Daniel's Senior Pictures

Yes, you read that right. My Daniel is a senior this year. GASP!!

So Daniel and I went off to take pictures of himself. Turns out this is not his favorite activity. It is right up there with learning how to latch hook a rug.

He was a tough nut to loosen up and pose in a natural position. After taking lots and lots of pictures, most of them of him blinking, Ben and I have whittled it down to these four. Daniel does not like any of them. He said it is nothing against the photographer, he just does not like pictures of himself. I can honestly say I know exactly how he feels. I think of all the 400+ posts I have on this blog I am in less that five pictures.


Here is voted # 3

 Here is voted # 4

 Here is voted # 1

 Here is voted #2

Feel free to weight in and let us know what one you think should go into the yearbook. But be fast, we have to have the pictures turned in soon.

P.S. Daniel is one very handsome kid!! Luckily he will never make it this far down on the post to read this.

Post summer wrap up

This summer we did A LOT! It was crazy busy. But here is my reason/ excuse. This is our last summer with Daniel. Next summer he will be on his mission or off working. This makes me sad to ponder. He was my very first road trip and camping buddy.

This is the boys chopping up some wood for our fire. We had to cook most of our food over the fire because the hornets were so heavy at camp this year the only time they would leave the food alone is when it was over an open flame. This made eating mildly uncomfortable. 

This may look like an ordinary picture...but if you look closely you will see the remnants of many, many sticks. They started off as small trees but ended up as toothpicks. We had a pluthera of toothpicks at camp. Extremely sharp toothpicks. We used them to defend ourselves from the hornets.

Our usual ice cream stop. Those who have followed through the years, (me), will notice that our benches and carved bears are missing. We were very sad. But luckily the ice cream helped fill the void.

** Daniel had an epiphany while eating his bubble gum ice cream. He commented, "Mom, boys don't really grow up do we? I mean we get big and such but inside we are still about 4 years old. Here I am skinned knee from crashing on my bike, chili from dinner dripped down my shirt and your still handing me napkins to wipe the ice cream off my chin." ** I always joked the kid was a genius, now I am beginning to actually wonder....

After a week of camping we came home, joined Ben and took the kiddos to Silverwood, our local theme park. Anna, Maria and Jakey earned free tickets through the school's reading program. Here is Maria and Ben on the train ride.

Anna and Maria on the bumper cars. I have no pictures of the boys because they were all off riding roller coasters and making themselves sick. WOO WHOO!!

Jakey is a HUGE garflield fan and was very excited to have a picture taking with Garfield and Odie. He made me promise to use this as his profile picture when he is old enough to have a Facebook account. Well this could like a tiny bit out of date when he is 30 and finally is allowed a Facebook account.

We grew a small garden this year. The girlies planted carrots. Here is Anna enjoying some of her hard work.

 This is Maria giving her carrots and close inspection.

All in all this summer was fantastic! It went by way too fast! All the kids are back in school more or less. Daniel's college starts in the middle of September as does mine.

Ike's Observations

One of Issac's chores is to clean the bathroom everyday.
Yes our bathroom need to be cleaned everyday.
Seven people, one bathroom.
You can do the math.

While cleaning the toilet I hear him shout out, "THE TOILET BOWL SHOULD BE YOUR TARGET PEOPLE!!"

 I responded, "I will try better next time."

Ike came out and said, "I am talking to the snipers of the house mom, not the shot guns." HA HA HA HA

Love that kid.

Then again this is the same 14 year old who laid down on the floor outside the bathroom door and asked if he could have snack through the crack the is between the floor and the bottom of the door. All I wanted was a few minutes of peace to pee. I guess I should have been more realistic in my dreams.

All work and no play can make for a very dull summer

SO LETS PLAY!!!

This is my former BFF Anna Nelson. I say former because she is moving away from me to Portland, Oregon. I am bitter about it. Very, very bitter. So bitter in fact I took her kayaking knowing she had no idea how to swim. HA HA HA. Those are my feet. That is the only picture you are going to get of me. 

While we were out on the lake we noticed a fire that started up. As we paddled around I took pictures as it got bigger and bigger. Then I called home to make sure all my boys were still there. 

We stopped for lunch and we were met by the local welcoming committee. 

This is Daniel's friend he met at UCLA. She lives in Colorado so really they do not see each other. This summer her and her family flew to China and had a 14 hour layover in Seattle. So......I loaded up Daniel and Ike and went to Seattle for Saturday.She brought him back some really fun stuff from China......surprisingly it was all made in the USA. HA HA.....I kid. He brought her some cool huckleberry items because they do not have those in Colorado. 

After the airport we went to the Seattle Aquarium. Ike is an avid fisherman. The trip was bitter sweet for him. Surrounded by all these gorgeous fish and no fishing rod. 

They also had some nice touch tanks. I like feeling the sea anemones. 

They did have a couple tropical salt water tanks as well. Which is good because the fish of the pacific northwest are rather drab.

This is my absolute favorite picture of the trip. 

Finally an animal I can relate to.

These are my two oldest. The first of the family. I cannot remember the last time I got to spend a day with just them. Words cannot describe how special this day was for me. I am sure for them it was just another trip with their mother, sigh..... but for me it was an opportunity that is quickly slipping away. We laughed a lot. I teased and embarrassed them mercilessly and I watched them smile and laugh with each other. 

As you know I notice odd signs. Ones that should have been checked again for spelling, punctuation and grammar and of course just for making absolutely no sense at all. 

I personally prefer my toilet paper to be virgin toilet paper. Call me old fashioned but I do not want to reuse someone else's toilet paper. Keep that crazy practice in Seattle. Here in Spokane it is all virgin all the time!

So there ya go. 

Summer time fun for everyone!!

This summer I decided to take on the chipping paint on the house. Next summer I think I will just sew my face to the carpet. Seems like it will be easier, less hornets, and a lot less painful.

Daniel helped out a lot when he was home. We learned the joys of scraping. Turns out there are not a lot of joys to scraping. It was a very short lesson. As you can see by all the bare places on the cedar siding we has a shameful amount of loose paint.

I am not a huge fan of heights and did not enjoy being on the top of a 17 foot ladder. Turns out the hornets living in the apex of our roof was also not fond of having me at the top of the ladder either. I got stung in the neck once and Daniel, in fear of being stung, flung a paintbrush full of primer at them. Ya, that made a bit of a mess.

After scraping and two coats of primer I was ready to start putting on some color. I love colors!! I was really struggling trying to figure out what colors to throw up there and Ben had a brilliant idea. I love fiesta ware colors....why not use those. So I did!! 

 Because our house was build in 1950 it has come cool character to it. I wanted to have some fun with the diagonal siding and did chevron strips on it. This is the front of the house.

This is the side of our home. All ugly......

Nice and white with primer....

Now all happy and colorful!!!

 Here is the carport in front of the house. I figured you really should never paint a house from 1950 without including Seafoam green!! 

I love my home now. Well at least the trim work on it. I have actually have people stop while walking by and comment on how cool it turned out. She is defiantly unique, but really, would you expect anything else??

Now to put on a new roof. Ugh!! The one we have now has decided to start leaking. 

Huckleberry picking 2013.....aphid poop

This year we went huckleberry picking with Paulino again. Yes, I am a glutton for punishment. He told me he knew the "perfect" spot. ( In huckleberry picking it is all about finding the perfect spot and then never telling anyone else about this spot so right away I was very suspicious) My instincts were right. This perfect spot was on the top of a mountain on the side of a cliff that was covered in aphid poop. Yes, you read that last part right.....covered in aphid poop.

We  were up on the mountains of Idaho, at least I think we were still in the continental United States, were the woods are filled with cougars, bears, and other assorted wildlife that would like to eat people but I was not worried one bit. You see our guide, Paulino, is an experienced big game hunter. I could be quite confident that there was no big game in the tri-state area because I also know his hunting record. HA HA HA.

This was Ben's very first time huckleberry picking. He learned the bushes are short, the berries are small, the bugs are many and we were covered in aphid poop by the time we were done. He cannot wait to go back next year!!

Jakey is sharpening his stick because every 10 year old boy will tell you that it is foolish to pick huckleberries without a sharpened stick at your side.

Somewhere on this bush there are huckleberries. What? You can't see them? Oh, well neither could I. 

After we were done picking for the day the boys and Paul shot some guns. By guns I mean totally ridiculous things that are totally impractical so of course everyone had fun.

All in all we got about 1.5 gallons of huckleberries. That will help feed my addiction to the little buggars. Did not eat any this time while picking! You may be wondering why....it's because I needed to go home and wash all the aphid poop off them first.

A Lesson in Housekeeping from a beloved former president

I will admit I may not have been keeping up on house work as best as I can. I have been very busy repainting the house this summer. But I figured I still had a fairly good handle on things until I found this stamp while sweeping the kitchen floor.

It is a 20 cent Harry S. Truman stamp. For those who are too young to remember when it only cost 20 cents to mail a letter it was a very long time ago. 

So maybe I need to start sweeping my floors more often.