Christmas tree problems

When your water bucket cracks and leaks all over your new carpet and the 11' tree almost fell over.  And if the tree was plugged in you would see half the lights are out.  Is this karma for attempting a pre-Thanksgiving tree??? #treeproblems #christmasfail

I don't bake, but when I do, we leave a fork in the pan and take it down- one bite at a time

I bake about once a year.  By baking, I mean we whipped up this box cake.  Usually I do chocolate chip cookies- really because I want cookie dough.  Anyhow, I had one expired box and this one was expiring next week.  I guess we made a good dent in it. 

Look who turned 4 already!!!

I tried to take a pic of her once a week to see how much she changed over the year.  What I'm mostly seeing is all sorts of style!

Here's to trying new things this summer

My boys now have such a short food list of things they will eat- seriously, I don't even know what to feed them anymore.  So we are trying to be adventurous and try new things.  So far...

Yellow watermelon- not so great

Hawaiian rolls- success, because they are delicious anyway. 

Dragon fruit.  Not going to lie, I was slightly terrified.  It was just ok, not worth the money. 

Happy Mother's Day

I'm pretty lucky to have these three!!!

Hello out there....

It may be possible this is my worst blogging to date???  I don't know -sometimes I struggle to find motivation to do it.  Looks like blogger added an easier feature for uploading images, so who knows, maybe I will get back with it!!

Seems like for a while there towards the end of the year we had this massive travel spree between work and personal trips and seemed like we had something going on every minute.  Then it seems like January was fairly quiet and I spent a lot of weekend evenings cleaning - and by cleaning, throwing away crap that has piled up in the basement.  Obviously I didn't throw away everything - no worries, still a nostalgic hoarder.  And of course I found several gems.  Activities are quiet right now - between seasons!

The boys played basketball for the first time this year.  Overall, it went really well.  We had a great coach and most the kids were a grade older.  To my surprise, they actually scored several points a game.  The team that is, not Carter and Dylan:)  This as really all new to them and at the first game, they were playing defense when they were supposed to be playing offense.  On an occasion they had a great moment of making a basket.  But I am happy they are enjoying one of my favorites- knock-out!

Otherwise, the big thing happening at our house right now is finishing our basement!  So excited to be doing this project - and we aren't doing it ourselves, so things are moving along quickly.  However, I have been pinning like crazy and trying to find some fun ideas and since I'm miss picky, picky, picky- I've been to a zillion flooring stores and places.  Mostly picky just because I hope to still love it in 10 years!



Olivia is doing dance this year.  She showed me her little routine last week, so sweet!

Olivia picked out this Christmas dress this year and she just absolutely loves her "prettiest dress" and she has to wear her most special dress to all big events - church, boy scout events, grandma's bday dinner.  We will see if she finds a summer event to wear it to!


Look at our little Tiger scouts.  I'm not so great at keeping up with the boy scout activities!

Keith had a blast meeting John Elway at the PAC12 championship in California.

I took the kids rollerskating for the first time - and we have gone two more times since!  The boys fell a zillion times.  Liv loves it and she looks like she is rocking it out there, but those skates are locked up and she is basically walking.  Happy as could be:)

My mom got liv her own tree this year.  she loved it and she slept laying so she could look at her tree because it was so pretty:)
And the boys and their traditional tree pic.

One morning Olivia took a break from a dress and wanted to dress just like mom- and wanted to wear her "blanket shirt"



Boys 7 year stats!
The boys at the lighting of the town square - one of our favorite Polk City traditions.  We finally took Olivia to Disney on Ice - she loved it!  It was quite entertaining, I would go again!  Boys probably won't make it back.  I think Carter asked Keith about 5 minutes in - so this is a bunch of princess shows all in one.

Second year with a real tree - we love it!!!!  So much fun.  Not so much fun on the lights.  We weren't really sure why we threw them all in a box without organizing them???




My mom trimmed Olivia's hair.  This was her first haircut and we haven't trimmed it anymore since.



Until next time.... hopefully sooner than later:)

So this has been happening!!!

No need to look back for a diy here, we wouldn't be finished until 2026 if we did this on our own!   We are already at dry wall!!!

She loves, loves, loves riding her bike.

Working so hard..,,

On her valentines!!!  She was struggling in why one wasn't for her and why the boys would want frozen ones😁.