Beautyshop

I was flipping through my pictures today and found this 'interesting' one from summer.

They placed every single bow and clip in the exact spot where they thought it belonged.

I know this because I remember getting in trouble for moving one that was poking me, lol.

Then I ran across this one...

I guess my mom taught me well :)

Plus, I'm sure if I flipped through pictures from when I was young,

I'd find some of me playing beautyshop with her too!

Thanks for setting such a great example mom!

Halloween

This year for Halloween we had The Last Airbender, an American Soldier, and a pretty little poodle skirt little girl who changed her mind 3 times before we walked out the door, lol. Her original costume was Belle from Beauty and the Beast, then she changed to Minnie Mouse (which she was last year) and once I finally gave up getting her in a costume she decided to pull a dress up outfit out of her drawer and wear that. Typical girl, huh?

Everyone looked super cute! Mimi made Brayden's cloak and it fit him perfectly! Blake loved his camouflage on his face and Abigayle... well I'm not sure she could even remember what Halloween was all about but she quickly figured it out and had no fear whatsoever walking up to people saying trick or treat and thank you.

Mimi made her orange jello with skeletons sunk inside and came to trick or treat our house instead of the other way around. We headed to the church for their trunk or treat and had a lot of fun! The kids wen't through less than half of the cars when we decided they had plenty and headed off to go play in the bounce houses and then hop on a hay ride. All in all, there was no super scary stuff going on and everyone was happy. We even sent all our extra candy to our Soldiers overseas. We figured they'd like the extra treats!

Soldiers

I'm a little late in posting this but... I have something exciting to tell you but needed to play catch up a bit before spilling the beans, lol. A few months ago, I took the kids to a Naval Air show. It was beyond hot!! We had an absolute ball the first day that we went back out and saw the entire show again the second day. The kids were in aw of all the military personnel and all the jets they were seeing. It has literally been months since we've gone and they still talk about it daily!

Here are the boys saluting in front of the 'bombs that could go off any minute' haha!!

They were able to get an autograph of the captain of the blue angels!

The amazing jet (that somehow I cannot seem to remember the name of, lol) that actually broke the sound barrier going 1/2 speed while we were there!

We met this man named Tony who is a Military Police. He was so full of useful information and even talked to the kids and answered the many questions they had. He works with a drug sniffing dog and he brought him out of the car so we could take a picture with him. He answered many questions I had about our troops overseas and I'll tell you more about what I've found out later in this post. It is exciting!!

The Blue Angels

Our WWII fighter planes

The kids and Landon sitting in a bomber plane.

An wing walker.

The opening act was the Navy's Leapfrogs. They were so good!! Above you see them spiraling down with their legs hooked together.

The first Leapfrog out of the plane carried our flag. It still gives me goosebumps to see this picture. What an AMAZING thing to see!

While I was picking Tony's brain, I asked if he had ever been deployed and what it was like. He didn't give me this horrific story that I had expected. He told me a few details and then I started asking questions like, do you remember receiving packages from strangers and were they helpful or encouraging? Did you appreciate the letters from children or just adults and he responded with this; imagine this, you are surrounded by everything that is the same color as the sand you are walking on. You live this life day in and day out without complaint. It is hotter than hot. You are surrounded by men and fighting daily. When mail comes, it makes your day. He said that you expect mail from family and friends to help encourage you but when a stranger or a child reaches out that is what makes his job more bearable on those rough days. I decided that I was going to be one to help. I wanted to make a difference and I wanted those soldiers out there fighting for my freedom to know that I remember daily what they are doing. That they have not been forgotten and that we are praying for them. I asked him how to get in contact with someone overseas and he guided me to a company called anysoldier.com.

From that site you can read over hundreds of men and women in combat zones asking for encouragement and/or supplies. Those hundreds of men and women represent thousands of men and women living in conditions we, here in the states couldn't even imagine living in. And you know... not one of them complain about it. We, as a family, started putting together boxes to send. We signed 282 Christmas cards and sent them to 5 separate units. 3 were from the Navy, 1 from the Marines and 1 from an Army unit. I know that each service feels that they are the best (hence the reason they chose that service) and often supporters stick with one unit but I feel that all our Armed Forces are important and they are all people, needing support. I simply chose troops that touched my heart when I read their request. I didn't look for anything specific, I simply read until I knew that I wanted to support that group. I encourage you all to go check out that site. Read through the front page, read the rules and see what's allowed to ship through customs and then read through the requests. I literally had tears running down my check as I read through some requests. Some men were asking for anything that could help bring them comfort, anything like a pillow or some sheets. They request items that I'm sure you already have in our house right now. Body wash, shampoo, toothbrushes, toothpaste, candy, snacks, healthy food to put in their backpacks so when they are out on missions they have something to eat but most of all they appreciate the letters. The encouragement, the reminder of what they are fighting for. These men and women are willing to give their lives up for us and I'm no longer willing to sit back and just watch. I want to make a difference in their lives. I want them to know that we as American's care about them!!

Since I sent out our 5 boxes I've received an email from one soldier. He is the most humble man I have ever 'met'. He has nothing but positive and encouraging things to say. He isn't very forthcoming on needed/appreciated items (which I hear is very very typical of our Military personnel) so the boxes I'm sending full of goodies, I only hope are being used and appreciated. I'm hoping to stay in contact with him until well after his year long deployment but only time will tell. I have also heard from another unit. They sent me a Happy Thanksgiving card and a thank you card for the letter and Christmas cards I sent with a picture of his unit. I'm not doing this expecting everyone to make contact back to me but I must say receiving the emails I have literally makes my day! The cards are also so exciting. Just to know that the little I was able to give was received, makes me happy!

So... I know this is a long post but I encourage you to write a letter. Don't expect a reply back, they have a lot more important things going on (like staying alive) but if you are lucky enough to receive a thank you back and see how exciting it is, just think about how encouraging it is for them to receive something from you. I'll gladly help you with any of the customs forms or any questions you may have. If you don't want to deal with the hassles of sending a letter but still want to help out, I'll do all the leg work for you. To all those teachers out there, this makes a great lesson! Have your students write a letter or color a picture and send them to a troop or to me and I'll send them to mine. I have one platoon that receives very very little and I'm sure they'd appreciate something from the innocence of a child.

Lets support our Military and let them know that they are not forgotten! Many of you are not supporters of this war but can you honestly say you are not supporters of our troops fighting for your freedom, for your safety?

I'll proudly stand and say that I am proud to be an AMERICAN!

Daddy's home

Daddy's home!!

Which means I don't wanna spend much time on the computer blogging, lol.

I'll do my best to find some time soon but for now, I'm working on signing all our Christmas cards for our well deserved American Sailors and fixing up the house for our early Thanksgiving dinner/birthday party.

Things should calm down after that :) Just hoping my turkey finally defrosts!!

busy

Things are busy around here. I've got 4 little ones running around playing, being loud and very VERY dirty!! We are expecting daddy to come home HOPEFULLY at the end of this week. He doesn't have a plane ticket in hand yet but he won't until the last minute we haven't been able to plan anything yet :) He's 'supposed' to be home for 2 entire weeks this time!! YAY! He needs to take a Typhoid medication/vaccine for prevention while living in Mexico and it takes an entire week to take the dosage and another week for it to sit in his system before he can be exposed so... we should get him for 2 weeks!! This time, we are taking it easy. Hopefully not doing much but spending time together. We were all so exhausted after his last trip back home.

Well, I've got to get these kiddos ready to head to JoAnn's. My kids dislike that place with a passion but I love it!! lol. Plus, we've got to get these Halloween costumes finished up, it's just around the corner! Enjoy your day everyone!

Field Trip

We headed out to the farm and had a field trip during harvest season.

Blake enjoyed driving the tractor.

We tasted fresh pine nuts for the first time (yum!)

We picked the best tasting grapes EVER!!!

We learned that Budweiser is really the workers Gatorade, haha!!

We saw grapes in all different stages of drying from green, to needing to be flipped, to raisins.

From the dirt on this face, you can tell they all had a blast!

Blake's dragonfly that got hurt.

They hunted for rabbits and caught a bunch of frogs and brought them back to our house.

The beautiful sunset on my families beautiful vines.

Such a fun day with great people!

Shooting

Blake was so excited to shoot his new BB Gun! He is still a little too little but he has tons o fun anyways!

Brayden's shot has improved and he hits his targets more times than not now.

All three boys posing for the camera with their bb guns. See Blake with his eye ON the gun, lol.

Mommy giving lessons to the littlest. After all... girls need to know how to shoot too!

My boys and their toys!

Daddy came home

Well, I'm not really sure how I'm going to catch up on all the cute pictures and stories to tell so things will be out of order for awhile but... I'll do my best. Daddy missed Blake's birthday in the middle of September so when he came home for a week, we gathered together to celebrate seeing him again and Blakie's birthday!

The kids (and I) were so excited to pick him up from the airport! Blake brought 'elliot' (his kitty) just in case daddy forgot who he was and wore his too small FAVORITE blue shirt and cowboy pants. Ab's wanted to be 'super pretty' so she wore her tinkerbell costume with her mismatched high heels!! (on a side note she dropped daddy off in her minnie mouse outfit and purse, lol) and Brayden just wanted to see daddy so he came ready to pounce on him just as soon as he saw him.

Here is daddy and his kiddos!

After 7 weeks, it sure was nice to see that man again!!

Even the dogs were so excited to see him. He couldn't even put his stuff down until he greeted the dogs for several minutes. It was really kinda sweet!

After a nice long nap we were ready to celebrate Blake turning five years old. He's as big as a nickle now (just ask him, he'll tell you!) He chose the food; nacho/taco salad. It was so simple and oh so yummy!

Homemade refried beans, taco meat, two kinds of chips, lettuce, cheese, homemade salsa, sour cream - YUM! And the drinks for the adults in the back. See mama's vanilla vodka!

Then on to the cake. This little boy loves blue. He always has and it has gotten more and more difficult to make and create a 'blue' cake every year. I think his octopus cake turned out pretty cute this year though.

Took me almost an entire day to make and only seconds to destroy, lol.

He opened his presents and got lots of fun things. His last present was the long awaited BB gun! I'd say he was pretty excited, look at that smile! It was too dark to shoot that night but the next day we loaded it and shot till it got to hot to shoot some more. I'll post pictures of that tomorrow.

The night ended with a very sleepy little boy. He remembered to set his favorite shoe out and hoped that the Birthday Fairy would arrive sometime that night. Can you see where she kissed him? See the fairy dust?

Sure enough, she brought the 6 quarters and he found them in his boot waaaay too early in the morning, lol.

He was so excited about the Birthday Fairy that he woke up somewhere between 3am and 4am and joined us in our bed with his quarters on his chest the rest of the morning. When he woke, he tossed his quarters in him piggie bank and I wasn't able to get a picture... stinker!

His favorite color is blue.

He will only wear wrangler jeans

and loves his plaid blue and white long sleeved button up shirt.

He wants to be an American Solider when he grows up.

He LOVES school.

He doesn't sit still.

He's loud, he burps, 'gasses', digs in the dirt, is always dirty and is all boy!

And I love this little boy more than he'll ever know.

Happy birthday Blakie!

I'm so glad you are as big as a nickle now!

the abc's of me!

a. age: 31

b. bed size: king

c. chore you hate: folding and putting away laundry although my newest least favorite is cleaning the boy's pee smelling bathroom, daily (seriously... just aim!)

d. dogs: yes please!

e. essential start to your day: a few minutes, to myself, in my bed, with NO kids

f. favorite color: pink

g. gold or silver: silver. or white gold?

h. height: 5'9"

i. instrument you play: i used to play piano. don't know if i still can though

j. job title: mommy, wife, homeschool teacher, chef, housekeeper, crafter, picture taker...you get the picture

k. kids: brayden james, blake austin, abigayle hope. i love them!

l. live: central california (but not for long)

m. mother's name: debi

n. nicknames: leannie

o. overnight hospital stays: many many times with childhood asthma and childbirth

p. pet peeves: being late, chewing with your mouth open, cre8ive name spelling

q. quote from a movie: really? so not me.

r. righty or lefty: righty

s. siblings: brother; landon

t. time you wake up: whenever ab's does

u. underwear: pretty

v: vegetable you hate: peas

w. what makes you run late: very rarely am i late. i plan for early!

x. x-rays you've had: teeth, back, wrist.

y. yummy food you make: mexican, japanese, breads, cookies. i just love to cook and bake so... give me something you'd like and i'll search, try and perfect almost anything till it's super yummy!

z. zoo animal: my kids. they often act like animals and i often feel like i'm living in a zoo, lol. ok seriously, i'd say the hippos. they are so amazing to watch swim around and around.

THREE!!

YAY!! Blogger worked today!!! I've been trying every week since it stopped allowing me to post pictures and just today it let me! I uploaded the pictures backwards (yes it's been that long and I'd forgotten how blogger posts them backwards until I saw it, lol. So please forgive the backwards story)

I have TONS to catch up on but first I must start off with Abigayle's third birthday. She turned three just a few days ago and since daddy is still in Maine, we only had a "skype birthday". You can kind of see him on the computer screen below. Our day started at 4:50 in the morning when Brayden woke up. I told him to go back to bed since it was too early but he convinced me to lay in my bed until he was allowed up. BIG MISTAKE!! He tossed and turned and neither of us slept till I finally told him he could get up at 5:15. Then at 5:20 Blake woke up screaming bloody murder that his tummy hurt. I fly out of bed, trying to figure out what was wrong but he couldn't tell me anything since he was still so sleepy. I managed to distract him with cartoons while I got Ab's who was screaming in bed cause she was woken by all the craziness, lol. What a way to wake up on your birthday, huh? lol Anyways, it wasn't long before everyone was happy and our day began. We sang, we tickled, we loved a while then we started school. Everyone managed to finish all their schoolwork by 9:10 in the morning (that's what happens when you start before the sun comes up!!) So we had the rest of the day to celebrate!

Ab's chose a strawberry cake and her momma's oven cooked a bit to hot leaving it a little darker than she'd like. Then that very same momma was distracted when making the frosting and added too much milk making it too thin to cover the little bit too dark cake underneath. Good thing she's little and cute and loves her mommy even when she does silly rookie things like that. It sure tasted yummy though! We sang happy birthday over skype and opened a few presents. Her real party (and I promise this cake will be waaay better!) will be sometime when daddy gets home before he leaves for Mexico.

Here is Ab's telling my mom that she's three over the phone, lol.

And here she is eating her favorite breakfast, a fried egg. Soon as we sang Happy Birthday to her, she dipped her finger into the yoke and smiled :)

Happy birthday little girl!!

She loves the color pink,

She love to play dress up,

She won't fall asleep unless you sing "Jesus loves me" to her in her bed.

She sleeps in her bed 'aww night yong!' (I must say she says it so cute!)

She rocks her babies when they cry and covers them when they are cold,

She chooses how her hair gets done daily,

She often carries an imaginary kitty around in her hand and remembers where she puts it if she doesn't have it with her.

She still loves to be cuddled.

She still thinks I nurse her even though she's been weaned for MONTHS and asks daily for more 'night-night'

Mommy asks her to stop growing up so fast and she'll respond "me try" with her lips frowned and her eyebrows down.

Mommy loves you baby girl!

lack of pictures

For some reason, I can't upload pictures to blogger...
I've been trying for two days to get a new blog up for everyone but the picture 'loading' page just keeps turning and turning. I've let it set for 10 minutes with no luck.

I promise, I'm trying!!!

Soon as I can get it to work or if anyone knows of a program that I can download my pictures to and then try to pull from there instead of my hard drive, let me know!

Thanks!

Strange places

Look at the beautiful flowers my husband sent me.
Aren't they gorgeous??!!
Thank you Diver Daddy!!

I put the kids to bed the other night,
I treated then and allowed them to sleep in my room.
I had checked on them to make sure they were quiet and asleep
and then went back into the living room to continue folding laundry.
About an hour had passed when I noticed this little boy
laying on the floor in the hallway!!

Seriously??
What would posses someone to sleep like that?
He left my comfy bed,
walked down the hall
and had been sleeping there for up to an hour, lol.
And you know what I did?

I left him there, haha!!
He looked so peaceful
and anyone who knows Blake knows that those two words don't usually go together, lol.
Before I went to bed later that night,
he had gotten up and crawled right back where I put him.

I seriously did a double take.
Had I really seen him in the hallway?
Glad I got a picture to prove it or I'd would have thought I was cracking up!

bedtime

Daddy always puts the kids to bed.
This gives me a few minutes of sanity each and every night :)

Every night he reads them a bedtime story and tucks them in.
Since daddy had almost every kid book we owned memorized he has switched over to reading chapter books.
I think they enjoy these more.
They get one chapter a night and they anxiously awake the next nights chapter.
I must admit, even though the rule is 'one chapter a night'
I have heard multiple chapters being read on occasion. lol
Daddy most definitely likes these books also.

I was a bit concerned with the first night and the lack of daddy.
We had the idea of recording a book for the kids and they absolutely loved it!!

I actually recorded the entire book and their reactions (very cute and very surprised)
but this is their reaction of the last page.
This is for you daddy!!!

Well the video won't upload.
I've tried several times.
Believe me, it was cute!
Guess you'll have to just take my word on it :)

Red Robin

Daddy wanted to make our last dinner together special.
He decided to treat us to Red Robin.
The kids really really enjoyed their meals!

Brayden ate every single bit of his hamburger some fries and some of my salad.
Blake ate his chicken strips and fries and one bit of salad and
Ab's literally licked her bowl of "chheesh noonle"
Daddy had chicken strips and very very spicy riblets.
And I had my favorite salad.

Since the riblets were so spicy daddy's heartburn was killing him so he decided to treat us to our favorite frozen yogurt shop, Yo Diggity. Oh darn... lol
We all had our favorites and left with super full tummies.

Nana and Papa came over after dinner and yogurt to wish daddy a good trip.
With the kids going to bed late,
the early morning to get him to the airport on time
and the stress of everything lets just say our first day alone wasn't the best.

Don't get me wrong, there were high's but lets me tell you, the lows were low.
Every day will get easier for the kids, I'm sure.
Ab's just doesn't even come close to understanding.
Although she is a little mommy's girl she still loves her daddy!
When I picked her up from her Sunday school class this morning she immediately asked where daddee was. I told her he was still working. She said 'oh, det haiport' (oh, get airport)
I think she is ready to go get her dadee already, lol