That is a barn noise...

When the kids get out of hand with noises and mimicking all the "sounds" that the human body can make I tell them that is a "barn noise". Well, we were actually in the barn and Rowdy and Bodie were perfecting there arm farts (sorry) together...ahhh brothers!

"I want a Faux-hawk Mom..."

This is what he says to me as I was helping him dry his hair off after his bath today. I am so glad he let's me take pictures of him. I need to take these little opportunities because I don't take as many of Rowdy as I do of Bo and Avery.

Rowdy has been enjoying the "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" books. He got the first one shortly before Spring Break and he is already on his third book. He loves them. One day several weeks ago I told him after he helped clear the dinner table, he could go play the Wii if he wanted and he said, "I'm going to go read." What a great thing for a Mom to hear that her son is choosing to read instead of play a video game! A + + + for Rowdy James.

Proof I don't make him sit still and smile pretty the whole time...

Funny girl...

and funny story about Avery over at my photography blog...

More "Easters" fun!

Snippets from our Easter weekend:

• In our house you have to pronounce Easter - "Easters" like the monk in Nacho Libre when he says, "Do you not realize I have had diarrhea since the Easters?"
• Bodie drank some of the water we were dying the eggs with and got a big surprise when it tasted so awful...I put vinegar in it to make the colors brighter.
• I am still picking Easters grass up off my carpet.
• Ron made his Annual "poop" egg. Simply put an egg dyed brown with the word poop on it...he's 40.
• The Easters bunny came and everyone loved what he brought.
• The kids had an egg hunt Oregon style in the rain with their winter coats on.
• We know that the Holiday is not all about he eggs, candy and chocolate bunnies and we are grateful for Christ and the sacrifice He made for us. I can't leave that part out.

A child's point of view...

When I was taking these photos of Rowdy during Spring Break he told me, "Mom, I can't wait until I am a grown up and everyday is like Spring Break!"

Poor bunny...

Start at the top left photo and work your way around to the right to see this poor little chocolate Easter bunny disappear. As you can see it got pretty melty and messy at the end. The photo before that Bo was getting a bit concerned about the melting chocolate in his hands. I will have to do a post about this little boy and his need for neatness. The middle photo is my absolute favorite!

Enjoying their chocolate bunnies!

We have had our fill of candy and treats this weekend that is for sure. We just wanted to say Happy Easter to all of our friends. We are off in a few minutes to go eat more at Ron's parent's house!

Bodie...

I went to a meeting this week for Bodie's Pre-school. Yep, he will just turn 3 at the end of August and be going to school two days a week. I have mix emotions. But no doubt he will do great! Some of the things Bodie has amazed me with lately are the following:

• He knows the traffice light. He knows that Red is stop and Green is go. But he is a little annoying at times with his backseat driver ways.
• He says things like "Sweet!" and "Awesome!" when a sports car drives by our van. He calls them Hot Rods.
• He tells me daily, "Me...Love...You...Mama!". The little dots in the phrase are important because Bodie talks a little bit like Capt. Kirk from Star Trek. He puts little pauses between his words. He also talks in third person most of the time...third person is that right? All my friends who speak good english can correct me if that is not right?
• I am thrilled to pieces that he repeats many of the good things he hears. For example, he told me the other day, "Me...proud...you...Mama!". But he also said "freaking" the same day...Yikers!
• He unloaded the silverware from the dishwasher all by himself.

Here are just a few more of Bo and his turn taking some photos with Dada's Charger...It's like the General Lee from the Dukes.

Ugly/Cute...

You know when an animal is so ugly it is cute? Sort of like a pig (sorry Nic) or kind of like Yoda from Star Wars. Well, look who we got to meet yesterday...

My sister in-law posted some photos on Facebook of their new, less than one week old, goat. We simply had to go visit! I think he is so stinkin' cute. Avery loved him. She scooped him right up and was snuggling with him.

Hi, little fella...named Snowball...is there any other name when you have a white pet?

He gave Avery a little chin rub and nibble.

Ok, maybe he is just plain cute and not ugly/cute.

There were also two Monkeys in the barn. These boys are ebony and ivory generation two.

You would think we own stock...

in John Deere. It is interesting to me that your children will learn what they are exposed to and the things that are in their environment. Bodie knows all too well the John Deere logo and colors. He sees them everywhere.

He can pick Elmo out of a line up. And unfortunely, he knows Michael from The Office and George from Seinfeld. Ron and I got a good chuckle one night when Bodie said, "George" when we were watching Seinfeld. What can I say, he is still awake with us sometimes and these are the shows we watch...oops! He couldn't tell you who Obama is or any other President for that matter. He has time for that I suppose.

Bodie also knows Jesus and can point to him in pictures and sing songs about him. So that makes me feel a little less guilty about The Office and Seinfeld. I'm just waiting for his next phrase to be, "...this is...American Idol!"

I gotta move fast...

because I had the boys sit on this pile of logs and I took a series of shots and seriously they were gone in like 30 seconds...onto throw things into the pond and look at the duck in the pond that really is just a decoy. Rowdy told Bodie it was a real duck.

I had the unique opportunity to have Bodie and Rowdy only this weekend because my Mom took Avery for a Grandma weekend. We had a great time! We went to Gilbert House and it was awesome! Super glad I took the chance to quickly take this shots of my boys!

Here he is...

As I said I was set on taking some shots of this young man...who looks like he could ask for the keys to the car anyday! I have more to post but am on to squeezing out more Spring Break fun and making every last second count!

Random...

I sat down last night at the end of a very busy spring break week to edit some photos. Something I like to do to unwind. I thought I will pick one photo of each of the kids and edit them and post them on the blog. This is what I came up with...

I am so mad at myself because I just don't have very many photos of Rowdy. So we are headed out today to get some.

I love the light in this next one. She was headed to school and the light just fell on her and the background stayed black so I wanted to turn it to a black and white.

If you look at the very bottom of the photo you can sort of see Bo's finger pointing...Well he was feeding the dog and kept scooping the food and dumping it and saying "one more". I turned the photo black and white and then I added some "grit" or noise and stole a color from his sweatshirt and put it on top of the photo at a super low level.


I love editing photos to relax and unwind. It is fun to create and to be creative. I have always loved color, art and the tools you need to be creative.

No Pink this time...

Note: When I was working on this photo to post of Avery, Bodie said, "Sister, Princess." So stinkin' cute that boy!

While we were out running around one day I thought I better get Avery a new dress for church because all of her skirts are getting too small and so are the dresses that she has. She is just growing so fast these days.

The dresses we had to choose from weren't that cute. At least, all the pink ones...pink is the go to color for Missy. Then I spotted this cute little black and white polka dot one. I told Avery that Grandma Mickie (my mom) would love it (yes, I use manipulation to convince my kids of things)...Black and White is her favorite color to wear. Avery thought that was good enough and we come home with this dress. I wish I would have stood back and taken a shot of her whole body because she just looked so cute in her non-pink outfit.

The Muffin Tin Lunch...

I introduced Bodie to his first Muffin Tin Lunch. He loved it! I have done a post about this before. It is a fun thing to do at snack time or meal time. You just take a muffin tin (any size) and fill the little cups with the items on the menu. It is a fun way to change things up at meal time. I think he actually ate more lunch because he was having such a good time!

We took a picture together and he thought that was pretty darn cool too! "See it?" he would say after I took the picture.

B-O-Y!

It has been so nice having him home for Spring Break! I love staring at his little freckles on his nose and cheeks...I had the same ones when I was his age!


And this is Rowdy's latest accomplishment in the "stupid human tricks" catagory of things you learn once you start attending elementary school. Actually, I taught him how to do it but he has all sorts of things that he says and does because he learned it at school or on the bus ride home. Lovely!

March 12 of 12...

I was actually not too excited about lugging my camera around for the 12 of 12 this month because we had a bunch of running around to do. The kids didn't have school. It ended up being a pretty good day but we were all so tired once the day came to a close. I had to fudge some of the photos and use some shots from other days this month so that I could get 24 images. Enjoy this little peek into our day last Friday!


1. I straightened my hair the night before
2. French Toast for everyone! We like to sprinkle "snow" (powdered sugar) on top!
3. Avery showing off her latest pipe cleaner art...I think it is a really good flower.
4. I guess not everyone had french toast...I had my protein pancakes.
5. Target with all the kids in tow.
6. Rowdy found a Captain Underpants book he had been wanting and he had 1/3 of it read by the time we got to the check out.
7. Avery discovering the pains of shoe shopping...all the shoes she liked weren't in her size...I hate when that happens.
8. Bodie snacking from the box of "Granola Bites" (something new for us) that we got from the food section.
9. We met Dada for lunch at Applebee's. We always play tic tac toe to pass the time until the food comes.
10. Avery and I played too!
11. Bodie liked the chips and salsa that came with our spinach artichoke dip.
12. After lunch we went to Payless Shoes to buy Avery some new dance shoes. (totally overdue for these)



13. Then off to Toys R Us to return some toys that were defective from Christmas. I still had the receipt and it was $25 worth of stuff so we picked out some new toys!
14. Avery chose some Littlest Pet Shop cats to add to her collection.
15. Rowdy picked out these two Chargers. They have been the toy of choice everyday since. Bodie wanted Candy!
16. My handsome son!
17. Spring is Springing.
18. I love this tree...and I don't even know what it is?
19. We have been blowing lots of bubbles lately.
20. I love having fresh cut flowers in the house.
21. Fajitas for dinner...Yum!
22. For sure the best moment of the day was when I saved one of my Compact Flash cards from my hard drive. I just put it in on a funny angle and it just vanished. Well, I took the panal off the side off my tower and very carefully figured out how get that little sucker out of the 5 and 1 card reader. You can see where it was hiding it is the little black and red thing inside that little box. I ROCK if I do say so myself!
23. This is what Rowdy was thinking about as he drifted off to sleep because we had big plans to go see this amazing engine on Saturday.
24. This photo was not taken on the 12th but was way too cute to leave out!

Chasing Trains!

As I have mentioned before Rowdy is a train junkie! But he isn't just into Thomas and toy trains, he knows about the real thing too. He has several train documentories that have been gifts from family. He has learned a lot about steam engines this way. By the way, steam engines are far superior to diesels, in Rowdy's mind.

Saturday we went to the Union Station. Yep, we went to the train station in Portland for no other reason than to hang out and hope that we would get to see some trains in action. Unfortunately, we didn't get to see any trains coming or going, but we still had fun!
Bodie was so brave to walk onto this bridge. It was pretty high up, it even made me a little nervous. He was watching that train on the right and he kept saying "boo-let wrain" (bullet train). See, only in my house would a two year old call a train "bullet train" after the Shinkansen in Japan.

Rowdy with his cousin Evan, who shares the same love of trains. Avery wanted nothing to do with the bridge and was perfectly content to stay back with my Mom.


Although, we didn't see any trains coming or going we had bigger and better plans up our sleeve. We went back to the roundhouse that I mentioned several weeks ago and the doors were open this time! Yes!

This the the "famous" 4449 or Daylight. This steam engine is quite a site. Needless to say it is HUGE! The photo doesn't do it justice. I was talking to my brother (Evan's Dad) about how we feel about these trains and he put it well when he said, "I don't know why but, they just kind of get in your blood." I agree because as silly as it sounds when I see these amazing engines in person I get teary eyed. I don't know if it is because they are truly massive and awesome, or that I am excited for Rowdy or just the fact that I am witnessing part of American history. When I told my brother the I get teary eyed he said, "I do too!"

It's a big deal!

So we did a little ponytail to school last week and she loved it! Later in the day when we were at dance class I was fixing her pony tail because it was a bit loose and she told me to put it lower...I knew exactly why she told me to do this. As she pranced off to take her place on the dance floor she had her head up and was swishing her head from side to side to see if she could feel her ponytail on her back...cute girl!

One, two, wife...

Totally funny that I caught this...I was taking some pictures of something Avery was doing and Bodie was sitting across the table getting into some homework that Avery was working on. He had his little fingers out and was counting...He still skips three and four and pronounces five like wife....One, Two, Wife! When I encourage him to say three it is so cute to watch him try to get his tongue to make the "thhhhhh" sound.