Holy Picture Update Batman!

Yeah, so I'm wayyyy behind on pictures, and updating my blog for that matter.

Rather then break these apart in several posts (too  much work, not enough time!) I'm going to do one big long picture update post.

First of all - as you see in my first picture - Owen graduated from kindergarten! So fun! I've only had one other kindergarten graduation, Brayden's. They sure are fun for photo ops!
Here are a couple more kindy graduation pix:

Owen is cheesing out way in the back of this photo. The girl with the pretty dress on just in front of him was the girl he had a crush on most of the year!

Owen and his buddies!

Next we have our first camping trip of the season. It was still cold out, but we stayed warm AND had fun!

Then the next weekend, or a couple weekends later, the guys did a father's day camping trip with just the guys (one of the many bonuses of having only boys...haha) and I stayed back at Billy's mom's house with the two littlest boys and we had fun just hanging out and playing with the babies! Much cleaner then camping, and a bit more fun too. haha

Gabriel was SO worn out from playing hard, look at him just laying there in Grandma's lap!

Gabriel and Billy Jr playing in Grandma's fountain

Love these pix - here they are playing with their daddy's old toys

My favorite pic though - the original size is cooler - but I love the colors of the garden and the way the sun is shining through Billy's crazy hair. lol

Okay, that's all the pix for now. Not too bad! I have more pictures from the boys' school picnic on the homeschooling blog though - check them out here: http://boysnbooks.blogspot.com/

Now you see him...now you don't...

Meet Prince! Take a long look because, in his case, a picture really may last longer....

Let's back up a bit....
About a week ago (not even quite a week yet!) I was perusing the Craigslist Pet section. Not that we were even looking for a new pet. Not that we even really wanted another dog. Yes, we had talked about it but quickly decided that, at this time, we don't want another dog.
Then I saw Prince, or Peanut at that time. He was so cute, and his story melted my heart. I've read numerous sad stories on the pet listings before, but I'd never thought about taking any of those animals home. However, somehow Prince just "spoke" to me. His story was such that his family was moving apart because of divorce. He was raised with two girls and they had pictures posted of him cuddling with this girls on the couch and giving them kisses.  However because of the divorce, for some reason Prince (aka Peanut) was being left behind. :( He went to a friend's house who couldn't keep him, so she found another friend. This other friend had three dogs too many already and her husband said she had to find Prince a home very soon or he was going to be taken to the Humane Society. This poor little doggy lost his family already, I couldn't imagine him sitting in a kennel at the Humane Society for who knows how long....
Also, he fit our original "requirements" when we were discussing a second dog. We wanted a male, not a puppy but not too old, well-trained, and CALM. He is all of the above.

What a sweetheart he is! He's super calm and laid back. He loves cats and kids. He's perfect really....

Yes, there's always a BUT.

He is also an explorer and "mountain" climber. After the first day of having him, he got out of the fence a dozen times because the kids are used to leaving the gates open since Lady is trained to stay in the yard and she no longer tries to escape.
So we began closing the big outside gate too (that closes off the whole property from getting to the main road).  We thought we had nipped this problem in the bud.

Today however, we almost lost him - TWICE.

First I noticed that Billy Jr was riding his bike in the driveway and I couldn't find Prince. Great. I run around yelling his name (which he doesn't come to yet since he still thinks of himself as Peanut). Finally I make sure the boys are secure in the yard and I run to the main road.
Yep. There he is. Cars honking and him dodging traffic. Great fun.
I catch him and bring him home. Angry, but very relieved.
Immediately Brayden and I get to work plugging up the hole he climbed out of. Which was actually a 5" gap between the house and the fence, which leads to a 4" ledge with a 20 foot drop to our driveway that slowly declines down to the ground. He had squeezed through this hole and then tiptoed down the ledge until it was close enough to the ground.

Celebrating our victory of catching him and plugging the hole, we walk back to the house to finish lunch.

The. Gate. Is. Open.

Billy Jr was playing with his tricycle again and left the gate open. I yelled a few "kid-friendly" swear words at that time (something like gosh DARN it I'm so flipping tired of this gosh darn dog getting out!).

We all go back to searching for him again. This time the big outside gate is closed though, so we should be good right?

No.

I run down to the main road again...not there.

I look around the house again to see if he's hiding. Not there.

Then I see the slope of firewood against the back fence that he probably climbed up on and jumped out over.
CRAP. Gosh DARN dog!

I debate whether its worth it to go track him down.
I decide it is.

So I load up the messy spaghetti-O faced babies and load them in the car. I circle the block....

And finally I find him, again. This time in a neighbor's yard. He happily jumps into the car like nothings wrong.

Yes I'm happy to have him back. Yes he's on doggy lock-down right now...supervised bathroom breaks outside only.

But I don't know how long this will last. I think we'll get him microchipped very soon. Although, then if he gets caught we'll just have to pay $100 to come pick him up each time.

Oh the joys!!!





Edited to add one more picture - Lady, our first dog, and Prince the new dog.
The names are supposed to be Arthurian - Lady Guinevere and Prince Arther. But we shortened them both to Lady and Prince. We had a Merlin too, but he sadly only lived a year. I posted about him in this blog a couple years ago I believe.

Apple Blossom Carnival 2010!

Its that time of year again! That time of year to spend way too much money and way NOT worth it carnival rides. BUT the boys love it. Ahh what we do for our children. haha

I took my long lens to the carnival this time to get some upclose shots of them way up high. I loved how the pictures turned out this year!

Before I get to the pictures, some quick updates: there's not much else to report...we've been so busy lately. Pretty much busy from sun up to sun down and beyond! There is always something to do, someplace to go, and somewhere to be. We're in the middle of Spring soccer for Owen, two boys in Scouts now, Billy's ever busy church calling, homeschool stuff, and Billy's classes to finish up his Associates degree. Aaack!
We haven't finished painting YET but we're close. Its on the back burner for now while we catch things up. We did get some thermal blinds for our living room, the school room, and the boys room. It looks sooo much better. Next I want to replace our old sliding glass doors with either some new sliding glass doors with the blinds built inside them or french patio doors with the blinds built inside the glass pane. :)
We have quite a "to do" and "to buy" list for this house...but we're slowly cutting down the list! Walls - check. Blinds - check. Floors - check.
I promise to try to update my blog more often...now to the pictures!!

Brayden's Baptism, Owen's Soccer, and more

A busy busy week indeed!

Besides painting the walls, and more painting of the walls...we had Owen's first soccer game and Brayden's baptism!

On the walls: Almost done, but I guess we didn't realize how much time and work really went into painting. Perhaps we should have taken everyone up on their offers who wanted to help. I guess we thought we could handle it ourselves though?
 It's  been a week since we started and we have finished the living room, most of the dining room, and most of the school room. What's left includes a small wall in the dining room, the small laundry room, a tiny patch in the top part of the closet in the school room, and all of the master bedroom (which is the boys' room - blah!).
 We bought posters, table and chairs, and cool school room stuff for the school room that I had hoped to be ready by Monday...but its just so much work! We'll get there.

Here are some more sneak peak photos - nothing exciting yet, but you get the idea:

The living room - you can see the green better in this photo, and the trim we changed to pale yellow, the same yellow of the school room:

 In this photo you can see a portion of the school room - but its also our painting supply central, so it's pretty torn apart right now. We did a yellow on the walls and the same green as the living room is the trim in this room:

On Owen's first soccer game:
It was a rainy, drizzly day but Owen had so much fun! He was quite the ham on the field and was having more fun then caring about winning I think. So that's good! It was tricky to get get photos because I couldn't seem to catch him fast enough, or it was blurry, or Gabriel was just so fussy and didn't like competing with the camera. haha But here's what I do have:

 

GOAL!

On Brayden's baptism:
The day really snuck up on us, and the time too! We were almost late for his baptism. Typical for us though, drives Billy crazy. However, what can you do with five little kids and only two adults? haha
Grandma was in town and came to see Brayden's baptism, thanks Grandma Beki! He was first to get baptized and did really well, despite his nerves. There were two other children being baptized that day also. The little girl to go last was petrified of the water, the poor thing. :( Finally after about half-an-hour of coaxing, she was able to get baptized too!

As I can't take photos during the baptism, the only photos I have are of after:

Also, I forgot to post last month but Brayden also started cub scouts when he turned 8 yrs old. He's been happy about that and having a fun time. He looks forward to scout nights! Here he is in his little uniform the first night of scouts:

That's all I have for now! Check back later for finished house photos!!

A Busy Easter Weekend

 Happy Easter!

We had a busy and fun Easter this year. Billy took his vacation this week following Easter and so we decided to paint the interior walls of our house during Easter weekend and the first few days of his vacation. Since everyone else was busy for Easter, it was just going to be our family anyway. Billy ended up inviting four sets of missionaries (so six total) for Easter lunch/dinner. It was interesting trying to clean up the house and our paint mess while cooking a big Easter dinner. Thankfully we pulled it off though!

Gabriel very "eggcited" about his Easter eggs...hehe

 

Alex didn't want to pose for this picture...can you tell?

Brayden finding an egg...

 

Goofy Owen!

    After several late nights we have succeeded with finishing the living room now...almost. There is just some trim work to be done as of right now. We're still on track to finish painting the whole house by hopefully mid-week. YAY!
Its such a HUGE difference going from the dark brown walls to a light green paint. I originally had picked out a brighter green, however I wasn't brave enough to go that bold. So I chose a lighter green, that on the paint chip was more of a lighter grayish-green. However on the walls its a bit more of a pastel celery green. In low light conditions you almost can't see the green color. Oh well, I still love it and I can't wait to see the house finished!
I'm really excited to finish the school room as well and get that all set up. I love organization...I just don't have the time/energy to do it myself. Painting the house is forcing us to clean up all those little unorganized nooks and crannies of the house however.

Its been interesting trying to paint with the kids underfoot. I'm quite tired of cleaning up dog prints, kitty prints and kid prints of paint on the floors! aack! (Thankfully it wipes up pretty easily pheww)

As we were painting, I started to do the trimming with the new green paint. Billy Jr walked in and saw me painting the new white walls with green paint and he was shocked. He said "uh oh daddy!" then he pointed at me at said "mommy a bad girl!". He thought I was ruining the white walls!

Okay - on to pictures....

Old wall next to the white primer wall:

Progress! A white primer-ed living room:

 A first glimpse at our new living room!

Happy 6th Birthday Owen!!!

(copied mostly from Facebook) 

Happy 6th Birthday to my little April Fools Day baby! And boy did God play a trick on us when he was born. A normal pregnancy, and normal and easy delivery with him - ON his due date, 4-01-04 (to be fair, I was sort of induced though!). He was the most beautiful baby I had and he even started nursing right away without any struggle.
But then everything went wrong and soon after they took him to the nursery, Billy came to tell me that something was wrong with him (I won't post WHAT it was here, it would embarrass him lol but many of you know already). He said that he would need to be flown to Children's Hospital and probably have a colostomy bag for a few months or more (a bag that collects the stool because the intestine is re-routed to a spot in your abdomen-area..I think that best describes it).  I thought it was a big April Fools Joke. I told him that was very nice to pull on a mom recovering from just having her new baby. But then he said he was serious and the doctor came in too. 

Owen was to have surgery maybe later that day or the next day. Billy went with him to Children's (they ended up taking an ambulance). I went home, 4 hrs after giving birth, and packed Billy's and my bags. My parents drove me to Seattle to be with them. As I've said before, it was a weird feeling to be running into a McDonalds just 5hrs after I had given birth and not knowing how my baby as doing or exactly where he was. 
To make a long story short, he had the surgery at 2 days old and it went very well and amazingly all tests showed no other problems and only the surgery was going to be needed. No colostomy bag either! We went home a couple days later like nothing happened.
It was a scary first couple days but all was fine in the end. Of course no one believed  us when we told them what was going on when he was born. Most people thought it was a bad April Fool's joke! haha

Now Owen is my little jokester and the family clown! I'll post a video of him in the hospital that Billy wanted me to post.

Owen at Children's - after the tubes on his face had been removed. Papa holding him.

Owen just a few days old...I love this photo!

 Owen three months old

Owen's first birthday

Owen's 2nd birthday

Owen's 3rd birthday

Owen's fourth birthday

Owen's 5th birthday

Owen is six!