Christmas!

Christmas was a lot of fun this year. The kids have been seriously anticipating it for so long now! We all had a great day. Santa was very kind to the kids and brought them a new pet! Curren got an iguana and named him "Bullet" He loves it. We were woken up at 6:00 am by Jessie running in our room and saying "Dad! Santa brought us a TOAD!" And she ran out of the room, came back and said “no, it’s a lizard! Hurry and come see!” It was great. We watched movies, played the Nintendo DS (Jessie got one this year), along with a lot of new DS games. I hope you all had a great Christmas too. Let’s hope this lizard doesn’t escape from his cage anytime soon, he is really fast! :)

Lots of snow!

The kids totally lucked out around here, they got ALL week off from school! So this means a 3 week Christmas holiday for them. How good is life being a kid? I want to be one too!

We got our tree up this week :) It is a shrimpy one compared to what we had last year. But that is okay, it's a beautiful one. We got it all full of shiny decorations and have been enjoying it.

Curren has been sick all week, which is why he's not in many photos... Hopefully he'll be feeling better very soon.

Curren has a request

Curren is officially addicted to eggnog, so he says. Here is a note I found on the counter the other day with the empty eggnog carton on top of it.

I had better get to the store!

Dirt bike riding.

Mark got a new toy, to add to collection. He has been out quite a bit, when he is home anyway!

Curren went with him one time. :D

Nikki was here :)

Nikki came to visit me while Mark was on another business trip. She found out that she is having a baby girl at the end of April :D We had a lot of fun sewing, and hiking and talking. thanks for visiting Nikki, we miss you .

We went on the Silver Falls State Park hike, it was awesome :D

Jessie and Mark are silly

So Jessie has become quite a silly kid, she likes to make people laugh, and goes out of her way to do it often... it's very cute. Lately she discovered she's very good at crossing her eyes and looking crazy. I've caught her practicing faces in the mirror. She is a crack up :D

This picture is hilarious and makes me laugh out loud every time I look at it, she looks like a nut!

Happy Halloween

We had a fun Halloween this year. I think I was asked every single day in October if it was Halloween yet, finally I could say that YES it is Halloween, now stop asking me.

We had a witch...

And a Zombie.

Mark carved his annual pumpkin for the contest at work. He always does a good job, and this year did a silly pumpkin, I think it's totally cute!

We also had a "trunk or treat" at the church last Friday, here are pictures from that.

Pumpkin Time!

The pumpkin patches are all getting pretty bare around these parts. We went to a local pumpkin patch on Sauvie Island this weekend, and most of the pumpkins in the field were mushy and dead, but we managed to find a few keepers!

Hill Billy Bob

We got a toothless kid here...

He lost his two front teeth Sunday morning :D Within 24 hours he could whistle again, spit a cool fountain of water out of his mouth and make weird noises… you know the important stuff!

Summer vacation pics (waaaay late)

Here are some more pictures from our trips to West Virginia and Colorado...

Colorado first...
So, first of all, Colorado is beautiful, I really liked it there. Mark & Uncle Dan took the kids to the top of Pikes Peak (big gigantic tall high mountain).

Curren wouldn't smile at all, so Mark made him do it! Ha!

The giraffes at the Colorado Springs zoo were the coolest! You could feed them crackers. Their tongues were a force to be reckoned with. I haven't been too close to giraffes before, but their faces are SO expressive, they have really cool eyebrows.

And this Lynx was really neat! It was talking to us.

West Virginia... was a huge hit. Aunt Emily had brought some tiny new kittens to take care of, and the kids were in heaven being their mommy. The kittens had to be bottle fed several times a day, and Jessie was in LOVE. In fact the other night right before she went to bed she said "mom, I miss the kittens at Grandma's house, they were my friends"

It's Fall You Guys

First off, I must share my new doormat, I think it's awesome, my kids think so too :) And no it's not because I want Edward to show up at my doorstep (oh my gosh, that is funny) LOL!!! Don't get it, then go read Twilight and we can talk about it later.

How is your month going so far? Mine? Busy, but great! The weather is turning to fall weather pretty much overnight. It started raining over the weekend, and then it was a crisp 34 degrees this morning. Where did that come from? I need summer back.

Here are som pictures from the past several weeks, so I thought I'd share with my good friends :)

Here is Jessie all "fancy" as she likes to call it. She went for the purple look, so I gave her a purple pedicure, as well as let her get new shoes, she got some heels, you go girl? She is funny, on Sunday when we got ready for church my high heels were clicking away as we walked into the building, and she said "mom! My shoes aren't loud see?" and then she walked on her tippy toes through the door, it was so funny :)

This is Jessie 100%, she's a cool kid.

And here are the pumpkins that grew in our garden, we thought we bought the pumpkin seeds for you know, regular pumpkins. This is what we got :D Curren decided he'd like to be a pumpkin patch for Halloween.

And this is ME, it was one of those blog things I saw, take a photo of yourself RIGHT NOW and then post a picture. Don't brush your hair or whatever. I was a booger and took a picture of myself right after I got ready for work, you gotta cheat sometimes, because I always have my hair done, makeup on, and smiling... *wink wink*

The baby elephant at the Portland Zoo, I am in love with him, he's small, wrinkly and tiny (for an elephant). I've seen him twice now.