Rice Krispee Houses

The older the kids get, the more fun everything gets. Every year I pass the gagillion packs of Gingerbread houses lining the isles in every grocery store I enter in to....every year I sit and look and ponder whether or not I want to dive into that big of a project, cause its not as happy and clean as the little happy kids look on the cover. Its a huge undertaking! It literally takes over the entire kitchen....crumbs, icing, stickiness, candy galore....so every year I just keep walking. This year, however, I saw on TV kids making a Rice Krispee house. And I stopped and thought, now this I can do! So we did it. I loved it. Being one who really doesn't enjoy cooking with her kids....this was fun. I let everything go and dove in. I had NO idea what I was doing. My Mother-in-law is here and she is like, sooooo, whats your plan? and I was like, I have NO idea.....and we're all just sitting there looking at this huge blob of rice krispee and marshmellow....so I grab a ball off and start molding and my Mother in law, literally thinks i'm crazy...and she says again, "so, is that your roof?" and I;m like, "Roof?....ooooh, sure, yah, its the roof, uh-huh...." ...I hadn't even thought of a roof. The kids are going crazy wanting to dive in and i'm trying to keep them from eating up the entire house before we even start. So, we dove in and totally flew by the seat of our pants the entire time (I was peeking over at Caleb and my Mother in laws house the entire time copying there ideas, but shhhhh, don't tell them). This is what we ended up with. They turned out so cute!! We had so much fun! Priceless memories with thier Grandma :)
Skylar and My house:Caleb and Grandma's house:

Boo-Yaw!!!

You picked the wrong house to mess with Rats!!

Family Pictures 2009

I love when your really good friends have really good talents. Alyssa is an amazing photogropher and I've been meaning to get our family pictures done for a while. So when you fuse the two of those together, this is what you get:

These are amazing, thank you sooo much Alyssa. We love you!!

Rats

Day Yesterday

Picture: Sean- fresh out of surgery with arm in sling, Me-gimping around with a ridiculous back, go up to cut down Christmas tree in Lassen. I point out tree, Dad cuts it down, Dad loads it up. We drive back to Redding (painfully). Have two guys meet us at the house and unload tree, to stand, to house. Have two able bodied guys get down our Christmas decorations from rafters and bring them into house. Able bodied guys leave. Sean and I unpack Christmas decorations. Find Christmas decorations covered in rat poop, inside the bins. Find Christmas decorations had been eaten at by rats. FIND MY HOMEMADE CROCHETED (by me) CHRISTMAS STOCKINGS CHEWED THROUGH BY FREAKIN RATS!!

next step: find rats and kill rats.

Gooooo Teeeeam Edward!

Yep, thats right. New Moon hits theatres tonight at 12am. The countdown has been on. 6 hours to go. I re-read the book, I've been watching all Kristen Stewarts interviews, got my Hot Tomales, gonna take a pain pill so I can sit through it, yah, i'd say i'm good to go. Theres a pretty big group of us going, and to be honost I think I'm more excited for the night out with friends and the excitement that comes from drinking 5 cups of coffee, being one of 500 screaming (i probably won't scream, actually) girls, crammed in 5 movie theatres. Its fun. New Moon, here we come!!!

Ugh

My back has been out. Ugh. Like really really out. Like can't move, can't sit, can't stand out. Since Saturday. I absolutely hate this kind of stuff. I hate being down. I hate being weak. I really really hate being out of control and my house being out of control. I like things clean and orderly. I like to do things my way (in my house). I have had things to do. Things coming up. I can't be down. So all this to say, God has really really been showing me some things this week. At first when I was praying and praying and praying I was hopeful. Hopeful God would hear me and heal me. Then after a couple days (we are sooo impatient!) I started getting frustrated. Really frustrated. At God, with myself, just so frustrated that I had so much to do and couldn't do it and that God wasn't healing me. And in this time of frustration I slowed down. Really slowed down. I layed on the floor a lot. Played with the kids a lot more laying on the floor. Cuddled with Ryder a ton while laying on the floor. I let go. My mom came over and served for an entire day, while I layed on the floor. Sean has served me and has been an amazing house cleaner/dinner cooker/dad, while I layed on the floor. I think my back hurts more from all this laying on the ground......hmmm......well, anyway, God has been teaching me to just let go. To let people step in and help me. To not have to have everything done MY WAY. And its so funny how to us 2 or 3 or 4 days seem like FOREVER, but now looking back on this past week, on just a few little days, I feel sooo silly for complaining and begging God so much. Instead of sitting back, and taking advantage of my extra time with my kids, and embracing the place where the Lord has me right now, I wasted the time complaining and being so frustrated. Ugh.

Tape

I love boys' little imaginative minds. I love watching Caleb play in his own boy world. He comes up with the cutest things. I could listen to him play all day. This boy sure makes my heart happy...all he needs to keep him occupied for hours is a motorcycle, a truck, and a ramp....sometimes tape....