Adventures in Tracy-land

Green Smoothies!

2011-12-01T15:16:00.000-08:00

Guess who's finally on board? Josh begs for a green smoothie every single day, but until yesterday, Caleb would cry to see a precious banana blended into an algae looking mess. But he finally tried one and had three helpings!

Anatomy of a treehouse/ swingset

2011-10-25T17:34:00.000-07:00

Treehouse phase one...

2011-10-16T00:25:00.000-07:00

So as Josh was working on the treehouse today I took some pictures of it all. But when I went to come put the pictures on the blog, I realized I hadn't put any of the older pictures up on the blog yet! So here are the initial stages of the treehouse (sorry, they aren't really in order)

A typical stare from Ben... Becca was taking pictures of the other kids in these next few shots. I thought they were funny, so I kept them :)

I don't know what's in her mouth?

"Go away!"

The elders came over and helped Josh get that pole up. It was quite the feat!

"Cheeee" Caleb cuts the last sounds off of every word he says. So he requires a lot of translating for anybody but me and Josh to know what he's saying.

I thought it was completely built at this point. Josh's mind had already gone right onto the next phase, though.

Fat baby :)

But he's happy! Sometimes...

Back to School!

2011-09-13T12:44:00.000-07:00

It's the most wonderful time of the year! The house stays cleaner, quieter, and I can actually get things done! Here are the girls on their first day. It was sunny (so Becca made a squinty face in every picture) and hit over 80 degrees all week. Go figure...

Why the sweatshirt in such nice warm (hot?) weather? I think she was just excited to wear her school hoodie?

Overheard...

2011-07-11T17:23:00.000-07:00

How they got on this topic, I don't know, since I walked in mid-conversation.

Rebecca: I'm going to marry someone I don't know.
Isabel: You can't do that. You have to know them to marry them.
Rebecca: But all I know are boys... I'm going to marry a MAN

Welcome Baby Ben!

2011-07-08T21:14:00.000-07:00

June 30th Benjamin Isaac Tracy came into the world in a hurry! He was born after 45 minutes of labor, start to finish, and only about 10 minutes after we arrived at the birth center. He weighed 10 lbs 5 oz, and was 22 3/4" long. He's a big boy! He had the cord wrapped tightly around both his neck and his chest, so he was pretty purple for about 24 hours. Because of his cords he got a really good squeeze that led to bruising in his face, and he blew blood vessels in both eyes. So he was purple and had red eyes, not so attractive. At least it was only temporary. He has blonde hair and blue eyes, and came with little fat rolls already built in.

After one week, he looks so much better. No more purple, no more red eyes and swollen face. He's quite the cutie. He's a particular little guy, though! He is very picky about whether his diaper is wet, and makes his desires to be changed known as soon as he goes. He won't do anything, not sleep, eat, or anything else, if his diaper is wet. And since he eats like a little porker, he has lots of wet diapers. At least we know he's healthy!

Larabee State Park

2011-06-24T16:47:00.000-07:00

We went on a picnic and exploring trip to Larabee State Park with Grandma, Kali, and Miley. We only had a couple hours, definitely need to go back for a full day trip. It was gorgeous.

Run Run as fast as you can...

2011-06-24T16:31:00.000-07:00

Seems like we've been at a lot of runs lately. Here are the two most recent. First is one that was put on by the Bellevue Stake, they had a 5K for adults and a 1K for primary age kids.

Whoops... Isabel running in the younger kids' race... I had to pull her out and get her into her proper age group :)

Daddy helped Josh finish.

Becca and Josh wearing their medals proudly. Isabel had one too, but didn't want to stop playing for a picture.

And Caleb was in the stroller...bored.

Josh tried his hardest to beat the guy in orange... but he later learned that this guy runs marathons in under 6 minute mile pace. So Josh had no chance. He came in 2nd, beat by a couple minutes! This guy was crazy fast, and ran in his warmups no less.

Then, this past weekend was Berry Dairy Days in Burlington. Again, Josh came in 2nd, but ran his personal best for the 2 mile, so he was happy. The kids, on the other hand, told him he lost!

Josh's cheering section.

There was a fun parade and fireworks to go with the festival too. Made for a really fun day. And it only rained a little bit in the morning! Awesome.

Randomness

2011-06-09T19:33:00.000-07:00

Life has been crazy busy lately, so here are pictures of some of the things we've been up to the last few months.

Uncle Bubba came home from his mission, so we met him at the airport with Grandma and Grandpa, and even Kali and Miley.

Becca turned 6

Caleb and Daddy dressed as twinners one Sunday (not on purpose! Daddy came home from his morning meetings and we discovered that I'd dressed Caleb just like him )

Josh built the boys a great big indestructible bunkbed

And Joshy turned 4

Caleb's hospital adventure

2011-03-23T10:41:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday the 15th, Caleb was eating a snack of Chex Mix with the girls. He sort of choked on a piece, but once I got to him he seemed to be just fine, so I didn't worry much about it. He still coughed once in a while that night, but nothing major. A couple hours later he was sitting on my lap and I noticed that I could hear a whistle when he breathed. Knowing that there were lots of different nuts in the mix, I just assumed that maybe he had a nut sensitivity to one of them. I let Josh know (he was at work) and then just watched Caleb closely for any swelling, rashes, etc. Nothing else ever happened, just that weird wheezy whistle. It didn't seem to bother him in the least, either. I thought about taking him for a quick visit to the ER, but knowing that it was evening, would be busy, and there would be nothing quick about the visit, I decided to stay home with him and just check on him a lot. Nothing ever happened...

So the next day, the wheeze was still there, but pretty quiet. But once Caleb starting really running around, it got a lot louder. So just to have it checked on, I called his doctor and set up an appointment for later that day. Josh was back at work, so I dragged all four kids to the doctor at 6:30. The doctor listened to his lungs from each side over and over and over. He decided that it sounded like something was in his lung. One of them had lower breath sounds than the other. He told us not to wait for morning, but to go right over to the hospital and get it xrayed. So we did. Isabel stayed at a friend's house in our ward, and Becca and Joshy went with me to the hospital.

They did Xrays on him ( I have pics in my phone of the contraption they had to use to hold him still... he was very non-cooperative) and upon looking at them, they called the doctor, and he looked at them too. They decided there was indeed something in there, but since we figured it must be a piece of Chex Mix, the x-ray looked right through it. They could see that one lung was blocked, air was getting in, but not back out. So one lung was swollen up larger than the other. They told us that we then needed to go to the Children's Hospital in Seattle, as our hospital didn't have the ability to do the scope procedure on kids so small. Our hospital is very good and nice, but not super big. So I called Josh at work, told him we were on our way. We picked up Isabel, packed up bags for the kids as fast as we could, and left. We picked Josh up from work and just left his car there. We got down to Seattle (about an hour drive at what was now 10:00 ish) and met up with Grandma Tracy in the ER. She was there to pick up the other kids to take them back to her house so that they wouldn't be waiting around in the hospital. She had also brought a family friend from her ward with her so that he could help Josh give Caleb a blessing.

In the ER, there was really no place to do a blessing, so they ended up taking Caleb into the bathroom and giving him a blessing. Then Grandma went home, took the kids, and it was just me and Josh and Caleb left. We waited for an eternity in the ER, and finally got taken back after midnight. It seems like we were in the ER room for an eternity, with a constant stream of doctors, nurses, pokes, prods, and nebulizer treatments for Caleb. All of which he hated, of course. He was to the point that he would see a stethoscope and just start to cry.

At one point, a doctor was looking in his mouth with a tongue depressor, and went too far in. She gagged him in the worst way, and Caleb coughed, choked, gagged... we thought for sure he was going to vomit. It was a gag like I've never seen a baby do. We think at that point that he choked up whatever was in his lungs, and swallowed it, but nobody is for sure about that. We finally got admitted to the hospital and got a room at 6:30 am. Yay for beds! Yay for our own bathroom! We all knocked out pretty fast, since we'd been up all night. Caleb had little bitty naps, but there were just too many interruptions to get any real rest.

Unfortunately, at 8:30 a couple nurses came in and told us that it was time to get another set of xrays. So with our two hours of sleep, we went. Caleb got more xrays, and we went back to his room. Now in all of this, Caleb has not been allowed to eat or drink, since the procedure to remove whatever is in his lung is through the mouth with a scope. So he's starving. And we can't eat either, because he would see it and that would just cause more trouble. At this point he's just a mess, he's tired, hungry, has wires and tubes attached to him. He would go between ten minutes of calm/tired/exhausted and then ten minutes of thrashing, trying to pull out his IV, etc. No fun.

A couple hours later they decided that the Xrays were from the wrong angle or something and they couldn't see what they wanted to. So we went again. Once those come back, they decide that the xrays are inconclusive as to whether the chunk is still in his lung and just moved, or if it is out. So we're going to still do the scope. He went into the Operating Room around noon, and they told us it would be 45 minutes or so. We were starving and took our pager and headed to go get lunch. As soon as we have our food, get sat down, but not started eating, our pager went off. So we loaded everything up on a tray and headed back to the surgery area. Caleb was already done and the doctor was ready to fill us in! Wow!

They didn't find anything, but could see an inflamed area with some muck, that they figure was the spot that had the food in it before the big gagging. But everything was good, they just cleaned it up and sent him to recovery. So we took our food back to the room and ate while we waited for Caleb's return. They told us he'd be in recovery a half hour to 45 minutes. We got to the room, and just a couple minutes later, there was a knock at the door, and it was a nurse with Caleb already. He was kind of drowsy, but awake. So we ate our lunch, while having some snuggle time. They wanted to get Caleb to eat, and brought him some yogurt. They wanted him to get 2 oz down and keep it down, but by the time they told us that much, he'd already downed the whole cup and was asking for more. So they figured he was doing great. He ate three tubs of yogurt, a tub of apple sauce, and a bag of teddy grahams. So they started the checkout procedures, since he was doing better than they had expected. We figured we'd be out around 6, but he was doing so great, I think we were out by 2. We left, headed to Grandma's, and had nice naps.

And yesterday he had his follow up appointment with this doctor and they said his lungs sounded perfect. The best news ever. :)

So here are a few pictures, there are more on my phone, but I haven't downloaded those to the computer yet. Maybe another day...

Finally eating...

Josh's igloo

2011-02-25T22:09:00.000-08:00

We got hammered with snow this week. On Wednesday we got a whopping 23"! So on Thursday, Josh decided to make a snow cave in the back yard.

He says he has been waiting his whole life to build one in his own back yard. It's just unusual to have enough snow to do it!

Snow day!

2011-01-09T13:46:00.001-08:00

We had some good snow about a week and a half ago, but it was icy, crunchy, no fun to play in hard snow. It was good for sledding, but not for making snowmen. It rained for a couple days and there was only the smallest trace of snow left in our yard last night. Then this morning, Josh got up and went to his 7:30 church meeting while I got the kids ready to go to church. After he left, it started to snow. We left the house around 8:30 because the roads were starting to build up a lot of snow. By the time we got to church there was about 4". Big, huge, silver dollar sized flakes, and LOTS of them.

Church got shortened to about a half hour, after passing the sacrament they looked out the windows, saw it was still coming down really fast, and had a closing song and prayer. Shortest church ever! By the time we got home, there was 6-7 inches in our yard and it was still snowing. So we played in the snow and built some awesome snowmen. BIG ones.

Josh says this is the "Best snowman I've ever built." It's taller than our roofline and the base is about 5' in diameter.

I love the details that he added. A fence post stabbed through the middle for arms, a snow shovel (I think he'd better get to work on the sidewalk!) he even has gloves, and a traffic cone hat.

He pushed that ball around the yard until he couldn't move it any more. And that's where it stayed.

Snowcones! yum!

This one is Frostina. She's about 6' tall and has fabulous blue curves.

This might be my favorite picture ever!

The girls built this little snowlady all by themselves!

Merry Christmas everybody!

2010-12-21T17:04:00.000-08:00

Here are a few fun pictures taken at the ward party :)

Gingerbread houses

2010-12-04T17:35:00.000-08:00

We took the kids to the local grocery store this afternoon where they were making free Gingerbread houses out of graham crackers. The three of them each made a house, very different from each other. Can you guess who made which?

Caught red handed...

2010-11-04T16:20:00.001-07:00

Anybody wanna take bets on how many browsers a one year old can open up before his mommy notices? (The answer is FORTY-EIGHT!!!!) Whoa... I'm surprised the computer didn't crash.

For Katie...

2010-11-04T16:13:00.001-07:00

I saw the pics of Raleigh's marker mischief. I think it's genetic? It's a good thing you caught him or Trenty would be looking like this! I think he was going for an eye makeup look?

Or maybe not. Just tattoos?

But he sure is cute when he's cleaned up! Until he gets to something else...

Being One is Fun!

2010-11-04T16:04:00.001-07:00

Yep, you read right. Caleb is one. I made him a really fun cake, we got him all undressed to smash it to bits for the camera, and he was super careful and dainty. He picked off all the KitKat's one by one, and then started on the York Pieces. Finally we just cut the cake and ate it while we watched him slowly work on what was left.

Sporting a shirt from Grandma S.

Eight is Great!

2010-11-04T15:53:00.001-07:00

Isabel has reached the ripe old age of eight. Where does the time go? She got baptized in September by her dad. Here she is wearing the dress made by Grandma Sorensen, she was able to actually be baptized in it.

Here she is with Daddy, wearing the dress that I made her.
The fam... what's up with Becca?
Grandma and Grandpa Tracy

Holy cow... so far behind!

2010-11-04T15:51:00.000-07:00

I guess I've been busy, huh? Just logged on today to see how much I haven't uploaded on here! So be ready for lots of posts, here they come!

Becca's First Day of Kindergarten!

2010-09-14T19:08:00.000-07:00

Becca is officially a Kindergartner! She's been dying to go to school ever since Isabel started going. So this Monday she had her first day!

Becca's rockin hot pink high tops this year :) **love them!**

Passing the time while waiting for the bus... just as a funny side note, Becca gets to ride a SHORT BUS! hehehehe

I know she's gonna do great!

Isabel's first day of School...

2010-09-09T20:29:00.001-07:00

Wednesday was Isabel's first day of school. Kindergarten doesn't start until Monday, so she'll get her own first day :) But here are some of the pics we took of Isabel's! They kind of got backwards in the upload, sorry.

Here's the bus coming...

Spiderman waited for the bus too...
The three that stayed home watched out the window to see Isabel going by in the bus.
I told her to do a muscle pose. And THIS is what she came up with? Thats the wimpiest muscle pose ever, hehe
All decked out in new clothes, but she covered it up with an old jacket. Way to go for your school pictures, missy.
Caleb was indifferent to all the activity going on.
Becca on the other hand was really excited and wished it was Monday already.
Isabel was really excited too, I just liked this picture!
She has a great teacher and I'm sure she'll do fantastic! And I appreciate being down one kid during the day, and look forward to Monday when I'll be down two! Well, at least for part of the day :)

Newsflash...

2010-09-04T18:14:00.000-07:00

Caleb is WALKING. OK, well, he takes a few steps then either sits down or falls down. But he's doing it! Now to try to catch it on video tonight, maybe after Josh gets home and the 3 distractions running around the house are gone to bed...

Mega Trip Part Five- Lake Chelan

2010-08-18T13:07:00.000-07:00

Our last stop was Lake Chelan. We had so much fun, it was so nice and relaxing. A perfect way to end our busy trip. We played on the beach, rode SeaDoos, boated, and even did some tubing. We got tons of awesome pics (couldn't help but get good pics in such a beautiful place) but here are some favorites.

Where we stayed...

Mega Trip Part Four- Grand Coulee Dam

2010-08-18T12:48:00.001-07:00

On our way from Yellowstone to lake Chelan, we stopped for a few hours at the Grand Coulee Dam. Here's a view from the top. You can't drive up there anymore, but the tour will take you there in big vans.

Mega Trip Part Three- Yellowstone

2010-08-18T12:26:00.001-07:00

Mega Trip Part Two- Wedding

2010-08-18T12:08:00.000-07:00

So the main reason for our trip was my sister Shelley's wedding in the Logan, UT temple. Here are some fun wedding pics from that day.

Mega Trip Part One

2010-08-18T11:55:00.000-07:00

It's so nice to have long term friends. Friends that even though it's been a few years since we saw each other, it's still just like old times when we finally manage to get together. These girls were my roommates in college for a couple years and we've kept contact ever since. OK, so one is my sister, that makes it easy to keep in touch :) We finally got together in Utah at a super fun park with all 14 kids! Now if only Lizzie could have been there as well, we'd have all been together.

Now that's a brood! Ten years ago we never would have pictured this collection of kids :)
Caleb and Caleb! I guess we all still think alike. Me, DeAnn, Lizzie, and Jen all had baby boys in 2009. And since we didn't ask each other about names, three of us chose the name Caleb! Go figure. Jen was last, after we had discovered the name repetition, and we joked that she should use the name as well. She was smart and didn't. Three Caleb's is probably enough.

Things you can say to a kid, but not to an adult...

2010-08-14T18:35:00.000-07:00

There are some things that we can say to our kids, but would never ever EVER say to a grown up.

Case in point. In a public bathroom, there was a lady in the stall next to one of the kids. And this nameless child totally plowed through the line of what you can ask an adult, and said, " Are you pooping?" under the wall. At this point, I figured I had two choices. I could be mortified, or I could laugh. Thankfully, I just decided to laugh. Not worth worrying about. The lady that was in the stall apparently didn't choose the same, she emerged a few moments later.... mortified, lol.

Are we there yet?

2010-07-30T16:43:00.001-07:00

you know he's thinking it... (and yes, he's wearing crackers on his face. Trying to keep him happy over a thousand miles is hard in the car)

Slugs = Uber-gross

2010-07-11T21:07:00.001-07:00

Have you ever left home for the weekend and found something super gross when you came home? We did this weekend. We went to Redmond to play for Derby days ( Lots of fun!) and got home really late last night. It had been hot all weekend, so it was toasty in the house. We were opening all the windows and the back door, when I saw there were a bunch of huge slugs on the back deck. I called Josh over to check out the giant slugs, when we looked at the side of the house and saw this. eeeeeeeeeewwwwwww!

Ick. That would be two slugs intertwined around each other, hanging from what looks like a giant loogey. After watching for a couple minutes, the clearish white things emerged that you can see in the pictures, and they were moving around each other too. Weird! So we started wondering if they were mating? So Josh watched the slugs, while I got online and found a youtube video that confirmed that they were definitely slugs getting frisky. Gross!
Here's a close up of the blobs mixing (turns out slugs are neither male nor female....so they just refer to them both as male parts mixing and fertilizing each other.) Another reason slugs are gross...
And here they are "flowered out" just before finishing up.

So we let them finish their "business" and then promptly sprinkled Slug Death around the deck, and sprinkled (ok, dumped) salt on their frisky bodies. No baby slugs on my watch....

Slugs have reached a whole new level of gross in my book!

For Uncle Dub....

2010-05-27T14:16:00.000-07:00

saw your pic of wrestling with the tiller... and we think we rented the exact same tiller last week! Here's Josh using ours :)

Look how easy it was... he can even use it while drinking his lemonade :)

OK, reality is, I don't have any pics of the beast trying to rip his arms off and run by itself into the neighbor's yard... I was convinced I'd be taking him to the hospital at some point during his first pass across the garden...

Hello out there?

2010-05-17T19:04:00.001-07:00

sorry about posting everything at once. I finally uploaded the camera and there was lots of fun stuff on it.

I came across this the other day when I came in from working in the yard. It's Joshy's Spiderman "suitcase" and it will zip completely shut. It was moving, with Joshy inside. He was calmly saying, "Hello? Hello? Girls? I'm all done playing in here!" So instead of rescuing him, I got the camera. And eventually let him out...

Caleb's first Hershey kiss :)

2010-05-17T18:57:00.001-07:00

I was making peanut butter blossoms the other night for Relief Society, and Caleb saw the kisses. How does he know they are food? I have no idea. He's never had them, he didn't see me eat one, but somehow he knew. And being obsessed with trying all things food, he wouldn't stop whining and reaching for them until I gave him one. So here goes...

Reaching for the kiss...

Into the mouth... obviously he's not sold yet...
Thinking... tasting.... (really, I mostly just love the expression on his face in this picture)
And he has now joined the ranks of chocolate lovers around the world.
And after eating a couple, he was drooling chocolate all over the place and making a grand mess. But he was a happy little guy!

Behold the fatness!

2010-05-17T18:51:00.000-07:00

No... not MY fatness, Caleb's :)

Here he is enjoying the sunshine in just his diaper. He's 7 months old now, time flies!

He has the best rolls. And more rolls... and cellulite dimples, and wrinkles, and all things associated with baby fatness.

I think he's getting enough to eat, don't you?

The joys of Spring?

2010-05-03T14:45:00.000-07:00

I was in the shower a little bit ago after my run, with Caleb in a couple of inches of water splashing at my feet. I was rudely interrupted from my almost kid free bliss by the bathroom door opening, and a little voice saying, "Mom, can I get in the shower?" Of course, my answer is, "No. Go back out." A couple minutes later another monster came in. "Mom, I need a shower." "No, get out." is my reply. A couple minutes later they are BOTH in the bathroom, "Mom, we need a shower." "Wait for me to finish mine." I reply. But they stay in the bathroom. "Why aren't you going out?" "Because Daddy says we have to have a shower."

"Why?"

"Because we're muddy."

Now I poke my head out to see.... and this is what I found.

I win

2010-04-25T17:18:00.000-07:00

I finally did it, I won the toilet paper war!

For months I have been battling with the kids on their wasting toilet paper. Seriously, some days they would go through TWO rolls. But on a good day we'd still go through an entire roll. Ridiculous. I always buy those big rolls, so it was a lot of toilet paper! I'd find wads of it that I was afraid to flush down the toilet for fear it would clog.... I'd find the roll completely unrolled in a pile. All in all, the kids were using too much tp.

Now I'm a huge fan of the nice cushy papers, so I always buy the nice ones. But going through that much of it was driving me nuts. Buying a huge pack every couple weeks? The last thing our budget needs is to have a toilet paper allotment having to be added in. Crazy. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that they wipe and want them to keep doing it. They just don't need to use a yard per bathroom visit.

One day Josh suggested getting the nasty crispy paper. Its cheap, and maybe the kids wouldn't like it as much and keep using excessive amounts. Isabel refers to it as the kind they have in Target (in the bathrooms, lol). Pretty much like using tissue paper, and not the Kleenex kind. I didn't want to get that stuff (yuck!) but I did finally break down and get a big pack of Scotts. Not the one that's supposedly soft, but the regular stuff. It's not so nice, but the kids have gone 4 days on one roll! Score!

Rebecca calls it the itchy paper... Isabel says it's hard....Josh, I just hope is still wiping.

At any rate... I WIN! (though I'm considering hiding a few rolls of Cottonelle that only Josh and I know the whereabouts of for us, hehe)

April Fool's Day Dinner

2010-04-01T19:01:00.000-07:00

We had fun with dinner tonight....

First we told the kids that we were having cake for dinner and spaghetti with meatballs for dessert. They were thrilled! WooHoo! Dessert first!

It even had nice pink frosting! But.... as it turned out, the "cake" was really shepherd's pie with pink mashed potatoes on top.
Apparently shepherd's pie isn't as appetizing as cake for dinner....
But for dessert we had "spaghetti and meatballs" (cake with icing spaghetti and strawberry sauce, whopper meatballs) Yummy! So the spaghetti made up for the cake prank :)

Becca's Evil Faces

2010-03-27T16:45:00.001-07:00

Tulips!!!

2010-03-23T00:09:00.000-07:00

That's right, the flowers are up really early this year! We went for a drive through the valley today, and found that the daffodils are still in bloom, and there are lots of tulips on the verge of blooming. We found a couple fields bloomed, and a lot of the flowers in downtown are also in full bloom.

Scrum fell in the mud...

So did Becca. She was more upset about Scrum than her own wet clothes, go figure.

Not sleepy...

2010-03-11T14:40:00.001-08:00

Our early spring

2010-03-03T22:37:00.000-08:00

SIXTY DEGREES! Makes me wonder what our summer will be like this year...

Spring has sprung!

2010-02-28T13:55:00.000-08:00

On the way home from Anacortes yesteday, we passed some of the daffodil fields. And to my surprise, they were already in bloom! So after church today, we went for a drive through the valley. It was a gorgeous 56 degrees and sunny. We found quite a few daffodil fields in full bloom already! Gorgeous!

Bookmarkung!

2010-02-24T09:58:00.000-08:00

http://sumossweetstuff.blogspot.com/2010/02/mouth-watering-wednesday-cookie-dough.html

Hehe...now I won't forget to try this over the weekend. Doesn't it look yummy?

Gigglin'

2010-02-21T20:19:00.001-08:00

Rascally boy...

2010-02-21T19:29:00.000-08:00

Yep. That's exactly what you think it is. And to make it worse, that's the HALL, and we had guests over when he did it. Little stinker.....

We are evil parents

2010-02-20T14:48:00.000-08:00

Joshy has asked me for this juice at least twice a day for the last 4 days. So we finally caved....

Part one...

Part 2

Most beautiful baby...

2010-02-04T09:54:00.000-08:00

...on the planet. So I'm biased! But do you disagree???

Captain Underpants Strikes Again!

2010-02-01T17:28:00.001-08:00

to the rescue??

2 year olds give me a headache...

2010-01-29T15:50:00.000-08:00

Conversation with a super cranky Joshy this morning:

Josh: I need some doos (ie juice)

Me: ok, here you go

Josh: I want the giraffe cup

me: I already put it in the blue cup, I'm not dirtying another cup

Josh: I don't want doos *pushes cup away*

me: fine, I'll drink it, ok?

Josh: drink it Mommy

**drinking Joshy's juice**

Josh: ** crying** Mommy drank my doos!

Nose Cannon

2010-01-24T18:13:00.003-08:00

I guess it's about time the kids figured it out, noses are great for shooting things out of.

We found gingerbread decorating kits at Michael's for a dollar. Yep, a DOLLAR! So we got a couple and had fun decorating them, and especially eating them. But Becca and Joshy discovered that these little round candies were a perfect size for shooting out of Joshy's nose. He got a green one stuck (which required a little help from Mommy to get out) and it left him with green boogers for a couple days. So that explains the green streak... why there is frosting in the other nostril? Well... you know....

2010-01-20T21:50:00.000-08:00

Words I never thought I'd say... I use cloth diapers!

Seriously, they have come a LOOOOONG way since diaper pins and plastic pants. Look how cute these are? I'm totally loving the bright colored ones, they are super fun. And the laundry part? Not that bad! And knowing that I don't have to buy a box of diapers at least once a month ain't bad either :)

And this site is doing giveaways, hope I win some more cute stuff!

www.sewcraftybaby.com

3 months

2010-01-14T14:02:00.001-08:00

Can you believe it? I'm three months old already!

My toes are still cute, just bigger.

My hair has changed a lot... remember that full head of hair I used to have? I have replaced it with a mohawk...

and a mullet!

No more stick legs for me.

But I have kept my bright eyes and silly facial expressions.

I love Little Miss Sunshine and her friends, they are my girlfriends. We hang out every day.

Get this! I wear cloth diapers now. But no pins and plastic pants for me... I get cool Fuzzi Bunz with bright colors.

Aren't I just so cute?

Party like it's 1999!

2010-01-01T00:15:00.000-08:00

That song always pops into my head for New Years. But maybe I don't want to party like it's 1999? That year I graduated from college, moved home, then back to Provo where my friends and life were. I thought my life was full then, but really had no idea what a full life was really like. So reflecting on what I have now that I didn't then comes up with a huge list. I didn't have my little family of me, Josh and four busy kids. We didn't have this home, even just last year. And those things are way more important to me now than any of the things that I thought were important back then. I didn't have drawings on my fridge made by my kids (but I didn't have drawings on my walls either) I didn't get little love notes every day. I was having fun and partying in 1999, but there was a lot that I didn't even realize was missing in my life.

So as I sit here just after midnight listening to the neighbors lighting off their illegal fireworks and the neighbor kids banging pots and pans with spoons (which makes me laugh because my mother in law does that still, even though her kids won't do it with her anymore) I think I'd rather party like it's 2009, or rather 2010. We'll stick with our quiet party of watching movies with the kids, drinking Martinelli's out of plastic cups, and then sending the kids right to bed. Happy New Years everybody! Party like it's 2010 :)

2009-12-22T22:48:00.000-08:00

Found this gem parked at Bellevue square last night... do you think there will be any needles left after driving through the parking garage with their tree hitting every structure beam?

Cutie Patootie

2009-12-19T22:11:00.000-08:00

Finally caught his grin on the camera :)

Santa's out to get you!

2009-12-12T22:06:00.001-08:00

Baby Blessing

2009-11-18T22:35:00.001-08:00

This past weekend was really a fun and full one for us. We blessed baby Caleb, so we had family come visit, and had some fun with them on Saturday. My parents and youngest sister came up to share this special time with us, and we all went to Deception pass together. Here's the awesome bridge. We walked across that and it was WINDY! But the water below was a gorgeous teal blue.

Here's Isabel with Aunt Naomi, I managed to get one picture of her, proving she was actuallly here :)

Check out Dad's stylin' hat. Do you think this fashion could catch on?

Josh and his little boy...his screaming little boy. Caleb was just not having any of this picture taking... he just wanted to snuggle with mommy.

Banished for fighting... and the worst part? Forced to sit together. Oh, the horror!

Since Josh's birthday was just a couple days before, we had his birthday cake late when all the family was here. And a mighty cool cake it was. Too bad we didn't get any pictures of all of us with blue teeth.

Joshy had to be restrained, he kept blowing out the candles.

And after a very full day, here's Joshy about ten minutes after everybody had left... yep, naked and sleeping on the couch upright.

It was a long day, but it was so nice to have family with us to celebrate Baby Caleb's blessing. It was great to see everybody and we're grateful for those who traveled to spend it with us.

One month birthday!

2009-11-09T20:30:00.000-08:00

And look what he can do!

So much for tummy time...

Halloween pics!

2009-11-02T18:09:00.000-08:00

Joshy sharing his candy corn

Isabel as the pretty witch

Becca as Lilo, and Joshy is the perfect Stitch

2009-10-26T18:53:00.001-07:00

He's a boy!

OK, the public is retarded. I can't tell you how many times this past two weeks that I've had some variation of this conversation. Now, keep in mind that 90% of the time Caleb is decked out in some kind of blue outfit, going to town on a blue binky, and wrapped in a blue blanket.

Jane Q. Public: What's your little girl's name?

Me: HIS name is Caleb

Jane: Oh, she's adorable!

Me: **groan** Thanks.

Silly baby faces!

2009-10-17T15:06:00.001-07:00

This boy can pull some pretty funny faces. Here is a few minutes worth for ya!

1 week old

2009-10-17T14:54:00.001-07:00

Look at the difference in their head sizes!

He's finally here!

2009-10-11T21:33:00.001-07:00

And it's about time! We had a scheduled induction for Friday morning to finally have a baby. it took about 6 hours just to get me into labor but once the pitocin was able to do it's job, Baby Caleb was here about 4 hours later. He weighed 9 lbs 1 oz (aren't I glad we didn't just wait for him to get here and keep growing!) and was 21" long. He has tons of dark hair, with two cowlicks in the back that give him a cute little built in mohawk.

Not long after the delivery I got a raging headache, and it ended up being a "spinal headache." Now when you hear about the side effects of an epidural, one is a "headache". I'm convinced that the term is a super duper understatement. It should be retitled a "just shoot me now or my head will explode" headache. I literally had to be laying flat at all times or it was just so intense that I couldn't even keep my eyes open. So on Saturday they had to call the anisthesiologist back in and they had to do a blood patch to fix a little hole made in one of the membranes around my spinal cord during the epidural. Not a fun procedure, especially knowing that's it's not guaranteed to work, or even last long enough to keep the headache away until the hole heals itself (can be up to 10 days!) It's essentially another epidural, with a blood draw, that they then inject directly into my spine. But at least for now it has worked! It's not a perfect fix, but probably 80% of the headache is gone. Now it's just like having a lingering headache that would be more normal. It's just not touchable by any medication, so taking some tylenol won't fix it. But I can tolerate that, especially remembering what it was like yesterday. Now I just have a really sore back instead. But that seems to be getting better gradually.

So now here are pics of the baby, since I know that's what you all wanted to see anyways!

Trying not to let on that my head is about to blow...

Hanging out with daddy

Now I'm not sure what he was trying to do, but Joshy is pulling Caleb's ears outward to check them out! Josh is so incredibly fascinated by his new little brother, we'll have to be super dilligent in watching what he does to the baby

We'll get some more pics taken soon that are nicer and not in the hospital :) He's a cutie, and we're grateful that he's a super mellow little boy so far. He hardly makes a sound, and is content to just snuggle with mom or dad most of the time.

Isabel's fun run

2009-09-13T12:44:00.000-07:00

Josh signed up for his annual alumni run for Redmond High School. And just for fun, Isabel got signed up too. The intention was for her to run with Grandma on a shortened version of the course, and just having a mile or so of a fun run instead of doing the whole 5K.

So the race starts, and off they go! We're waiting at the first turn that they run past the crowd.... and here goes Josh!

And here goes Isabel! Yay Isabel! But wait.... where's Grandma?? At this point she's supposed to be taking a different route than the rest of the runners that will cut off almost 2 miles of the course. But she's following the other runners, not Grandma. Because.... she's completely left Grandma in the dust! So Isabel runs by, and quite a bit later, so does Grandma.

At the next point when the runners go past the crowd, we set up a little finish line for Isabel. Yay Isabel! She's gone almost 2 miles instead of almost one. And she doesn't even look winded or tired. Most impressively, she is ahead of other runners from the high school cross country team! Wow! Way to go Isabel! Now we need to watch for Grandma.

Here she comes! Grandma has ALSO run almost two miles! Way to go Grandma! I know at this point I would have never made it the first mile, let alone two. Grandma earns a cookie!

And here are all of our runners for the alumni race. Way to go! Next year Isabel gets to try the full race, since she did most of it anyways and she sure looked like she could have finished without any trouble. I think Grandma will take the year off and just play cheerleader on the sidelines :)

Our bounteous harvest

2009-09-06T18:36:00.000-07:00

So we've been picking things from our garden and eating them for weeks now, but today Josh went out and came back with a lot of veggies. So for dinner tonight we had a garden dinner, where everything we ate we grew. Except for the milk... and we don't plan on ever getting a cow.

We had corn on the cob, carrots, cucumbers, beets, and tomatoes. And once we manage to get hungry again, there's a bowl of raspberries we can munch on.

And there's more to pick tomorrow! Anybody hungry?

How not to potty train

2009-09-02T17:22:00.001-07:00

So joshy has been learning about how to use the toilet this week. So far so good! He's doing better than I had expected. BUT... he decided to try without his little seat once and this was the result. He discovered that it's a fun game to dip your bum in the water and splash!

Buzzing noises...

2009-08-23T13:18:00.000-07:00

So it seems that this year has been particularly bad for bees, wasps, hornets, etc up here. Lucky us! The other day Josh was mowing the lawn and was swarmed with them by our juniper, so in closer looking he found there was a nest in the ground beneath it. We sprayed two whole cans of hive killer into it, and the next day he dug it out. Here's what he found!

Hornets, lots and lots of them. Now for somebody who was so severely allergic to stings as a kid, Josh has no fear. He split the hive open and messed with it just because he was curious. You couldn't have gotten me to touch it with a stick, lol. At least it's been found and destroyed, I'm happy with that!

Mt St Helens pics

2009-08-18T12:40:00.001-07:00

We went to Mount St Helens for the week last week and here are some fun pics from it! So they aren't much of the mountain, but we've got tons of those kinds of pics from previous years.

June Lake hike. Two pretty little waterfalls into the same lake. Cool!
One of the only pics with all of us in it, lol

part of the blown down forest. Just a cool old creepy tree
We did the sand ladder at Windy Ridge this year. I thought I was gonna die, but everybody else did great! It was a LOT of stair steps, though.
More blown down forest
Happy Josh...
Goofy Josh...
And whacky Josh
It was pretty overcast the whole time we were there, but at least we got to see it a little bit! And up at windy ridge we got a great view into the crater in a cloud break.

I'm not tired, Mom

2009-07-30T12:38:00.001-07:00

Oh, really?

ER follow up....

2009-07-22T09:30:00.000-07:00

boys will be boys, right?

Well, at least Joshy is definitely a boy. So yesterday he decided that he didn't like having the glue on his head and instead of napping, he meticulously picked it all off. So we landed ourselves back in the ER, this time they had to stitch it so that he couldn't pick it off. So instead of glue, he now has stitches, and scarring will be worse since he popped it open. Oh well, at least he's a boy and probably won't care much!

Our very first ER trip!

2009-07-20T19:44:00.000-07:00

Neither of the girls has given us cause to go there... yet. But tonight Joshy did!

Since he was following Isabel's wonderful example of jumping on furniture and from one piece of furniture to another, he missed. And on his way down in the little space between a table and the arm of the chair, he whacked his eyebrow on the edge of the table. When he just stopped and did a big breath cry (a LONG breath) I knew it wasn't going to be pretty. So I went and got him, and within seconds his face was covered in tear filled blood. So we tried to call daddy, who was at work and not answering his phone (probably in a meeting or something) and ran out the door to the ER. They thought that it would need stitches, but once the doctor cleaned him all up and got a better look, he said that he was pretty sure that they could just glue it back together instead. Helps that it was on his eyebrow, where it's easier to pinch the skin together. So that's what they did. It took me, a male nurse, and the doctor to hold him down while he was all wrapped up as a burrito! He's a strong little guy. But they did get him stuck shut, and then he got a popsicle.

So here's what he looks like now! It looks a whole lot better than it did a few hours ago.

And his new hospital bracelet (he won't let me take it off, he likes it!)

Wisdom of the panda...

2009-07-14T08:53:00.001-07:00

Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift, that's why they call it the present.

Thank you kung fu panda... ok, so it's the old turtle, not the panda, but whatever :) great quote anyways.

Things we love about Mt Vernon!

2009-07-13T09:23:00.001-07:00

We are loving our new town, it's so drastically different than Everett. There were good things about Everett too, but those had mostly to do with our friends there, not so much the city.

1. People garden up here! And they take care of their yards! Most everybody has mowed lawns, usually even trimmed and with flower beds. So now we're trying to keep up and not be the ugly house in the neighborhood. So far Josh is doing great at it, but I"m having a harder time reaching the ground to pull weeds and stuff. That day will come later for me.

2. No hoity toity people up here, everybody is very down to earth. Everywhere we've lived previously has had a lot of people who worked for either Microsoft, Boeing, or other large corporations that have made some people around us very rich. So there were always large economical desparities. Up here it seems everybody is on the same playing field. Everybody is working class up here. We like that, since that's where we fit in too. There's nobody in our ward that stands out as the "rich family" and things like that. It's great! We fit right in!

3. Tulips! Need I say more? Well... it would be nice if they were all year long, but I'm happy to have them in the spring at least. The tulip festival is a blast and we've gone every year. So now it's even easier to go! We can go in the morning, come home for lunch, and then go back out if we want to! Who can resist a view like this???

4. We could afford a house up here, or more importantly, we could afford a YARD up here. We got almost a quarter acre for our money, which is so much more than we could have gotten anywhere else. We're loving the yard, and the kids are especially. It's so nice to be able to just send them outside when I need a break. And once our fruit trees are mature, we'll be living large with all the fruit. But for the next few years, we'll be happy with just the apples and raspberries :)

5. On occasion, our sunday school lessons will involve stories about cows! OK, so that NEVER happened in Everett. Made me want to laugh during class, though. It's fun to be around farmers again, haven't had that since I was a little kid.

6. Mount Vernon is in the GORGEOUS Skagit valley. It's absolutely beautiful up here. We have a park that's on a little "mountain" (maybe more of a very large hill, unless you live back east, then it counts as a mountain) and it's full of trails and amazing views. You can see Puget Sound, the San Juan Islands, the whole valley (which much look amazing during tulip season) the cascade mountains and a great view of Mt. Baker.
And here's the sunset on the Skagit River that we sat and watched on the 4th waiting for fireworks
We live in a beautiful place!

7. We live less than a mile from the hospital! yay! Now that we'll have two boys, we might get some good use out of it.

8. Fireworks are LEGAL up here for the 4th! OK, so it's supposed to be just the regular stuff, not the things that fly up in the air and then explode... but we lit up our little things without feeling bad at all! And we enjoyed the fantastic shows that our neighbors put on with all their illegal fireworks. They were the BIG ones. If it hadn't been so late, I would have just laid out in the back yard on a lawn chair and watched the sky. There were blasts of color coming from every direction. It was illegal, but pretty.

9. We're a lot closer to the mountains than we are to big cities! We're about a 2 minute drive to rolling countryside and forest. And quite close to Mt. Baker. so if it blows, we're in trouble, but we're counting on it not blowing it's top anytime soon.

10. The schools! In Everett they were still working on letters and struggling through them. We moved up here and they expected Isabel to be already reading. Instead of learning letters, she was having spelling tests. She is way less bored now, since she could read before she started kindergarten. Now she's on par with the rest of the kids and she has an actual challenge. She maybe doesn't think of that as a plus, but I do!

11. And did we mention it's far away from seattle? There's never any traffic (except for a couple weeks in April when the festival is going, lol)

So if you ever want to come see our beautiful valley, come visit! We'll BBQ in our big back yard! :)

classical chicken

2009-07-12T20:42:00.001-07:00

Happy belated 4th!

2009-07-06T09:23:00.000-07:00

Lost and Found in Primary

2009-06-22T12:18:00.000-07:00

We had quite the adventure yesterday, and since it's in the past, it's ok to laugh about it now. It definitely wasn't ok yesterday, lol.

After church, Josh and I had temple recommend interviews. So while I was waiting for my turn, Josh went down to the library to check out the stash of old manuals they were getting rid of. Isabel and Becca went down to the bathroom, which was right by daddy. When Isabel came back without Rebecca, I asked where she was. "She's with Daddy" I was content with that answer. After my interview, I came out and Josh was in the foyer with just Joshy, no Becca. I come to find out that he never had Rebecca! Isabel had left her in the bathroom by herself. So while Josh went in for his interview, Isabel and I start to scour the building looking for Becca. After two rounds of the building inside, I took two frantic walks around the outside. No sign of her anywhere! I was getting really frantic. Since this is a new ward to us, and it was the other ward in session at that point anyways, nobody would see her and know who she belonged to.

Once Josh came out, I took the car and drove down every street around the building to see if she had walked off thinking she had been left or something. Meanwhile, Josh is running around the building looking for her. Thank heavens he found her! As it turns out, she wanted to go back to primary. so she had walked into the primary room, the other ward's primary was just starting, and sat on the Sunbeam row! They asked if she was a visitor, and she said yes. They sang her a song, she had apparently answered questions in sharing time, and had gone to class afterwards! So where Josh finally found her was in a classroom with the other ward's sunbeam class.

After she saw how frantic I was, she decided that she was scared too, but she was really fine the whole time, just having fun in Primary. After we got home, she told me, "Mom, I should have told you I wanted to go to Primary." No kidding...

Ahhhh.... cute kids.... but rascals

2009-06-06T11:00:00.000-07:00

We decided that we want to put big pictures of each of our kids on our livingroom wall instead of the collage of small pics that I had done up a year ago in the old house. I think it's mostly because I had them all printed in black and white (which I loved and Josh hated) We didn't really want to go get professional ones done, but have some from our own back yard which is our favorite place in the whole world right now. So I took some pics and I'm trying to decide if I like them enough to use these or to take more another day and try again.

Joshy is just the little picture man, camera comes out and he's grinning ear to ear saying "Cheeth" Becca will smile but doesn't hold still (notice the strange postures) and it's hard to get her to smile and still be able to see her eyes. And I wish Isabel wasn't wearing black, so I think that one will definitely be retaken.

Summer has finally arrived!

2009-05-29T17:22:00.000-07:00

We don't know what happened to spring, it seems we went from super wet winter weather straight into our steamy 80 degrees this past week. Yes, that's warm for us, lol.... we like our mild weather. So we've been doing all kinds of summer type stuff trying to keep cool while we work on our new yard. We've been outside pretty much as much as possible lately.

We got a picnic table and it has become Joshy's job to help move it.

We've had lots of watermelon and popsicles (doesn't help that I crave watermelon non-stop)

And we got the kids one of those inflatable pools to play in. And I've been wading in it too trying to keep my feet cool and less puffy.

I hope everybody else is keeping cool and having fun with the start of summer!

2009-05-17T16:51:00.000-07:00

So Josh decided to learn to blog today, and posted a whole bunch of pictures for you! Aren't you lucky. Now I'm going back through to tell you what you're seeing :)

First, the pic of Joshy is from last summer's trip to Hell's Canyon. He's still that cute :)

Then he posted a mountain of pictures of our fantastic yard. Now that we've mowed it, it looks a whole lot nicer than the long grass that we moved into. The kids are loving it, and even though it's a lot of work, Josh and I are enjoying that we have a yard of our own to take care of, because it's OURS!

Then he posted some pictures of our backyard BBQ last night, including a fantastic "squidgy" face that I made for his sake only, but he decided to share.

Next, we had a bit of a hair adventure this week. Isabel got up yesterday and got something sticky in her hair. She won't say what, and pretends she doesn't know, but I think she snitched gumdrops and ate them in bed, falling asleep in the sticky goo. Instead of asking for somebody to help clean it out, which would incriminate her, she CUT IT OFF! So we got to go to the salon and get haircuts at the same time yesterday. So the sideways pic of Isabel is in the salon before her hair got chopped off, if you look close you can see the evidence about chin length on her right side.

Thankfully they were able to layer it to try to blend the hack job into the rest of her hair so that they didn't have to give her a chin bob. She just has a big swoosh of hair that looks like it was supposed to be jaw length. They did a nice job. Here's what she looks like now:

And the last pictures are what happens when you get in dad's garage :) That's Daddy's space, and little kids shouldn't get in it, lol.

2009-05-17T15:43:00.000-07:00

Busy Busy Busy!

2009-05-10T18:37:00.000-07:00

April and the beginning of May have been the craziest times ever! We have tons of pics that I could post, but that would just take too long to load up :)

First there was Easter, and Steve, Katie and Raleigh came up to visit. We got to play at the zoo, go to the Tulip Festival and all kinds of fun things. It was fun to get to spend some time with them even though it pretty much just rained a lot of the time. Welcome to Seattle, huh?

After they left, it was time for Bubba's farewell to head to his mission in Jamaica. So all of the Tracy clan was up for a visit. We got to visit with lots of family from far away, which was really nice. So Bubba's in the MTC now which just seems unreal. I remember the first time I ever saw him, and he was at a Jr High wrestling match. This scrawny little kid wearing a wrestling suit, and I couldn't figure out why they called this little guy Bubba, lol. Then I saw his baby pictures and understood better :)

And while we were doing all of this visiting with family members, we were anxiously awaiting the closing of our new home in Mt. Vernon. It closed WAY late, so we were getting itchy to move. Not to mention it is a pain living around boxes. So it finally closed just before the end of the month and we finally got to start moving in. The kids have been loving the huge back yard and space to run. Josh and I are really enjoying our freedom and lack of downstairs neighbors. We're getting close to having our boxes unpacked, one of these days the garage will be emptied out and we can use it for a car instead of a storage unit.

Josh made a whole bunch of videos of the house this morning for everybody to see, so I'm posting some of them here :) Here's the girls' room. Pardon the mess, we haven't organized anything in there yet, so they just throw it all on the floor. I don't suppose that will change even after everything has a home.

And here's Joshy's room (and it will be the baby's room come October as well) The wall bed is awesome, it was a total bonus, we thought it was a weird closet when we first visited the house. So if anybody wants to come visit, we have a hide a bed (not so comfy) and a wall bed (quite comfy) if you don't mind sharing a room with Joshy :) This room will be painted blue in the near future.
And here's the street view. We haven't figured out what to do with the missing door area, we'll probably plant something like a lilac that will fill the space there.

We'll post more of the house later :)

We've learned lots of things about the previous owner by moving into this house.
1) she hated to clean. She probably just straightened things up but never did a real clean. The paint was so dirty that when we went to wash it up to paint the livingroom, it was literally stained. We just had to pray that the primer did it's job well. And it did, so it looks lots better with a new coat of paint.

2) She liked to change her window coverings, but didn't like taking out old brackets. As I took down all the old lady lace in each room, I discovered each window in the house had about 6 different window brackets in it. She would just put the new one a little higher than the old one to hide the ones that she wasn't using. 3) She was a very "make it work" kind of person. There are all kinds of oddities that when we run into them we wonder what they were doing and why they didn't just get the right thing. Like the blinds wired to the window in the girls room. Why not just buy a bracket? It probably even came with the blind, lol. Strange things :)

4) We think she was worried that somebody would come steal her during the night. This house has about 15 exterior lights, around all sides of the house. Every window has a lock AND a bar.

But we were very grateful that she was willing to sell her home of 50 years to us for the price we offered, as it made it possible for us to own our first home and have a place for our kids to play. Newer houses just don't have a yard like this one does. So we will just deal with the strange things that come with an old house and slowly update everything to our liking. And we'll enjoy having a yard that we couldn't have had otherwise. We have a lot to be thankful for right now :)

Oh! And Becca turned 4 too :) So we had her party on Saturday, and the sunshine even came out. So we had a little BBQ of hamburgers and hot dogs. I made her an Ariel cake, but the face turned out really scary, so I called it her "Scariel" cake. She didnt' seem to mind, though. So Happy Birthday to Rebecca :)

I'm looking forward to a less busy rest of the month!

Joshy is TWO!

2009-04-07T17:03:00.000-07:00

His birthday is today, but we actually had his party on Sunday so that Grandma and Grandpa could come up too. He had a blast, and I have to say, we've never had a birthday party quite like it. Both of the girls have been very dainty with their cakes, but Joshy dug right in! He completely demolished it. We have some pretty great video, but it's way too long to upload to the blog. He had to have a quick bath before opening presents, he was way too messy to be allowed to roam free. So Happy birthday to Joshy, here are some of the fun pics!

The cake-

Testing it out-

Only a little bit messy, not bad!

And a LOT messy. He only got worse from here-

Presents!

He's a HUGE Wall-E fan

One of my favorite pics of all. He got a new trike, and didn't know which way was the front, haha

A cool custom shirt from Grandma and a whole set of fingerpuppets!

Ultrasound pics :)

2009-04-04T17:33:00.001-07:00

OK, so you can't see much, and the pics are crummy (we don't have a scanner) but just in case you were wondering, yes it's real! And yes, we posted on April Fools Day on purpose, lol.

A very tiny hand complete with fingers

And an alien pic

And a profile

Happy April everybody!

2009-04-01T09:19:00.000-07:00

So the weather hasn't figured out that it's April, it's trying to snow right now. Ugh.

Along with our big news of the house (still just sitting and waiting, no new news there yet) we have MORE big news! We will be adding to our family as well, with a new baby in October! Just another reason we needed to move somewhere bigger :) So Uncle Steve and Uncle Noah might be getting to share their birthdays with our new little one. We'll just have to wait and see!

Uncle Dub's newest fan

2009-03-26T10:48:00.000-07:00

Joshy always thinks that anybody we're talking to on the phone is Grandma. Well, quite often it is. So a few days ago, Josh was talking to Caleb on the phone, and Joshy wanted to talk to "Grandma". I told him it wasn't Grandma, but was Uncle Dub, and showed him the picture on the fridge. Ever since then, Josh walks around the house saying "Uncle Dub" and likes to point at the picture on the fridge.

He likes to look at the picture of Beckett's family too, but so far both Beckett and Ashley are just "uncle" Sorry, we're working on it. He has Megan and "baby" down, though. Madeline is a mouthful for him so far. So if you want Joshy to know you by your face, send us a picture and we'll stick it on the fridge!! :)

Chicks dig him

2009-03-19T10:47:00.000-07:00

Joshy's favorite jammies say so. Well, we like him at least! For as much trouble as this little boy causes, he makes up with entertainment. Seems like he's always making us laugh at something he is doing.

All thanks to the crashed economy....

2009-03-04T17:30:00.000-08:00

Wow! Momentous stuff going on here right now! Since the economy is SOOO bad, and the market is absolutely flooded with foreclosed homes, house prices are falling! Yay! That's great for us, not so great for those of you losing equity. So after 8 years of marriage, and three kids, we are finally in the process of buying our first home! It's up in Mt. Vernon, so a little ways away from everything but the tulips and Canada (if you're going to the Vancouver Olympics, we're on the way there!)

So the house is small, and kinda old, but it means we can afford it! And it gets us in the door to be able to have equity towards something bigger and better down the road. The big advantage this home has is the HUGE yard. Up here if you buy a newer house you get about three feet of land, all the way around the house. Whoopie... the kids can play marbles. But this house is on 1/4 acre, so there is tons of space for the kids to run around and drive each other nuts instead of me. There's tons of storage space too (garage, carport, and two other storage rooms behind the garage, kind of shed like)

Here are some pictures, they aren't great, but better than nothing!

The front

Part of the back yard

The rest of the back yard (and the old lady who lives there right now, lol)

The back porch. Anybody wanna BBQ?

So we're saying our prayers, and crossing our fingers and toes that nothing happens to make the deal fall through! It's passed inspection, and still needs to pass the appraiser. Then the financing has to all still work out as planned (they tell us that stuff is so fluid right now you never know what might change!) But we're hoping!

I feel Pretty! Oh so pretty!

2009-02-15T18:18:00.000-08:00

Mmmmmmmm.... yummy! Happy Valentine's Day everybody :)

Isabel's first school award!

2009-02-08T16:34:00.001-08:00

Isabel got an award on Friday for Positive Action, in the theme of of "Responsibility." We're not sure how.... but she did. She got to go to an assembly that was in the afternoon (so after school for her) and got a certificate and everything.
Here's Rebecca (and her matching kitty) waiting patiently...

And here is Isabel finally getting her award!

And this is in the hall, in front of the snowman that Isabel made :)

Becca needed to get in on the action

Is it Halloween already?

2009-01-18T13:58:00.001-08:00

The other day the kids decided to get into the dress up bin (still waiting on them to clean it back up) and got into their Halloween costumes. They had a blast running all over the house dressed as dogs, cats, caterpillars, and bees. It was too funny to watch them to worry about making them stop. Once they had chosen their favorite costume, I took their picture :) Isabel is a fantastic caterpillar, Becca is a ballerina bunny (pink bunny costume PLUS a pink tutu) and Josh loves to wear Scooby Doo.

The next morning the party continued. Only this time it was only Becca and Joshy, Isabel was gone to school. They played princess, and Joshy played right along! Here he is without his dress, but he couldn't leave behind the sparkly purse and pink heels!

One sleepy puppy....

Why we live on a hill....

2009-01-11T18:02:00.001-08:00

and not in a valley!

This happens EVERY year! Every spring when the snow starts to melt and the massive torrents of rain hit, the valleys all flood. And still people choose to live there! It's like living in a trailer park in Kansas, the tornado is going to have a target on your house.

So why do people choose to live in a flood plain in Washington when we have thousands of hills that won't flood? I don't get it. It's not like this is a new thing, it happens every year, but we always have to act surprised when it does and feel bad for the people who chose not to move after LAST YEAR'S flood.

Makes for some pretty cool pictures though, I took the kids on a drive around Snohomish "Lake" (usually it's a river) and it took us about 6 miles to reach the end of it. And that was just heading south. I have no idea how far north of the river the flood extended. These were taken about 24 hours after the river crested, it got almost to record heights this year! Maybe some of those effected will be ready to sell their property and move to higher ground. It seems it gets worse each year.... go live on a hill!

An extra Christmas Surprise :)

2009-01-04T13:36:00.000-08:00

After we finished opening presents and were busily trying to uncover the floor again, a friend of my parents walked past the house with a horse! The girls were of course very interested in the horse, particularly Isabel who has decided that is her favorite animal as of late. He graciously let each of the kids get on the horse and pose for a picture. They were thrilled at their horse ride :)

Did you notice Rebecca is all dressed up in her princess gear? I don't think she took off any of it for the rest of the day. she's wearing a red fur stole (backwards), big sparkly earrings, and a matching ring. Doesn't she pose so nicely as a little princess??

Josh on the other hand was not so excited. The horse was just a HUGE hairy creature to him, and he was sure he shouldn't be on it.

Because it will bug Grandma :)

2009-01-02T15:54:00.000-08:00

Joshy has the curliest blonde hair ever, and we let it grow out for a couple months through Christmas just because we knew both Grandma's would like it. But we prefer it short because it lays down flat and never looks messy. When his curls have grown out, it gets really fuzzy every time he sleeps or gets out the brush (he loves to brush his hair when I'm doing the girls' hair). He gets a little baby afro. So as soon as we managed to get home from our holiday travelling, we got out those clippers!

Here he is before the haircut...

So we're posting the after picture just because Grandma won't like it. She gives Josh a dirty look anytime he cuts his own hair really short, and then when he cuts Baby Josh's hair too.... wow, he gets the stink eye for a while :)

So Joshy has short hair again, and our little boy looks like a BOY again :) Sorry Grandma!

Walkin in a Winter Wonderland

2008-12-18T15:43:00.000-08:00

We've been having snow on and off since Saturday! Big deal for here, since we're all hills. So Isabel hasn't had school all week, and right now it's still snowing, and doesn't look like it will melt any time soon. Josh is driving back and forth from work with chains on (whoa!) so everything takes longer to do. We're avoiding driving at all. But all the snow makes for some fun play time. Here are some pics of our fun snow sculpting:
We built a fort, which is now even more sturdy thanks to another 3" of snow on top of it

And we built some snowmen (a whole lot bigger and better than Beckett's, lol)

We actually had a different pair of snowmen, but some rowdy teenagers decided to tackle them. Made us really mad, but we just built a new pair instead. I want to see them take these ones down without getting hurt, these ones are now ICE! It warmed up to about 35 degrees and then refroze, so all our creations are here for a while, even after the snow melts.

Merry Christmas Fun

2008-12-11T13:59:00.001-08:00

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Here comes Santa Claus :)

2008-12-07T15:12:00.001-08:00

I took the kids to see Santa Claus on Saturday and we had the discussion about how the real Santa is so busy getting everything ready for Christmas, so he sends his helpers out to talk to the kids and visit with them. They accepted that explanation easily! I was pleasantly surprised at how easy that was, considering Isabel wondered why there were so many Santas out there. But when we got done with visiting santa, she was convinced that this was NOT a helper, this was the REAL Santa. He had a real beard, and real white hair. So my kids saw the REAL Santa, and all the rest of you got his imitations, lol. Here are the cute pictures we took of them on his lap.

On a whole different topic, here are some funny pictures of when Isabel fell asleep in the car in a really awkward position. She was VERY asleep, never woke up for pictures or when we tried to get her to get up. She has her mouth open, and her teeth resting on the edge of the window ledge, holding the rest of her up.

View from outside the van. This is what everybody on the freeway saw, lol.

Happy Turkey Day and Seattle marathon

2008-11-30T18:25:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving to everybody! We had a very nice day. We went down to Tacoma to have a nice dinner with Grandma and Grandpa Tracy, Grandma and Grandpa T, Don and Jill, and Uncle Bubba. We had a very nice dinner and lots of fun chatting and visiting. We hope everybody else had a great day too.

On Saturday we went into downtown Seattle to the 1st ever 5k in conjunction with the Seattle marathon. The race was right on the waterfront, making for a fun morning. And the weather was nice too! What are the chances of that in Seattle during November?? It was chilly, but not raining, for which we were grateful. Josh ran his race and did very well. He got 26th overall, and 2nd in his division. He was mostly excited for the shirt. Instead of just a t-shirt, like most races, he actually got a really nice running shirt. WooHoo! That made it worth the entrance fee right there!

So here are some pics from the race:

Caught Red Handed!

2008-11-23T15:54:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we went to play at Grandma's house, and one of the things we did was make our gingerbread house. We'd never actually done this with the girls yet, so they were really excited and proud of our creation. I think it turned out pretty cute!

So this morning, as I am getting the kids ready to go to church, I see Joshy climbing up to get something... but I wasn't sure what. I figured out what he was getting into. Those little fingers were already pulling candy off the house!

And doesn't he look like he's pretty proud of himself doing it so quietly? This kid is sneaky!

Too bad we can't use the Santa Claus list to coax this one into behaving the way we want, it's working sometimes on the girls, though :)

Josh is old...

2008-11-16T17:07:00.000-08:00

and getting older by the minute! We had his birthday party on Sunday because it was also Isabel's primary presentation, so Grandma and Grandpa were already up here.
Isabel's part was, "The prophet is the prophet of God." Can you tell they wrote their own parts? That's total Isabel-eze.

So we all had a nice dinner and jello cake, with Martinelli's, yum! Here are some pictures from that night.

The girls made him their version of "Mopar Action" to go with his subscription.

And here he is with his fancy schmancy running watch.

Pre-Halloween fun

2008-10-28T09:21:00.000-07:00

We had a crazy weekend! On Friday was the Jackson Jamboree at Isabel's school. They had a little carnival, dancing, and food. Grandma and Grandpa came up to go with us. The girls had a lot of fun playing the games, while Joshy just enjoyed the little treats they won.

After the games we went down and ate pizza and Ice cream. Isabel was too embarrassed to dance with Grandma, but Joshy and Becca were boogy-in' on down with her. Grandpa even got in on it a little bit.

Saturday morning, we got up bright and early and went to Seward park for the Pumpkin Push 5k that Josh was racing in. He did quite well, we ran all over the park trying to see him at points in the race, but in doing so missed the finish. Oh well, we got some funny pictures in the middle.

How's this for the view from the starting line?

Here he is rounding a bend. Isabel saw him and said, "Mom, Dad's racing a pirate!" Another lady heard her and laughed, "And he's winning!"

He ended up about 30th overall, with some 1300 racers, so he did really well!

And here's where a bird got Becca, lol.

After that, we had a ward Halloween carnival for all the primary kids. They had games, cupcake walk, and all the usual stuff. After that there was trunk or treating. Here are the kids in their costumes.

Joshy wearing Scooby Doo:

Becca as Snow White:

And Isabel as a butterfly: