Camera

I am so upset! This week is red-ribbon week at Abigail's school and she has dressed up for it every day.

Monday she was a Nerd

Tuesday she had crazy hair

Today (Wednesday) is silly sock day

Thursday is red day

Friday is sports day

AND my camera completely died (3rd camera in 3 years by the way) My first camera lasted 5 years, but the last two cameras have not been good to me and I think have been dropped one too many times. Also between the three girls we have seven Halloween events to attend in costume and my camera picked a fine week to die on me. BOO! They have looked so adorable in all of their costumes thus far and I know my memory won't be sufficient in remembering these days. So sad! I have decided that I need to purchase a better quality camera, so it may be Christmastime or later before I get a good camera. I will try to video record some of these things, but for now, no pictures on the blog.

Pumpkin Harvest

We decided to plant our own pumpkin patch this year. We harvestd a few of the pumpkins and squash yesterday, this is only about 1/5 of what we will have by Halloween. The kids love it and it only has cost me about $4.00 for the seeds that we planted in the spring, plus the water. All of the vines went crazy and kind of took over the right side of our yard, but the kids have had a blast checking on the plants every day and watching them change.

Fall Haircuts

We didn't get back-to school haircuts this year, so we decided to all go for fall hair cuts before our family pictures. I love the lady that cuts our hair, she keeps up to date with trends, but isn't too extreme either. The salon that she works in is really cute too.

Elizabeth's cut was the most drastic. We took about 4 inches off the length.

Christmas in October

Elizabeth LOVES these Christmas pajamas that are a hand-me-down from Abigail. Elizabeth discovered that her daddy had a matching pair and she insisted that they wear them one night before he left for Pennsylvania again. She is so proud to have matching pjs with her dad and he was a good sport for participating, especially since it wasn't really cold in the house and those pajamas are fleece.

ISU Homecoming Parade

The girls dance studio always participates in the ISU Homecoming Parade. Abigail got to ride on the float this year and the twins cheered her on from the curb in their DSDS attire.

Emily was much faster than Elizabeth when it came to getting candy, but she shared with Elizabeth every time she got some and Elizabeth didn't. I was very impressed with her generosity because Emily is usually the one that struggles with sharing the most.

The camera wasn't working before the parade, so this is a tired Abigail after the parade was over. The parade lasted 1 hour and 45 minutes, that is a pretty long parade if you ask me. Then we had to try to locate Abigail in the sea of orange and black and that took another 45 minutes. I think she had fun throwing candy from the float though.

Unfortunately, this is the only picture of Abigail that I got on the float, you can't tell by this, but she is having a blast.

Making Tortillas

I have always wanted to make homemade tortillas, so I attempted to yesterday. I think they turned out decent and the twins had fun helping me.

My Grown Up Second Grader

This is Abigail on picture day. I can't believe she is in second grade. She brings a lot of joy in our life and there is never a dull moment when she is around. We love how friendly she is and how her personality lights up a room with fireworks! She is loving her school and her teacher. We hope that second grade is a good year for little (or not so little) Abigail.

Hanging Out

I love it when my girls are sweet to each other. It doesn't happen often, but when it does I try to snap a quick picture. In the top picture the twins are watching a movie together snuggled up nicely with each other. In the bottom picture, Abigail is reading a bedtime story to the twins and they are listening to "Brown Bear Brown Bear What do you see?" by Eric Carle.

Some things never change

The top picture was taken of the twins in September of 2008. Fast forward 3 years and the twins are still wrestling with Elizabeth pinned under Emily, unable to escape.

Potato Harvest

Darin has been driving a big 18 wheeler for the past couple of weeks while he waits to hear from his Pennsylvania job. He is working long days, but is having fun being on the road in this big truck. While Darin was on a route he decided to pass by the house. I am sure the neighbors thought he was lost when he parked right in front of our home.

Painting Chairs

We are SLOWLY working on getting the girls bedroom back together. Last weekend they started painting the chairs to their desks. We will have some pretty loud colors going on, but I think it will be cute. I can't wait to see the final result. Hopefully, their room will turn out as cute in real life as it looks in my head.

Pre-School

I have been collecting stuff over the past few years in hopes to one day do a pre-school out of my home. Well, this year I made it happen. I started trying to get licensed by the city in April and finished all of the requirements by July. Our first day of pre-school was on September 6th. I have a full class of eight 3 and 4 year olds. The twins love it and I am having alot of fun.

The Flood

Last Thursday, I had been a "single" mom for two weeks and three days. I tried to get a hold of Darin all day, but his phone was off. I then noticed that there were some large purchases on our debit card and I became concerned. At 9:00 at night, after being in a panic, I finally got a hold of Darin. Here is the story of his very eventful day. On Wednesday 9-7-2011 it was raining really hard at his job in Pennsylvania, so hard that his managers told them to call it a day and head home. All the guys went to bed pretty early that night, but were jolted awake to the National Guard banging on their door forcing a mandatory evacuation. The guys grabbed what they could and headed out the door in knee deep water. The Susquehanna River was flowing through their front yard and rushing past the house in the back yard. When Darin went to bed the river was about 40 feet from their back door. The guys loaded up in a 15 passenger van and after 2 detours finally made it out taking a chance as they drove the van through three foot deep water to escape the flood. They traveled to higher ground (NY) and the company put them up in the hotel. The area was declared a natural disaster zone and Darin was told that it would be a minimum of 5 weeks before he could return to work. The guys could choose to stay in the hotel or head home. Dairn decided to head home since he missed his family and now was not making any money. Darin flew home and finally called me to tell me the harrowing story at 9:00 p.m. when he landed in the Salt Lake Airport. Heather and Shane picked him up from the airport and we were re-united at midnight. I am so grateful that he is alive and well and not stranded on the roof of the house he was living in. The house's first story is still under water and it may take them a while to re build. In the mean time, Darin is hoping to help out with harvest with some of the larger farms in the area to at least keep some cash flow coming in. The video is of some if the destruction that occurred that night.

Canning

It is canning season again here in Idaho. This weekend I have spent quite a bit of time doing peaches and corn. Earlier I did beans, chicken noodle soup, and canned apricots and apricot jam. Next weekend is pears and the following weekend after that will probably be applesauce. It is a lot of work, but I like it and the food seems to taste so much better to me.

Corn

Peaches

Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup

Apricots

Dry Beans

The Third Day of School

Abigail's first day of second grade was on September 1st. When I got to the school to take her pictures the camera battery died and I was so upset. September 2nd was Friday and they always wear their school shirts on Fridays. Monday the 5th was Labor day and we didn't have school, so I snapped these pictures on her third day of school which was September 6th. She seems to be liking her new class and loves her new teacher Mrs. Sirois. Mrs. Sirois reminds me of a sweet grandma that you just want to climb up in her soft lap and hear a story. I hope Abigail doesn't take advantage of her soft-spoken-teacher and appreciates the calmness of her classroom.

Yes, my Texas friends Abigail is wearing a jacket. It is about 55 degrees in the mornings when Abigail heads off to school.

5 in 5

I have a really hard time keeping my house from being so cluttered. I see the clutter and I feel a bit overwhelmed. Yesterday the girls and I tried something new and it worked, so I thought I would share. After dinner I said, "we are going to spend 5 minutes in 5 rooms picking up." They moaned and grumbled, but off we went anyway. I let the girls choose the 5 rooms they wanted to pick up and we set the timer and cleaned and picked up for 5 minutes. Sometimes we were able to pick up the entire room and sometimes we weren't able to finish in 5 minutes, but by the end of the game the girls were having a great time, happy and no one was complaining. In fact they asked if we could do this every day. SURE THING! The house isn't completely clutter free, but we made a pretty good dent and I feel much better after 25 minutes. Who knows we may do 4 in 4 or six in six or 10 in 10 next time.

New And Exciting Change

As many of you know, things have been a struggle in our family for many reasons over the past two years. Too many reasons to explain, but the one I will elaborate on is that two years ago Darin was laid off from IBM. IBM was really a perfect job for our family and we were pretty devastated when this happened. Darin quickly got hired by Direct Communications a local company in Rockland, which was a tender mercy. Things did not work out in Rockland as we had hoped, so we decided to give Texas a try again. Things were going well for me in Texas, but not for Darin. He got a job at the Wal-mart distribution center to make ends meat, but it was very clear after getting to Texas that we would not be staying there for long. Being the kind people that they are, Direct Communications offered Darin a job with the company in a different position than he had worked before, so we moved back to Idaho, this time to Chubbuck. Chubbuck is a good fit for our family. All of us really like it here and we were able to purchase a home. We are so grateful that Darin has been able to work for Direct Communications. They have bailed us out twice in our family's time of need. Although Direct Communications is a good company for Darin to work for, it has been very clear to us from the beginning that this was just a job and not a career path for Darin. This local company is owned by a very kind family, but because it is a small company, there is not really any movement within the company, and the pay is decent, but not quite enough for our family of five that relies on one income to support our needs. We are also in desperate need of Health Insurance for obvious reasons. Darin got wind of a company that is headquartered in Rexburg they are an oil and gas company and have been hiring for a while now and Darin actually knew one of the managers from his childhood in Rockland. All he needed was a CDL and an interview. He trained for his CDL with his brother Mark and was hired by the company (IBEX). He starts on MONDAY. What does this mean for our family? Well, we will be making more money, we will have vision and health insurance, and sometime next year a 401K possibly. Darin will be working for 3 weeks and then home for 3 weeks. he will be driving a water truck. All of Darin's living expenses are paid for while he is gone except for food and the company pays for half of his travel expenses. The con is that he will be away from us for 3 weeks and I will be a single mom for that period of time, but he will also be home with us 100% of the time during the 3 weeks he is home. The job is in Athens, Pennsylvania and he and I feel pretty comfortable about the environment he will be living in. Supposedly, these are a really good group of family men, we shall see, but the hiring manager said that they really tried to hire good clean guys, not like the rough characters you hear about working on the oil fields. I really hope this works out for our family, I have a feeling that it will and things are finally looking up for us after two years of struggle (2009 & 2010). Wish us luck with our new adventure!

We love to play at Grand Nan's House

We have been having so much fun over the past six weeks that I haven't even had a minute to blog about it. The posts are in order of the most recent to ones that go back to around July 15th, so if you want to read in order of events you will have to click on "older posts" and go back to where I left off.

We took our annual trip to Texas and the twins tried to beat the heat by doing puzzles and playing polly pockets. Grand Nan has some pretty fun toys that we don't have which makes it exciting to play with her stuff.

Elizabeth

Emily

Ashes loved to hang out in the same room as the kids, but quickly realized that she wasn't a puppy anymore and couldn't keep up with their energy level.

Legoland

Grand Nan took us to Legoland in the Grapevine Mills Mall. The tickets were pretty expensive, but I think worth it for a one-time experience.

Harrison is going to save the lego princess in this interactive video game.

Emily and Grand Nan

Abigail singing Karaoke in the princess palace.

At legoland we watched Bob the Builder build a roller-coaster out of Legos in 3D.

Elizabeth loved the 5 foot Buzz Light-year made entirely from Legos.

Abigail liked building with the brick-size Legos and thought she was being sneaky hiding under this giraffe also made entirely out of Legos.

The coolest thing in Legoland was a large-room that had a model of the city of Dallas all out of Legos. There were working parts to this model, lights, and millions of pieces. There were sky scrapers, the Fort Worth Stock Yards, Buildings, The DFW Airport, Ball-Park in Arlington, Texas State Fair Grounds, etc. I think my favorite though was the model of the Dallas Cowboys Stadium. Every piece in the entire model is a Lego.