So Excited... For Someday

I just have to share because I'm thrilled.
I shared a dream I've been considering with Gabe, and he thinks it is a good idea!!!

Most of you probably know that we want to have more kids. While we do have a rental and a house, even if we sold them both we don't really have enough equity/cash to buy a house that would hold us + more because prices have gone up so much around here. So we are somewhat strapped for space to grow...
But. We have a giant garage in our driveway. Like 2000 sq feet, possible two story garage. I was thinking that we could work on finishing half of it to make room for Gabe's "room," homeschooling area, play area, and safe storage for other stuff. And he thought that was a great idea. A bit on the large side, but eventually, it would help to make room for us. I'm even envisioning a covered walkway connecting the house to the garage :-)

Now, isn't that exciting? Praying for God's blessing (tangible approval) for our future, and having us agree on a plan of action :-) Yea!

Oregon Trip: Day 6

On Sunday, we drove from the campout area up to Beverly Beach State Park, a bit north of Newport, arriving just in time to get some dinner and get in bed. This was the day that Kiera was fighting a fever; thankfully she slept most of the morning and through the driving.

Monday we decided to visit the Oregon Coast Aquarium, but as we hopped on the highway to head south back to Newport we could see at least a mile of backed up construction traffic. So we turned around and headed north to the Devil's Punchbowl. This is Kiera with a little squirrel near the punchbowl viewing area. It seemed totally unafraid- I wondered if it was blind... I'd read that there was a good tidepooling beach near there, so we asked at the local seafood shack and found the most darling little beach ever!

I used this picture for the girls' birthday "friend party" invite. I thought it was priceless!!!

Melia was so excited that she found this "dinosaur bone!" :0)

Tidepooling is so much fun- but Kiera was more about collecting thousands of mussel shells...

After playing around and really enjoying ourselves at the little beach, we though we'd head back to the beach at the campground before dinner. Don't let the beautiful sunshine deceive you; this beach was cold! The wind was freezing, but it provided the opportunity to fly our little kite. Melia loved helping Daddy- pretty soon she may be able to do it herself!

This beach also was perfect for wave chasing.

And hand disappearing acts...

The water and sand fascinated Isaac, but he wasn't so sure about the "walking on moving water" thing.

Isaac also really needed some walking time- and the beach was good for that. He'd been close for a while, but most of our trip he was in the trailer, stroller, carseat, or being carried, so he was excited to get out and move!

But the first thing he did after getting back to the towel was curl up and pop his sandy thumb in his mouth! He was cold and done!

That night I had my own little adventure- I spotted a laundromat just outside our campground, so I loaded up all our stinky stuff and headed off after the kids went to bed to do a couple loads. But when I got out there, I realized that it was actually a storage place for someone, with a laundromat sign still on the building... I thought- well, I'm already halfway there... so I drove back to Newport to find a real laundromat. I found one, but the soap dispenser just stole my money, and another person there watched my clothes while I ran to the nearest grocery store to pick up a few detergent travel boxes (oh how I wished I'd had my coupon book!). I got back and finished up, but was about 1/2 hour later than I told Gabe I would be. I had the radios, but was 7 miles away, so I couldn't let him know I was ok. (His cell phone had died a few days into the trip.) He was glad to see me get back, to say the least. The sad thing was... our clothes didn't smell a whole lot better... Isaac's stinky diapers and an accident Kiera had while feverish made them quite... pungent... And apparently I needed some lessons in laundromat machines. Who knows. It was an adventure anyway :-) Other than worrying my husband, I enjoyed it!

Mystery/Secret Shopping

I realized I forgot to share with you my experiences about secret shopping. So here goes :-)

First one: Pretended to be interested in buying a new car for a whopping 30 minutes w/ no chilren. Good: No children, had a little break. Bad: got paid $14 bucks for too much effort. Won't do it again.

Second: Applebees Shop- had dinner w/ Gabe and the kids. Good: It helped to keep track of details with Gabe there, especially with the kids distracting me. Had yummy dinner out, which was mostly paid for. ($25 reimbursement) Bad: Not much-we'll definitely try to hook up a date night sometime again. Hard to schedule on the website.

Third: Oil Change at Cascade Autocenter. Good: Free + cash oil change. They also fixed a door problem I was having. Bad: I took my kids along, and it went significantly longer than expected. And we watched the food network which made us all hungry!!! :-)

Overall opinion: This is pretty cool. I have to be picky about what I can/can't do with kids, but having dinner and oil changes paid for is helpful when we're on a budget. The really cool thing is that they "say" you can't do more than one of one kind in a certain time period, but I'm scheduled to take Gabe's truck in tomorrow... so they are pretty flexible about the details. I appreciate that :-) I wouldn't consider this as an "income" because it's not consistent at all. But I would call it a way to get random stuff/services free in exchange for a little work. And it does take about 3-4 weeks to get the check, so it's not quick by any means.

There's also not a whole lot available in Wenatchee, but for my friends and family across the mountains, there's a ton. Plus Moses Lake and Yakima... which yea, I consider a bit odd compared to the limited amount here. But hey, I'll take what I can get and let the rest of you have some too :-) I'm only working for one company right now- Bestmark. If you want a referral, let me know!

Oregon Trip: Days 3 through 5

Day 3 found us traveling south on I-5 for a loonnngg time. We drove from Portland down to the Medford area, ending up at Joseph Stewart State park where we met up with some friends. We spent the next three days there. The very first day Gabe found a tick on me when I asked him what was crawling on my back! We spent a lot of time praying that God would keep the ticks off of us, especially Isaac! I had my oils, just in case, but we never saw another one!

Being funny with Mommy

Stopping for some ice cream- YUM!

Isaac loves Ice Cream :-)


Me attempting not to further injure some one's spine whose been injured but must be moved to survive... theoretically...

Crashed out Isaac.

Trying to recreate Melia's flying picture with Isaac... Not too bad! It sure makes his hair look long!!!

Kid craft time- they had a ball!

Me learning how to throw a tomahawk. Incredibly hard, but fun!

I kept making the tops fall off the handles!

We had a great time meeting people we know, but had never actually met before! We did a couple of classes; soap making (can't wait to try!), shooting, safety, mountain medicine (hence my picture above), cooking outdoors (AWESOME!), tomahawk throwing, knife sharpening, OC spray... lots of good information. We are really looking forward to the next one... Maybe in Hawaii!

What I battle for my berries

Hornets or wasps.... earwigs... and even mosquitos!

Melia! Stop! You have a butterfly on your FACE!!!!

100 down... 4000+ to go

I would love to post some pictures for you. Problem is, our computer actually said it didn't have enough memory to copy any more pictures onto itself... That means only half of our vacation pictures made it here, and none from Shea's wedding or anything since.

We are furiously burning them to DVD's but it may be a while. Maybe you'd like some oldies but goodies? OK, I'll see what I can do :-)

Wow- so beat...

Summer has officially kicked my butt. Oops, bum. Tookus. Whatever. Busy-ness has won, I am still trying not to fall out of the race! (Really, if anyone knows the proper way to spell busyness, I'd like to see it. Because business just doesn't look right :-)

Saturday we headed over to Chattaroy for Shea and Todd's wedding. stopped at Sears @ Northtown to buy me some shoes, hit the clearance shelf and picked up some DARLING! shoes for Melia and Kiera as well!! (Who can beat $5??!!) Rehearsal at 7, Isaac barely made it through! Sunday included a fun walk to Starbucks with Chelsea and Celeste in which the lid came off my frap on the way back (BOO!) while Gabe stayed in the stinky hotel room with Isaac trying to get that kid some down time. Pictures at 2, wedding at 4 (if anyone got pictures of Kiera flashing the audience, I want a digital copy!!!), getaway at 6:30, then following my parentals up to a "cabin" (that really ended up being a lodge!) where we relaxed for the next 18 or so hours. And then a 5 hour drive home, in which Isaac did not sleep until WE PULLED INTO WENATCHEE! Little turkey!!! Then he didn't want to go to bed at home... But this morning he slept in until 8:30, so hopefully he'll be a little easier now...

Now, laundry, dishes, cleaning, and book club! Whheeeeee.... Work tomorrow, Work Thursday, Friday and Saturday birthday parties, Sunday youth group at in-laws... Not sure it's gonna slow down for a while! I'm just hanging on for dear life...

Ants on Rampage!

Did you know that little black sugar ants can be pretty nasty? Kiera likes to look under rocks for "rolly-rollies" and often ends up with an anthill or two. A couple evenings ago she found one and we didn't think much of it until she started screaming- one was biting her on her hand! I couldn't get it off; he was clamped on pretty hard!!! Over the course of the next few minutes we had two more encounters with nasty ants biting her hands. She's probably traumatized for life, especially since I had told her that only the red ants in the driveway bite, not the black ants around the house! Oops!

Distractions Distractions... and a Melia funny

Did you know that I have several half-written blog posts sitting here, waiting to be finished? I do love summer and the fun activities that come with it... but the busy-ness makes it nearly impossible to blog about all of it. This typically wouldn't bother me too much, but I've decided that someday I'd like to be able to print my blog, so everything you don't hear about also doesn't make it into my book :-)

Yesterday we were picking raspberries (which I made into a sauce and we had with whip cream on French Toast this morning- YUM!) and Melia says to me:

"I think you've joined the Mommy club!"
Me: "Really? You think so? Why do you think that?"
Her: " Because we have three kids. Oh wait. You have to have four to be in the Mommy club. So you just need to have another one, then you can be part of the Mommy club."

Oh... ok. Well, I'll just have to wait a little while longer then... Darn. I really wanted to be part of the Mommy club now... whatever that may entail :-)