we're moving to iderho!!

the hubby interviewed at byu-idaho in october. we found out he got the job in november. and we'll be outta here mid december!! snow, mountains, sub-zero temps (oh my!), here we come!!

outdoor theater

the hubby thinks it's fun to bring the tv outside. (and he's right.) usually we just watch a movie on a blanket, but this time they lugged unco dano's futon out there. you can see who got that luxury.

(riley eventually snuck her little self in there. can't let those boys take over everything, can we?)

halloweentown

zoe was a pajama girl this year. she was adorable, but one picture was enough for her thankyouverymuch. (gotta love this girl for spending nada on her costumes.)

although max loved his firefighter costume, he just wanted his picture taken with "scawy gween teef". so i obliged. maxwell could not get over "trunk or treat". everytime he got a piece of candy he ran back to show me. "mom! mom!! look!! that guy gave me a piece of candy too!!"


this was the first year that jakob was not a star wars character. so he let me take a picture or two of him in the cute little deadly ninja costume.

sweet little riley grace-face was ariel. and she. is. in. love. sometimes she sleeps in this costume, but has yet to ask to wear it to church. thank goodness.

you're going to have to excuse the immodesty of that last shot. but that kind of thing doesn't "embawass" little miss thang.

the bus

i picked riley up after her first day of preschool. i couldn't wait to find out all about it. of course she loved it. she loved her teacher. she loved the toys. she loved her classmates. she didn't love lunch. (what?! they serve lunch? you only go until 11!) there's a play kitchen and a sand box and paints and a boy that is in love with her. (excuse me?) she knows because he looks at her like this: then she doubled herself over, let her arms dangle in front of her, stuck her tongue out the side of her mouth and made a sound kind of like "duh..." yep. that's a boy in love, all right. the only thing she didn't love was that i came to pick her up. (whell! i never!) she wanted to ride the bus. (oh! of course.) so we signed her up that day and now she's a bus rider! and that sweetest little face running to me melts my heart.

every morning i wake up with this song stuck in my head

girl's rock

riley has never appreciated our "gender neutral" approach to posessions. she refused to wear zoe's (then jakob's, now max's) blue and red coat because it was not "pink or puwple or spawkly". She doesn't love her "boy shoes" even though i tried to explain to her that white converse are NOT "boy shoes". when i buckled her into the red booster for the drive home from north carolina, she asked if we could paint it. hmm. probably not. as we started through those winding, curving roads, riley started to complain about her tummy. poor little riley grace-face gets car sick. (but only in north carolina.) her cries were getting worse, but there wasn't a place to pull over. not even a shoulder. so as zoe (not so) lovingly told her to "be quiet. you're fine." riley puked all over the backseat of the car. including her hand me down car seat. (riley kept crying, "you know my tummy doesn't do well in cars!!) luckily there was a target nearby. because i'm not ashamed to admit that i left that throw up covered car seat on the side of the road somewhere just over the tennessee border. (i'm not the best at handling vomit/vomit associated things.) we spotted a car seat on clearance and grabbed it. knowing full well that riley would be so excited because it was pink!!

(these were taken when we were well into the flat lands of texas. hence, the smile.)

meeting noah

one of our favorite things about the beach this year was baby noah, our newest nephew/cousin. aunt lauren let riley pick out his clothes. she loved that. zoe and jakob were so sweet taking turns holding him and playing with him and trying to make him smile. max, however, had a nervous breakdown. seriously. "don't hold him!!" "i don't want to take him with us!!" "give him back!!" sweet little noah. hopefully max will come around and you guys will be best buddies.

she bangs! she bangs!

this girl has never had bangs. now she does. could she be any cuter? i think not.

give blood

we donated blood last weekend. while my platelets and blood cells were converging into the little bag, my children looked on. the woman assisting me told them, "your mommy's blood is going to save 3 adults lives or 6 babies lives." they all just kind of blankly stared at her. but riley's eyes got huge. when i was all done, and hanging out in the "juice and cookies corner" my littlest girl came over to me all excited and asked, "when do we get our 6 babies?! do we get them now?! where are they?!" uuuuuummm.

look who's wearing big boy unders!!

we pulled out the "potty" thinking we would start training max sometime this summer.

but he just trained himself. we heard him yell "hey, riley! do you wanna see my poops?!"

the end.

the right to bear arms

it's not at all that i'm "against" plastic weapons, (my brothers and i used to turn tennis rackets around and use them as machine guns while we hid around the house on sunday afternoons.) it's just that i try not to encourage it, because it seems like everytime there is a lightsaber or nerf gun or ninja dagger thing in the house, some people go a little overboard with the fighting and defending and...it can get messy. so i always end up hiding them, knowing they will eventually be found. and there are peaceful days until that happens. but in the meantime, he's started something new. it looks like there could be an uprising.

i can't get that alice cooper song out of my head

"schoooooool's out fo' summah"! and here are some of the things we are most excited about:

we get to sleep in. (theoretically.) this little man sometimes lets us sleep until 6:45!

we've moved into our summer home. the "cushion house" is nice and breezy and aside from slanting walls and a constantly collapsing roof, it is quite enjoyable.

we eat, breathe and sleep in our swim suits. which makes for a nice "to do list" on laundry day.

1. wash swimsuits
2. line dry swim suits
3. put swim suits back on

it's too hot to cook (or that's my excuse, anyway) so we've been happily surviving off of yogurt, cold cereal, sandwiches and pop-ice. allowing more time for the swimming, the cushion houses and the sleeping in. nice.

netflix

so i followed the example of a couple of friends and we got rid of tv!! (you heard me right.) instead, we pay a measly $8.99 a month for netflix. and you have to know how much that makes my cheap little heart sing. we get as many dvds as we could want through the mail (one at a time) and we have "instant queue" via the wii. just a couple of clicks, and we can watch whatever we want, when we want. some of our favorite things about it are no commercials. not ever. and it's deliberate tv watching. no more random "just watching because it's on" business. and we don't have to pay for satelite or cable or even redbox. (the only thing we don't like is that the "fast forward" and "rewind" are a pain, but i'm willing to live with it.) and there is something for everyone. a couple of these are often playing sometime before swimming but after chores:

sometimes after 9:00, the hubby and i (+ daniel, if he's not working) watch something like this:

and although these are in my instant queue, i have a feeling i may never actually get to see any of them:

maybe someday a movie will be more appealing than sleep. but i doubt it.