventures

We were recently given this neat, old, beat up locker stack. We weren't entirely sure what we were going to do with it, but I was pretty confident that I could make it cute and put it somewhere useful.


Originally, it had three vertical stacks of two lockers. One side was really beat up so Jake and Darrin dug out their tools and removed one section. This greatly increased the chances of it fitting somewhere useful in our house too.



After the broken section was completely removed, we scavenged some of the hardware off of it and fixed up the remaining section. I cleaned it thoroughly with soapy water, then out came the sandpaper and the Rustoleum metal primer.


After a day of drying, we started spray painting with Rustoleum Gloss Finish in a country-ish blue color.


It took about two and a half cans of spray paint to get good coverage and I didn't paint the inside. I think it turned out pretty darn cute!


This is sitting in our entryway, right inside the front door. Jakey hangs his backpack and coat in his locker every day after school.


Jake, Darrin and I each have our own locker and the two little ones share. It's going to be so useful when the snow comes and I have to sort big bulky piles of boots and other snow gear.

Hurray for DIY!

Our Labor Day Weekend

What? More sunshine? I'll take it.

It was a tough decision to stay home for the long weekend this year. Especially because the weather was, dare I say, RAD. However, Darrin had a ton of homework to finish up for this coming week and so we did the responsible thing and did not go camping/fourwheeling with our friends. There were a few tinges of regret in there at times though.

That's not to say we didn't have ANY fun, because we did. We made the most of our weekend with some super fantastic family fun time on a more localized level.

On Saturday, I headed out with some friends to a neat little place called McHugh Creek for a photo shoot to celebrate their 10th anniversary. My girl, Tracy and I spent hours taking advantage of the awesome location. I took almost 900 photos that night. Just the day before I had driven out there during school with Jordan and Josh to scope the scene. I forgot to bring my camera. DOH!


The Muffins, smooching in the sunset.

During our shoot (on and around some railroad tracks) the train came by.


Hello train.

On Sunday after church, we took the kids and some canoes to Cheney Lake.








Finally, on Monday, we rode our bikes down to Goose Lake to play on the beach. On our bike ride we stopped a couple of times to enjoy the views of the road from the pedestrian overpasses.




As usual, the bees were buzzing. I don't know what's going on in Alaska but the bees are EVERYWHERE. It's a plague of bees. At the lake, Jake was stung on the bottom of his foot. He handled his second bee sting of the year with a tad more composure than the first one.

Aside from bees, we also learned about leeches. This lake is full of leeches and we could seem them everywhere. Nobody got sucked on though.