Enjoying Asheville with Mom and Dad

I am visiting my family in NC right now and my vacation is coming to a close. My sweet sweet husband took off from work to play mom so that I could go and have a much needed visit with my family. We have had a wonderful visit. The first days home were spent visiting my church family and sisters. We then headed to my parents house. My family has insured that my trip home would be filled to the gills with all sorts of fun activities. First stop was a new little restaurant my mom found called the Early Girl Eatery. MMMMmmmmm the food was yummy and all good fresh food. Even my orange juice was fresh squeezed!

I spent lots of time in book shops. This was a children's bookstore and this is where I love to be. I just love finding new treasures for my kids' bookshelves. I bought two books for my boys; The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stuart and The Blood Hungry Spleen and Other Poems About Our Parts by Allan Wolf.

Gettin' and Givin' LOTS of HUGS!!!

Easton's First Birthday

Well I am super behind on photos as usual. So here goes trying to catch up a bit. This is Mr. Easton's First Birthday. We went down to see our cousins for the day and celebrate Easton's birthday. They had a cook out at this awesome park, oh how I wish we had this park closer. It was very neat. We had such a great day visiting with our family, just need to make it happen more often!! Happy Birthday little Easton!

Church Campout

After VBS this year we went with the church on their annual campout. It was up in the Northern Cascade Mountains in Washington.

It was absolutely beautiful!!! There are just no words to describe it!! We went on a couple hikes with the church, one to a dam and then to some waterfalls. Honestly didn't want to leave... except to maybe get some clean clothes :) That and I think Layne (Jason's mom) was a bit cold. She spent most of the campout enjoying the fire.

VBS 2010

I have so many great pictures of VBS this year but unfortunately I can't post them on this blog because they have other kiddos besides just mine.

This VBS was my training to be the new Children's Ministry Director at Oak Harbor Church of Christ. It was the first time I have every planned a VBS by myself. Man I had so much fun with it!!! I picked the them SonHarvest Fair. You know that so FITS me, haha! The curriculum was all about learning the fruits of the Spirit. I am happy to say that even I learned something new. I have a terrible time memorizing verses and I was able to memorize 5:22

²²But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

Of course, more impressive is that the kids learned it too, haha!

It was a wonderful experience and I learned a lot about the planning of VBS that I will be sure to put into practice next year. Overall I think it was a success!

Double Birthday

This year Noah and I celebrated our birthday together. We wanted to make sure Mamaw got to be here for Noah's birthday and we wanted to do something special. The day Toy Story 3 came out at the drive in was on my birthday, so we took our "party" there. Noah and I opened all our presents in the back of the truck before the movie started. Noah has been wanting a "real" buzz lightyear so that was his big present this year. He was SOOOOO excited and watching the movie with his new buzz was the best! My momma got some great new cookbooks for me and the boys picked out some beautiful jewelry for me. It was a wonderful birthday for both of us!

New blog background

Felt like I needed an update today, so I fiddled around the the layout on the blog. I love this background with all the homeschooling and college work that is going on this really fits my mood right now :D

Day on Camano Island

One of our last big outings while my mom was visiting was a trip to the wooden boat club on Camano island. It turned out to be an absolutely beautiful day so I brought the boys swimsuits and let them go in the water.

Noah is in love with the water. You would have thought the kid had won the lottery. He was just JOY personified.

Abby loved gathering up all those beautiful rocks. I don't know if my washing machine can handle yet another rock collector, haha!

Oh and the little professor, his wheels are always turning!! A shell and a piece of driftwood, wallah, he's invented a "tool".

The water was a little cold, but thankfully the rocks were sooooo warm.

Sometimes the sunshine hits those blue eyes just right, wow... what beautiful kids I have :)

Thanks for a great day momma! Miss you like crazy!!

Smart Cookies

I have some good readers in this house. These two boys really surprised me one week this summer. We are homeschooling and our curriculum is literature based so we are constantly reading. Well I took the boys to the library to pick out some picture books, just for some lighter reading. What do they do? They both insisted that they wanted to pick out their own chapter books to read. Doesn't matter that I am reading two at the time TO them. No, they want to read a chapter book to themselves. So I told them, "that's fine, but mommy just doesn't have time to read it to you. So if you get it you have to read it to yourself." Apparently that isn't a problem. They both read their first chapter book BY THEMSELVES in a week and half's time.
Noah read Night of the Ninjas, a magic treehouse book, and Gabriel read the first book out of the Hardy Boys series. WOW was I impressed, but more impressive is the fact that they didn't stop. They are both continuing to read books on their own time. Gabriel is on his 5th chapter book of the summer and Noah is on his 3rd. Can I remind you that Noah is going into 1st grade and Gabriel into 2nd!! A mom just can't help but brag sometimes, my boys are just so stinkin' smart!

Mama's Girls

My sister didn't stay very long but there are somethings you just have to do while your in the Northwest, so we tried to do as many as we could.

Deception Pass

Crab Shack

Pike's Market

At Pike's Market my mom bought Tasha a chinese stamp with her name engraved in it. The man did the engraving right there while we watched.

The Space Needle

TeeTee Smooches

Eating Pie at Greenbank Farm

My big sis came to visit us this summer. Never really thought it would happen, but she braved out the plane ride just for me :) We had such a great time with her and I hope she will come back again (hint hint)! While she was here we took her to Greenbank Farm for some pie. It is definitely one of our favorite spots on Whidbey. When we went this time the goslings had just hatched so it was a special treat for the kids to see all the babies. Of course, having pie is a pretty good treat too!

Look who's riding now!!

Can you believe it!! Noah learned how to ride his bike!! Woohoo!!

He is doing awesome. After learning to balance on his little strider he was ready for his other bike. The problem was not the "knowing how" it was just needing the confidence that he could. It was so frustrating at first I would give him a push and he would ride... REALLY ride... then he would get scared and run into the curb so he could stop.

One day he just decided... stubborn little guy... that he was gonna keep trying. Of course a little cookie motivation helped too :) but he DID IT! Just kept on getting on and doing it. Now this little man is just ZOOMING around the street with his brother! Can't you just see the pride on his face!

We adjusted the strider and handed it over to our other little rider. She is plum proud of her self too! She is really getting it though. Yesterday we were out there and she would get on the sidewalk and go down the little incline and pick her feet up. Before you know it I am going to be telling you about her learning to ride.

Beautiful Breakfast

Gabriel has taken too preparing the breakfast bowls lately. When I come downstairs they are always so neatly arranged waiting for mommy. I just couldn't resist taking a picture this morning. Such a clever boy I have :)

p.s. notice the vitamins are there too!

We love the Waterfestival

This was our second time going to the Water Festival in Anacortes and I have to say that it just might be my favorite festival. Oh maybe second... I am really looking forward to Shipwreck Day too. They have a great children's section where the kids get to make boats and then get to sail them. Last year Daddy got to do the hammering while I watched with Abby. This year I got to do it. Abby and Daddy watched but Abby did get to take home her own boat. I will have to take pictures later of their finished boats, because they brought them home and painted them this year.

The Art Walk

Last weekend was a festival called Holland Happening in our town. They have a parade, craft vendors, and a carnival. They also had the Art Walk the same weekend. Which is when all the schools pick Art done by the kids at their school and display it downtown in shop windows. That week I got an email from Gabe's former teacher, we are now homeschooling, to inform me that one of his pieces of Art was picked for the Art Walk. I was kind of surprised that they would still allow him to participate even though he wasn't going there anymore. They picked the art before I started homeschooling, but I still think it was rather nice of them to use it anyway. So here is a picture of Gabriel and his MASTERPIECE that was displayed downtown for all to see.

Our first Family Bike Ride

A couple of weekends ago we decided to try to go on a bike ride with all of the kids. It started off as just a short trip to the park in our neighborhood, but we were having so much fun we extended it. Gabriel was a real pro with his bike. We rode down to the commissary first which is down a rather large hill. After that we headed down town and looked around in the shops. Then rode over to the park beside the beach. It has a nice walking trail around it and we wanted to give Noah a chance to ride his bike too. This was a good spot for him to ride because it was all flat. Most of the way Noah rode in the trailer with Abigail, but we kept his strider strapped to the back of the trailer so that he could ride a little too. We were so excited that Gabriel is finally old enough to go on long rides like this, and he was pretty proud of himself too. At the end of the day we were all so tired and we still had to bike up that big hill to our house. When we got there we just couldn't do it so we ended up pushing our bikes up the hill, but it was still such a great time.