Halloween

Sorry I've been gone so long again. My days like I've said before seem to pass by in a flash lately. I've been reading a book series lately that has really had my attention when not dealing with the kids and the house.

Anyway not much really going on other then the regular daily grind around here.

Of course yesterday was Halloween. We went to trick or trunk at the elementary school near us again. It's the best for trick or treating since the houses are spread out around here and in the woods. The kids had a lot of fun with it though.

McKenzie was a fairy bride as she called it. She wore a bride dress and fairy wings anyway. Of course she was very cute as always. Maddie was a pirate in pink, very cute. The outfit was totally her! They went with a friend here who was also a fairy.


Joshua was a vampire a bit creepy in the night later as we were coming home don't you think?


Madison with her costume. She was loving it and playing it off well. She looks very happy with herself here. Doesn't she?


For anyone who doesn't know what trick or trunk is. Basically instead of going from house to house they go to a parking lot where people park their cars and sometimes decorate them. They hand out candy from their trunks while kids pass by. This year worked out nicely. It was still a little light out when we started because we hadn't set our clocks back yet. For one day at least the heavy winds we've been having all month died down and the temps were comfortable, in the mid 40's. Last year we were wet and in the 30's.

Here is Kenzie in her bride costume. You can't see her wings very well here though. They had balloons because one of the people was passing them out with candy.

Like I said though sorry I've been absent so much. Not really much going on to talk about. Kids are doing great for the most part. I'm having some issues with Joshua and his behavior lately. The kid has decided it's okay to yell at his mother, which is definetly NOT okay with me. We are working on it though.

Late 4th of July edition

Sorry about the late post. I have an extra kid in town right now. Connor who was here in March is here again for a couple of weeks and the 3 boys are keeping me busy! Can't have them getting bored!

Anyway we had a great Fourth this year for our first in Ketchikan. We started the day off with a parade in town. It as fun. They started the parade with one of the many helicopters flying a huge flag down the maid road.


And of course all the typical parade walkers. It was smaller then the ones we had in Portland but fun since we knew a lot of people walking and the kids loved it since all the walkers were throwing candy for kids. It was like Halloween all over again without having to walk.


After the parade we went home for a little while and made dinner. The weather wasn't too windy so they were doing the fireworks this year. We were told that they hadn't been able to do them in 6 years since the 4th kept being to windy to do them safely. Since it doesn't get close to dark enough for fireworks till about 11 here we left about 9 o'clock to walk around town for awhile and while we were there we watched a lady doing a hoola hoop with fire on it. She asked Izzak to light it for her. He thought that was pretty cool.


It was cool to see her do it though. Madison was convinced she was going to burn her clothes though. Obviously she has done it a lot though so knew what she was doing. She offered to let the kids try but they were afraid of the fire....


We walked around for awhile longer until it was dark and they started the fireworks. They do it out on the ocean in the narrows. It was really cool to see them over the water. I wish I could have gotten some better shots to show you what it was like to see them but this was the best I could get.

Like I said we have been busy playing with the kids so I have lots of photos to share and I plan to do a post tomorrow to show you.

Yep still busy!

So yes I am still very busy and unlike last week I have 6 kids right now instead of 5. There just hasn't been much time to write here or even really to check out blogs. The kids are all very busy and driving me totally insane at the moment!

I picked up the 6th child on Friday awhile after my last post. We have 3 boys and 3 girls in the house. Except that Kenzie has decided she has had enough of having extra kids around and has been spending most of her time with her friend instead.

I thought I would share with you what we did last weekend for our Easter fun!

On Saturday we went to the "mall" (I quote it because they call it a mall but really it only has a few stores....sad really). They were doing an easter egg hunt there and some other activities. The hid eggs in shredded paper and the kids liked looking in it for the eggs.....



.....my problem was that it let up a lot of dust and probably wasn't the best idea for the kids lungs.....the picture below isn't as fuzzy as it looks but a lot of paper dust.


The kids liked it though.

After that we went to my friends house (Kenzies friend also) who has a big enough table for a lot of kids to dye eggs at. Another friend of Kenzies and her friend came over as well so we had 8 kids dying eggs! Five 9 year olds!

We split up the eggs to about 7 eggs a piece and that seemed plenty for the kids to keep them busy.





One of the things we had for dying them were there dye sticks so alot of the kids did dots on their eggs. I'll show you what Kenzie did that was a little different a few pictures down.



Here are Izzaks eggs. One of the other things we had for dying the eggs was a kit for what they called camouflage. Really you put oil in the dye mix then stir it with a spoon quickly just before putting in the eggs. It left a pretty cool design.


Here are Joshuas eggs. He did all the camouflage eggs and figured out first how to die them in regular dye first then do the camo dye so you can have multiple colors.



Here are Kenzies eggs. See how she did a little different take on using the dye sticks? Instead of just dots she made flowers and wrote her name.


And lastly Maddies eggs. She did a little bit of everything.


On Sunday after church we went to Ward Lake, which I've shown lots of pictures of before, and did another egg hunt. The hunt here was a lot more fun since it was actually in the woods and along the trails around the lake. I didn't get any pictures of them actually looking for eggs though because they were moving along so quickly I was having a hard time keeping up myself.



It was a beautiful day though. The sun popped out and you could feel the heat from it which helped the fact that it was actually pretty cold out. We haven't had a lot of nice days like this so it was really nice to get 0n a day when we were all out in it. Especially since it has snowed every day since then! Where is Spring??????



The eggs where scattered all over the grounds near the lake and of course Joshua had to jump into the lake to get an egg he saw down there. Here in the picture he, his friend Connor (our other guest) and Uncle Josh are trying to help him take of his rain boots that are filled with water! It was pretty funny.



I didn't really get any pictures of the kids in their Easter clothes since it was cold but I have been told that the girls at least have had pictures taken at church so I can show you how they looked then if I don't get them dressed up again and have pictures taken. I'm really thinking of that since we haven't done a proffesional group shot in ages.

Here is a group pic of all my kids plus Kenzies friend.



Just the girls



Just the boys.



Just mine



That was out Easter weekend anyway. I will post more soon since the extra kids leave on Sunday I will have more time but I might actually get a post up tomorrow with some other pictures but I figured I kind of did a little picture overload here today! The kids have had multiple activities pretty much everyday with my 2 in homeschool so as long as we are at those they are easily entertained. It's those times when we are not doing one of those that the kids are driving me nuts. They are just very busy!

A shot of our new house and new pup pics

In two more days we will be moving to the new house. Did I ever explain that? Well you see when we were moving here to begin with we were having some trouble finding a place, you can read about it here. It's not to long you should read it it made me kind of sad though, not sure why. What ended up happening is a coworker had a father who lives here and they had a home they usually use as a guest house when family and friends visit. It asked them to rent it temporarily till we could find something and they said sure. That is how we ended up with our beautiful view we have now. We have been looking but it took awhile to find something. So here we are 4 months in and we found a house we love about 3 weeks ago that would be available to move into January 1st! The house is bigger then this one and even Kelly's brother Josh who is still staying with us will have his own room till he moves. Much nicer then him sleeping in the living room on the couch like he is now! I know he is looking forward to it. It's more up on the side of the mountain and backs up into trees. No one lives behind us at all and the woods back there go on forever. The landlord said that they used to go out there a little ways back to practice shooting and to go hunting, Kelly and Izzak are more then excited about that. It has the 2 car garage Kelly wanted, a good size front yard for the kids to play in (and of course the pups), a play house in the woods to the side of the house and much more. We still have a great view of the Narrows as well! Here is a pic of the house.

It's been snowing pretty much all the time for days now and actually quite deep. This picture doesn't show it so well but it's about a foot+ deep in front of the house more so in other areas and they have plowed the driveway before the latest storm. Am I ready to move right now though? Nope not at all! But it will be fine....

On to pics of Kodiak.

Here is Kodiak playing with her momma.
She is teething big time right now.
Cute little pose
Finally laying down

Other then that all going we are doing well. We had a good Christmas and I'm glad to see things finally settling down for a bit though this season has just been crazy so far!

Hey look I found my camera!

Yep I found it! It was in the pants pocket of the pants I was wearing earlier in the day before I changed into my Christmas clothes that I got.....yes I'm a dork.....

So here you go. The kids on Christmas eve in their new Christmas jammies. This is a tradition for us. I always buy them new pajamas and they open those on Christmas eve so they open their Christmas presents in the morning in fresh new jammies! My parents did this with us when I was growing up and I always loved it so I have always done it with the kids as well. I have always gotten the girls princess jammies from the Disney store so this year I orded them online. Joshua is wearing Pirates of the Caribian sleep pants and Izzaks say Ford on them. Notice my skinny son? The picture doesn't actually show it really well but he has a pretty muscular chest for an 11 year old, always has.


My sad tree.....it was frozen solid when we got it and when we put it up it was a little crooked. I always let the kids decorate the tree so all the ornaments tend to be at their height. This was on Christmas eve before I went to bed when the gifts were all out.

The kids on Christmas morning looking very tired (it was 5:00 am). Getting ready to look in their stockings. Izzaks stocking is the one I made for him when he was a baby. It has a little teddy bear on it that I embroidered and even though it looks kind of little kiddish he doesn't mind because I made it for him Kenzie and Josh have stockings I bought and Maddies used to look like theirs but we couldn't find it after moving and when I realized that all I could find was one of the inexpensive kind. I found princess stockings to make for them today though for next year and will have to look for one for Joshua now that I can make for him.

Opening gifts!

Kenzie picking up Kodiak while opening gifts. I like to annoy people by making everyone open one gift at a time and only one person opening a gift at any time. They complain but I like to see everyones reactions to their gifts and besides it takes me forever to get them all wrapped it better take them longer then 20 minutes to unwrap them all!

More unwrapping, see the puppy under the couch?
Kodiak climbing unto the couch trying to help Maddie unwrap with Kiska under the couch near her feet
As Kenzie says her "most favorite gift she has every received!" Yes she told me that. She has been asking for an easy bake oven for the last several years. I finally gave in. We'll see if I'm kicking myself for it later. For now she has to wait till we move to try it out.
Kodiak and Kiska having breakfast.

Kids playing Littlest Pet Shop Monopoly at our friends house on Christmas.

How was your Christmas?

We had a good Christmas this year. I was worried because of not being with our families this year but it was actually fun. We brought home the puppies after the kids had gone to sleep so they could be surprised that they were here. Oh yeah when I say puppies I mean we decided that my brother in law Josh would be able to have his puppy also. We had to figure that out since he is living with us for the foreseeable future. Her name is Kiska so Kodiak will have one of her littermates when she first comes home. That will probably make the transition to our house a little easier on them at least. Anyway the puppies did well and the kids were very excited to have them here for Christmas morning. They woke up about 5 am! My kids always wake up early Christmas morning they are so excited. We made coffee for us adults who were barely awake and the kids opened their stockings and the first gift, when the power went out! That was fun.....I was ready to just go back to bed till the power came on but the others didn't want to so we lit some candles and waited for the power to come back. Fortunatly it was only out for about 30-45 minutes then all was good and we had light again. The kids finished opening gifts and the puppies loved playing with all the wrapping paper and ribbons! The puppies are almost completly paper trained which was nice only a couple little accidents to clean up.

After the gifts we cooked the cinnamon bread my friend had sent us home with as a gift and had breakfast. The kids opened up some of the gifts to play with and we just relaxed for a little bit. I had baked two blueberry pies the day before and on Christmas day I made 2 pumpkins and 2 cheesecakes (Kelly's favorite) got everyone dressed and went to our friends house for Christmas dinner.

We had a lot of fun. I had given her my Christmas money from my mom to buy my gifts because I don't like to buy my own gifts. I like surprises. She did great and I got 2 pairs of pants a shirt and a lightweight casual jacket. Kelly had given me new jammies a new warm coat and a cordless keyboard, mouse and speaker set for my computer. I have so many wires comming from my desk from everything it has been driving me nuts so that was really nice!

We played Mexican Train Dominoes while dinner was cooking for a couple of hours and ate lots of appetizers. For dinner we had prime rib and all the fixins'. It was a really good dinner and we really enjoyed ourselves.

We did take back the puppies since we need to wait till we move into the other house next week to keep them home. Our landlords in this house didn't want us to have any dogs. This house we are in was just a temporary thing until we could find a house we liked here because Kelly wasn't able to find anything when we were first coming up. Our new house is up on a hill and has a great view of the ocean as well. I promise to upload our new view pics when we move there!

Anyway I have tons of pictures but can't seem to find my camera so you will have to wait for those until I find it.

Hope you all had a great Christmas! I did.

Christmas pageant

Sorry the photo quality isn't good my camera is acting a little weird for some reason.

So yesterday the kids were in the Christmas pageant for our church yesterday. They did really well and all of them were involved in this one.

Here is Kenzie in the front bending down she was a cute little shepherd

Izzak was a wiseman
Joshua was King Herod.

Kenzie again as a shepherd. She is the fuzzy one second to the girl in the front pulling her headpiece out of her eyes.

And of course my little angel Madison. Hmmm do you notice her halo is a little crooked?

They all did really great and everyone enjoyed it.

We are getting excited for Christmas tomorrow and Madison is checking the NORAD Santa tracker every few minutes to see where he is now!

New puppy pics

Kenzie holding Kodiak

The puppies are starting to eat solids now!

Kelly putting her in his hat teasing that he is going to take her home.
The puppies are all teething so the other day I bought a couple of chew toys for them to have so that Kodiak would have something familiar to take home with her when we bring her home. Everone laughed at me when I bought a set of baby key rings but they are all the puppies favorite toy.
Kelly getting licked by Kodiak. She loves to lick on people and if you bring her close to your face she will go nuts.

Sorry I'm not posting much lately. It's just really busy with the holidays coming. Also I haven't been in the best of moods for posting either. This will be the first year since we have had kids that we won't be able to go to our families homes on Christmas and that makes me really sad. Usually we will be so busy on that day visiting everyone I didn't mind it though it was part of the day. This year we are going to be at home, although we may go to our friends house for part of the day. Also Kodiak will be 5 weeks on Christmas so we are going to bring her home for a couple of hours since she is kind of a family Christmas gift. The kids don't know that yet so it will be a surprise for them. The other thing that has me down is that all the families are sending money for Christmas gifts so I am trying to find gifts for them and us then figuring out which is from them and which to have from us it just seems like a lot of extra work. Also I like the surprise in seeing what everyone gets and that is kind of lost when I'm buying gifts for everyone from everyone else. Does that make any sense? I know this is the hardest one probably and the holidays without being around all of our families will get better as we make our own new traditions but at the moment I'm just kind of sad.