August-part 1

August started out with another trip to Moses Lake, the kids love that place.  Brooklyn asks me at least once a week when we can go to Moses Lake.  I try to tell her in the summer but then she just asks when will it be summer.  It is a never ending conversation that we have had several times.  

Lucy just chillin' on the boat.  (not our boat, our friends' boat)

Billy wake boarding.

That is our friend Skyler in the background. (yes, he landed it)

The kids took turns getting thrown off the boat.

Lucy, by far, flew the highest and farthest.  (Probably has something to do with the fact that she weighs nothing.)

I promised you a video of Noah wake boarding way back in July, well here it is.

We also spent a few day over in Bremerton and took a drive up to Fort Warden.  The kids had a great time on the beach with their cousins.

They had a great time building this sand castle.

The Jessee's and Richmond's 

We also went and explored the battle stations at Fort Warden, it was pretty cool but very creepy! 

Also in August, our friends, the Ketner's invited us to go spend a weekend in La Conner.  Their family owns a cabin right on the water.  It was soooo fun.   We love just hanging out with them and it helps that our kids are really good friend too.

This is Noah and Jaden, they are the best of best friends, seriously these two could and should be brothers, well actually they like each other a lot more than brothers usually do.  Anyways, they met in preschool about the same time Jaden's mom, Jenny, and I met at the gym.  Soon we couldn't go a day without one of them asking for a play date with the other and thus, the friendship was born.

Look at these 2 ready to take on the world!

Let me backtrack a little further, One day Jenny and I were on the treadmills at the gym and she mentioned that they were thinking about booking a trip to Disneyland, I stopped, looked at her and told her that just that weekend we had booked a trip to disneyland.  It turns out we were going at the same time.  We of course didn't tell our kids so imagine Noah's surprise when we walk into Disneyland and there is his best friend Jaden.  It was priceless.  

Back to the present, this is Lucy and Jessica, they met and became friends on the Disneyland trip.  They have become very close friends since, so now we usually swap Jessica or Jaden for Lucy or Noah so everyone is happy.

We had a camp fire right on the beach and roasted marshmallows

Even Mercedes got to come, she enjoyed wandering the beach and getting dirty.

Lucy and Jessica had a lot of fun on the kayaks.

We always like a good card game.

And we caught a ton of crab.  YUMMY!

Uh oh, I think I might be jealous!

Flash Back-September

Since there wasn't much to blog about in October, besides Halloween which I actually already blogged about, I'm skipping to September.  September, as always, means back to school.  This year I was surprised to find that I didn't want my kids to go back to school, I enjoyed our schedule free summer but I guess they need to learn and grow so off they went.

 Lucy had some big changes this year, a new school and a new teacher.  So far she has enjoyed it overall, the change was a little hard at first, but she has made some new friends and is doing well in all her school work.

 Noah started 1st grade, which means all day school.  He wasn't too thrilled and all month I kept thinking he should be getting home soon only to look at the clock and realize it was only 1:00 and he had 2 more hours.  He is doing good at learning to read and he REALLY loves Math and Recess.  He also played soccer again and loved it. 

High 5in' the coach after he scored a goal!

Good Kick Buddy!

Nicholas went into 7th grade this year.  We were sightly surprised to find out, when we picked up his schedule, that he had qualified not only for Algebra (which we knew about), but for honors Language Arts and Social Studies too.  Language Arts has been a bit of a challenge for him but he continues to try to do his best (and since its the end of the semester when I am actually typing this, I can let you know that he got 4 A's and 2 B's on his report card, so he's doing pretty good).  He also decided to try football, so that was fun to watch.  

Niko is #64

In the middle of the month I got to sneak away with my Mom, Grandma, and sisters for our annual girls' weekend.  This year we went to Orcas Island in the San Jaun Islands.  It was beautiful and fun and crazy like always.  We always have such a fun time together!  We look forward to this weekend all year!

Back to November

I'm still trying to catch up on part of last year so, here are some pictures from November.

Just some cute pictures of 2 of my favorite red-heads.

Who doesn't love the beautiful fall colors?

What can I say?

Lucy painted this for the Reflections program.  The theme was "Together we can"

The week of Thanksgiving, we got quite a bit of snow. Brooklyn couldn't wait to go out and see it!
(yes, those are her pajamas!)

The last few years we have played a turkey bowl with some of our friends.  This year we got to play in the snow.  It was SOOOO fun!!!

Look, Lucy and Noah aren't fighting.  I had to take a picture!

Skyler lead everyone in some warm ups.

After the turkey bowl we ran home to get ready for Thanksgiving, which we hosted at our house this year.  Aunt Kristi helped Mackenzie and Brooklyn put hand prints on the cake that Aunt Wendy made.

With a little re-arranging we were able to get all 17 of us in one area.  It was a great meal and I am thankful I have such a great family to share it with.

Back tracking to December:

 Because I plan on printing this blog in the future, I wanted to go back and touch on a few of the things we did in the last few months.  This is the December recap.

 Lucy is participating in the Miss Auburn Little Sisters program.  It is a great program where the girls get paired up with one of the contestants as their "little sister"  The little sisters get to learn a dance and perform on the night of the pageant and they get to walk out with their "Big Sister" for the evening wear portion of the pageant.  Lucy is super excited to get a dress and be on stage.  Here they are leading the crowd in songs at Auburn's Santa Parade.  

We spent a lot of our time and energy in the beginning of December working on a school project for Niko.  His honors english class was reading "A Christmas Carol" and for 100 pts. extra credit, he could build a house or other building for a Dicken's Village that would be displayed in the school.  Well, he really needed the extra credit so, we built a house.  Neither Billy or I know a whole lot about building houses so it was a learning adventure for all of us.  Niko did most of the cutting and painting himself and he really enjoyed it, so, for christmas we decided we would build him a work bench out in the garage so he can try making other things like shelves and stuff. 

Finally done! Yeah. 

 a look at our front door if you were only 2 inches tall.

 the back

We even added lights.

  Billy and I enjoyed a nice night out and went to his law firm Christmas party.  It was a lot of fun to dress up and have a night out with my hubby.  But, the best part was that I surprised him by booking a hotel room in downtown Seattle so we could stay the night and enjoy the next day shopping and just having fun.  It was a blast!

Finally, we had a great Christmas, we spent most of the break at my parents' house and I really enjoyed the down time.  We played more dominion (a card game) than I want to admit and we beat all the levels of "Angry Birds Seasons,"(the kids would come upstairs and my mom, dad, sister, and I would all be playing Angry Birds, they would just roll their eyes and laugh at us) and, we ate way more sweets and junk food than we should have.  Santa Clause managed to find us so the kids were happy.  

It was great!

Mr. Goody (an elf) brought the kids pajamas bottoms and white t-shirt with puff paints so they could make their own christmas shirts.

Noah with his ninja swords in a back pack.

Brooklyn all snuggled up in her Dora sleeping bag.

Niko counting the money that was in the piggy bank Santa brought him.

Lucy opening her cell phone, I think she was excited.

Merry Christmas

We are still here and doing well, 

hopefully I will get better about posting in the new year.