HELP!

My latest post (Collin Turned 2!) looks horrible. The spacing is terrible! Blogger is acting up on me and I don't know why. Everytime I got the spacing just right, I'd post it and it would look totally different than what I had done! OR, when I tried to fix it, it wouldn't even do what I wanted. SOOOO frustrating! So, that's the story. If you have an idea of what I'm doing wrong, please, please let me know...My Spring Break post isn't right either :(

Collin Turned 2!

We brought Collin home the night before Easter, two years ago, which is funny because I just realized that I'm posting about his 2nd birthday the night before Easter. Anyways...we came home around 8:00 pm and we had to get Easter baskets ready and settle in and get ready for Easter Day. It was an exhausting night!

The next two pictures are the morning (at the hospital) and night (at home) of that day...

 

Now, here's our "baby" boy all big now! Where has the time gone?! Collin turned 2 on April 10th. We had a truck themed party with Jeremy's family. We BBQ'd, opened presents, and the kids ran around like crazy. Fun night!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He just blew out the candles and dug into the rock candies already.

What a great day! We love you Collin!!!

Spring Break!

We had spring break the first week of April... We didn't do anything exciting, but we did take one day out of the week to play! Jeremy took the day off and we woke up bright and early (to snow!) and headed to Denny's for breakfast, which was super yummy. Then we finally decided to go to the Science Center in Seattle. Originally, we wanted to go the Family Fun Center, but since we woke up to snow we thought it would be warmer to go to Seattle. The day went great. The kids had fun. Other than the fact that the place was packed because of the Star Wars exhibit, it went pretty smoothly. We came home after our Seattle outing and took late naps then got up to head back out. We went to Southcenter and did some shopping and ate dinner at The Old Spaghetti Factory. One of my FAVORITES!!! I love it. Even though we didn't go to some warm vacation spot, it was a great day to spend with the family!

Ensign Ranch

Our little cabin :)

Sledding!

The snow was falling while we were sledding. It was so pretty!

Blurry picture of dinner...mac & cheese and hot dogs.

A little wrestling...

A little coloring...

Off to bed

Sam so happy to be on the top bunk!

Donuts for breakfast

And...back out in the snow. Notice Collin wasn't too thrilled, at first.

Sam making a cave in the huge pile of snow

Happy boy! And, yes, he's wearing pink boots....Jeremy put black duct tape on the tops and all around them so you couldn't tell, except when you see the bottoms! Thrifty,right?!

Collin finally got into the snowy spirit and LOVED sledding with Jer. He hated sledding with me.

Tuckered out on the way home. This was what all the kids looked like within minutes of driving.

Just Words...

So, I'm using my new laptop (!) right now and I have an urge to do some sort of update on this blog of ours, but no pictures to put up. I'm still waiting for the Hubby to set that up so I can get pictures off our computer downstairs while being upstairs...What technology! If only I knew how it worked. :) We haven't been up to too much, but enough that I thought I'd jot down our latest happenings. First of all, Samantha just finished up a soccer class at the Issaquah Community Center. She's loved it enough that I signed her up for Spring Soccer, through the Issaquah Parks and Rec. I've never played soccer on a real team, or wore the gear, so I was just looking up what I need to get her, online. Now that we've got her signed up though, she's not acting thrilled about it anymore, although she said she'd try out this season and see how it goes. That's my girl! We went up to the Ensign Ranch a couple weekends ago to play in the snow. We stayed over one night in the family cabins and was only gone for about 24 hours. Short and sweet. Too bad I had to pack our whole house, I felt like! Seriously, going "camping" with children is so much work! Or going camping at all, actually. You need all the bedding, clothes, extra clothes, snow clothes, sleep stuff (stuffed animals, blankies, music things, more stuffed animals!) Yes, it's quite a chore. You also need food, drinks, cooking stuff, all the paper products, garbage bags, wood chopping and fire stuff, games, toys, the list goes on...BUT, it was fun! We got their Friday afternoon, unpacked, started the wood stove up, and headed out to play in the snow. Once we were frozen and wet we came in and I made some good old hot dogs and macaroni. The kids played and had fun running around upstairs and snacking on all the goodies we brought. We also tried to stay warm. The wood stove was small and didn't do a whole lot of warming. Not at first at least. By the time it was bedtime it had warmed up enough to not have frozen fingers and we crawled into our sleeping bags for a good night's rest. Well, Samantha and Parker did. I was up with Collin so much! I only slept a few hours that night. And, poor Jeremy was also awake for two reasons: 1) He knew I was up, so he got up with me. 2) He had to keep the fire going. It was freezing outside, which meant if the fire didn't stay burning, we would freeze! He even left in the middle of the night in the van to get more firewood at the wood pile. What a good guy. :) So, it was a rough night. We made it though. On the positive side of my lack of sleep, I was able to watch the snow falling all night and I had the warm fire to sit by. Morning came all too soon (or maybe not...) and we had our breakfast and headed back out to the snow. It was a beautiful day, with the sun shining and new fallen snow. Very pretty. We finally headed out around noon and took the scenic route through Cle Elum. We stopped in North Bend for lunch and made a pit stop for chicken feed and got our car washed before heading home. Great weekend! Tired, but fun! Another happening was the loss of our kitty, Cinders. She was such a great cat and LOVED being with us and snuggling with us. We noticed she was gone, which was so not like her. She's always stayed indoors or kept herself in our yard. She was gone about 6 days when Jeremy found her in a pond in the woods in our backyard. It had been pretty cold, so were thinking she may have stepped on it, thinking it was solid and fell in and drowned. Who knows? She didn't have any trauma or signs of being attacked or anything. Weird. We're looking to get a new kitty soon. The talk of a dog has also come up, but we'll see about that one. I think that's it. We've had two birthday parties that Parker and/or Samantha have attended last week. Both were super fun! One was at a trampoline place and the other had a bouncy house at it. Score! They loved them. Collin has been super talkative and I can pretty much hold a conversation with that kid. He's getting so big! He'll be two next month. I just can't believe it. Right now, I love that he ends every phrase or word with "ok, mommy." Even when I'm disciplining him and telling him to do something it's "ok, mommy." Too sweet. It's been a fun month so far. I'll get some pictures up next time! Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Snowy Snoqualmie Falls

I decided the kids and I needed to get out of the house today. It was mostly because Jeremy's been sick and was sleeping. I thought I'd give him some peace and quiet and maybe, just maybe he'd wake up and magically be healthy. No, that didn't happen, but he did get some sleep so that was good. We ended up going to Target, like we end up in every outing :) THEN, we went to Snoqualmie Falls. It was very cold, but very pretty. I've never been out there when it was snowy so I thought it would be nice to get a different view of it, and it was. The kids were even impressed, so that made it even better. We only stayed a short time, but had fun driving out and seeing all the snow that Snoqualmie got. It was super misty, so the pictures look like it's foggy, but it wasn't...

February Snow

We've had a wintery wonderland at our house the past couple of days. It's been fun, but I'm hoping it's the last. I'm really looking forward to spring! This is only our second snowfall, but it's time for sun!!! Luckily, this time, when I heard the word "snow" from the weatherman I got prepared. Everyone had snowpants and boots, unlike last time, which meant happier kids and more time outside. Today we still have the snow, but it's so cold we didn't get out much. The snow is more like ice. Anyways, not only did the kids venture out, the chickens did too! Last snowfall, the chickens were...um...chicken? They wouldn't step foot in the snow. This time they did, but did a lot of shaking off and their steps were extremely high, like it was going to make it less cold or something. Funny birds. Here's our snowy days!