Halloween Fun

Last night we went to a carnival and trunk-or-treating at the church. Alyssa went through the maze four or five times, and she loved running around with her friends. She went around the parking lot with Emily McShane.


Brian and I went as the Queen of Hearts and the Mad Hatter. It was fun wearing that costume again.

Marcus loves trick-or-treating. What? All I have to do is walk around the parking lot and people give me candy? Okay! He wore his eye patch last night, and he looked so cute!

Friday Halloween Fun

We went trick-or-treating at Brian's parent's house on our way to a carnival put on by the city of Richland.

Alyssa is a sun princess. Ethan is a Transformer. We took the boots off of him after a little while, because it was hard for him to walk in them. We tested them several times while we were making them, and he could easily walk around our house, but I guess tests are never quite like the real thing.

Marcus ended up being a pirate. He did not want to take his costume off at the end of the night. He threw such a fit and fought like crazy to get his arms back into the vest.

The carnival was a lot of fun. We took my nephew, Michael, because he was to be babysitting the kids while Brian and went to the Ransom's Halloween party afterward. At the carnival there was a hayride through Howard Amon Park, a maze, and a ton of games in the community center. The kids had a blast!

Brian and I went to the Ransom's party as a winged, but not-winged demon and a gypsy, respectively. Brian was winged, but not-winged, because I got him some rockin' demon wings from Value Village, but he couldn't get past the whole "fairy" thing associated with wings, so he didn't wear them after going to his parent's house. We painted his face dark, and he was wearing red eye contacts, which looked really cool.

We had a ton of fun at the Ransom's. Brian and NaDell kicked everyone's rears at Apples to Apples, then we played boys verses girls Catchphrase. I was really hungry, so I had two turkey sandwiches (sorry to anyone who didn't get one!) and a ton of NaDell's yummy pumpkin cookies.

Carving Pumpkins

Picking My Battles...And Just Barely Winning

Ethan refuses to wear clothes. He prefers to wear pajamas or just his underwear. Now, for a four year old, this isn't a huge problem, but when he wears one pair of pj's to bed, and then a new pair the next day, and so on and so on, he runs out of clean pajamas pretty quickly. So this morning, when he kicked and screamed when I tried to force him to get dressed, I laid his clothes out on the dressing room floor and told him he didn't get breakfast until he was dressed. You can see from the underwear-clad picture that it's not exactly phasing him. We'll see how hungry he gets in a couple of hours.

Oh, and he's standing on the chair behind me and saying, "Are you putting H's in it, Mom?"


Update 8:30 - Ethan said, "Mom, I'm in my chair. I'm ready for beckfust." I told him that he needed to put his clothes on to have breakfast, he said okay, then disappeared upstairs for five minutes and came back down again in his underwear. He is now (8:45) sitting at the table, stirring imaginary things in his bowl and saying, "Beckfust please!" and "Cerul please!"


Update 10:49 - I guess we're having an early lunch. Ethan is sitting at the table saying, "Can I have my hanwich now?" Then when I tell him he can have his sandwich as soon as he puts his clothes on, he yells "I hate cothes!" Can you see his pants and a shoe on the table? It wouldn't be hard for him to put them on...


Update 10:58 - Victory! And he's enjoying his grilled cheese right now.

Update 11:10 - He's now on his second grilled cheese sandwich. I wonder why he's so hungry?

Tombstone Tales A Success

This is me, being all ghostlike, because Megan tried really hard, but the pictures kept turning out blurry. And the next picture is Megan and the other girl playing Elaine Compton. They became fabulous friends over the weekend.

Oh, Megan and I had a wonderful weekend! Thursday's rehearsal wasn't nearly as terrifying as I thought it would be. We actually only went through the first and last of our parts so the Grimm Reapers would know what to listen for. KEPR news came out and taped a segment for Friday morning's news. Megan was interviewed for it, and she was so cute!

Friday morning was cold and extremely rainy. We had school groups come through, and they all crowded under canopies with us dead people. It was fun to see that the elementary kids came through with coats and hats, and the middle schoolers were mostly wearing sweaters.

In the second or third group through, there was a woman who gasped and took a step back when I said that my dad was hung. Surprising her surprised me so much that I chuckled, and I had to force back a smile when I was talking about my dad dying.

Friday even's session was dry, but cold. I had on two layers of long sleeved shirts, and tights and jeans on under my costume. I was so glad that we had all morning to practice on kids before doing "the real thing." It was so fun!

Saturday afternoon was great, because my parents and Grandma Yeats, and Brian's mom and grandma came through. It was a little hard to get into character in the daylight after doing it in the dark the night before, but it was still fun.

Saturday evening was the best, because we all knew what to expect, and I also had on an extra sweater and long johns. The baseball player and the military guy and I got together to talk while we weren't performing, and that made it fun. The military guy actually works as a history teacher at Pasco High, and it was fun to talk with him about which teachers still work there and what all the programs are doing.

After cleaning up on Saturday evening, we all got together at a local restaurant for dinner. Megan and I are on the list to be a part of "Night at the Museum" that CREHST puts on in February, and we're excited for that. It was so fun to have a vacation from the kids (Thanks Mom, Diane, and Christina for watching them!) and to do something completely different and new for a few days.

Jenny Koppin

Tonight is the dress rehearsal for Tombstone Tales, and then we do it for real, bright and early tomorrow morning. I think I'm ready. I've only been able to run through my part completely through from memory just a few times. I tried to go through it again last night while I was folding laundry while the kids were going to bed, but I kept getting interrupted. Alyssa needed more water and I told her to wait, Ethan started coughing so hard that he threw up, then Marcus saw all the attention that Ethan was getting, so he started coughing to try to get me over to him, which caused him to start coughing for real until he threw up, too. Once the boys were asleep, I still had some laundry to fold, so Alyssa promised to be quiet long enough for me to get through my part just once.

Since I've never been able to successfully practice while the kids are not in bed, I'm going to type out my part to you. So here we go. Ahem.

My name is Jenny Crawford Koppin. I was born back east in 1858, but when I was small my family and I headed South. My father was a newspaperman and printer. Naturally, he kept up with current events, and the Civil War captured his constant attention. It didn't take long for Father, a sympathetic man by nature, to feel that the South was being misrepresented in print. When he expressed his views, he was branded a Southern Sympathizer and became an outcast in his own community. Southern Sympathizers were never welcome and rarely safe in Northern towns. Well, ever the determined optimist, and despite protests made by mother, Father decided to pack up the buckboard with his printing tools and supplies and see if he could offer his services to organize publicity and make more appropriate posters for the Confederacy.

Father knew that to make his plan succeed he would need to go straight to the top. But Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis were hard men to request an audience with. Security measures had been tightened considerably, so we drove the team as far south as we could, avoiding any Union posts, and finally made it to the Confederate line. The guards of the outpost weren't exactly the cream of Southern aristocrats, and father, despite a very thorough explanation, was apprehended by them when they didn't agree with his self imposed mission. And he was lynched. Right then and there, without a trial or anything.

Mother and us were put on a horse and told to ride outta there as fast as we could or we would meet the same fate. Mother was beside herself, as you can imagine, with where to go, so she did the only thing she could think of, and that was to go to our nearest relatives, which were in Minnesota. We ended up staying there for quite a while. I completed my education at Winona college and taugh school in Minneapolis. My brothers grew into fine young men with a pioneering spirit. They had been wooed by the cheap land being so attractively advertised in the west, and they convince mother and me to go with them.

We traveled to Ellensburg in the new state of Washington in 1890 by the Northern Pacific Railroad. What an experience it was to see new lands as they flew by the window. Ellensbrug had suffered a great fire the year before, but it was a progressive town, and had already made impressive strides in rebuilding. A new college opened the next year, the State Normal School, which I enrolled in for a certificate to teach in Washington. School was different then. Tuition and books were free, and I got room and board for four dollars a week.

My brother, Johnny, had been out prospecting a suitable homestead in 1892, and he found us a nice piece just North of here at Waluke Slope. We built a cabin out there, but planned on spending most of our time in Ellensburg, visiting the farm only as necessary. It was on one such visit that a young German man knocked on our door and asked if he could join us for a meal. This was not an unusual occurrence, as people were often stopping by on their way through. Frederich Koppin was his name. I took an instant liking to him, and as his passes through our area became more frequent, so did his visits to our farm. He would often spend several days with us at Waluke. He was a kind man, and we always looked forward to his visits.

Well, in late November 1892, I became Mrs. Jennie Koppin. Frederich decided that rather than move us to his homestead in Idaho, that we would remain here, among family. I was forever greatful to him for that decision. How I woul have missed my mother and brothers had we moved. We spent the first few years of our marriage in Ellensburg, but after Mother died, we came to live permanently in Waluke. The Ellensburg house was much more comfortable, I can asssure you, but after visiting Waluke one time and finding the back door broken open with our belongings strewn about and several items missing, we felt the move was necessary.

It seems strange to think now, but when Frederich and I first met, he couldn't read or write. Even his English was broken. I guess it was providence that brought me, a teacher, to him. We spent long hours together pronouncing grammer, and practicing spelling and reading. Simple book at first, but as Frederich progressed, so did the books. He was a good student and a smart man.

Frederich became quite the farmer out here. He was of the opinion that anything would grow if we could only get water to it. Of course, irrigation was always a problem. Even if we dug the ditches deep, and long enough, the soil was so sandy that the water would leech out of it before it could reach the crops. But once we started using sprocket wheels to move the water from the river, we could reliably grow more. Lets see, we planted fruit trees, butternut trees, all sorts of vegetables, peanuts, berries, sugar cane, maize, alfalfa, and all sorts of flowers. Frederich was proud of all these, but his pride and joy was the Black Lily of the Nile, and extraordinary flower with a very unpleasant odor.

While Frederich enjoyed experimenting in the garden, I taught school part time at White Bluffs. You see, at that time, once a woman was married, she was not allowed to work more than part time outside the home. I made up for it by tutoring in art. I was actually the first teacher at the new White Bluffs school, which was made entirely out of driftwood logs retrieved from the Columbia. At first White Bluffs was part of the Yakima School District, and the superintendent and I exchanged words on more than one occasion about his views on education. I had to write several searing and poignant letters to him until, thankfully, we became part of the Franklin District.

Waluke was a pretty desolate place. Our nearest neighbor was nigh four miles downriver. We kept a raft on our banks, and if the flow was right, I could reach them in about 40 minutes. Then, if I needed to, I could borrow a horse for the return trip.

Being that our neighbors were so far away, any chance to get together was a welcome thing. Celebrations were a big part of pioneering life. One Christmas we held a party and invited everyone in the area. We had over 20 guests that year, and they all stayed late - 3 or 4 in the morning, as I recall. No one wanted to make the long trek home in the snow to a cold, dark house. Babies were put ot sleep on the coats and wraps on our bed, and the adults became more exuberant as the night went on. George Borden place the accordian, and we began to dance. Now, there's always one stickler in the bunch. Mrs Brice was the minister's wife, and she made such a fuss at our outrageous behavior. She was incensed that we dare allow dancing in our home, and demanded to be taken home immediately. Mrs. Craig sided with her while she was here, but once Mrs. Brice was gone, Mrs. Craig readily enjoyed in the festivities.

That was the year the Columbia forze over solid enough to drive a team of horses over. The river was wide and swift and rarely froze over for more than a week at a time. I remember how eery it was to cross on foot. You could hear the water rushing under your feet. Winter was always long and cold. I would cook nearly all day to keep the house warm.

Our house was the first post office in the area. All the mail came through us, though it only came every three months or so, as we weren't on a direct line.

By 1901 there were so many new settlers in the area that we felt it was high time to form an organization of the first comers to bind us together and furnish some entertainment. It was under that pretense that the Old Settlers Union was formed. I was the first president of the club, and though the idea was not mine to begin with, I enjoyed the post. It gave us another reason to come together with neighbors and enjoy a little song and dance.


And then the Grim Reaper, who will be leading the groups around will say that I died in 1928 in an automobile accident. And then I'll do again for the next group, all day long on Friday and Saturday. I'm honestly more nervous for the rehearsal tonight than for the actual performance tomorrow. We start out tomorrow with a bunch of school groups, so I'm not worried about that at all. But tonight I'll have to do it in front of my fellow portrayers, some of which are professional actors. I know that in the end it'll all be okay, and overall I'm excited for the whole thing. If I get pictures tonight, I'll add them to the post.

A Little Bit Taller

A couple of years ago Brian got a blank wooden board for Father's Day. It took a couple of years for me to finish it, and last spring we finally had our official growth chart board. (You can see the yellow on the bird where Marcus helped when I was putting it together.) We measured the kids again on Sunday and found that Alyssa and Ethan had both grown about an inch and Marcus about two inches since last April.



We also discovered that at 1 year, eleven months, Marcus is about an inch taller than Ethan was at 2 years, 2 months. Their current height difference is about 4 inches, but people are always asking if they're twins. I guess it's only going to get worse as they grow!

Blog-crastination

Hey, did you see that? Did you see how I combined the words "blog" and "procrastination" for my post title? Yeah...I missed it, too.

So it seems like all my posts for the past while, and probably the next little while, are going to be "this is all the random things we've been up to" posts, because I keep procrastinating the little things I want to blog about. Between homeschooling, cooking, laundry, dishes, cleaning, grocery shopping...and all those fun things mothers do, blogging has definitely gotten pushed down on the priority list. I've been pretty busy with all those things I mentioned - that, and I've been spending all of my free time reading Sherwood Smith's Inda and The Fox, and they're pretty huge books.

So this is what we've been up to.


Alyssa played Princess Pansy in her Theater for Young Readers class's rendition of "The Frog Prince." She was so excited, and she read beautifully.


Brian turned 33 last Thursday. We took him out to dinner at Red Robin (Red Robins, as my kids call it). The kids and I gave him ties and an oilskin G. Loomis fishing hat, and we made Grandma Orton's Chocolate Dessert instead of a cake. After dinner, we stopped at his office, and he snuck out the leftover two pieces of red velvet cake they had at lunch so I could try it. He had to sneak it, because they were also celebrating his dad's and someone else's birthdays, so it wasn't just his cake. It was delicious.


My niece, Megan, and I met with Stacia from the Columbia River Exhibition of History, Science, and Technology (CREHST) Museum at the Resthaven Pioneer Cemetery to go over the logistics of our parts for Tombstone Tales. Tombstone Tales is a living history tour where groups of people will be lead around the cemetery, where they will come across people like Megan and me, who will be dressed up to tell about the life of someone who lived in our area a long time ago. I am portraying Jennie Crawford Koppin, and Megan is Elaine Grace Compton, who died when she was twelve. I'm super excited about this event. I found out about Tombstone Tales when I was checking the museum hours over the summer, so I called to see how to be a part of it, and they were thrilled to have volunteers. If you're in the area, and you're interested, give CREHST a visit to get your tickets. It's going to be on the 23rd and 24th of October, and it's going to be really, really cool.

Finished!

Before continuing on with this post, I must insist that you read the title with a French accent. It makes it that much better.

On Saturday we finished putting together the swing set, and we love it! Over the couple of weeks of putting it together we had over my parents, Brian's brother and parents, and our neighbors. It was so fun setting it up, and I'm excited to be able to send the kids outside without them whining, "But there's nothing to do!" I love it.

Life As Usual

I don't have anything terribly exciting to report. There's a lot going on right now, but most of it is just...life.

We're putting up a huge swing set in our backyard. It's one of the big wood ones that normally go for four or five hundred dollars. My parents bought it on sale for two hundred a couple of years ago, and since they haven't put it up yet and don't have plans anymore to put it up, they sold it to us for one hundred. Fabulous! We've got the middle tower put together so far, and hopefully we'll finish the rest of it this weekend. It will be wonderful to have something (besides the hose) to keep the kids happy and busy outside.

Home school is going great. I love it. It's so fun having Alyssa around with us all day, and it is so fun watching her learn. On Monday we picked up a school desk off of Craigslist so she could have a place to sit with her feet flat on the floor and her bum flat on the seat, and it has helped so much with getting her to sit still. Also, by suggestion of my mom, I got her a binder with designated folders for each subject that I put her work into each day. That way she can look through the binder and see what she needs to do to be done each day. The schedule right now is that she has thirty minutes of Phonics, then Math, then we do Language Arts together for however long it takes, then we have snack and recces. Then she comes back in and does Phonics and Math again, then we do either History or Science together and we're done! Thrown into our days is also writing practice and reading time, which we do sometime in the afternoon or evening when we can fit it in, but mostly we're trying to be done with everything by lunch time. On Mondays she has an acting class through MCP in the morning, and Tuesdays she goes into MCP for P.E., an art class, Spanish, and cooking. Really, I am incredibly impressed so far with our curriculum (K12) and MCP.

Ethan is dead set on being a Transformer for Halloween, even though he only knows about Transformers because of the fruit snack. With him being so small (almost four but still fits 2T clothes) I'm afraid that we'll have a hard time finding a cool costume that will be able to fit him, and I have no idea how to make a Transformer costume. When he woke up just a bit ago, we had a little talk about the whole thing, and I haven't made any progress.

Carrie: Hey, Ethan, what would you think about being Spiderman for Halloween?

Ethan: No, I want oo be sumpfing else.

Carrie: What do you want to be?

Ethan: A Ransformer.

Carrie: But I don't know how to make a Transformer costume. Do you know how to make a Transformer costume?

Ethan: Um, Daddy does.

Carrie: I don't know if Dad does either, Honey. Well, what does a Transformer look like?

Ethan: (thinking very hard) I don't know.

Then why do you want to be one?!? He is not budging. Not at all. Looks like we're going to have to make a trip to check out the costumes at Costco (I've heard they have Bumblebee), and if we don't have any luck, Brian and I are going to have to get creative. Alyssa wants to be a moon princess, which should be easy, because all she wants is a "beautiful blue dress with sparkles for stars," and Marcus is going to be Batman, because one of the first things he learned to say (er, sing) was, "Na na na na na na na na...BATMAN!"

etHan

Yesterday, when Ethan woke up, he slowly came down the stairs, and when I greeted him from the bottom, he said in his little half asleep voice, "Mom, I love the letter H!"

We don't know why he loves the letter H so much, but ever since he learned his letters, H has been his absolute favorite.

Last week, at his cousic Tegel's birthday party, we were getting out lunch sacks to put the kids' goodies in, and when I put Ethan's name on his, I asked if he wanted a star or smiley face on it, and he said, "No, I want an H." So he had a little brown bag with his name, and a huge capital H on it.

And now, he's sitting on my lap, watching me type. A minute ago he asked, "Are you doing yours work, Mom?"

"I'm actually writing about you," I said.

"Oh," and he thought for a moment. "Are there H's in it? Mom, are you putting H's in it?

First Day of School

We finally got all of our registration stuff figured out, and we signed up for K12 yesterday, so we were able to start school today. Yea! My neighbor told me that Alyssa told her that I keep saying that we'll start school "next week." Apparently, every week, I say "We'll start school next week," but yesterday I was able to tell Alyssa that we would start "tomorrow."

We started off by saying the Pledge of Allegiance and doing our Daily Board, which we made because Ethan's always asking, "What day is today? Is it Saturday?" Saturdays are the days the kids are allowed to watch movies, so he always wants it to be Saturday.

Then we spent the rest of the morning going back and forth from the computer to the table, doing Phonics, Math, Science, and Language Arts. We're having adapted lessons right now, because our materials will take a couple of weeks to get to us, plus we're flying through some of the reading and math lessons, because they're very much a review, and I want to get Alyssa to her right level as soon as possible. Right now the math is, "How many lady bugs are there?" and "Which group has more?" I think it's good for Alyssa to review some things, but I obviously don't want to spend a huge amount of time on it.

For Language Arts we read a story from Japan about a sparrow who was helped by a kind old woman, and to repay her he sat on her roof and sang songs. The woman across the street, however, didn't appreciate his singing, so she cut his tongue, and he left. It turns out the kind woman and her husband go in search of him, and he gives them a choice to take home one of two baskets. They choose the smaller basket, because they figure the larger basket would be taking too much from him, and when they get home, they find a small treasure in the basket. When the mean old woman sees this, she goes in search of the sparrow, and she chooses the larger basket, which has "stinging and biting" insects in it, and they chase her out of town. It was a fun story to read, and Alyssa drew a picture of her favorite scene, which we're supposed to save for a future lesson. I'm excited to see what we'll do next!

Stand for Something

Ethan is using the toilet like a big boy does, and he couldn't be more proud of himself.

Why Didn't They Break A Mattresss A Long Time Ago?

My children are willingly and happily clearing the table, doing the dishes, folding laundry, cleaning up their toys, making their beds, putting their dirty clothes in the laundry basket...the list goes on and on. They're learning the value of work, they're learning that work is really not that bad, and that is has its rewards. I hope that by the time they earn Alyssa's mattress that these things will have become habits for them.

We have each chore listed at a very low value, like 5, 10, or 25 cents, but it's surprising how it adds up each day. Alyssa is finally understanding the concept of money, and how each coin has its own value. Up until now, money has been some vague concept she didn't quite get, even though we've tried to explain it multiple times. This is very exciting!

Hellians

Yesterday the kids tore apart Alyssa's bed, moved the mattress around the room, folded the mattress in half somehow (permanently bending the springs), pulled on a white string, and kept pulling until the binding around the edges was completely torn off. Brian and I have both looked at the mattress to see if it can be fixed. It is dead. Very, very dead.


So the kids are sleeping on the floor for a while. I was pretty proud of myself for keeping my cool through the whole ordeal, until I called both my mom and mother-in-law to ask, "What the heck do I do with these kids?" There were also some tears shed by the children as they watched me move their beds to the basement. Alyssa said she didn't want to live with our family anymore, that she wanted to go to the orphanage, because she didn't like the way I was treating her. That's when I called Brian's mom, and pretended like I was inquiring about orphanages in the Tri-Cities and did they have any room for a seven year old girl? When I got off the phone, though, she gave me a hug and said she didn't want to leave.


Brian and I talked this morning, and we've decided to make a list of chores that are worth different amounts of money, and all three kids are in charge of raising money to buy a new mattress for Alyssa. Whatever they can raise on their own, we'll match. I want it to take a while, though. I want them to learn that they have to take care of our things, and follow the rules. There are no toys in their bedroom. They are not supposed to be playing in there anyway, and they know that.

Which brings us to my other resolution. I have to be more diligent and stick to the rules in my life, too. Yesterday started out fine, but Brian didn't have to leave for work until around 8:00, so I put off summer school for a while, then summer school got messed up when I found out we weren't registered for K12, and Alyssa had apparently taken the wrong placement test, so we would have to do it again, really fast, then I gave her yet another wrong placement test, since she's really supposed to be in second grade, instead of first, and all craziness broke loose, and after we got all that figured out, I decided to can our routine and work on designing t-shirts for our homeschool. (Our mascot is the jackalope, by the way.) So if I had stuck to our routine, instead of playing on the computer, the kids wouldn't have been left alone upstairs for so long without me checking on them. My new motto is "I'm sticking to it." I'm sticking to our routines, our rules, and I'm definitely not changing my mind when I tell the kids to either do or not do something, and they whine to me about it.

And the kids are now awake, so I've got to finish up and turn off the computer, so we can start our day.

Row, Row, Row Your Boat

On Friday we went to Big 5 and bought a 3 person inflatable boat and a pair of oars, then headed to Leslie Groves to take it out on the river. We rowed out to the island, where the kids picked snake grass, and chased after beetle looking things. Alyssa and I went out and swam in the water for a bit, after we found an area not taken over with sea weed. Usually, when we play by the river, Ethan and I have this conversation:

Ethan: Are there harks?

Carrie: No, there's aren't any sharks.

Ethan: Are there hocadiles?

Carrie: No, there aren't any crocodiles.

But this time, he didn't ask any questions, he just jumped in the boat, ready to go. Marcus, on the other hand, was very unsure of the whole thing. He's not a big water person, but he does end up enjoying it once he's used to the idea.

So This Is Why The Pounds Are Piling On

Last night Brian wanted to show Alyssa a song on his computer, so when we gathered in our bedroom for family prayer, he played the song for her, and the kids started dancing. We ended up postponing family prayer for close to an hour while Brian played the DJ, saying such smooth lines as, "You thought that I was BJ, but I'm the DJ," while the kids and I danced all around the bedroom. About halfway through, when I was thinking about how much fun everyone was having (and about how great a workout dancing is!) I realized that it's been forever since we've had a family dance party. We used to have them all of the time; we'd dance in the living room, the kitchen, wherever on a multiple times a day basis. What happened to that? I think it also explains why I haven't been as chipper as my normal self, too. We need to dance more.




*When I wrote the word, "chipper," I thought, "That's a dorky word. I need to use another word." But then I looked it up to find another word, and the definition is, "marked by or being in sprightly good humor and health," and it is actually, the perfect word. So "chipper" stays.

Went to a Garden Party

Today we had a garden party to celebrate Alyssa's birthday. The kids painted flower pots, played hot potato and "Flower, Flower, Weed," had dirt cake, and planted flowers in their beautifully painted pots. We had the party in Alyssa's flower garden, which has marigolds and huge sunflowers that she and Grandma Jacks planted at the beginning of the summer, but sadly, all of the pictures I took were facing the desolate, barren part of the garden area. The kids all got along well, and we had a fabulous time!

Alyssa's birthday was Sunday, but it's stretched for three days, because we had cake for Family Home Evening with the cousins yesterday, and her official birthday party today. We've learned that she is quite the diva on her birthday, but we also taught her about being a good hostess today. We were trying to teach the kids to wait until everyone had their cake before eating, and some of them said that Alyssa needed to take the first bite since she was the birthday girl, but we explained to them that it was because she was the hostess. She had to make sure that each of her guests had a plate of food, and she would take a bite to signal to everyone that it was then okay to eat. Alyssa kept looking around as we served the kids, and all of the others had their eyes glued to Alyssa to watch for the first bite. It was so fun to watch!


Alyssa's birthday always seems to fall at a time when we're really busy and I'm not posting on the blog very often. I haven't been very good at doing special birthday posts for her, but I will say that we love her so, so very much. She is such a sweet little girl who always makes our lives exciting. I'm so proud of her for all of the progress she's made in the last year with sitting still and learning to read and helping so much around the house. I have loved watching her grow from being a tiny, busy baby into the beautiful busy girl that she is now.

Success!

We have little shoots of grass in our backyard!

Tidbits

• First and foremost, I am not dead, or ill, or on vacation. I've just been busy. It's amazing to me how fast life can fill up with things to do, things that need to be done, and things that are just plain fun. I didn't take a break from blogging intentionally; there have been many times over the last couple of weeks that I've wanted to post, but never made it to the computer with time to write. One of the reasons for this is because we've been keeping the computer turned off and have only been turning it on as we need it, instead of just keeping it running all day long. If I want to post, I have to plan a time for it, which is a good thing, but it takes away a little bit of the spontaneity of things, and usually I save things for the end of the day, but by the time the kids are in bed, Brian and I drop into bed, exhausted, and go to sleep. But I want to post more often. I feel like blogging has been slipping away from me a little, and I don't want to lose it. I love how it captures little moments of our life that I wouldn't normally think to put in a journal.

• We went camping with my sister's family to Mt. Rainier a couple of weeks ago. We camped at Ohanapocosh and hiked to Silver Falls, then drove over to La Wis Wis to see the Blue Hole. The water was freezing cold, but Brian swung off the rope swing anyway. He wasn't prepared for how shallow the water was, and we're lucky he didn't get hurt. He even swam across the river, only to find that it was actually shallow enough to walk the whole way. Then he went back and forth, helping people across. Megan, Michael, Ethan, and I were the ones that went with him, though Ethan didn't get wet since Brian carried him on his shoulder. Did I mention that it was cold? Like, ice cold? It was fun, though. I wore my flip flops, because Brian said that the rocks on the bottom were hurting his feet, but every time I took a step, my shoes would get caught in the current and start to pull me back. I'm glad I had Brian to hold on to.

• We planted grass in the back yard on Saturday. There was some grass back there already, but not much, so hopefully this will take even though it's the wrong time of year to plant. We used the grass clippings from the front yard as a mulch to cover the seeds, but we didn't have enough, so Brian ended up mowing our neighbor's front and back lawns. It was funny when the mom came out to say thank you, and she mentioned that he sons was concerned that he wouldn't get his allowance, sine someone else was doing his work for him. I hope the seeds take, because it would be so fun to have good grass back there for the kids to play on.
  

• We've been having a great time looking at houses and lots to put houses on, and talking with different contractors. The plan right now is that we'll either build or buy next summer, so right now we're still gathering information on different areas and builders, but mostly we're just dreaming, and it is so fun. We've looked at a few different houses that we'll never be able to afford, just to get ideas on floor plans and whatnot. Half the time we set out in the car, we end up driving around looking for a place we might want to end up. Brian and I are having a wonderful time planning our dream house - listing what we want, then paring it down to what we really need, and trying to figure out how to get what we both want and need in the best way possible.

• Brian's dad went to Prosser to pick cherries last weekend and brought back a whole bunch, which he shared with us. Last night we made cherry cobbler with homemade ice cream, and it was so yummy.

• Marcus is talking up a storm, but half the time he's speaking Gibberish and expecting us to understand. I love when he lets out a string of nonsense syllables, then looks at me with an expression that says, "Did you get that? I couldn't have made myself any clearer...Why are you not doing as I've asked?" He's also saying a lot of words, and it's fun to hear him talk.

• Alyssa's losing teeth left and right. If our tooth fairy wasn't so cheap, we'd be broke right now, but luckily our tooth fairy believes it's the novelty, not the amount of money that makes it special, and she's never upgraded from the classic quarter. There was one time, though, that she went to bed without exchanging the tooth, and Alyssa woke up to find her tooth still under her pillow in the morning. The tooth fairy gave her two quarters the next night, and she hasn't missed a tooth since.

• Ethan is doing very well with potty training. Part of me is kicking myself for not taking the opportunity more seriously when he was potty training himself last summer, but the other part of me realizes that the situation wasn't ideal last summer, and it was nice not to have to deal with accidents through the winter while Brian was gone. Ethan is also doing amazing with the alphabet. He knows all the letters, and their sounds. We play a letter game with his flashcards every day for summer school, and he loves it.
  

A Fairy Tale Reception

I didn't get an official picture of it, but in the background of this one you can see the arbor as you walk into the back yard. On the front it has a board hanging from it that says, "Once upon a time...," and on the way out it says, "...they lived happily ever after."


Each of the tables had a different fairy tale centerpiece on it. Months before Kimberly became engaged, I was at Big Lots with my mom and Christina, and Christina found the pumpkin we ended up using for Cinderella, and she joked, "Hey, when Kim gets married she can have a Cinderella wedding, and we can put glass slippers in the pumpkins and put them on the tables." We talked about how to do that in a cool way and add other fairy tales into it, but mainly we were joking, and Christina bought a pumpkin for an Autumn decoration. Then, when we went out looking for centerpieces with Kim, we weren't finding anything that she wanted, so on the way home I mentioned Christina's idea. Kim loved it, and things just took off from there.

It was so fun putting these together. A lot of the things we bought, like the swan and Snow White's cottage, were lucky finds from Value Village. It's not a whole lot of bride's that will let you shop for their center pieces at thrift stores, but Kimmy was so excited. The bed frames actually originally had snoring Santa's on them that we had to pull off. We sewed miniature quilts and mattresses, and then about a week before the wedding, we put together each centerpiece on Mom's kitchen table, and then ran around the house looking for things to add to each one. With Beauty and the Beast, we laid out the vase and the mirror, and we knew we needed to lift the mirror onto something, so I started looking throughout the rooms, trying to find a jewelry box, and on my third or fourth pass down the stairs, I saw a few old children's books on the shelf and grabbed those. Perfect! So yeah, we had a blast putting these together.

It was Christina's idea to put the open books with each one. Each book contains an excerpt from the actualy fairy tale. She and my dad put them together, and they turned out beautiful.

Sleeping Beauty


Cinderella


Repunzel
This was one of Mom's brilliant ideas. We took a glass vase taped off the window, and spray painted it with rock spray paint, so it was textured. The roof to the tower is actually the top to a wind chime that had some pretty ugly chimes hanging from it. Mom painted it a distressed gold, and used it as the roof.


The Frog Prince
My mom searched the entire Tri-Cities for weeks until she found the perfect frog. She said she wanted one that you could just hold in your hands and give a big kiss to.


The Little Mermaid


Swan Lake
This was the head table that Kim and Brian sat at.


The Princess and the Pea


Snow White


Beauty and the Beast


And this is the finished dress, before the wedding. It was a huge chore sewing it together, but it was fun to do, and like I said before, it went together perfectly.

Brian and Kimberly McCann

The sealing was beautiful. Kimberly was gorgeous - she looked incredibly happy. I'm sure Brian was happy, too, but I was watching my baby sister.

A few of the cousins. Derek, Ethan, Tegel, Callie, Alyssa, Emma, Merian, with Michael behind. All of the kids looked like the Von Trapp family, running around the temple grounds. Christina said that it felt like they would start singing any second. It was also hard to keep track of them all. I would be looking for Alyssa and have to closely look at five different girls before I would find her.

The ring ceremony. They had Brian's dad and Brian's bishop speak, and then they talked a bit about the traditions in their families that they want to implement in their own family.

Brian's children, Quiana and Elijah, sang Kimberly a song called, "Welcome to the Family."

Derek, Asher, and Marcus

Sharing the cake


Saturday was so hot! Notice all the people lined up under the shade of the fence instead of sitting at the pretty tables? It was hot! At one point I saw 104 on the thermometer, but someone arriving at the reception said it was 112.

I Love To See The Temple

My sister, Kimberly, is getting married tomorrow, and she went through the temple today. It's been a crazy couple of months what with sewing the dress and getting together decorations for the reception, and I almost didn't make it to the temple. (I'll tell you now that her dress is gorgeous. Kim designed it, and Mom, Kim, and I sewed it. It was actually pretty complicated, and there were many times that I was amazed at how smoothly it went together. Plus, the centerpieces for the reception are definitely the coolest centerpieces of all time. Each table is different, and I can't wait to see it all put together.)

Yesterday my "mom planner" came in the mail, which I was so excited for, because I've been wanting a planner for a few years now, and it's taken that long to find one that looks like it'll work for me. Brian brought the package to my parent's house when he came home from work, then I brought it home with me yesterday evening. After tucking the kids in bed, I went downstairs to do some laundry and clean out my purse to make room for my planner. As I was going through my purse, I thought to check my temple recommend just to make sure everything was good, and sure enough, it was expired. "How did that happen?" I thought, then remembered going to the temple in late April and thinking that I needed to renew my reccomend before it expired in May. Then, the wedding dress and reception centerpieces happened, and I didn't give it another thought until last night.

So at 10:30 pm, I called Brian's cell phone as he and all the other male members of my family were on their way home from the bachelor party, and cried, "I can't go to the temple tomorrow. My recommend is expired." He quickly remedied the situation by waking up both the bishop and one of the counselors of the Stake presidency to get emergency interviews this morning. He's my hero!

Then, this morning, as I was getting ready and running out the door for my interviews, Marcus and Ethan (I put Marcus' name first, because he was the one on the counter, and Ethan was just below, watching) decided to dump out every bag of cereal we own onto the kitchen floor. Brian had a great time cleaning up while Marcus and Ethan had a great time in time out while he was cleaning.

We dropped off the kids at the church, where Brian's mom volunteered to babysit all the cousins with a couple of girls fro our ward. That was so nice - it made our day so much easier. Then we headed to the temple.

Kimberly is the youngest in our family, so she was the last one to go through the temple. We were so fortunate to have all of the kids come home and be able to be there with her. It was incredibly wonderful to have our whole family in the temple at the same time. I was looking around at all of my brothers and sisters while we were in the Celestial Room, and I thought how blessed we are to all be together in the temple. I loved it! I know my parents loved it, for sure.

For Your Fourth of July Viewing Pleasure

The Old Red, White, and Blue...Sort Of

Girls (and boys) Night

Alyssa has started calling Girls Night, "G.N." around the boys, because she's afraid they'll find out about what we're doing and be jealous. It's so cute when she's talking to me, and then she'll say, "And I was thinking that maybe for..." whisper, "...G.N..." normal voice, "we could do our nails and our toe nails, and then we could - Ethan, don't look at me. You didn't hear that. You didn't hear what I said."

So last night for Girls Night we had a makeover night. We actually let the boys join in, since they both took late naps and weren't ready to go to sleep at a normal time. We soaked, scrubbed, and lotioned our feet; did Mary Kay's Satin Hands, then did each other's make up. (We didn't put makeup on the boys, though.) Following the tradition of Girls Nights everywhere, we used way too much eye shadow and blush, and we got mascara on each other's cheeks and eye lids while trying to put it on. By the way, have you ever had a six year old apply your mascara for you? It's an experience you'll never forget.

Here's our finished product photos we took of each other. I wanted to get one of all of us together, but the boys wouldn't hold still.