Picnic At The Beach

So once again it's been a while since I've updated. That doesn't mean we have been up to nothing. I blame our very very old laptop computer that refuses to recognise our new camera disks, which means all of the pictures I took for Noah's 8th birthday are stuck until I can get onto my mom's computer and post...which will happen soon, I promise!
I am finally starting to feel like my old self again. I went in last week for an ultrasound and from that they say this baby is due on August 4th. The kids came with us as they all wanted to see the baby. They were all very excited! The kids are taking bets on whether it's a boy or a girl. Emma really wants a sister!

Today was so beautiful! The sun was shining (until we got to the beach) and it was really warm. Emma was at preschool all morning so Noah got a lot of school done and didn't really complain at all! So Noah and I decided it would be a good thing to get out and enjoy it while it lasted! We picked Emma up and headed to the beach where we explored the beach looking for crabs, ate a yummy picnic lunch and played on the play ground. Sadly it was high tide and there weren't any crabs to be found. But we did have a fun time learning all about the tides.

Okay I am posting this picture cause I love the look on Daniel's face...but you can't really see his face now that it's on here....oh well. Emma didn't like walking on the beach so much. She doesn't like the feel of the sand under her feet. So she mostly stayed up by the picnic table while the boys explored the beach. Daniel got soaked from the knees down, but that didn't stop him!

Noah showing off his clam shells he found as the tide was going out.

When we got tired of the beach we headed for the playground. Daniel really liked the slides and swings.

Noah finally overcame his fear of heights and climbed up the rope tower. Here he is sitting on the little platform about half way up.

Noah, Emma and Daniel goofing off on the playground. It was a really fun day and so nice to get out of the house...it's been a while!

Daniel had so much fun on the swings...as long as he didn't get pushed to high. Emma pushed a little to high and he wasn't so happy. She almost got kicked in the face. Speaking of Daniel.... he's hit the terrible 2's, heaven help us!! He is currently working very hard on throwing tantrums in public (You should have been at Costco last week for that one! I had one woman come up to me and tell me she had just said a prayer for me...it was THAT bad!). He is also working hard at throwing hard objects such as rocks or toys at Emma's head. She had 3 big bruises around her eye last week because he threw a rock at her while she was sleeping and then a car at her later that day! We sure love our Daniel! Well that's all for now. I will catch up on all the other ideas I have in my head soon!

Random Kid Stuff....

One night I made popcorn to snack on while we watched a movie. I gave each of the kids a little bowl but Daniel would have none of that. He refused the little bowl and insisted that we give him the big bowl. I have always said he will be the one to eat us out of house and home!

On Sunday Emma came home from church and changed her clothes. The thing is she insisted that her clothes be on backwards. She was so excited about it too! She likes to do things her own way, and takes great pride in it.

Have you ever heard of or seen the movie The Last Mimzy? Well my children LOVE this movie. They got it for Christmas and ask to see it almost on a daily basis. They love that the big brother is named Noah and his little sister is Emma, and that it takes place here in Seattle. They always watch it sitting close together in the recliner, without fighting (can we say miracle?). In the movie the boy, Noah, learns how to "talk" to spiders. I noticed last night that Noah was starting to make the same sound as the boy in the movie. It's quite funny and he imitates it very well. I will have to try to get a recording of him.

Well it's been a while since my last entry. Life has been very busy with well, life. Right after Thanksgiving I discovered that we are expecting baby number 4 this next summer. I have not been feeling very well, which is normal for me and hopefully it will pass in a couple more weeks. That's probably why I haven't been blogging, just haven't felt like doing ANYTHING. My mom has been a HUGE help with cooking meals and cleaning up.
The kids have been so excited about Christmas and Santa coming. I hope you enjoy the pictures of the kids. We spent the morning opening gifts and playing with all the games. Daniel just had to take a bath after breakfast with his new bath toys. On Christmas Eve we had our traditional Mary and Joseph Dinner. The kids love eating on the floor with their hands. We had lamb, dates, olives, figs and goat cheese along with a loaf of bread. It was really yummy! After dinner we read the nativity story from Luke. The kids opened their Christmas Eve presents and got ready for bed. I was so amazed at how quiet they were when we put them to bed. Usually we are telling them to be quiet and stay in bed for at least an hour after putting them to bed. But last night we put them to bed told them stay there or santa wouldn't come and we didn't hear a single sound from them all night!
This is Daniel showing off his new PJ's.

Noah and Daniel in their new PJ's. I just really love this picture.

All three kids in their new PJ's. Every time we tell Daniel to smile he makes this funny face and scrunches up his nose.

Daniel showing off his new cars.

Emma got a rocking chair from Mana and a new dart gun. She has spent the whole day playing with it. I think it was in almost every picture we took of her.

Emma showing off a new dress, with the dart gun, of course.

Santa brought Emma a new booster seat. She was so excited about it! All day long she wanted to go for a care ride so she could try it out. I'm excited about it too, cause now she can get in and OUT of the car by herself!

Noah got a rc jet from Santa. He and Kendall spent a lot of time out in the field flying it. Noah also got a slingshot from Kendall. So they also spent a lot of time practicing with that.

Kendall got a Dilbert desk calender. Every engineer has to have one of them on their desk!

Noah got the game battleship from his Grandma Cork. He's excited to play it!

Daniel got a set of balls from Santa. He has spent the day throwing them at our heads!

Great Granny made the all the kids "happy pants". Here is Noah showing his off. We had a wonderful day and hope you had a wonderful Christmas as well!

Thanksgiving

This past week has been fun and a little crazy. The first half of the week I felt like I was in the car all the time. I picked up my step sister Tuesday evening from the airport. Then the next morning I got up early and went down to Olympia to pick up my sister Jessica and niece Emily. Jessica was buying her 1st car in Seattle so I took her to pick it up. We got home about 3:30 in the afternoon and the kids were so excited to have Emily here! We then started baking! We decided it would be easier to make all the pies for Thanksgiving that evening. So we ended up making a German Chocolate cake (for my mom's birthday, which was on Thanksgiving), a pear pie, pumpkin pie, pumpkin log, and an apple pie. We only had 13 people for dinner, but in my humble opinion, you can NEVER have to much pie!

Emma and Emily were so funny! Emma ended up wearing Emily's clothes and Emily ended up in Emma's. Then to make it even more confusing they wanted their hair done in the exact some way! We all kept calling Emily "Emma....ly" cause we had to stop and think about who it was.

My brother Joshua is the "favorite" uncle around our house. Daniel wouldn't let him alone all day!

My mom in the kitchen cooking dinner. We had so much food!

Thanksgiving was also my mom's birthday so we had a little celebration later in the evening with cake and ice cream.

I thought this picture was funny with Noah eating his cake, I think he was the only one who really had a whole piece of cake as we were all so full from dinner and pies!

On Friday morning my mom, Tedra and I got up way to early (4:15am) and went out shopping. We got everything we needed and were home again by 6:30am. It was nice to have more people to go out with and it saves a lot of time having someone stand in line while you run and grab things. I think we spent more time standing in line waiting for the stores to open then we spent in the store itself. Later in the day we decorated the tree for Christmas. The kids always have so much fun with this! You will notice in the video I kept taking ornaments off the tree and placing them in other spots on the tree. The kids kept putting ALL the ornaments on the same three branches which were beginning to look a little crowded. It was a fun few day and it was really nice having Kendall home for 4 whole days!

Visit with Grandpa Bill and Grandma Catherine

Last Week the kids and I took a trip down to visit their Grandpa Bill and Grandma Catherine. We got there Thursday afternoon and stayed till Saturday. The kids had so much fun!

Noah and Emma both LOVE crystals and rocks. So Catherine took Noah and Emma to a really neat rock store close by their house. Noah and Emma had so much fun there and both came home with little crystals and rocks!

Noah showing off one of the crystals Catherine gave him.

Emma enjoyed dressing up in the dress up dresses and made a necklace too.

Noah being pushed on the swing in the back yard!

This is my dad pushing Emma on the swing. Emma LOVES this swing and talks about it all the time!

Daniel waving Hi! He enjoyed walking around the yard, watching the squirrels and humming birds.

Catherine made chocolate banana shakes which Daniel LOVED!

I love this face! He is such a character!

Daniel loved playing with these little plastic cars and always had one in his hand or mouth!

One of the main reasons we went was so that Noah could do some art projects with Catherine, who is an artist. This is Noah working the printing press. We made some beautiful prints of some leaves and other things we made the night before. Noah had fun making a couple books too!

Catherine and Noah at the printing press.

Noah, Catherine, Daniel, my dad and Emma.

Daniel with Grandpa Bill.

Noah, Daniel and Grandpa Bill.

It was a nice visit and the kids had fun spending time with my dad and Catherine. I also got to make some plant medicine with my dad which is something I've been wanting to do for a while now. Thanks Dad and Catherine!

blogging rut.....

The kids love books! Noah is reading a story to Emma and Daniel.

I've been in a little bit of a blogging rut lately, as you few who visit my blog might have noticed. Life has been very busy, yet not very exciting the last couple of weeks. I have been sick with bronchitis for about 4 weeks now, but it's finally starting to go away. Kendall and my mother grounded me to my room this weekend so I could get some rest and maybe start to get better. I think it worked as I am feeling better. I have a hard time staying down and letting someone else take over the cooking and cleaning and taking care of the kids. We've been busy with homeschooling Noah, preschool for Emma and trying to keep Daniel out of things. He seems to be able to get into EVERYTHING lately! The picture above is of Noah with his animal fair project, all about grasshoppers. The home school group had all the kids learn about an animal of their choosing and then do a project on it. They had a night set up where they could display their work. Well things have been so crazy lately that I somehow got the dates wrong and we showed up the day after they had it. I felt so bad for Noah as he had worked so hard! We do have a chance to show his work off on Thursday so that hopefully will make up for it. Well that's it for now. Hopefully I will have something blog worthy happen in the next little while and then post more often.

Happy Halloween

This year we had a lot going on for Halloween. The kids had a few opportunities to dress up. We had a party with the home school group on Thursday. Preschool party for Emma on Friday, and then trick or treating on Saturday. We had planned on heading down for the big Halloween event at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, but Kendall came down with the flu Thursday night, and I was not going to take the kids down there alone!

Noah was a bat this year. Daniel was a ghost and Emma was a ballerina.

Noah and Emma.

All 35 kids from the home school party on Thursday. The kids had so much fun! And I managed to come away without a headache!

Noah with his cupcake he decorated.

Halloween night at the trunk-or-treat at the church. Daniel caught on really fast to the whole concept of trick-or-treating. We came home put Daniel to bed and my mom and I took Noah and Emma around the neighborhood. They have never been trick-or treating before. So they were a little confused about the whole going to "strangers" homes and knocking on the door. We had to practically push them up the driveways! (We usually go to the church and do the trunk-or-treat every year. So that's why they haven't been trick-or-treating.)

Kendall put Emma's pumpkin on our headless scarecrow last night. I can't wait for the cobwebs and scarecrow to come down tomorrow!