Raaaaaaar!

They are coming to Spokane in April. I have three little boys who will wet their pants if we can save the money to go. We have GOT to see this:

Cookie Bliss

With all the baking we've been doing around here, we've been doing our fair share of eating too. The boys *LOVED* decorating the sugar cookies I made. Theirs had everything but the kitchen sink on them.

Daddy also helped and spent more time than anyone creating his masterpieces. 

Whoa, the white balance was off on that last one. Probably should have corrected that in Photoshop but I just don't care that much.

This is the one that he spent half an hour on-- Get it? Home is where the HEART is-- yep, he can be sappy and sentimental when he chooses. And yes, the "snow" is individually placed blue sprinkles. Like I said, serious time investment here. The man has much more patience than I do.

This is the cookie he made in honor of Brecken. This is the baby who has slept on his tummy since birth, and will only sleep that way now. However, now that he is rolling, when he doesn't want to sleep he flips over on his back like a turtle and cries and cries until someone comes to get him. Jarrod started wrapping him in the "Brecken Burrito" which prevents him from rolling and in turn gets him to sleep in two minutes flat. So, that there is a baby in a BB, the Brecken Burrito.

Just get it out

Can't seem to stop long enough to put together a coherent thought, let alone a blog post. Figure it's time for another round of confessions, and then maybe I'll jump back on the blogging wagon:

** I've gotten snagged on the new series on the WB (or is it the CW, I forgot), called "Vampire Diaries" Last week I let Jarrod watch it with me but he wasn't allowed to comment at any time. He did very well. No snarking or scoffing at all, and this week he asked what time "our show" was on.



**I started reading Clan of the Cave Bear because I can remember my mom reading it when I was a little kid. I picked it up and tried to read a page back then, and couldn't understand any of it. I have been reminded of that over the years and how annoyed I was that I couldn't handle it, so I went to the library and checked that sucker out. Still in chapter two, because it reads like a history book. Ugh. (by the time I actually posted this I had given up and returned the book to the library. I decided that there are a million other books out there to read, I could let this one go)

**My baby is starting to growl like a baby tiger. He isn't mad or upset, he just likes the sound of his own voice. He does this really weird mix between a dove coo and a bear growl. It cracks me up.

**I forgot it was picture day at Greyson's school and I actually licked my hand to slick his hair down. yep, I have become my mother. She was the one who thought it would be a good idea on picture day to braid my hair and then cut the bottom of the braid straight across, so it would be even-- ummm, the braid had to come out eventually and my hair was most definitely NOT even.

**When I want Rowan to go downstairs and play I've gotten in the habit of telling him it's bedtime. That kid takes off like a rocket and I don't hear from him for a while.

**I've continued to use the expression "Son of a Crapper" because it makes me laugh. Jarrod was present the other day when I cut my finger and employed my new euphemism. He nodded and said "That's a pretty good one-- because who ISN'T a son of a crapper?" HA!

**Haydn had a friend over the other day and Jarrod and I got into a tickle war in the kitchen. Haydn rolled his eyes and says to his friend "They are ALWAYS like this" Strangely enough, that made me feel good.

**I started this post two months ago and just found it in my saved stuff. Considering I havn't posted anything else in forever, this is going up. I keep waiting for the blogging fairy to come along and magically transfer all the posts I've done in my head while driving, but she's backed up with it being Christmas and all.

Hello Again

It's busy around here. Baking, cleaning, eating, cleaning, playing, cleaning, spanking, cleaning... and on it goes. We have a two year old loose on the premises, which is the equivalent of a leprechaun. Cute and jovial until you tick them off, and then watch out. I have a whole post documenting this fact all planned out, but that'll have to wait. He was sitting next to me while I typed this, pulling packing peanuts out of a box and happily snapping them in half. I told him to go help Daddy get dressed (Jarrod is still in bed) and he lit up like a Christmas tree and ran away saying "Oh yeah! Hep Daddy DRESSED" He is a helpful leprechaun, but only if the job is appealing.

The agenda for today includes:

** Baking Amish friendship bread with my friend Selina. It's our annual tradition.

** Baking four dozen cookies for the cookie fundraiser at church. The ones i made last night are not so tasty *sigh*

** Making French Toast casserole and putting it in the fridge for MOTS tomorrow morning.

**Recovering from the amount of baking I have to do today.

** Hanging curtains in my new office. The curtains that have been purchased for two weeks on the wall that has been painted for a month. Time to wrap it up already.

** Stalking the Basic Grey website until they officially launch their new digital line like they promised they would do today. Well, it's 7 a.m. Pacific coast time and there are no digital elements up yet-- I've been waiting daaaaays for this! Digital Basic Grey is enough to push me firmly onto the dark side, er... digital side.

They are my most favorite scrapbook paper company, and the appeal of purchasing their papers ONCE and re-using them forever is just too strong. I went into my local store and they are feeling the heat of digital competition. The shelves are kinda bare and they are putting in a "digital cafe," which really just means you can lug your laptop in and sit in their store while you use it. There is something magical about a real sheet of paper so pretty you would rather hang it and frame it than cut it, but I'm afraid that the digital age is coming for the paper industry.

iheartfaces photo challenge-- BLUE

When I read the theme for this week's photo contest was "blue" I immediately thought of this picture. This is one of my all time favorites, probably because it was back in the day before I got my "real" camera, taken with a simple point and shoot, on a crisp February day where the sky was so blue it was almost eerie, with my husband's hands framing this little butterball who is now a skinny busy boy just turning five.

iheartfaces is a website/blog devoted to-- you guessed it-- faces! And learning to photograph them well. Their site is jam packed with free tutorials, wonderful tips, and oodles of photographs to inspire. Definitely check them out.

You ever notice that good movies come in waves? There is always a lull (sometimes a very very long lull) and then several come at once. Here are the ones that I've got my eye on.

Because I've had a soft spot for Julie Child since I was a little girl, when I watched her on Saturday morning with my mom. Right after Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and before Yan Can Cook.

500 Days of Summer: Will probably have to wait for this to come out on DVD because for some reason Coeur d'Alene is not of the "select" cities playing it. Why is that? Idahoans are cultured people too, we can handle it. They send us every horror slasher movie made, but they seldom send us the good stuff. This looks to me to be similar in feel to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which was funny, poignant, thought-provoking, quirky, sad... all the good stuff.

Why BandSlam? Why not. It looks good, though I don't really know what its about. And its rated PG, which is surprising considering it has teenagers and a music festival of some kind in it.

I have really mixed feelings about this one. For some reason every time I see the preview it gives me that nervous/sick feeling in my stomach. I'm not sure if that is because this is one of the rare books that I didn't finish, and my attraction to the movie reminds me of my reading failure, or because I didn't care for the book. It lost me three-quarters of the way through because it was so depressing and I just sort of drifted on to other things. But now I keep seeing these previews, and the casting on this has to be some of the best EVER because seeing Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana as Claire and Henry has made me rethink the entire book and maybe, just maybe... I was totally wrong about it. I picked it back up the other night to check (I own it because my husband spilled a latte on it and I had to pay the library for damages... my first library book incident) and I read the last three chapters of the book. It had me crying in the kitchen while my children were running around like hoodlums, and I havn't even been invested in these characters for almost a year. Sooooo, I don't know where that leaves me. I don't want to see it, because it will be sad, but I do want to see it because darn it, I read the book and I always see movies of books I've read, and Rachel MacAdams is one of my favorites. She has to be one of the most stunningly beautiful women I've ever seen. Oh, to be a redhead.

Because it has GIRLS NIGHT written all over it. I am so seeing this movie opening weekend.

Road Trip!!

So we bit the bullet. We took the plunge. We strapped four children, including an infant, into a borrowed SUV and drove to Portland. It only took us 10 hours or so and we survived! We actually did better than surviving, we had fun.

Are we crazy? Maybe a little bit.
They boys all had very good attitudes and enjoyed watching DVDs in Grandma Roxanne's car (thank goodness for that DVD player, it made all the difference.)
We stopped at Multnomah Falls on the way home and took a mini hike up to see the waterfall. I've been driving past this on various road trips since I was a kid and have never gotten to stop, so it was exciting for me as well.

We walked the .2 miles up to this bridge.
While we were in Portland we went to the New Frontiers conference, which was held at George Fox University. We were able to stay on campus in the dorms and we enjoyed walking to all the different events because the campus was so pretty. This bridge was right by our dorm and my friend Connie took these pictures for us.

We were loading up to go home and had just found out we'd locked our keys in the room and would have to wait for a campus security person to come unlock it for us. We were a little grumpy and tired, so she had to practically drag us down to the bridge to take the pictures, but I'm very glad she did. We look happier than we actually were, and that's all the matters right, hehe.


The focus was off on this one, but I actually really like it. That was a really cool bridge with a creek way down below it.

Rowan was a relatively happy camper for the whole trip. He slept in a bed for the first time and only fell out of it twice. When we were two hours from home the cranky bug hit, though, and he started randomly shouting the word "NO!!" to remind us that he was still strapped in the back and was no longer happy about it.

Hopefully more to come tomorrow!