Lydia at 4

Back to blogging? Not sure yet but I didn't want to miss an opportunity to document who our new 4 year old is these days.

Lydia favorites!!!

Color: Pink

toy: my little ponies

cartoon: my little ponies

food: carrots and apples

treat: candy

animal: ponies

thing to do: play with her ponies

movie: strawberry shortcake

song: whip my hair by willow smith

part of the day: walking to school(brother and sisters school)

outfit: dresses

Lydia's best friend is: Ashlynn

When she grows up she wants to be...."A rescue hero"

Freddy

We are now an elf on the shelf family. Freddy is our newest member of the family. If you have never heard of this, first of all where have you been??? and second of all..check it out! You buy either a boy or girl elf which comes with a book that explains the tradition of the elf and the reasoning behind owning one. Basically you tell your kids they have to come up with a name for your elf and they are not supposed to touch him. I am not sure why no touching..but anyway....then in the story it says that your elf watches you all day long and then when you go to bed at night he flies back to the north pole to report back to santa on whether you have been good or bad that day. For the record I didn't buy this elf so that I could doop my kids into being good...because it doesn't work.  If I am being completely honest I love the idea that as the parents we get to be creative and place him in a new location every night and the kids are supposed to try and find him each morning. Pinterest has many creative ideas of what to do with your elf but I am going to try and come up with my own ideas as long as I can.

This is where I put him last night. I am not sure where I came up with this idea. The kids had put this plastic snake on our brick months ago. I think that adds a nice touch to rock climbing Freddy.
Stay tuned for Freddy's latest shenanigans!!

Thursday confession session

~ I really wish I would blog the events of each day. There is always something I could be documenting of my treasured life. However, I have a hard time sitting down to do it. I would rather play Mahjong on my kindle.

~ Brad always calls me an old lady because I like to get up early and drink my coffee and play Mahjong and solitaire.

~ The real reason I like to get up early is because I like to trick myself into thinking that I was in control of when I woke up. In reality my kids are in their rooms playing at 5:30 every morning and I sit and pretend they are still sleeping.

~ Almost every day I have an internal battle with myself to eat real food, fruits, vegetables, even sandwhiches. If I could function normally and not feel like crap or be 500 lbs I would eat candy and drink pop all day, every day.

~ My kids eat peanut butter toast almost every morning. They don't complain, that is what they ask for. It is nice knowing I can whip that up quickly without worry.

~ I thought I would love having a couple hours to myself every tuesday and thursday while Lydia is in preschool. In reality, I really don't like quiet that much. I usually end up getting groceries and that takes up most of the time.

~ Today I took Leo on a walk and he decided he had to take a dump right across the street from mcdonalds. It is not technically on the sidewalk but pretty darn close. People better watch their step. This is the first time he has ever pooped on a walk or run before.

~ I am wearing a hat today because I haven't washed my hair in two days.

~ I hate taking showers now that I have 3 other people to worry about keeping clean. Mostly it is the brushing out my thick wet hair afterwards that is annoying.

~ I am listening to the twilight soundtrack as I type.

~ I am NOT going to the midnight showing of the last installment of the twilight series. gasp! I did go to the other 3 though.

~ I am probably going to go see if friday night with my mom at an acceptable hour.

~ I would have put up my christmas decorations by now if I didn't have to go out to the shop and get them myself.

~ I have gone black friday shopping for as long as I can remember...like when Target opened bright and early at 7 am. It is all about nostalgia for me.

~ I hate that I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up.

End of October

We have been busy as a family enjoying the usual fall/October festivities that lead up to Halloween.

We carved pumpkins purchased from fred meyer this year. We just couldn't squeeze in the time or money to go to the patch. Most of the fun comes anyway once you are home and get to design your own pumpkin. Somehow I usually end up doing most of the work of gutting them. However, this year I told them they had to do most of it on their own and I would help towards the end. My job was to separate the seeds. I always roast seeds for a yummy snack. This year I tried a new recipe. I usually add salt and some spice but this year I wanted them sweet so I did cinnamon and sugar.

Lydia and I ended up getting to go to Hunter Farms with her preschool class this year. Laila and Landon were pretty jealous because their school doesn't do that as a field trip. Lydia had a great time running around with her little friends and screaming when the loose chickens came towards her.

My cousin Jon, his wife Amber and son Kynan were in Olympia this week for a few days visiting Amber's grandparents. They live in Missoula, Montana so it has been awhile since we last saw them. We intended to meet at Charlies Safari but when we showed up it was closed to the public. They had some special party happening. We ended up at Chuckee cheese which probably was for the best. On a monday night, there was basically two other families. It was awesome!!

Halloween ended up much better than I thought it would. We have had pooring rain for days and it was not looking like it would change. Luckily, we had rain free trick or treating up until the last couple houses where it lightly rained on us. As you can see Landon was an army soldier, Lydia a bunny and Laila was Merida from the movie Brave. Originally, Landon was going to be spider man and Lydia was also going to be Merida. Unfortunately, we bought the costumes from costco in early September and we let them wear them around the house and Landon and Lydia just wore them out. Landon's is fixable, just coming apart at the seams. Lydia's dress is not as easily fixable. Her dress got caught on our fence and tore the first sheer layer.  Anyway, I think their costumes suit them perfectly. The kids had a great time and ended up with just enough candy to gorge themselves for a day and half and then life can go back to normal. :)

apple juice

We are so lucky to have friends with an amazing home with their property full of apple and pear trees. Brad has been lifelong friends with the family so he has been picking their apples and pears to make juice all his life. None of the kids live at home anymore and the parents are too busy to deal with all of their bounty alone,  so we are always asked if we want to come get our fill. Not only do we get to make juice but we get to talk to the neighbors llamas, alpacas and horses. What kids don't want to "hang" out with farm animals?? We get to feed them scraps and whole apples out of our hands.

This year we have been so busy with fall soccer and other things. We were asked weeks ago if we wanted to come do apples but never had time. Kenan was home for 2 days before heading back to San Fransisco so we made the time last night to go over after Brad got off work and do what we could before dark. There are still a lot of apples that will go to waste. Depending on weather, etc. we may try and do apples one more time.  Here are a few pics of our fun.....

cold continues

It is now day 5 of being completely stuffed up. It seems like every fall I get this same cold. I was pretty lucky last year and that was about all the sickness I had. I am definitely over the zero energy and aches. After dropping Laila and Landon off at school Lydia and I went to the drive thru at mcdonalds so I could get myself orange Juice. Yes, getting out of the car to walk into the grocery store for a full jug would have been too much for me. I envision the rest of the day going something like this; laundry, increase piles of used tissue, put in dvd after dvd,  and be too distracted with my own misery to realize the gingers are pooring glue on my bed...oh wait that happened yesterday when Brad got called out to work.

While Landon was at school today Lydia wanted to do "homework". She sees Laila and Landon doing school work all the time now so she has decided she needs her own. This seemed like a good time to get out the dry erase book and pens. She had fun tracing letters. She has just started to trace her own name at school so she is kind of fascinated by it all for now.

Wet weekend

I have had a yucky cold since last Thursday so the only time I got out of the house this weekend was for Laila's soccer game. The rain has finally hit so it was a wet one. The girls finally got a taste for what real soccer is about here in Washington. We had been spoiled with such an amazing beginning to fall. The girls won 3-2. It is amazing how much each girl has improved since the beginning of the season just a month ago.

It was our turn to bring snack for after the game. I let Laila have a little fun after school on friday putting stickers on the girls snack bags.

Laila playing goalie. She loves it. However, she needs to work on being more aggressive. She let one get by her because she didn't want to get down in the mud. I "nicely" yelled to her that she can't be afraid to get a little dirty. The next play she was on the ground:)

check out the dirty legs..haha

Landon had it made in the pop up tent fully enclosed. Meanwhile Lydia is dancing in the rain being her crazy self.

A ball from the game next to ours went on the field and Brad quickly went out to grab it and ended up flat on his back:) I shouldn't have laughed as hard as I did because not two minutes later I was talking to a parent and walking backwards and tripped over Lydia who was playing behind me. I didn't fall flat on my back but I had a wet butt the rest of the game.

I love watching my girl play. I am starting to worry though that I am becoming one of THOSE parents. Ya know the kind that stands up the whole game....can't keep her mouth shut....?? yikes.