Celebrating 60!

We had a wonderful time celebrating mom and dad's 60th birthday last night with many of our close friends and family! As always, Celia prepared an amazing spread including appetizers, chicken and salmon (Fresh salmon, caught by Patrick just a day or two earlier) dinner and finally some amazing desserts! Did I mention the amazing decorations that Celia and Kattrina put together also. You can see a small glimpse of them in the pictures. I was assigned with one simple task and couldn't even complete it : ) but Kattrina, Grace and Christian came through for me. Therefore I must give most of the organizing and prep credit to Celia and Kattrina. Way to go girls!! (Living an hour or so away has it's advantages and disadvantages : ) We were so happy to also have Uncle Jay, Aunt Carmen, Amanda and Grace from Redding here to celebrate with us!  Mom and dad had a great time and got some good laughs in while opening presents. (You can picture and only imagine what people give to others turning 60!) The last gift of the evening was so perfect for dad. A couple that they go to church with made dad an AMEN sign for church complete with instructions on the back for the appropriate times to use during church. Everyone got a good laugh out of it! I am so thankful for my parents and for the celebration we had for them last night. They deserved every minute of it!!

And a quick DIY from Mykayla

Monsters Inc characters...

All you need is some construction paper, wiggly eyes, glue and Crayola markers : )

Crayola obsession!

So looking at this picture, you could say I am a little obsessed with Crayola and admittedly I am!! Being a teacher and a parent of an elementary school student, I have an obsession with Crayola! I also love Back to School supply shopping and can't resist the back to school aisles in every store : ) As I have posted several times before, I cannot pass up a good bargain/deal/price/whatever you would like to call it. So I have this stack of Crayola products sitting on my ledge upstairs just waiting for September (minus one set of markers in my drawer at work). Pretty much from beginning of July till about end of August, Fred Meyer almost always has their box of 24 Crayola crayons on PRICE BUSTER sale for 25 cents a box!! So each trip I make, I pick up four. (You can never have too many crayons!) The markers I picked up at Target for
99 cents a box and the packages of 24 skinny markers I snagged at Toys R US's Buy 1 Crayola product, get 2 FREE! Can't beat that!! So I have paid about $11 total for all these great Crayola items and can't wait to put them to great use!!

A DIY Pinterest pin!

So here is what I originally pinned...

And here is what Kayla and I created tonight for her room...

I am pretty excited about how it turned out and hope to actually create many more ideas I pin!

The sun will come out...

if we put up the Slip N Slide???? 

When I got home from work today, Mykayla really wanted to put up the Slip N Slide (which I must add here, we got on mega summer clearance at target for $1.24! Love it!) I figured it couldn't hurt much even though it was a bit windy and pretty much all gray clouds. (Isn't it the middle of July?) The water had to have been freezing cold but she went for it and had a great time. She probably went about 6 to 8 times before getting a small injury and deciding she was done. Micheal just enjoyed standing in the "sprinkler" part of the slide. About an hour and a half later, the sun actually decides to comes out a bit and she decides to go back out again. After one slide, she is too cold and done. Too funny!!

Notice what's in this picture? Yep, that would be his blanket, soaking wet. He drug it onto the Slip N Slide with him just like he does in the house. Luckily he has several "extra" blankets so this one could go in the wash.

Hopefully we have many more of these to come!

My best friend Jenny and I are always posting pictures on Facebook of our boys doing their boy things. Yesterday she posted the one above of Logan dumping the Cheerios all over the floor and I right away texted her and said "Please send me that, I need to do a post of them." : ) I love that we have similar pictures of our boys and similar ideas of what to take pictures of. I hope that we have many more "twin" pictures of the boys.
I also hope that the boys will grow up to be as good of friends as Jenny and I are. What fun they (and we) will have!!
And just for fun, here is the one I posted awhile back of the two of them in sunglasses that we posted on the same day.

Anxiously awaiting an invite!

I discovered Pinterest.com the other night and I am addicted!!! Well to all the ideas I have seen on it at least. Still trying to navigate and figure out how it works. You must be invited to join Pinterest so I have requested an invite and hope to be formally notified soon. Until then I will continue to browse and find cool stuff like this...

Cool photography ideas

Classroom/home decor

More room/home decor.

DIY ideas

 Excellent quotes and words to live by 

Excellent kids crafts and activities

So many new words!

I was just bathing Michael and he said another new word. I keep meaning to write them down as I hear them so I thought I would do it here! Perfect place and somewhere safe : )
Whenever Michael says a new word, I get all excited and say the word again followed by that's right or very good. He always gets a big smile. So tonight in the bath, he looked at Mykayla's bath time Cabbage Patch doll and said "baby" as clear as day! Here is the rest of the list:

* apple (just picked this one up last week when we were grocery shopping and he pointed to some bananas and said "nana" to which I said "apple" and now he says it too)
* nana (banana)
* cracker (usually referring to Pirate Booty)
* ball
* mama
* dada
* dissa or dissy (sister)
* woo woo (dog, it's really too bad he is allergic to them because he would walk up and pet any dog we run into)
* bubbles
* ah done (all done, with the hand signs)

Just scrolling through my cell phone pics tonight...

and found several series pictures I had taken that I thought would be fun to share. I was originally inspired by the pictures I took of Michael this morning.

Michael LOVES his blankets!! He is most loyal to these receiving blankets that I got at his shower. He can sometimes often almost always be seen dragging one of these around the house, school, aunties house, wherever! I often refer to him as Linus (Can't you just picture Linus in the middle pic?) I think I have mentioned before that if one of these is not in his reach, he will grab the closest piece of laundry and snuggle it till he finds one. I wonder if one of these will be hidden away on the bottom of his backpack on the first day of Kindergarten? : )

So two things about these pictures: First, what a sign of the times!! My 7 year old and 16 month old (at the time) playing on a Nintendo DS and an iPad. (What happened to dolls and cars?) Pretty sure in a few short years, Michael will be able to navigate the iPad better than me and I can guarantee Mykayla already does!
And second. I love the bond shown between the two of them in these pictures. Most of the time (Notice I say most : ) Mykayla is so patient with her brother and will show him how to do things and then sit there while he tries. She is an amazing big sister and I hope this bond only continues to get stronger as they grow up. On a side note, Michael calls sister "dissa" or "dissy". How cute is that?

I took these pictures about a week or so ago while Adam was teaching Mykayla how to ride her bike in the field at the school across the street. Again, love the bond and patience shown in these photos. Good thing she has daddy to show her because if it was the two of us, she would not be on the bike and we would probably both be in tears : )

Sunday afternoon on the ave

This afternoon, the kids and I went to Art on the Ave on 6th Avenue in Tacoma. We enjoyed listening to music, hula hooping, eating lunch and looking at several very neat art vendor booths (Along with some very different art vendor booths, some people sure have a vivid imagination!) Mykayla enjoyed hula hooping at one of the booths. They were selling them and you could buy one of the demo's or design and make your own. We ended up with one of the demo hula hoops for the small price of just $10. Mykayla was so excited about it though, not to mention the girl can hula hoop! I couldn't say no : )

We are off to the spray park now to escape our oven roasted house!

A small living room transformation update...

So my husband got me this beautiful painting for my birthday last month and I found the mirrors at Marshall's a while back. Adam hung them for me yesterday and I added the tool bows to the tops of the mirrors. I love how it turned out! This is the main wall in the dining area where my scrap hutch used to be. I am going to put a bench or some sort of (hidden) toy storage under it. My hutch will go next to the window in the corner. Slowly but surely getting there!

Happy 60th Birthday Dad!

Tonight we celebrated dad's 60th birthday at MOD (Made on Demand, for those not familiar with it) Pizza in Bellevue. It was my first time there and I am sold, I will definitely return! Fun place, great atmosphere and awesome pizza!! Anyway, back to my dad! I am sure I am bias but I truly do have the best dad in the entire world! Thought I would share some fun facts about my dad with you:

* My dad is actually one of four (Yes 60 years ago, quads were almost unheard of!) One of his brothers died in the womb, his triplet passed away shortly after they were born and his twin brother passed away several years ago from cancer. Being a twin myself, I could not imagine the pain of losing my twin sister. Not sure how he got through this except that he is a strong believer in Jesus Christ and relied heavily on his faith.

* My dad's name is Barry Dene, his twin brother was Carey Gene and their triplet was Terry Rene. Talk about childhood torture : ) My dad grew up BarryCarey all his life. That would be why Kattrina and I have such different un-matchy names : )

* Dad majored in costume design/theater in collage. Growing up I never had a store bought costume and sometimes was jealous of friends who did. Looking at pictures now, I realize how incredibly lucky I was to have such unique, hand made costumes. I was a crayon one year, how cool is that? Dad has also always made costumes for himself each year. The most memorable one for me was Ms. Doubtfire, it was dead on! Papa Barry has made several costumes for his grand kids also including the Queen of Hearts and Old King Cole for Kayla's first grade play. They were a hit!

* As mentioned above, my dad is a believer in Jesus Christ who you can often times find in his brown chair in the living room reading his Bible. He taught Sunday school for several years and enjoys doing drama at his church.

* Dad is also an awesome "Papa" to his 6 grandkids and would do anything for them. If they cry, he insists they need a bottle or food. When we tell him no they don't, he always says "I'm sure glad you are not my mom!" to which we say "I am glad I am not your mom too!"  Seems to be our token line.

* Dad is crafty to say the least! (Hence the theater/costume design major) The man paints, makes jewelry, scrapbooks, quilts and loves to make things out of "found" objects such as purses out of cigar boxes or guitars out of gourds. You name it, he could probably make it. He enjoys entering things in the fair each year, my favorite being the duct tape purse he entered a couple years back.

* Dad is very generous and is always asking if I need money. He likes to say, "May as well spend it now, not going to be much when your mom and I die." Nice thought dad, but keep your money : ) I know I will be in trouble if we are ever struggling and I don't tell/ask dad for money.  : )

Thanks for all you do dad! We love you and hope to have 60 more years with you! : )

Celebrating 4th of July weekend!

We had a busy and exciting holiday weekend!

We headed north right after work on Friday evening to Celia's for some scrapping with the Sassy Scrappers. I got the two main missions complete that I wanted to have done so I called it successful : ) Most scrap nights are not successful for me.
Saturday morning, Trina and I packed up the kids for a bargain hunting adventure. We looked up some yard sales on Craig's List and headed out. (I don't believe we ever made it to any of the yard sales we found on Craig's List, we just drove around and ran into other ones) We found a few good bargains, mainly things for other people. Then we headed to Value Village because we had heard that they were having a 50% off sale which we were pretty excited about. We found some clothes for ourselves and the kids and of course, books. Thrift stores are my favorite place to get books for my classroom. After dragging the kids around Value Village, we headed to Forest Park with our picnic lunch. We ate, applied sunscreen and then went and played for an hour and a half or so. We had to get a popsicle from the ice cream truck. (I bet that guy makes a ton of money, especially on beautiful, warm days. He was smart!) Then we headed to Trina's to chill for the evening.
On Sunday, the kids and I went and met my mom and Celia at Ben Franklin in Monroe. This ended up being plan B since plan A; going on the boat was put off due to clouds and rain. Ben Franklin has the best scrapbook paper selection and I always find paper I have not seen before. This is a problem because paper is my weakness : ) We took mom to lunch at Taco Bell (We frequent TB alot now because we found several items on the menu that Michael can have and he loves that he gets to eat what we all have) We went and hung out at Pat and Celia's, scrapped a little and waited for some sign of sun. It finally came out and we were so excited, we headed out as quick as we could to catch some time on the water. There was hardly any other boats so we pretty much had an open lake. We anchored for a while to eat and swim and then I decided to try skiing. The last time I water skied was probably 3 to 4 years ago so when I popped up on the 2nd try I was so excited! I didn't go too far before letting go because I was so exhausted. It takes a lot out of you! I was just excited I got up! We did some tubing (Again, haven't done it in years but it was a blast! I went with my nephew Christian) and then headed home.
On Monday, Trina and I took Mykayla to go on the boat again and then took Jordan, Brooks and Michael to the 4th of July parade in Downtown Everett.  I love parades and sharing them with my children and nieces and nephews. After the parade, we headed to Fun in the Sun at the church we grew up at. Basically a smaller scale carnival in the middle of the street. The kids enjoy bouncy houses, pony rides, face painting and of course, food.  Trina and I love to run into people that we grew up with and catch up. That evening, Adam, Michael and I went out to his parents for a BBQ and a few small "fireworks." Michael did Pop its and sparklers with his cousin Elliott. Mykayla went to Aunti Nuni and Uncle Kevin's for a BBQ and real fireworks. Michael and Mykayla both crashed hard on our way home! They were wiped out.