Before and After of the Fireplace

After a couple months of hard work our fireplace cabinets are done! Drew and Nathan put in a lot of time getting these babies done!

I can proudly say that I tiled most of the fireplace (alright, maybe half). woot!

What a way to end the summer!

We loaded up the kids and met Mike and Teawna in Parma at the Drive Inn. This is an excellent excuse to load up on bean dip and caramel corn . . . yummy! The double feature for the night was Harry Potter 7 part 2 and Cowboys and Aliens.

Don't ask me why Mike will never give me a real smile. He is so silly.

Here is what the kids looked like at the end of the 2nd movie. I admit to falling asleep also. My bedtime is usually 10pm not 1am.

Emma's 12!

I am now a mother of a 12 year old! Where has the time gone? Emma has turned into one beautiful young women. She is a thoughtful, smart, loving girl. She adds so much to our family and we wouldn't trade her for anything!

So for Emma's party we had some of her friends over for pizza, cake, a sock exchange and a movie.

It's that time again . .

Here we are again, first day of school! Back to bed time schedules, homework and tons of paper all over my house! Ugh. But . . . my kids sure do like school so I will get over it!


Emma is now in Middle School! Oh my goodness where did the time go??? She wasn't even nervous! She is in a couple advanced classes so she will be in heaven. She was ready to head back to school the 2nd week of summer vacation.

Ethan is in the 2nd grade this year. He didn't even want us to walk him to school. :( He told us he knew exactly were to go so we didn't need to go with him. I guess this is a good thing, he is getting so much more independent and confident!

Next year will be a sad one for me, Ella will start Kindergarten! She wants to go to school with the other kids but is happy enough for the time being going to Preschool.

Everyone needs a friend . .

Speedy is so much more vocal and happy now that he has Kirby, just goes to show that everyone needs a friend.

They get pretty crazy at night after Ethan turns off his light to go to bed. They run around their cage and "chat" with one another. It is funny to stand at Ethan's door and listen to him laugh at the guinea pigs, he has been staying up late watching them.

Introducing Speedy

The deal was that if Ethan could learn how to tie his shoes this summer he could buy a guinea pig. Ethan came home from Oregon on Tuesday and here we are with a new little friend. Ethan picked him out and paid for him all by himself. This is exciting stuff!

Day 8 - Going home!

Saturday morning we packed the girls up in the van with all of our stuff and headed home. It made us sad to leave Ethan behind but he will be doing some fun stuff with the Grandparents. Along the way we saw a couple Dams, a ton of wind mills and a waterfall.

Day 7 - Portland Zoo

Friday morning we packed up and headed to Portland (yes, 3 trips to Portland, that is a lot of gas and time in the van!) to go to the Zoo! I am sure most of you have been here so I posted our favorite animals. We saw tons and I didn't feel like posting them all! After a couple hours in the zoo we left to our van for some lunch. It is funny how people will follow you in their cars waiting to see if you are leaving because there is NOT enough parking there. We had to tell quite a few people we were indeed staying so keep on circling .

The Orangutan was sitting in the corner with a part of a box on his head. Weird . . .

Before you went into this bird area you could purchase for only $1.00!!! a tiny cup of syrup to feed the birds. This being vacation, what the heck, cups for everyone!

After the Zoo we stopped at McDonalds for Ice cream cones and they were not .99 but 1.48. grrr. Still cheaper than the ice cream at the zoo.

Day 6 - OMSI

After coming home from the coast and scrubbing off all the sea water and sand we heading once again to Portland to go to OMSI, which stands for Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. It is like the Discovery Center in Boise only 4 times bigger and cooler! Before we got to Portland we stopped by the Portland Temple which is currently closed while it was being cleaned so we ate lunch in the parking lot since they had the grounds closed off.

The temple had this ground cover with awesome yellow flowers, anyone know what they are? I would love to have these in my yard.


Dad's mustache app on his phone!

Gotta love that tongue.

Nathan getting shocked!

Oh ya, Pit Fall on the Atari! They had a video game room with all the gaming systems! Pretty darn sweet. I can't believe how boring and easy games used to be!

Here is some pretty Portland graffiti. Can you see it? I took this picture as we sat in 5:00 Portland traffic! Ugh, sooo nasty and hot!