Busy busy yardwork.

This is the yard work I was doing when I got so burnt the other day. The second picture is kinda crappy since it came from my phone, well both of them came from my phone, but the difference is amazing. Seriously.

Here are my lovely little babies. They love love to cuddle. :)

Here we are driving on our way to church. It is probably Paul's favorite thing when I take pictures for no reason at all. Haha.

I was seriouly in bed all morning. I woke up at 9:45 to an alarm, lame I know, then played on the computer. Then I got up did a load of laundry, picked up downstairs, ate breakfast, took a shower and got back into bed. The kittens love it when I do this.

Then later in the day I went outside for about an hour, picked weeds, mixed cat litter in with old paint cans so I can toss them, sprayed weeds. Then I made baked ziti and cinnamon rolls. Now I need to make potatoes since Paul is cooking us steaks for dinner when he gets home. :) Oh how I love days off, especially when I have more than one in a row!!

life lately

Hi girls!  Finally have things slowing down a bit!  We haven't really been that busy, but have been spending a lot of our down time doing things together as a family and with family, which has been so refreshing!  Things at our church have been very frustrating lately for us, so it has been good to find ways to get rejuvenated.  Gotta say, the sun has helped!  We have been getting out of town as much as possible on short little day trips to parks and places like that.  I only have two weeks left of school (this coming week will be short though, because Monday is a holiday, and Friday is a field trip day that Shea and Jeremy get to come to at the beach!), and am so excited that I will not be working!  For the summer, I joined a small group at a church we attend in the evening, which will be focusing on worship and I am excited about getting connected with some younger people in the area through this.       


And life has just been life!  My little boy is growing so quickly and talking up a storm - I can't believe how big he is getting and so quickly!  Here are some pictures from the last couple of weeks (I haven't really been taking many).

My sister came and visited for a day.  We had homemade chicken salad sandwiches and sat in the sun and talked for a few hours.  It was so nice to just spend time with her and catch up.  Disclaimer:  For your own sake, you may wish to not stare too much at my bizarre looking left shoulder.  I have insanely bony and somehow well defined shoulders that are gross looking in this picture.  I almost didn't post it because it freaks me out.

Oh and I just have to share this series of pictures.  My son has been trying to climb this rock in our backyard for a couple of weeks now, and he finally did it!  This just cracked me up though, because I was able to catch his reaction on camera.

This is when he first got to the top - extremely happy with himself, as you can see.

He thought about trying to stand up...

but realized that he had to lay back down in order to do his "victory clap" so he wouldn't fall.

then he just stayed there on the rock for a while, not wanting to get down because he made it all the way up there, but his face read, "...hmm...so now what?"

And here is a pic from another day after a visit at the beach with his cousins.  I wish I had my camera with me on the beach, but I left it in the car.  Even though the tide was in and it was cold, he had so much fun!  He sat in the freezing cold water throwing rocks for the longest time!  He was soaking wet (not really dressed for getting wet) and full of sand.  He also tripped and fell on a barnacle covered rock and cut his lip.  Poor guy.  Its all healed up now though.

Well, thats all I got for now!  Time to go hang with the hubby for a bit!

Summertime, please come and stay.

I took a break from taking pictures and cleaning and these last couple days I have been trying to get back into the swing of things. Yesterday I cleaned three bathrooms, changed the sheets, and picked up stuff around the hour all in an hour before work. Today I did three loads of laundry, washed-dried-folded-put away, made the bed, vacuumed, met the hubby for lunch, looked at rice cookers, went to Target and Ross, and soon to cook Strawberry Shortcake.

Here are my favorite kind of pictures, day to day life, this is what I do.

Kittens love their tower. They love being on the top and tackle each other to get there.

Eleanor is a bad girl, she won't stop climbing on the dishwasher no matter how many times I shoo her off. Someday she will learn (maybe). Eric is bad too (though I haven't gotten pictures of it) he keeps jumping on the kitchen counter, that naughty boy.

They love to snuggle every morning. Paul gets up at 6, they romp around and play around him till 7 when he leaves and then they come snuggle with me till I wake up at 9:30. They also love to snuggle while I am on my computer in the morning. They creep in closer and closer.

This is today. Talking to my momma while driving (on speaker phone because my bluetooth is lost atm). The new rice cooker we are buying that has RAVE reviews. I am so excited. The nasty looking basil drink at the asian store. And my new shirt and necklace!

A new cross I got today at Ross. I hung this purely to take a picture (there was already a nail in the wall). I have to find something for the other side of the window.

My new laundry basket!! You wouldn't think I could get so excited about a laundry basket, but do you know how long I have gone without one? I kept thinking it wasn't so bad to just carry the clothes to the bed to fold them but oh man, this is so much better. Eleanor thinks so too.

These are my sleepy babies right now. I keep thinking I am going to get up and make some dinner and strawberry shortcake and I just keep finding more things to do on the computer so I can lay with my babies. :) Oh and that mouse? I find those things everywhere in my house. Especially in my bedroom. They bring them to me as "presents" like it is a real capture and kill. Silly kittens.

I hope you ladies are having a wonderful day, week, month. :)

A sunny day off and a new haircut!

Here is a super crappy before picture, and a half decent after picture. Gabe and I got our hair cut together today at Gene Juarez at the Puyallup mall. Then we went shopping!! I got a few new shirts to wear under my scrubs and some 75% off jewelry, good times.

We had so much fun hanging out outside of work.

After our hair cuts and and mall shopping we headed over to costco for some cheap grub. Gotta love the 1.50 hot dog and pop!

The new do front and back. :)

Life has been crazy busy, I haven't even seen Amber lately! Not cool. I have been working, doing yard work, cleaning, sleeping (a lot), cuddling with kittens, and right now I am hanging with my hubby! :)

Hope all your girls are doing well, I miss reading your posts!

Oops and ouch.

Now I should have the awesome progress pictures of the yardwork I got done today but nope, just a picture of my awful sunburn. It hurts, it burns, and its covered in aloe vera now. I was outside for like 6 hours today in 61 degree weather...but um, the sun was out the whole time.

The nice amazing neighbor lady came and helped me for 3 hours tearing out heather, ugly dead heather from one of our islands. She is awesome! She is also going to help me tear out our shrubs. She is just so excited someone is living in the house and working on it! :)

Girls. Word to the wise. Wear sunscreen. My momma said to always wear it...and um, I forgot to listen.

Hey ladies!!

Hey girls, it has been forever since I have posted. I have had these pictures sitting on my desktop in a folder named "blog" for a week now. This last week was just plain busy. The weather was super nice, and I worked 4 days in a row (I usually work three at the most), so every day before work I would try and do yardwork or a little house work. Yardwork is WAY more fun than than housework when the weather is super nice, how the heck am I supposed to say no to being out in the sunshine?

That said our yard is really starting to come together. I don't think I really thought about how much work it would be to get a yard looking nice that had been neglected for an entire year, but it is coming along. A huge pile of blackberry vines is waiting to be taken to the dump (that will happen today), the areas around the back yard (like raised boxes of dirt with shrubs and stuff) have been cleared of weeds and some garden and plants have been planted. Overgrown areas of grass and dying rose bushes have been fixed. I will have to take a picture sometime, I know hard to believe I don't have one, and I am kinda irked that I didn't get one as a before picture because our yard was a disaster!

Anyway, this picture is one of a set of collages I do every month. Every month I pick out my favorite pictures of Paul and I and make a collage in the form of an 8x10. Yes I will always have all of our pictures, but scanning through the collages month by month is such an awesome quick summary of what we have been up to with our lives (besides work and sleep).

This last month Amber and I went to the park by the train house, we got kittens!, Paul went to a car show, Gabe and I had a mini picture session, we bought a lawn mower, I cleaned and organized (of course), I babysat Kaliah, and we painted our garage!

Speaking of Kittens they are as crazy as ever. They are still huge snuggle bugs but also think it is fun to run around the house and sound like a horse. They love to hide in corners and attack their fellow sibling who happens to walk by. Its so funny! They also love to snuggle like no other, and it's the best thing ever. :)

I went to Moses Lake this last Monday/Tuesday. I took senior pics of my little bro and celebrated mothers day with the family. We laid in the grass in 70 degree weather, we laid inside on the couches and basking in the sunshine, we bought side tables for our house, and just enjoyed family time.

Here are a few pics of the "little" bro. He just went to prom on Saturday and will go to UW in the fall and I just can't wait to see him make the transition! Paul and I are going to his graduation on June 11th and I so can't wait! The end of hs is such an exciting time. :)

Love love love him. :)

It's super windy outside right now, Paul and I are laying in bed right now, he is on a conference call and I am thinking about when we are getting the truck, going to the dump, and how long it has been since I have blogged. The kittens are stalking us because they haven't gotten fresh water or food or a cleaned litter box this morning. This is the first day off paul and I have had together in um, absolutely forever so apart from taking the blackberry vines and bushes away we are just chillin together, maybe going to Ruston. :)

I am loving life.

a change.

OK, girls!  Other than Amber's marathon of a post, we have been slackers on this blog lately!  Which probably means we have been just the opposite in real life.  I miss my reading material - and seeing Angela's kitten pictures :)


Anyway, I don't have much to say today haha.  I had a crazy busy week, yesterday was kind of hectic and full of things to do and a long doctor's visit for Shea.  Poor kid.  I was home for about 30 minutes after work, then we were at group health waiting forever...I won't even go into the ridiculousness that has been group health.  I was really happy with them at first, and I really like our doctor...but other things, I'm really not crazy about.  And the girl who gave Shea his shots was horrible!  I don't know if she was having a bad day or what, but  I mean, Shea had been waiting in a hot room with doctors and nurses touching him and holding him down, plus he's a year and a half old, active toddler.  She did the two in his one leg, but then she didn't even wait for me to hold down his other leg before she shoved the shot in.  So his leg kicked against it, she jammed it in weird and squirted some of  the vaccine on me.


Then we went to Point Defiance Park for a small family get together,.  Shea ran and played for hours, then all of the sudden, he couldn't walk.  I have never seen my son NOT move.  He took a step and his poor legs were aching so bad, he couldn't play anymore.  He was so sad because he wanted to but he was just too worn out.  I wouldn't have planned going out on a day when he got shots, but there wasn't much I could do about it, and he's never had a single reaction to shots.  He was a champ though, considering.


So anyway.


I did something somewhat drastic and spontaneous today.


I got out a pair of scissors in the bathroom.  Snipped part of my hair.  Freaked out, put down the scissors and went out to get my hair cut.  Which was almost as frightening as cutting my hair myself.


Gene Juarez has so spoiled me, and I decided I needed to stop getting my hair cut there with our current lifestyle.  I have never been so scared to step into a Great Clips before.  I really somehow convinced myself that they are utter buffoons and couldn't possibly cut my hair anywhere near to how I wanted it.  And I got the old lady who could barely walk as my stylist.  Yes, I was extremely shallow and judgmental.  But she was very sweet and I think I was more confident to tell her to redo things, because I had her re-cut it about 4 times and I never ever EVER tell my stylist what to do.  I don't know why, but for some reason I always just nod and smile and say "oh no, I like it" when inside I'm always thinking, "uuuugh this is not what I want".


Anyway, It's not EXACTLY what I wanted (when is it ever?) and the lady didn't style it or anything, and I had it in a ponytail all day before she cut it so it still has a funny bump in it...so I'm sure once I wash it and play with it I'll like it better.  But WOW it feels so good to have all that hair gone!

Yikes, too many pictures of myself.  Anyway, quite acceptable for only $6.99 (I had a coupon and actually, it costed me more, because I gave her a big tip for putting up with me making her redo it and because I felt really bad for not wanting her to cut my hair at first).

Jeremy is getting us a movie, and Shea is sleeping right now.  I've had an awesome, laid back Saturday.  Started some fun sewing projects, and I only have FOUR MORE WEEKS until summer break!! I cannot WAIT!  Except, my preschoolers are so cute I'm going to miss them!  Yesterday after it was announced that the kids needed to get their show and tells from their backpacks, one my four year olds said, "OH NO! I ate my show-and-tell for lunch!" haha.  don't you just hate it when that happens?

Hope to hear from you girls soon!

After becca's inspiring happy post...

Hi girls, it's me, Amber, writing from our new home! Joe is off working on the bathroom at the train house. I am sitting here eating green beans and potato chips...not together, but I need to use both of them up. And when you're sick nothing sounds good anyway, so why not eat stuff that needs to be used up?

Yes, I'm sick. It started two days ago with a sore throat; now it's a cough that inspires the gag reflex - lovely. Plus a constant headache, body aches, and a chill. But! At least I can breathe through my nose most of the time! I'm not as sick as I was last month, but it's still pretty miserable when there's a TON of stuff to do!

When we first got married, we bought a really nice mattress set with our wedding money. We moved our old bed to the spare room. When we moved the other day, we found a giant - I mean, giant, it takes up about 1/3 of the mattress - MOLD spot between the mattress and box spring! We think it's the manufacturer's fault because we didn't have mold elsewhere, and we didn't put any moisture on the bed. But we have to wait until May 17 before we can get an inspector to come and even LOOK at the mattress and tell us if it's covered under warranty! Which means it'll probably be even longer than that before we get our mattress to sleep on! Joe doesn't want to move a moldy mattress into the new house - I agree with him. Because my allergies are really bad and a moldy mattress is just gross.

Of course we could just move our old mattress to our new house, but we already volunteered it for the lady who is temporarily staying in our house with her three kids (she's a single mom of three with a well-paying job, and she is in unfortunate circumstances; she has an offer on a house to buy and she's just living at our place for a few weeks till she hears back about the house). So we are sleeping on Joe's parents' air mattress. I haven't complained at all because what good will it do and it's better than sleeping on the floor - but it really sucks to be sick and have to sleep on an air mattress. Joe doesn't mind because it's so firm. I, of course, feel like I may as well be sleeping on the floor. And it doesn't really feel like a bedroom without a bed.

We also left our couches at our old house. We spent all day (well, until I died from sickness and whininess and "I want to take a nap"-ness) sofa shopping. Another half-day ought to do it; we now know what we want and what we want to pay and what we have left to do before we decide what to buy. Exciting thing is that we are buying NEW ones! And Angela...we sat on the couch you guys bought at Ashley and Joe actually liked it!

We watched Minority Report last night. It was actually kind of cozy, laying on the floor by the TV with blankets and pillows. It was nice relaxing together, and I'm grateful we have a TV.

I'm also grateful for my amazing soaking tub!!!! I took a bath the day I got sick...wow, it fills up so fast and I used the bubble bath that becca got me (well, actually I think I used it up and bought some more, but you introduced me to it. Moonlit Path or something.) I was super annoyed at the shower nozzle in the shower, which was all hard-water-caked and it sprayed everywhere and I couldn't manipulate it. Joe replaced it and now I love it! Except it has a setting and the water doesn't get very hot so Joe is going to fix that too.

One of the sinks in the master bath has a leak so we are just not using it for now. And that is okay.

Let's see...I love the central heating, but when you're sick you're still cold all the time. So I'm still dragging a space heater around all the time.

At first I was excited about the fridge, but it turns out the fridge space is actually much smaller than our previous fridge, even if the freezer is bigger. We need a new microwave too (the one we have stays on even when you press "Stop/Clear") and range/oven (it is SO caked with black grease that it lights on a fire that comes up out of the range when we use the self-cleaning oven feature!). Oh, and a new dishwasher because this one is even sucker than our old one. How can dishes come out dirtier than they were put in?

All this is quite annoying to me, who was looking forward to the perfect kitchen. I can't use the oven at all and I'm going to have to hand-wash dishes. I've spent the last two hours researching kitchen appliances though so maybe we'll get new appliances soon. I'm so glad we budgeted for all this! Well, for most of it.

The washer and dryer, you may recall, are brand-new. I still love them but now I'm slightly annoyed. At the old house we had them stacked on top of each other, but here we have them side-by-side. Worse, the doors to the washer and dryer open up against each other. So when I'm moving clothes from the washer, I have to grab a handful, lift it out and over two doors, spilling stuff on the floor on both sides. Joe said eventually we may stack them. Which would be nice because right now all the dirty laundry is going in the bathroom, and all the stuff from the garage ends up on top of the washer/dryer, and dirt gets tracked in which is gross when I'm dropping clothes on the floor. But I do love the fact that I can wash huge loads of laundry!

Oh! The cats! It was so funny how they reacted to the new house. Gordo immediately left his cage and started wandering around, eyes wide, exploring upstairs and down. Jasmine meowed loudly and constantly; she hasn't been in a carrier since she was a kitten 2 years ago. She ran around, half-exploring and half looking for an escape. Wiggle shocked me; she wouldn't even leave her cage for half an hour, even though the door was open! She just huddled there and meowed, terrified. She's usually the gutsy one of the group. It took a while to convince Wiggle and Jasmine to come downstairs. When they did, they found a way behind the washer and dryer, curled up together and fell asleep back there! Joe found them when he went back to fix the dryer vent (another thing I'm grateful for - the ability to do laundry now!!!).

I start school on Monday. Just two classes; I'm so glad Joe convinced me not to take the 4!

Sorry for all the venting and complaining. I really am so grateful to be here; I'm just tired of crap!

my word for today

Wishing you a happy, happy Saturday!  I don't know how I can't be happy when I have my little guy perched on my lap and so full of joy himself!

Yesterday he started stringing words together for the first time!  when my Husband came home, he said "Hi Dada!" and later when they were wrestling, he stopped to rest, gave him a hug, and said "I love you, dada".  Ah, I love my little boy!  He even said "Go, Dog, Go!" when I was reading to him the other evening.  So amazing.  We are all so blessed!

short rant

ok, so my husband and I don't really get into fights ever...and don't really get too annoyed with each other, but tonight I am a little irritated at the moment!  He left to go hang out with some kids, which is totally fine, but I decided to work out upstairs.  So I'm in the middle of my workout when he walks in and goes "oh, me, markus and matt are here."  No warning.  I'm in my workout clothes (which are not always public appropriate, because I just grab whatever random tanks and shorts I have clean) and super sweaty.  Yeah. I want people to see me like this.  Plus, I am not going to continue working out while they're here.  It took me like 5 months to get comfortable working out in front of Jeremy.  So now, they're downstairs using the computer. What am I supposed to do?  I won't work out up here because our loft shakes the whole house.  I'm not going to go down stairs and walk past them dressed like this.  And I really DO want to finish my work out!


Sorry.  I am still really annoyed right now. And I don't know what to doooo.


I guess I'll just run downstairs and get in the shower and not work out.  hummph.


Sorry to complain, I'm just annoyed and I don't think my husband will really understand.  Is this like the stupidest thing ever to get worked up about?  probably.  Oh dear, I need help.