OH. MY. GOODNESS.

So, my mom calls last night at about 9:00 and Ray answered.  I am only hearing his side of the conversation.  I hear him say, "What?! Is it?  Oh my gosh!".   Then it clicks in my head.  It is our ANNIVERSARY!!  Both of us completely forgot!!  Someone at the park yesterday even asked me how long I had been married!!  Well, I felt terrible (less so because Ray forgot, too!).  I even made quickie spaghetti for dinner last night, nice!!  It would be funny if it wasn't so sad!!  Things have been so crazy around here since we moved, I have been totally out of it, obviously.  However, it has nothing to do with how important I consider Ray to be to me and how much I love him.  

So, Happy Anniversary Ray!!  It has been a wonderful and crazy 9 years and I am so happy that you have been with me for the ride.  You are such a wonderful husband and father and I consider myself very lucky and blessed to have found you.  I love you!!  We will do it up right for our 10th!!

Silly Grace

Grace has been cracking me up lately with her little kid grown-up thinking.  Here are a couple of examples:

After putting on her temporary tattoos from her kids meal:

Grace:  I love my new tattoos.  Dad says that tattoos stay on your skin forever.

Mom:  Well, these tattoos are called temporary tattoos, so they will wash off your skin in a couple of days.

Grace:  Well, we have to get me a real tattoo.  I LOVE tattoos!

Uh-oh....

When wrestling with dad:

Dad:  Are you the kung-fu panda, Grace?

Grace: Yes.  No wait, I am going to be the girl snake and you will be the kung-fu panda because your stomach is so fat.

OUCH!!!  I probably would have really gotten my feelings hurt by that but luckily Ray doesn't really care and he just started laughing:)  I asked him if he was okay with me posting this and he said that he's not ashamed of who he is :)

Sweet little Elliot...

I was downstairs on the computer with Grace yesterday and when I went upstairs to check on Elliot, this is what I found...



Elliot is such a sweet little boy and I love the way that he falls asleep in the funniest places!!  He used to do this much more often back when he took naps on a regular basis.  This got me thinking about all of the little things I love about Elliot.  Here is a little list:

I love the way he eats his pizza crust first.

I love the way that he plays with my hair whenever he is near me.

I love the way he hugs me and says, "I'm so sorry honey mommy".

I love the way he goes out in the back yard and lays on Max, hugging him for a half hour at a time.

I love it when you ask him what color something is and he answers with the spanish word for the color.

I love the way he gathers things up and lines them up, sometimes by color or shape.  Here are two examples just from today.

His favorite cartoon is "Super Why" on PBS kids, I love it that he calls it "Super Want".

I love it that he loves letters and numbers so much.  He will sit at the table for an hour writing all his letters and numbers on a piece of paper.

I love it that he writes smiley faces on everything.

I love it that he loves Charlie Brown so much.  I love the way he and Grace will still act out scenes from Charlie Brown Christmas.

I love it that he always wants to dress up in Grace's dress up clothes and shoes whenever she is playing with them. (Ray doesn't love this so much!)

I love it that he loves primary songs so much and tries to make requests during singing time in nursery.

I love it when we are in the store and I hear a song I like and tell him to dance, and he does it.

The list could go on and on, but those are just a few reasons why I love Elliot so much!!

In the News...

R. Kelly Found Not Guilty

DISGUSTED!!!!  All I have to say is disgusted...

June, Finally...

Well, it finally decided to be June here.  After a week and a half of freezing weather (not really freezing but in the 40's and 50's) it warmed up today to about 70.  It was such a beautiful day, it feels like we get to enjoy spring again.  We walked over to the park and the kids played for a long time, after being cooped up inside all week!! 

This is totally off subject but I thought it was funny.  Grace was pushing Maggie's stroller on our walk and I asked if she was okay.  She said "yeah, but my muscles are feeling a little hurtish".  It's so cute the way she makes up words to describe things.  She tends to add "ish" to a lot of her descriptive words!

We Made It!!

So, after months of anticipation and preparation, we are finally here!! We actually got here a week ago, only to learn that the movers wouldn't be here with all of our stuff until FRIDAY!!! We are so lucky that Ray's work paid for movers, so I am totally not complaining, but 10 days?! That is how long it took from the time they loaded it until we got it. So we were living on air mattresses with a borrowed TV/DVD player for most of the week. We were so happy when they finally arrived on Friday. It was seriously exhausting trying to keep the kids all in check when they were unloading, but I was so relieved when I finally had my bed to sleep in (despite the fact that I am still waking up at 5 am every day!!). Anyway, the house is still a mess, but we have the kitchen and living room all unpacked. Ray is leaving tomorrow for the week for work, (nice timing, I know) so who knows when it will all get done! It has been absolutely frigid here since we arrived. I don't think it has gotten over 60 the entire week. The average has been the low to mid 50's. Needless to say, I didn't pack hardly any warm clothes (it was in the 80's in OK when we left!!) So the kid's clothes were seriously disgusting when we finally got our washer and dryer! It is supposed to start warming up next week, but Tuesday isn't supposed to get any warmer than 50!! Despite all that, it is so beautiful here. I sooo missed the mountains. It feels wonderful to be surrounded by them again!

Here is a little overview of our trip!

We stayed in Goodland, KS on our first night.  I guess that Goodland is the sunflower growing capital of the US.  There was this 80 ft. painting of Van Gough's "Sunflowers".  The story is that when Van Gough painted this particular piece he did 7 different paintings.  Some art teacher in Canada decided to do all 7 paintings on giant 80 ft. steel easels and place on on each continent in the world.  Little ol' Goodland, KS got the North American painting!  This was right by our hotel.  We passed up the largest prairie dog in the world a few miles back!

Maggie wasn't in the Colorado pic because she was zonked!!

We actually missed the Wyoming sign when we got to WY because of construction.  So we just crossed the street when we got to ID (we were on a little deserted 2 lane highway) and took the picture with they WY sign!

Yeah!! Back in beautiful Idaho!

We stopped in Pocatello and stayed for a day.  It was a much needed break that all were grateful for.  Unfortunately, grandma and grandpa were on vacation, but my sister Dana, her husband and kids are staying with my parents until they move to San Antonio next week.  So we got to see them and all the cousins got to play.  The had so much fun!!

Max was extremely grateful for the break.  He loves grandma and grandpa's house more than just about anywhere else!  (We had Max groomed before we left, when we picked him up Grace saw the green handkerchief around his neck and said "did they say that Max was a pioneer dog?"  It was really cute.)

You can tell that Grace and Colby are related!!  They had so much fun together!

Our trip to Walmart.  I love the way Maggie is leaning over to get in the pic!!

Jez and Trina came to visit us while we were there.  They are moving to Minnesota next week!

Ironically we didn't get a picture by the Washington sign because it was in the middle of the freeway, not on the left hand side.  But we are here and very happy about it!

One Year Down...

Grace graduated from preschool the day we left Oklahoma. We got to go and see them perform all the songs they had learned throughout the year. For the finale they all sang "Oklahoma", it was choreographed and they all got really into it, it was really cute!! We left right after school was done, it was a little sad ;( (These pictures are classic Grace, you can see her new hair cut too...)
Grace hugging her teacher, Ms. Barr

Grace and Ms. Batterton, the teacher's aide

Grace and Ms. Barr (love the smile, Grace!!)