first day of school!

School started one week ago on the 26th of August. Christian started 6th grade and Anna started 1st grade. Christian tried to play it cool, but I think he was really excited to be back at school. Since moving this summer, we live just a block and a half from his school which he loves. He was never fond of riding the bus.

However, Anna now rides the bus to her elementary school across town. She was very excited to get to ride the bus though. In fact, she was so excited that she wanted to ride it on the very first day. Her bus stop is only two houses down and across the street so she doesn't have to go far.

Two down, one to go! Emily starts preschool next week and will attend on Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

the joys of Spam - scrapbook layout

You are probably wondering why I'm scrapbooking about Spam, right? Our family seriously loves the stuff. Me? Not as much as Troy and the kids do, but I love it enough that we have a good amount in our food storage, lol.

I started with a layered template from Hillary Heidelberg (Whimsical Set #1, ScrapbookGraphics.com) but altered it a lot so it was more of what I needed size wise. Paper, ric-rac, and brown brads are from two free sets (Festival and Vintage Florals) at ShabbyPrincess.com. I love their stuff! Cute tag from Julie Billingsley (SweetShoppeDesigns.com).

Christian's 11th birthday - scrapbook layout

Wow - 2 layouts in one day from me! When was the last time that happened?! Now that all the basics are coming back to me, I decided to try a quick layout that wasn't from the class that I'm reviewing (Up and Running from JessicaSprague.com).

The pattern papers are from designer Summer Driggs at Summertime Designs. She designs and shares free digi supply sets and I have loved almost all of her designs. I think the polka dot paper is from her Gratitude set but I can't recall which of her other sets the neutral paper is from.

favorite shoes - scrapbook layout

In case this layout looks familiar, it's because I created one just like it two years ago when I first started learning how to digi scrap. And I did blog about Em's shoes a few months ago HERE.The layout is from the Up and Running class from JessicaSprague.com. I haven't digi scrapbooked in months and months and my memory was foggy so I'm watching my class files again and decided to remake the layout while practicing.

The first time I made one like this it was for the family album about a parade. This one is for Emily's album, so it doesn't bother me that they are almost identical except for the photos and subject matter of course.

summer stuff update

My month long blogging hiatus is over. Hooray! Did you miss me? If not, please just tell me you did so I feel warm and fuzzy and motivated to catch up on our summer adventures.

In the meantime - a quick update:

*Right after we moved in, the kids and I drove to Utah. And we made it there without one single puking episode - that's a record for us! We hung out with old friends, reconnected with several friends I haven't seen since high school, enjoyed a few glorious hours of non-Walmart shopping in a real mall, cruised the DI's (Deseret Industries thrift stores), and had a great relaxing time.

*Then to top it off, my hubby joined us for the second week and we had the BEST TIME with my three sisters and their families, my parents, and one cousin that's at BYU for our family reunion. It was hard to drive back to Washington knowing it might be years again before I can hang out with all my sisters and parents at the same time again. It's too bad my brother & his fam couldn't make it cause they missed out big time. Thanksgiving Point Dinosaur museum, Pleasant Grove pool, family luau, Crystal Springs walk, Seven Peaks water park...fun!

*The stinky/peeing/feral/diseased cat situation next door is almost entirely resolved. A few are still lurking (Old fluffy tale is still taunting us) but the house is being put up for sale and so the owner's daughter & son-in-law finally saw our reasoning to not feed the stray cat population and also cleaned up some of the crazy hoarder-like decor on the back patio. One of my first jobs after returning from Utah was to spray down the many, many cat pee streaks on the house and our belongings and things don't smell quite as bad around here.

*Two of the three kids started school on the 26th. Pics to come of Anna & Christian that morning. Both were excited and Anna even rode the bus on the first day. Emily starts preschool next week and soon I'll have three lovely mornings alone each week.

*In case you are wondering, no we are not building yet. No, we also don't have permits yet. And yes, we are still tweaking our floorplan. It's looking like we'll start building when spring comes and the snow melts next year (hoping it's a mild year and snow is gone in early March). If we do get around to permits soon though we might do the foundation, well, and septic before winter though.

all moved in!

In case you were wondering why I've been a blogging slacker lately, here's an update. We finished moving to Troy's parents' home and finally have internet hooked up today. The landline still doesn't work even though LocalTel was here for a couple of hours today hooking up both the internet and the phone service. Hmph. I'm hoping tomorrow it finally works. I'm not sure where our mail is ending up. I had it forwarded over a week ago and so far not a bit has made it over here.

Back to the move. It's our #12 move in under 14 years of marriage. Crazy, I know. The next time we move (when our permanent home is built!) I plan on moving in there and not leaving until I drop dead.

Anyway, we'll be here between a year - 18 months while Troy's folks serve an 18 month mission for our church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) in the Cleveland, Ohio mission. Hopefully it helps them to have us housesit and take care of their property while they are away. And I know it will definitely benefit us because we now have a nice, air conditioned home to live in while we build our home.

The one downside to this home is the crazy cat infested property next door. Now, I'm fond of cats (domestic, clean, vaccinated, neutered/spade cats). Not feral, wild, stenchy, wildly reproducing cats that come over daily (perhaps hourly) to urinate on our property and all over the siding of this house. Seriously - that's what we are living with.

We've contacted the city and the son-in-law of the lady who lives next door (since she's in a care facility at the moment we learned) to see if this situation can be resolved SOON. There is only so much cat pee on one's belongings that I can tolerate and I reached that limit about a week ago.

fishing at the pond

My sister, Erin, and her family came from Utah to visit us July 2-6 and we had such a good time! Not many of my family can visit us here in the Washington boonies because we all live so far away from each other so I'm always so happy when we get visitors.

And Erin and Mark are a blast every single time we see them. It doesn't hurt any that their kids are crazy cute and our kids adore them!

One of the fun things we did was take them to the local fishing pond here in town. It's for kids 14 and under to fish for free and without a license. It's stocked with mostly bass (not great for eating Troy tells me) and chances are pretty good that kids will catch something. In fact, our nephews Henry and Teddy each caught a fish with a little help.

Erin and I hung out and snapped pics while Troy and Mark taught the boys and girls a few basics. The battery was dead in our good camera, we recenly lost our small digi camera, and I haven't figured out how to open the photo files Erin left me that she took with her awesome professional camera. So here's what you get - my phone photos.

moving on

Good news of the week - our house (the one I mentioned that we moved out of in February - yes, FEBRUARY) has finally closed. Almost four and a half months later, which is about 3 months later than we first expected to close, the house is now officially sold.

We picked up the check yesterday - which disappointingly was smaller than we originally expected due to the appraisal that came in much lower than we anticipated- sigh, oh well. But at least now we can move on with our building plans. It's taken so much longer to close on our house than we thought that at one point we thought we might have to pass up on building for a few more years and move back. Don't get me wrong - we loved that house and our neighbors and would have been just fine moving back. But we do feel it's a good time to build and are excited about creating a house that's exactly what we want.

We wanted to be cautious with our planning and funds so we didn't apply for permits (seeing as they cost a good amount of money) until the house closed. Now that closing is checked off the list, we can get going on permits. Several friends have told us that it often takes weeks or months to get permits approved, so we may not get much building in this year and it's highly unlikely if we do that we'll complete the house before next spring. Double sigh.

However - that's not all bad. There is a silver lining in the fact that building will take longer than we originally planned on.

And it's our second good news of the week. Grandma Joyce and Grandpa Ed received their mission call today! They were called to serve a CES mission (Church Educational System) in Kirtland, Ohio and will be leaving in mid July for 18-24 months.

While they are gone, they've been kind enough to agree to let us stay in their home and we'll be able to save even more each month while we are there during the building process. So there is no rush to get the house built super quick before snow starts to fall again and that relieves some of the stress and pressure of building it off of Troy (since Troy with the help of a brother or two of his along with me will be building most of it himself).

Next month, that move into Troy's parents' home will be our 12th move in our 13 years of marriage. A little bit crazy, huh?

crazy campers

Our family has been camping pretty much non-stop this month. Well, not that much but it feels like it!

Campout #1

Earlier this month Christian and Troy went on a two day campout for the 11-year old scouts in Coulee Dam. Christian is 11 years old and Troy is one of the leaders (that - and being Christian's dad) and they had a great time. They hiked, explored, carved stuff, ate, laughed - all that good boy bonding stuff.

Campout #2

Last week Christian had the opportunity to attend the regular Boy Scout campout at Ensign Ranch near Cle Elem with the 12-18 year old boys in the current ward we go to church with. He attended from Monday through Thursday and Troy joined the troop up at camp Tuesday night through Thursday. They worked on merit badge stuff, played cards, went rock climbing (even Christian who is afraid of heights!), hiked, ate (Christian had roasted banana boats for the first time) and had a wonderful time.

Campout #3

Troy and Christian returned from that campout Thursday afternoon. Two hours later our entire family was packed up and ready to head out again. We drove to a campout with Boy Scouts from our former church ward in northern Idaho Thursday and Friday nights. On Friday we joined the Boy Scouts for a 50 mile bicycle ride. Our girls and I only rode about 16 miles on the famous Hiawatha trail. The girls were towed by Troy in a bike trailer. After that part of the bicycle adventure, the girls and I drove to Coeur d'Alene for shopping while Christian and Troy and the scouts continued on another trail for an additional 35 miles. Unfortunately, we lost our small digi camera somewhere along the way which had the most photos so we don't have that many pics from our other camera, but there are a few I will share.

Saturday we went to Silverwood amusement and water park - the school has a reading program where the kids can earn a free ticket and Anna and Christian both did so we only needed to purchase three. It's a fun park - kind of reminds me of Lagoon in Utah. Sunday we recuperated and went to church.

Campout #4

Very early Monday morning this week I headed off to a campout with the Young Women group from church also at Ensign Ranch. I'm no longer one of the YW leaders but was asked to go to camp to help out since there was a need for an additional leader and asked to plan and lead games during the four hour activity rotation on Tuesday. (It wasn't too difficult to plan - I had to plan an hour's worth of games to repeat four times with each different age level).

I returned from camping earlier today. I have never felt so exhausted after returning from a campout in my life. The last two years I have gone as a leader for the whole week and loved it. This year I just went from early Monday morning until today. One of my good friends is the main leader this year and I was just filling in for her co-leader that couldn't make it after all.

Even though I didn't have much prep work or worry (since I was just assisting), the dynamics of this year's group really made for a different and often frustrating time. Out of our 12 girls, seven are only 12-13 years old and attending for the first time. Of those seven there were quite a few that were very challenging. We had issues with gossip, lack of respect for others and leaders, mean spiritedness, not listening, not cheerfully helping, whining, some inappropriate behavior, super late nights of noise, etc.

Girls Camp is supposed to be inspiring, spiritual, friendship forming, and lots of fun. Although we did have fun these last few days (cause it's almost impossible to NOT have fun at girls camp! at least I think so!), I felt disappointed and sad for those girls that are negatively impacting not only their own experience but that of the entire group.

My friend and I had several talks with the girls as a group and one-on-one to try and change some attitudes and I hope that after I left things will improve. It's my friend's first time as camp leader and that alone is challenging.

On the upside, I loved being in the beautiful outdoors, had a great time visiting with other leaders that I know (including my awesome sister-in-law that is a leader for another ward), eating yummy camp food (I adore dutch oven cooking even if it is finicky!), looking at the stars, laughing and singing the silliest songs, spending time with some great girls, and feeling the spirit of Ensign Ranch.

But I'm not denying that I'm glad to be home. I'm okay with a little bit of drama from my 4 and 6 year old girls sometimes. Not so okay with it from a big group of pre-teens and teenagers! And no photos of this week. Forgot the camera and would have been too tired anyway to take pics, lol.

Now - off to my cushy pillow-top bed, my mosquito-free home, and my cute kids and wonderful hubby. Maybe even a bit of ice cream.

last day of school

The kids have been counting down the days for school to end for quite a while and are so excited that it's officially summer vacation now. The top pic of each kid was taken on the kids' first day of school back in the fall. The photos on the bottom are the ones I snapped just before school on the last day which was this past Thursday. I can hardly believe the school year is finished.

Anna's hair certainly grew quite a bit! Other than a tiny trim off the ends a time or two this past year, I only gave her bang cuts. And Christian looks a little older and his face looks more mature, don't you think?

I went a few minutes early to pick up Anna and snapped a few photos of her with her teacher, Mrs. Whalen and the teacher's assistant, Miss Hinkey. They have been such wonderful teachers for Anna. I could not have asked for better ones for her and Anna not only excelled in school but loved each day. It actually made me feel a bit sad that this important first step in Anna's schooling is over.

Anna also wanted a few photos with some of her favorite friends from her class.