We love to decorate for Holidays!

Well Ben has been bugging us since Halloween to get the Christmas things out. So of course the minute we left Thanksgiving dinner Ben wanted to get the decorations out.

We have a little tree that we let the kids decorate and play with. Ben kept telling Katie it was his tree when he was a little boy. So we might have to buy one just for katie.

We got some new candy caine light's for along our walkway. Ben is so funny hand always has to add that he is such a "great helper" and trys to get in the action anyway he can.

This is a little disturbing....sorry!

I put Josh to work as much as I can. He even dusted the plant shelf while he put up my decorations....thats what hes holding near his bum bum in the previous picture.

So after Josh left for work that day Ben was asking if Christmas was tomarrow. I am thinking to myself this is going to be a long month. I told him that we still have alot of days before santa comes. So he informed me that i needed to make a Chistmas calender. I wasn't really in the mood to make such a project but how could i say no. I did'nt have many supplies so i convinced him to make the rings that you take off everyday! Man i should do this for every holiday so I don't have to hear about if its time yet everday. LOL

Then Ben wanted a star for his little tree. So i made him this cheesy one. If you know me I'm not the crafty women i would like to be. I hate cleaning up the mess. But I am grateful that Ben is so creative and loves to invent great ideas. He always tells me " Mom, I have a great idea". Oh,and poor Ben has pink eye so thats why his eyes look so red. Some lady at the store lookes at me and said " wow, he loks so tired". LOL

Too many projects!

We had a little fun and let them paint their names .

Here is Katie's cute outfit. She always wants to wear her Princess jamie's and sometimes that involes more than one pair. But anyways we kept the burgandy wall and painted the dark green.

Here is some pic's of the desk we are painting for Ben.

So we have a great shot of Josh's oufit......love it!

I have no idea what I am doing!

I am working so HARD!
That is the desk behind me in the clutter.

So we have several projects going on at our house. First we started cleaning out our garage so that Josh's dad could bring up the sailboat and to this day i still can't put my car back into the garage. So in theses pictures you can see the crazy clutter we need to go through! Second project is painting this cute desk that Josh's sister gave to us for Ben. And i have to add that we still haven't finished that yet. ( I am laughing at myself right now). I am working on painting some picute frames that are going to be in my front room with our family pictures that i am in the middle of painting. Finally we did finish painting our family room wich i love. It was a dark green and now its a light tan-cream. What a mess and a project. I forgot how much i don't like to paint. Josh and i stayed up several late night while the kids were sleeping to paint. That is the best way to do things arounf our house since we have such" great helpers "Ben would say. I am glad its done so I can start hanging things that i have in my closet waiting until we got it painted! I will have to post the final pictures when I am done.

The Past Life

Well here I am again...up late...darn school! I should have been smart and finished it long ago! I decided I should put some pictures of our past life up here. As many people know we were enlisted in the US Coast Guard before moving back to lovely Boise. For a little under 5 years we lived on the Oregon Coast. I was able to experience life on a boat for 1 year and 20 days...not that I was counting! Boat life is not exactly the greatest family life so I decided to join the Aviation field and am glad I did. The friends I made on the boat were awesome and the same goes for those in the Aviation community. Maybe someday we will meet again, maybe I will have the uniform on once again. Many people know that upon getting out I joined the Air Guard and love my weekend job....I am drawn to the military life and it gives me a little glimpse every drill weekend of what I love so much! Anyways....life in the military is fun and exciting and who can say that they had an office with a view like this!

Kelli came along with us on a family cruise when I was on the USCGC Orcas(WPB-1327)Carrying line....in my gas station uniform....

This is our first house....888sq ft. This is after we painted it...it was our little beach bungalow. We lived on up the street from the river and about 15mins from the beach. What a great starter home!

They grow up really fast!

Until next time,

Joshua

PS Here are some good quotes!

“Sometimes we let our thoughts of tomorrow take up too much of today. Daydreaming of the past and longing for the future may provide comfort but will not take the place of living in the present. This is the day of our opportunity, and we must grasp it.”

Thomas S. Monson

"There is no obstacle to great, no challenge too difficult, if we have faith."

Gordon B Hinckley

Halloween fun

So here is our start to Halloween Day. We waited until the day of Halloween to carve our pumkins. Ben could not wait any longer. Josh's and my schedule are opposite so it leaves very little together time as a family some days in this case most of this week but Ben was very paitent with us.

Katie of course had to throw in a tantrum. I think she was worried that Ben was the only one who got to carve by himself......

Ben did really great this year with getting all that gross stuff out. I just realized that I don't have any pictures of Josh on Halloween. It's usually the other way around, he cleaned out most of the pumkins....Thanks Josh!

Mmmmmmm Good!

Of course Josh got some cute pictures of Ben and most of his skeletons (aka Ha Ha). But he's starting to get a big collection it makes me a little nervous. How many kids collect skeletons?

Both the kids picked out the stencils for their pumpkins. Of course Katie picked a hard one so it did't turn out that great. Josh doesn't like the stencils he likes the plain old toothless faces.

Anyways we had a good Halloween! We had some friends over before we went out and had some potato soup. I made it all by myself it is a very easy recipe. And the kids made their own pizzas. Then we went around our neighborhood. Some of the kids were afraid of our house because we have a loud witch that makes a laughing/howling sound, so we had to shut it off. Katie was a little spooked as we started out because a Grim Reaper was following us around while making our first stops. So we had to ask the kid to show her his face to show it was a person, poor girl! But she does that even if kids are playing around her with any costume with a mask. We were at a friends house and all the kids were dressed up playing spiderman, batman, Turtle and she got freaked everytime they got near her....to funny.