Yard Work

We've lived in our current home almost 5 years......this coming August. We have a 'Home Owner's Wish List' we created years ago when we first moved in. We listed everything, even the things that probably will never happen in this lifetime, because it's a wish list and on those kind of lists anything goes!

Even though our house is worth much, much less than we owe we originally bought it to grow in with our little family. We continue to make the improvements we want and hope to recoup the value loss 20 years from now ;).
We have made a few changes around here and are working on more. Chad finally finished building a playset in the backyard for the kids. His plan of slow and steady paid off and now the kids have a playset befitting any lucky group of hooligans.

We had concrete poured (shout out to Andrew Covington!!!!). Now the kids play outside shooting hoops, playing four square, racing around on scooters, trikes, or legs ALL day long. They play outside before school, I'm talking 6 am!! And after school until bedtime. They're a noisy bunch and add the dog barking while he plays with them and our neighbors probably hate us. There's a space for the firepit and the outdoor covered patio...coming much later (refer to the above mentioned Home Owner's Wish List).

My favorite part of the project is the new driveway for us to park "The Chad" and my gorgeous steps that I plan on accenting with pots and plants. It's my work in progress and as of now I don't have a to-be-completed-day in mind. Maybe this fall, maybe next year, maybe when I'm 50...who knows. We just know we're excited for the little changes we've made to homify our house.

Spring!

Spring Break was a wonderful break from school and the rut of daily life. We started out our Easter weekend with a hike to the old Boulder City train tunnels. These tunnels were built into the mountain side to move materials up to Hoover Dam during it's construction. The train tracks are gone now but the tunnels are still entact and safe to walk through. If you're quiet in the tunnels you can hear the bats who live in them, you can certainly smell them. It's a very popular hike that even little kids can make, so even on the warm Friday morning the trail was packed with travelers. After our long, hot hike we went to CiCi's Pizza and pigged out on their yummy pizza and cinnamon buns.


This is the beginning of the trail.
Of course we stopped along the way to throw rocks over the hillside and enjoy the gorgeous lake views.

There are 5 or 6 tunnels but we only made it to 3 before kids started to get really cranky and tired.

The Easter Bunny hid all our eggs around the pool to keep them from our puppy, who would've eaten them all and not shared.
The kids modeling their new Easter clothes.

Our little family.
And of course our silly faces....we can never get away without having a silly faced picture in our family. In reality this is what we all look like.

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas!

Halloween

Happy Halloween!!

As you all know Halloween is a big deal at our house. We get to celebrate 2 birthdays right before which makes it a non-stop party at our house starting a week before All Hallow's Eve. Since Halloween landed on a Sunday this year we enjoyed twice the trick or treating fun with Trunk or Treating at the church Saturday night, followed up by traditional door knocking Sunday night. Although sad to say we didn't have the zeal Sunday night we had the night before, so costumes were half done and makeup barely on but we still ventured out, eager to fill our bags even more! This year Andrew dressed up as a "Greedy Kid".

Samantha was a Cowgirl and then Sunday night she was so pretty with her hair curled and done for church that we glittered her and she went out as a "Model Cowgirl"...whatever that is. We figured it's a gorgeous girl who models cowgirl clothes. Or perhaps a beautiful gal who also rounds up cattle, either way don't we all wish we could still feel as carefree and beautiful as we did when we were children :).

Braeden was a Zombie with a nicely slit throat.

Westin was Darth Vader but wore the mask for like 5 whole minutes.

Gabe was a skeleton baby and made out like a bandit. He walked to the doors, opened his own bag, attempted to say "Trick or Treat", but said, "Thank you," clearly enough that people cooed and loaded him up with treats.

Mommy and Daddy were outlaws.

I actually dubbed us the "Make-Out Bandits" cuz I couldn't keep my hands off of Chad. My kids were almost as embarrassed by that as the time we danced in public, but other kids at the Trunk or Treating thought the "Make Out Bandits" was hilarious ;)

Here we are in the car heading to the Trunk or Treating at the church.





Samantha is a tall girl but looks even taller because of my boots she's wearing. She can wear my shoes now. She just turned 12 and is a young lady, and my best girl friend and a diva....she is soooo fun! Westin posed in all the pictures with his light saber and showing off his moves, all the pictures he took very seriously :)

Hope you all had a safe and fabulous holiday!!!

Pre-Halloween

Pre-Halloween fun at our house! Decorating, costume planning and making, scary movies at night, creepy Halloween music and sounds filling the air, all in preparation for the big event.



Westin posing with our scary witch. You can't tell in the picture but her cauldron is filled with eyeballs, severed fingers and rats. It's the little details that truly frighten us all :)

The kids posing next to my main attraction...the graveyard in the living room. We went with a graveyard theme this year to match the graveyard in the front yard. Braeden is doing a dead look :)

O come on now! The boys look like their hearts aren't into the pose!! Samantha, now that's my girl, she looks really scared.

Over the years we've aquired quite a collection of creepy decorations. Every year we add one more thing, this years purchase is the big, hairy spider in this picture. I love it!

The front yard is always a big hit with the neighborhood. Chad tries not to do it EVERY year but every year he is pestered into the tradition. We add the fog maker Halloween night and move our witch to an upstairs window with a strobe light on her and in another window a ghoul of some sort (we have many to chose from) also with a strobe. Add horrifying screams from the windows and we get little kids in tears at the front door...SUCCESS!!

HAPPY OCTOBER Y'All!!

House Family Reunion 2010

Every year for the last 10+ years we've enjoyed a House Family Reunion. Each year is a different family members turn to plan and host the event and activites. This year was Brianne and Casey's turn. They are big into camping and wanted to share their love of the outdoors with the rest of us.
We camped for 2 nights in Bryce Canyon, Utah. One of the most beautiful places in the state. We enjoyed a variety of games and activites. Soooo much food!! And soooo many laughs!! We were shushed the first night we were so loud! Thats the Houses for you, a bunch of really, really big mouths! :)

We went hiking in Fairyland. The scenery (as you can see in the background) was incredible! Unfortunately our rowdy, little monkey children played too close to the edge and slipped off. Chad was able to run to their rescue. Alas he didn't even bother to grab onto Miles and save him ;)

The trail in Fairyland was a tad narrow and precarious and Chad, Emerson and Miles all slipped, almost falling to their deaths.

As you can see, Miles and Emerson were able to use Chad to climb to safety. Phew!!! Next time I'll push harder ;)

Here's Wes with his 4 feet of licorice. Uncle Ron kept us on a constant sugar high with his abundance of treats....suckers, candy bars, tootsie rolls, licorice, gum balls and chocolate...oh my!

3 little boys posing between swinging sticks, hatchets, axes and apparently a pvc pipe? Where the heck did he find that?!?!?! Heard more that once around the campsite, "Put the axe down! Hey! Hey! That hatchet is for chopping wood only!" As Grandpa so keenly observed, "Man you give a kid a stick or an axe and they're entertained for hours." :)

Thanks Brianne and Casey! We had a blast!

Caribbean

Thanks to the wonderful kindness and generosity of my mom, Chad and I were able to take a vacation all to ourselves this year. We went to the Caribbean island of St. Martin/St. Maarten. Half of the island is French and the other half is Dutch that's

why there are two spellings for the island and both are correct.

We spent 7 days of heaven resting, playing, snorkling and eating. The water beautifully clear, we also Snubaed (a mix of snorling and scuba). The fish surrounded us at several points, which made for an amazing experience. We ended up not taking as many pictures as we thought and ended up with no video footage. We were in the water 90% of the time playing. One afternoon we took sea kayaks out into the ocean, paddling and jumping the waves.

That's me waving half way between the docking boat and the beach. Can you believe that water?!? 86' was the average temperature of the Caribbean Sea. You could walk chest deep in the water for a long time off of the beaches. Plenty of room for bobbing peacefully in the waves with a coloda in your hand. Ahhhhh...the vacation life....

And no tropical vacation is complete without dinner next to the ocean. BBQ ribs and chicken was a main staple on the island, of course so was the seafood.

Oh the plans we've hatched for next's years vacation ;)