Were back

Hello everyone, it has been forever. we will do the super fast update. John lost his job, I got a job do the census, John worked for labor works (temp agency) He has been officially hired on at the place he has been working at called NW Casting. He does stuff with diesel engines. I hope to do a follow up census operation now that I completed the first assignment. We will see. Summer brake is here!! Crazy times.

This is Rufus, the newest addition to our family. He is 6 weeks old. His dad was full German Shepard and his mom was 3/4 German Shepard and 1/4 lab. He looks like he is full German Shepard though. John is the only one who has had puppies or dogs before so this is very new for us. When he gets full grown he will be a very large dog. I said we should get rabbits but I was out voted. Rufus is very spunky. The little girls are always loving on him and trying to carry him around. Jacob has taken on a lot of responsibility for him which is great. I agreed to a German Shepard only so I can dress him up as a FBI dog. We are trying to teach him now how to be a good boy. He is still very young but is doing well. He is mostly potty trained as long as we pay attention to his signals. We have taught him to come and sit. He gets distracted easily so he still needs a lot of work. It is fun to see him learn. Rory got a hold of Rufus's dog bone treats because they come in a cracker looking box. She came up to john on the floor and we realized she had a whole dog treat in her mouth all chewed up. Things have been an adjustment but fun.

What we have been up to.

We Went up to Mt. Hood to play in the snow the week before Thanksgiving.

We had a snow ball fight.

Here is our Thanksgiving disaster. Every year something goes wrong. This year I assigned Jacob and Shelby a salad to be in charge of making. Shelby got the green jello salad which turned out great. Jacob got to make the dixie salad. Everything was going well until he put in the whipped topping. The bowl was too close to the edge and it fell on the floor spilling everywhere. Good thing I just mopped. Also to everyone who ate the dixie salad don't worry we just salvaged the stuff on top so no one ate directly off the stuff on the bottom that hit the floor (except for Rory, she ate it directly off the floor while we all tried to clean it up before she got full)

Here is all of us celebrating Grandpa's birthday with him.

Here we are at Thorntons tree farm where we get our tree every year. This is there petting zoo. Rory was trying to grab the pony by the nostrils. That how she shows her love.

We always take the hay ride and scope out what kind of tree we want. This year we picked a Frazer Fir.

Here is the tree we decided on. It was so funny to walk through all the trees with Rory. Every time she found a tree she liked (which was usually one that was the same height as her) She shouted out Ulaah Ulaah. So we all joined in and scattered among the trees shouting Ulaah Ulaah at the ones we considered. It almost sounded like a Hawaiian word or name.

Here is Jacob rockin' the house at his winter band concert. They only gave us one opportunity to take photos then they told us no pictures so the kids can play without all the flashes blinding them.

Then we set up our tree and stocking. which have to do about every day because the girls love to take off the ornaments and play with them. That is also why the tree is decorated the way it is but even with keeping only the top half decorated they manage to get the horse ornaments off and play with them. Plus we end up having a ornament hospital and glue them back together every few days.

This is Mackenzie's school Christmas party. Here she is with her teacher Shaun.

We also decorated cookies

and visited with Santa

This is our first opportunity to really decorate outside. We were so excited we drove the neighborhood to get ideas. We chose these LED lights. They are bright blue and white icicle type. We really like how it turned out. But we want to get blue bulbs for the outside to go with the theme.

Now I think we are up to date. Sorry for the lack of posting but as you can see with have been really busy.

Here we are at Joe's farm pumpkin patch. Usually we go to the pumpkin patch at sauvie island with the corn maze but we didn't have time and the weather was not that great for walking in the corn maze. We got our pumpkins and had a good time.

We just got home and could not wait to carve our pumpkins. Everyone was getting started and when I began poking the holes in my pumpkin I wondered how everyone else was having such an easy time and I was struggling so much. After everyone tried to poke some holes in my pumpkin I discovered I had picked out one that had super tough skin. I poked and I jabbed and I hurt my hand and my pumpkin was almost indestructible. We nicknamed it the super pumpkin. Until we got out the power tools. John attempted to cut the top off with a saw but soon realized it wasn't working out so well but eventually we got the top off and I ended up carving it with a high powered drill with different size bits. So if you want to carve your pumpkin don't get one with lots of warts because then you have to use power tools.

So here they are all carved up. I think they all turned out great, even super pumpkin.

Here is john being funny and trying to freak out the kids. Rory really thought that was funny.

Here they are, ready to go. You cant see it in the picture but Rory's elephant costume had butt and belly padding to plump her up. It was the hot topic at all the houses. We went all around our neighborhood and we stayed out for 2 hours. It was fun to see our neighborhood and all the decorations. When we got back we went through all the loot and we managed to have a few trick or treaters and the kids really liked handing out the candy also, but I think they liked getting the candy better. John and I was really surprised at how much candy we ended up with for just going around the block and a few circles. We were talking and it seemed like there was a lot of older couples and they handed out grips of candy at every stop. So for not going to a ton of houses we scored. Our neighbor Dave gave out giant Tootsie rolls and they were so excited about that. They also scored on a lot of full size candy bars and I was really pleased with the amount of chocolate treats they got. We had a great Halloween.

How boring

I keep thinking something is going to happen that will make me seem exciting and interesting and people will want to read about it. Unfortunately nothing has happened and so I just feel compelled to write something because the poor blog is feeling lonely and neglected.

John's mom came for a visit finally. Even though she just lives in Portland it has been really hard to get her over to the house. She seems to be doing well. She is diabetic so every meal and snack had to be really thought out but we were able to go out to Mexican for lunch and that was good.

Jacob has been adjusting to middle school well and is turning in projects and making good grades. He did say however that every time he has gym class he chose soccer and he ends up playing in the rain. He also has been enjoying the better food and choices in middle school.

Shelby has been having a hard time getting back into the homework routine. She gets a packet every week that requires her to read everyday for 20 min. and do multiplication facts everyday also in addition to whatever spelling and other things are in the packet. She also enjoys the lunches in the Vancouver school district over evergreen. I thought it was going to be the same but I guess not.

Mackenzie seems to be doing well at her school although I have no idea what she has been doing until I quiz her teacher. Whenever I ask her she says "I don't know" Even simple questions like what did you eat or did you go outside. Her teacher informed me that she has been social with the other children and her favorite stations are painting and building large building that are taller than she is out of blocks.

Rory went to the eye doctor because it looked like her eyes were not tracking together but the doc says she will most likely grow out of it because she is self correcting the problem. We are keeping an eye on it though.

John has been working a ton of hours and being a housewife is never ending. We planted a tree in our yard. That's about it.

School started

Jacob started middle school at Jason Lee. Shelby started the forth grade at Minnehaha. Mackenzie started pre-school 2 days a week. Rory is getting schooled by me. It has been a crazy mash of orientations and preparing for 3 different schools. Now there in and the homework is starting to flow, which is another things to get back used to. Jacob has a huge assignment to build 35 different land forms and if they work there's extra credit. So now I get to make clay and take him to collect sand and other "real" things to make "real working" landforms. When he first told me about the project I couldn't even think of 35 landforms off the top of my head. School is great for everyone. We are all learning. We are also all practicing our times tables for Shelby.



On to other news...We took a quick weekend trip to Goldendale. We went to help build the garage, see the lawn mower races and visit. It was a good trip. We met the wild turkeys, some young deer and a chipmunk.

Mackenzie's Birthday Party

Here is Mackenzie waiting for all of her guests to arrive. She was so excited to see the backyard with some of her party stuff. We were all worried that it would end up inside because of the rain earlier in the day but the weather finally cooperated and we were able to set up and have the party outside at the last minute. She said she is happy to be turning 4.

this is our first game, everyone got to pin the bracelet on Dora. the kids really enjoyed it i think the adults had fun pining the bracelet on Dora also the kids loved the prizes also especially the load whistles.

We always wanted to do a pinata for Mackenzie because she is such a big candy lover. We got this Dora pinata without thinking about the hard truth that we would be encouraging small children to beat Dora with a stick. If we do a pinata again maybe we will stick with basic shapes that don't resemble people or animals.

I think Rory wasn't sure what to do with the stick, Allen was in a hurry to take off his mask .

Yummy cake!

She really loved all the gifts she received. Her favorite was the cash register that grandma gave her.