A mini man with a mission

We took a walk to get to our neighborhood beach so the kids could enjoy some sun and sand. Connor looked so stinkin' cute tromping along with his shovel over his shoulder!!!

"Kaben"

Emily wrote in her journal at school Monday about how we "went to a kaben. It was a long driv. I had fun." Our CABIN adventure really WAS note-worthy, so I thought I'd mention it as well! We were given the opportunity to spend a few days at a friend's cabin about two hours from our house during spring break and the kids had a BLAST! We were just a few minutes walking distance from the lake, and just a short drive away from a neat playground area within the neighborhood the cabin is located. We had a beautiful view from the wall of windows in the cabin. It was such a nice get-away, and I look forward to hopefully having the opportunity to go back again soon!

I took this picture while standing on a dock near the play area, looking out across the lake to some snow-tipped mountains: (I loved the mix of beach and snowy mountains!)


The kids had a ton of fun climbing all over this old tree stump:


There was a TON of driftwood scattered all over the place, and the boys had the BEST time gathering up pieces to throw in the water and haul around:


I think Connor would have happily thrown rocks in the water ALL DAY LONG:


There aren't many pictures of me with the kids, and I thought the pretty sparkling water in the background while on vacation would be a nice opportunity to pose with them!


I LOVE this picture. I know it's completely goofy, but it shows their personalities perfectly (Emily sweetly cooperating, Jared showing off, and Connor totally clueless and carefree, eating...LOL), and captures forever a wonderful afternoon spent as a family:

Olympic Game Farm

Dan and I drove the kids north to Sequim to the Olympic Game Farm. We'd heard good things about it, and it lived up to the hype. We had a BLAST! It takes about an hour to drive around within the farm (you drive SLOW), and you can feed bread to a large variety of animals. We had the most fun feeding the llamas and buffalos. I haven't laughed that hard in a LONG time. If any of you live within a decent driving distance (or have something similar near you in your area), I would HIGHLY suggest going!

Here's a baby elk we got to feed:


a buffalo (look at that tongue!!!); and this was one of the smaller buffalo we saw


If you roll down your window far enough, they'll stick their heads right inside to get food (it's discouraged to stick your window down that far, but Dan did it real fast to fold the side mirror in because the buffalo was bumping against it the opposite way and we didn't want it getting ripped off)


The buffalo are HUGE, so I'm not sure I'd feel very safe going through in a car, but plenty of people did. This was a van in front of us along the drive


The bears are behind electric fences, but you still get REALLY close. They will often wave at the cars to encourage people to throw food to them!


It was just windy enough that no matter how hard we threw the bread, the wind would blow it off course and keep most of it from getting to this bear, so we felt bad! We tried to get some good pictures of how LONG those claws are, but I still have some editing to do (resizing and deleting blurry pictures, etc). I just wanted to make sure and get a few up on the sooner side of things!!

Baby sweater

I knit this sweater and hat set for my friend Betsy's baby-to-be, Alivia (who should be here ANY DAY!!). I altered the original pattern to make it much smaller so that it's more appropriately sized for a newborn. Hopefully I didn't make it TOO small. I guess we'll see!

I photographed the sweater from the back so you could see the hearts




I'm sure Betsy will be sharing pics of Alivia wearing her sweater once she's born, so be watching on Betsy's Random Assortment of Thoughts!

MS Walk

I am participating in an MS Walk today with my mom, my friend Jessica, and my mom's friend, Mary. I raised $655 in donations after having set a goal of $500. It's the most I've ever raised!

I do this walk in honor of my parents, who have both been diagnosed with MS (Multiple Sclerosis), and in memory of my Aunt Sue, who died from complications with MS when I was a little girl. Please be thinking of us today!

Locks of Love

I sent off a 13" ponytail to Locks of Love


Do you have long hair you plan to cut soon? Why not donate it!?! If you don't plan to cut off 10+ inches to qualify for Locks of Love, you can cut 8+ inches for Pantene Pro-V Beautiful Lengths

A future in the circus?? Not likely.

This is still Kristina from Confusaled. Leah should be home tomorrow, or Friday at the latest, and we'll be back to regular posts. So, bear with me for just a bit longer.


You know how when you meet someone for the first time you get a feeling about them? Sometimes it's a positive feeling, you just know you are going to like that person. Other times, though, you know that you don't like that person. You have no reason, it's all instinct, and you just know.

Animals have this sense, too. Your dog can tell you pretty quickly if a person is good or bad.

I've always thought that kids can do the same. Now, I'm not comparing your child to your dog. That would be silly and insulting. I'm simply saying that both pets and small children rely a LOT on instinct to give them clues about the world around them.

That's why kids love my husband, even though he's so ginormous. (If you didn't read my guest post yesterday, you missed it when I told everyone that my husband is seven feet tall. No exaggeration. He has to duck to get through doorways.)

You'd think that someone so big would scare the bejeebies out of kids, but it's not the case. In fact, it's just the opposite.

One of my friends has a son who is now four years old (I refer to him as Wall-E on my blog). Even before he could walk and talk he has been enamored of J. In fact, I was over hanging out at their house one evening and J came as soon as he got off work. We had been invited to the Family Game Night - how sweet is that?

We were all gathered in the kitchen when J walked in. He had to duck to get through the doorway, and instead of hiding behind his mom like I expected, Wall-E toddled over to J, looked waaaaaay up and said, "WOW!!" Then he reached up and grabbed J's hand and took him on a tour of the house, babbling away in his toddler speak.

And J bent down so he could hold Wall-E's hand and followed him around the house, hunched over and oohing and aahing in all the right places.

This was not an isolated incident, either. A few years ago, before CJ was born, Leah brought Jared and Emily to the Tri-Cities to visit. They came in July so I was not working (I teach high school English), but J still was (he's a geologist).

The first evening they were there, Emily was a little shy, but she warmed up pretty quickly.

The next morning, J went off to work before the rest of us got up. When we were eating breakfast, Emily looked at her mom and asked, "Mommy, where's the big boy today?"

She was totally hooked on J, and didn't care a lick that he was literally three times taller than she was.

Truth be told, J was pretty enamored of Emily, too. When he came home in the evenings, he made a special point of asking Emily how her day was, and what she did. He even did tricks to show off for her a little bit.

One evening, he showed her that he can juggle. She was SO impressed, that he asked her if she wanted to learn how. Of course she said yes, so J found three clean socks (they're softer than tennis balls) and sat down to teach her.

It was SO cute! He explained it to her as if she were twelve, and asked if she understood. She, of course, nodded sagely and put out her hands to catch the sock he was about to toss at her. She caught the first sock, and then J told her he was going to toss her another one, and she needed to throw the first sock back to him at the exact same time.

Again, she nodded sagely, and J counted to three.

On three, he gently tossed a second sock at Emily, and she promptly threw the first one backwards over her head. J patiently explained that in order for them to juggle together, she needed to throw the sock back to him.

More sage nodding, and a do-over.

He counted to three again, and released a sock in Emily's direction again.

And again, she threw her sock backwards over her head.

Leah and I couldn't control our giggles! It was so darn cute to see them so serious about juggling. After a few more unsuccessful attempts, J finally gave up. He told Emily she was a great juggler.

I love that guy.


You can see in this picture how serious they both were. I only wish I had video of the hilarity that ensued!

(You can also see how bare my entertainment center was...Jared was crawling, so I emptied everything that could potentially be in the way and moved it to another room. Jared's safety was more important than making sure my living room was photo ready!)

**When I told J on Monday night that I was going to be guest blogging for Leah, he could hardly contain his excitement. (Read: He rolled his eyes and asked if he was going to be embarrassed on her blog, too.) Then, I told him I was going to use this picture. Interestingly enough, his only reaction was to complain that he was clean-shaven in it...he didn't want people to think he looked like this in real life. When I agreed to let his adoring public know that J typically wears a goatee, he was satisfied. He was only clean-shaven in this picture because he works at the Hanford site and occasionally works in areas where he can potentially be exposed to various radiation and poisons. That week he had to wear an oxygen mask at work, hence the hairless face - you get a better seal on the mask that way.**