"Treehouse" and a yellow duck

Carly got creative and decided to make a "tree house" They've made a "tree house" pretty much every day this week. It keeps them occupied and they actually somewhat play together (which is always a bonus!)

Letter D this week. This is her yellow Duck.

my new sickness...oops...I mean Hobby.

So...you know when you play the game Tetris so much that eventually you start dreaming of the little Tetris blocks? (Okay, so maybe that is just me!)
Anyway....it's to the point now to where I am dreaming of flowers and bows. I think I need help! :) The sad part is.... (I know, could it get any more sad than me dreaming of flowers?!?) this is not even all of them. Some of these little babies have twins!

another week....

We really didn't do much this week. I just stayed home with the kids and did the usually runs to wal-mart or target or the grocery store.

Sambo found Carly's pink cowgirl hat. I think maybe we need to get a few more boy things around this house.
This week Carly and I worked on the letter C. This was her cloud picture that she made.

One year later.....

Well, early (early) this morning exactly a year ago we were listening to winds howling, trees crashing and rain pouring outside the walls of our house. I was laying in bed texting back and forth to my mom who was safe in Utah. Looking back I've realized I've forgotten a lot of details about that night and the weeks to follow (two weeks without power!) But I haven't forgotten to be grateful for the little things. At least I hope I haven't. Having food in my cupboards and foods in the grocery store, gas in the gas stations and most importantly electricity. I'm so glad that we haven't had the same issues this Hurricane season (knock on wood) but I am glad that I did experience at least one natural disaster. As weird as that may sound!

(Meet Hurricane Ike)

(looking out our front door)

(Our backyard)

What we've been up to...

So, this week has been a weird one. One minute I was happy, relaxed and the next I would be freaking out at Carly or Sam for something! This could be a "ladies days" problem (hilarious episode from Everybody Loves Raymond BTW) At times all I wanted to do was close myself in my room and be selfish and do something that I wanted to do. I'm sure most of us get those days. (not so much fun for the kids I'm sure) Today has been a better day, I tried to start off with a positive attitude and so far it's been going smooth!
Here is my first quilt that I made. It's very small. I didn't want to do a big one for my first one. I am really proud at how it turned out. Thanks to my friend Tasha ,who got me started, and the world of You Tube I finally finished it last night.

Here is one of the clips I made for Carly. I saw some on Etsy and thought I'd try it out. I am pleased at how well they turned out. She was excited to wear her "new bows"

This week I've been doing the letter B with Carly. It's a bit tricky for her to write, she's almost got it down but here is our Blackbird puppet we made.

Kitten, A friendly bug, and the Letter A

My cute Kiddos before church. (I know, we still have a binky face. We're working on that....just waiting till his molars come in, we don't want to make things worse than what they are!)

Sam discovered the kittens.

As we were playing outside this afternoon Carly and Sam discovered this little guy crawling around in the leaves. I think it was injured because it wasn't flying and after Carly got through playing with it, it probably wished it was dead! At one point I thought she was going to kiss it. She proceeded to talk to it (like it could understand) and she said "oh....your my best friend!" (should I be worried about that?)

The first of the month I started doing pre-school with Carly. She absolutly loves it! We are doing a letter a week with other activities based off of that. This is her proudly showing the letter "A" that she wrote all by herself.

not much....

Sam found one of Carly's old hats.

Cute Kitties

Well, these are the only two kitties we have left (other than the momma cat) We gave two away and one of the orange girl kitties left the other day and we haven't seen her since. Sad. She was so cute! But these two brothers are hilarious together! They play constantly and are pretty much inseparable.

Tom and Bob

videos

A couple more videos for your viewing pleasure. As you can tell by the last video, Sam is just like his father when it comes to cars.

Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhjV6DmrpQQ

For some reason my computer is picky and doesn't let me upload videos straight from the blog sometimes. So Ihave to resort to You Tube. This is a cute video of Sam, it's kind of long, the best part is towards the end if you don't feel like watching the whole thing. I've tried to download a cute one of Carly but for some reason it keeps coming up with an error. Who knows?!?

This girl loves the kittens!

(She is holding Tom. I know, if you name them you get attatched. We don't know if he's staying or going.)

Colorado

This was looking down from our cabin. We stayed at the M Lazy C Ranch in Lake George, CO. It was a really cute place. I'm mad I didn't get a picture of our cabin. They served breakfast everyday and we ate dinner there twice. It was fun and relaxing despite all the rain they had and the unusually cold weather.
We towed up our buggy to ride around.

There were so many wildflowers out. I had to get a picture of them! Carly loved picking them.

Sam and Myreel (only a week apart) had fun playing with each other.

Mimi took Carly for a horseback ride. She LOVED it!

This swing set was right outside the cabin we stayed in. It was great, Carly loved to just go outside and play on it.

We went to a little town called Manitou Springs. They had a bunch of little shops. We found a cute little arcade area with a ton of little 25 cent rides. The kids LOVED it!

No, this is not food on his face. This is what I call a dirt mustache. Sam had so much fun playing outside that by the third day I decided to stop trying to keep him clean!

The girls went horseback riding one morning. It had rained off and on pretty much the whole time we were there but one morning looked very promising, So we headed out. We were riding for about an hour when we heard thunder in the distance. (It was already pretty cold outside) Less than 10 minutes later the rains started to fall and the thunder started to crack. I am not a cowgirl, I don't ride horses very often, in fact I can count on one hand how often. I was a little nervous riding with all the thunder and lightening. We pulled through and by the time we made it back to the ranch we were soaking wet and freezing. ( I could not feel my toes) Plus, my horse (not pictured) wanted to stop every chance he got to eat, kind of annoying when your wet and cold. Actually, I had a blast, it was definitely something I had never done before and I really had fun, despite the cold and the rain! (Carly didn't go with, she just posed for the picture)

The three pictures above were taken on top of a mountain. It had a great view and the kids loved playing up there!

We went exploring many times, Sam (and Myreel) loved riding in the back! Sam fell asleep a couple times.

After many days of riding in the car and man days with naps all out of order the only way we could get our kids to sleep (during the day) was riding in the car. We were lucky at night, they fell asleep so easy because we tired them out during the day!

Carly and Chad trying out their ropin' skills!

We took these pictures right outside the building that we ate in. They served very delicious food!

We finally made it home today. We followed Chad's sister and bro-in-law home. (They were nice enough to tow our buggy behind their Tahoe so we could drive a little faster) It was fun, but it's always nice to be home.

name ideas???

Any name ideas for this little kitty??

We're keeping this one. He's a boy and he's the runt of the litter. Chad likes Maestro and I was thinking Mr. Bob Cat (Bob for short) We also came up with Marty and Newt.

My kiddos....

(long post...just a warning)

It's been a while since I've done a post just on my kiddos. So here it is...

Carly

*She is communicating all to well these days (most days I wish she would take a break) This girl can talk your ear off (she definitely did not get that from me)

*She loves to pester her little brother. She will follow him around the house and always, without fail, wants to play with whatever he finds.

*She has an excellent memory (again...not from me) She will remember something I said to her a week prior. If I make promises to her I have to remember to keep them because if I don't, she'll remind me.

*She loves a schedule. She has a routine for almost everything. Whenever we go to the grocery store, she always (always) asks for a snack. (that was my mistake, when she was younger I would always be well equipped with snacks to keep her quiet while shopping, now it's turned into an annoyance) At bedtime, she brushes her teeth, spits three times and then drinks water, goes to the bathroom, runs to her bed and has to have her pink bunny, Ring around the Rosie doll and now her froggy. Every night without fail she does all these things.

*She is a good helper, most of the time. She is really good about cleaning up her toys or getting me diapers for Sam or throwing things away or (my favorite) picking up dead bugs :)

*She LOVES animals. She would kill every animal we had with too much love. A couple of times we have found her holding the rabbit by the ears or by the fur on its back. She practically mushes Miss Kitty because she wants to hold her.

*Some of my favorite phrases that she says are:

"I love you so very much"

"I miss you so much" (she usually says that to Chad when he gets home from work)

"I so very mad"

When she says Mommy it sounds like "moo-me"

*She has been potty trained for a while now. So she gets bored with peeing normal I suppose. A couple weeks ago she decided to make it a learning experience. You know how you can stop peeing midstream. Well, she likes to do this and count her pees (if that makes sense) I don't know what made her think of doing that, but it's pretty funny) The other night she got up to 10!

Sam

This kid has really become such a little boy these past couple months. It's amazing at how fast they change!

*he loves his daddy. He is such a little daddy's boy. Whenever he sees Chad his face lights up! He just learned to say Daddy it sounds like "ba-yee"

*He now loves to climb. He has learned to climb on one of our couches so I am constantly trying to keep him off because he doesn't just sit on the couch, he throws himself backwards on it because I guess he thinks it's fun. He is bonked his head a couple times on the wall behind the couch.

*He loves to be outside. He would stay out there all day if I let him (but it's been way too hot!)

*He loves the kitties and Skipper. He laughs whenever he touches them. He loves to rest his head on them.

*He can give you the cheesiest smiles sometimes and it's pretty funny because he only has four teeth and his top two teeth are extremely big!

*He loves to eat, he would eat constantly.....anything and everything! I can't keep up with him. If he sees that you have food he won't let you get away without feeding him some.

*He loves to play with Carly but he has also learned the trick of screaming to get her into trouble. I've had to watch out for that. Speaking of screaming, this kid has a set of lungs. His scream can make you deaf for a couple seconds! It's been that way since the day he was born!

*He's not really saying much these days. He'll say "cheese" (like when your taking a picture), he can "roar" like a lion, he'll also say daddy and wave bye-bye but that is about all. He could be saying stuff and we just don't realize what he's saying.

*he loves to play with cars. He'll push little matchbox cars around the floor. he'll even make a vroom sounds.

*He'll give kisses (usually with an open mouth) but every now and then you can get him to pucker up.

More kitty pictures, I know. My kids love them!

cuteness!

How cute is this?!?

(they have all developed some form of a kitty cold. Didn't know cats could catch a cold. They are sneezing and all have to breath out of their mouths and they have goopy, watery eyes. :( I'm crossing my fingers they make it through because some of them have decided to stop eating.)

p.s. I walked into the laundry room and this is how I found them. I didn't set it up.