Books

We found the library! They all had to pose with the books. M&M will have them all read within 2 weeks. ;) 

1st test block down..how many more?

We all survived the first test block! This means that James had a test in all of his classes spread out over 2 days. I think the count was 10 tests. Kill me now. I'm glad I'm not the one going to school. This mommy-brain would not be able to handle the pressure! After he's finished James is ready to get away and de-pressurize. heh. We explored a near-by city called Naches. Found a yummy place to eat! 

Originally we were going to camp, but it had been raining a bit and we didn't want to get soaked. We decided on a evening trip to a lake instead. It turned out to be so pretty! We went to Rimrock Lake, threw rocks, ate golden graham smores, got muddy, watched the sun set, and enjoyed the time together. It's these kind of weekends that will get all of us through medical school!

School

We have officially started! 

This was the real first day for the girls. Excited and nervous to start a new school! 

CJ started a couple days later with much anticipation. They all ride the bus and I've never seen him eat his breakfast so good to not miss the bus. He of course had 30 mins to kill he was so quick. After school he asked "do we get recess everyday?" We told him yes, and that made his day. I guess we know what he really enjoyed at school. 

We had to do a do-over for the sake of CJ's first day. So far the girls hate riding the bus home. It is really hot and they "sweat and stick to each other". Sounds pleasant. 

I have not missed school papers. Bring on the mess! Bleh. 

Fruit picking

I've been anxious to go pick some fruit since we moved here. All I heard before we moved was you're going to love all the fruit! So where is it all?? Well my friend clued us in to a place where we could go and pick as many blueberries as we wanted. Score! My kids had the best time and got along the best yet! They each had their own bucket to fill and it seemed like a race who could pick the most. We went right as the sun was coming down so temperatures were perfect! We picked for about 45 minutes and succeeded in picking 8 pounds! At $1.25/pound, that was a steal. Only one biff from CJ that resulted in a spilled bucket. Luckily he was more into running at full speed pointing out blueberries than actually picking so not a big loss. We will definitely go back! Hoping James can join  us next time. Now I know most the fruit is on the west side. It's everywhere!

Happy Anniversary!

Happy anniversary to me! We had the privilege of having Dad home for dinner so we took advantage of it. OK, we get him home for dinner most days but had to make it a little extra special. A nice table set by Little A, salad & dessert prepared by M&M, and the corn was shucked by CJ & Little A. There was a huge bawl fest (CJ) after the peeling of the corn was over because CJ didn't get to touch the last ear of corn. He failed to mention it to Little A though that he wanted to. Great.

He set the tone for dinner. I'll leave it at that. :) 

Scrumptious steak with sautéed onions and mushrooms, topped with Gorgonzola cheese. Dessert was baked peaches with oatmeal crisp on top and ice cream. I think I need to lay down now.

Miss L was loving her dessert. She couldn't even look up to smile. This was her "smile". Too involved in the goods.

Happy 13 years to us! 

I'm going to go fold laundry and eat some of this.  

We moved!

So I didn't reach my goal in playing "catch up" before we moved! Onto the present so you all can keep tabs on us. We have had a whirlwind last few months. We put our house on the market in April and had an offer the first weekend! A big surprise, and seemed too good to be true. Turned out we had a 2nd offer on our house a couple days later. Crazy! We accepted the best of the two offers and prepared to move the end of May. Inspection day on the house didn't fair so well. He found water in our crawl space due to the hose bib cracking over the winter and now was leaking water down in there. Not good. :( We jumped on it, contacted a restoration crew to clean it all, and dry it up. Crisis averted. Not so much, the buyers bailed and so we were back to square one with listing our house again. We listed again and had another buyer put an offer in within a few days The second people also came back and offered again. We accepted the better of the two and now our move date was towards the end of June. Even better for us! Except we still didn't have a place to move to in Yakima. I'd been checking everyday for new rentals or places we could live. Nothing was panning out. Out of the blue someone I had contacted earlier messaged me and said their place was still available. We just about took it on the spot! We hadn't even seen the place, but knew we had to get it. The timing of it all was perfect and we were truly blessed in how it all went down.

The mini "pods" that we loaded up (7 total)

Since our house sold a little early we still had to find a place to live for 1.5 months. We have awesome family and friends who offered their places to stay which we took advantage of. We stayed with my brother and his family and also James' parents. We also took a vacation to Canada for a family reunion, stopped in Spokane for a few days, and then finally moved our things to our new house.

No beds for this crew! We sold all their furniture before moving. They thought it was fun to sleep on the floor for about a day. 

Our little helper!

Can you see someone in there? 

Our home!

The family room

Kitchen/office/family room :)

This will all be such a new adventure for us. James has started his classes full force and we have seen him for a total of  5 hours in the past 3 days. Oy vey. This is only the beginning. Hopefully we can all survive each other. James is hoping he doesn't come home some day and find that I shipped off CJ to boarding school. It's a joke.

Santa came to town!

Every year Santa comes and visits all the grandkids at Grandma and Grandpa McMullin's home. This is always a well anticipated event each year!  We go caroling as a BIG family to a lot of their neighbors and then head back to the house where Santa soon comes. He brings a small gift for each grandchild and then is on his way. Having kids excited about things always makes the holidays that much better!

Star Student

M&M got her chance at being the "star student". For this she comes prepared with a poster all about herself and presents it to the class. After that she was to teach the class some kind of science experiment. She really wanted to use dry ice, so she decided to show how you can fill up a balloon  using the gas emitted from the dry ice. All the kids were mesmerized by the dry ice. M&M did a great job!

Happy Birthday M&M!

 We traveled back from Snowbird on M&M's actual birthday so when we got home we gave her her present. Now remember this was the tortuous drive home where I was deathly sick and could barely move from the seat in the car to the chair in the house. We figured she needed to open something on her birthday so she got the garbage bag wrapping. A new keyboard! She turned 9 years old this day. 

 We had a small get together with some friends to really celebrate her birthday. My favorite reaction was when she opened a card from the Smith's. It played a funny song and all the kids swarmed around her as soon as she opened it. So funny!

9 years old going on 15! She is my sweet girl who is such a big help. She does really well in school, loves the extra challenges, and knows how to still have fun.  She loves to read, play outside with her friends, and her best friend is LittleA. Happy birthday sweet girl! 

Snowbird 2011-snow time!

Every year we get to go to Snowbird, Utah and stay for a week at a timeshare usually during Thanksgiving. My kids look forward to it every year. We've been going to Snowbird their whole life, and I've been going almost my whole life. So many memories at this place. We had some friends come and enjoy the snow with us.

Some cute pictures of my nephew (4 months). He's adorable and it was fun to hang out with him for the week.