Christmas is next week!

I have always loved winter.  I grew up in Southern Idaho and we are blessed with 4 glorious seasons.  Unlike Texas where my dear hub hails from. In Austin it is either hot and muggy or burning hot and muggy. I really can't get used to it.  I applaud my family that can. I remember when I was about 4 years old having our house entirely snowed in.  My kids have never seen snow like that!

We get snow days for inches of snow here in Virginia, bad roads, etc. I understand. But I would love it if we really could get a real deal snow.  Right now my wonderful friends in Ohio are up to their ankles in snow, I am jealous. That is my Christmas wish this year.  A White Christmas.  We are not separated as a family this year, as so many military families are.  We don't have a family health crisis. We have had those in the past.  My husband works Christmas Eve, but not Christmas Day.  We are blessed. I hope we can ease the pinch for some families in our area, we were once one of those families that lived a very small way. Small birthdays, small holidays. Now we have a little extra and can give. Merry Christmas to all!!!

A Ball of fun in the Fall

We set our course for the much acclaimed and highly entertaining Brumbaugh's a few weeks ago.  Well after a few wrong turns and a scenic route later, we arrived to find some serious Fall fun.  Not only do they have delicious apple cider, there is a bakery offering fresh doughnuts.  It smelled divine.  They have a hay ride, story book forest, mini-zip line, mazes and a 40 ft slide.

First we had to check out the hand pump duck races. 

Can you see Jeremy hiding behind the chicken coop?  The camera was out and he was not about to let me document his shenanigans.

 

 

 

Summer Sillies

Sometimes the daily questions of "what are we gonna do today?" have good, bad and ugly answers.  I love it when we have spontaneous fun times to fill our days.  For example.....Hitting a school playground to be crazy with our buddies!

Check

out super Zeb on the jungle gym and speedy Miss Leizl crusin' on by.

Our buddy Ike here, rocking the tuff Tonka bike, seriously it weighs almost as much as he does!

               Austin and his totally great ride...borrowed from our pal. Such a turkey.

Jeremy was DIEING to ride this toy. I have no idea what its called, but as soon as the girls abandoned it, he claimed it. Heeeeer's METTA! We love this little sweetie to bits.  She loves my boys. Plus we get to hangout in Nursery, where all the cool kids are.

 
 

Look at her smile! Our friend Ava, so darn funny and cute.

 

 

 

         Look out, here comes little Cora! Cooper refused to let me take his picture, but that is his arm.  He shadowed Cora all around she is so precious.

 

 

Cheese! Mr. ethan

shocker he has his shoes off! Really though

that black top had to have been hot!  We had

such fun with our buddies, so glad we have

these great times of silliness

and summertime.

Proud to be a country bumpkin.

A country girl, like myself hopes that when given the chance to get down and dirty out on the farm, that the next generation steps up and jumps in with both feet.  My boys did not disappoint.  Off they went to my Uncle's farm south of my home town Burley to Oakley,  to be given a day in the life. 

 

 

 

I won't lie, they got to ride in MUCH better equipment than I did when I was little.  These babies are fully equipped with AC, cup holders  and GPS.

 

 

 

Cooper had such a blast.  I don't think he stopped grinning, until he had to switch out of that sweet tractor to give someone else a turn. 

 

 

 

Jeremy and his cousin Paige cruised in this 40 foot massive monter of a combine my cousin Brandon was "test driving". Good golly what a beast!

 

 

So here you can see the grain getting shot into the hopper, classic Idaho beauty right there.

 

Such dirty, happy, crazy bunch of young-uns, one thing can totally tell you these are city boys, THE SHORTS!! Grain is so flippin' itchy.

 

Ethan, Austin and cousin Harrison (he lives down the road a piece from the farm) made sure that they crushed as many dirt clods as possible.  I wouldn't expect any thing less from them. Makes a momma proud.

 

I have the bestest brothers, right there is my oldest bro Cody, he took all my boys out to the farm along with his 2 girlies that day and it wasn't always a picnic.  This day trip literally took all day long, they had to switch fields, fuel up, and of course it wasn't a real experience with out a break down. I love my country roots.

Road trip to Burley

This summer we had a heck of a lot going on in July and August.  To be honest though, having it all packed in like that instead of spread out over the entire summer (like last year) made it bearable.

We loaded up to drive all the way out to Grandpa and Grandma Larsen's house.  Headquarters for all things cowboy. It's pure heaven for the 4 ruffians that call me Mom. This year we had some time for more than riding the horses, we played on the river too.

My super fantastic cousin and his kiddos took us all out for some wet and crazy fun on the Snake.  This boat was SO fun.  All the kids took rides on the huge tube, on occasion bodies went flying.  That was when the riders in the boat would jump off the boat and swim in the water...Ethan was particularly excited to jump again and again.

I did not Drown and other things

The end of July meant Triathlon time in Burley.  I have been training since February, with a slight derail when my ankle got hurt doing a workout with Justin.  With all that behind me though, I was pretty nervous and excited.

 

This is the only place anyone will find a picture because folks, that outfit doesn't need public viewing.  I found out later that the announcer at the finish line was my Dad's friend, so my intro was a little bit more detailed than the average Joe.  that was pretty cool.  At this moment I was so beat.  The altitude nearly killed me.  But hey, I didn't drown.

We live in a yellow submarine

 No we really don't, but its catchy.  My kids have an eclectic range of music tastes.  Johnny Cash to the Beatles for example.  Or Pitbull (featuring Christina Aguilera) to The Beach Boys.  I blame myself.  I think variety is awesome in my musical world.  So my kids do too.

 Speaking of variety, here is a wide spectrum of events, places, peeps and things.....

Cooper is moving up through the ranks in Kung Fu. Pretty soon he will have completed his first year of instruction at Meng's, he is loving it, he has a real talent for it. My own personal ninja!! Hi-yah!

 

 

Coop and I had a fantastic day together at the Dayton Dragon's scholastic All-Stars field day.  All the kids in attendance had been nominated by their teachers for their achievement in the class room.  He had so much fun running the bases, batting practice with the players, a sack race with me (he totally smoked me) and oodles and gobs of other fun things.

 

 

Memorial Day weekend our Cubs had a trip to the Veterans Cemetery to place flags at all of the headstones to honor our Veterans.  It was a beautiful, peaceful day.

 

Ethan isn't old enough for scouts yet, but he was able to participate with his brothers.  I was a very proud momma that day.  We helped place hundreds of flags. 

 

 

 

 

 

 This spring our dad traveled to D.C. to find out if this would be his new office....It is!  Justin is an official member of the Medical Staff at the White House for 3 years.  We found out that our orders have been cut, we leave in October.

 

Oh my children, so, so silly!! You can imagine the amount of laughter.  It was copious to say the least.  Tears streaming, snorts of indelicate nature etc.

We really had the crazies going on.  Since the door was getting replaced the next day, Justin and I didn't care at all that their noses were all over the place.

By the time they were all funned out, their noses were rather snout-ish and our sides were plenty tired from laughing. 

 

 

What is a girl to do?

A couple of Christmases ago, my ever-loving, handsome husband bought me a new camera.  First of all, it was a TOTAL surprise.  That almost never happens. So began my lame attempts to use the camera.  It started out badly.  I freely admit it.  Wrong settings were used, not a clue about the knobs and hoo-hahs.

I am so glad to say that for the past few months I am learning what those things do and my photos are getting less lousy!!  I seem to take way more crappy ones than good ones still, but since learning a few things, well I am a little bit happier.


So here we have some shots from our most recent bbq, we bobbed for apples old school style.  We have one of our darling friends here giving it her best shot.

Here goes Ethan's best bud. It takes mad skills and dedication to nab one of those bad boys.

Looks like he's got those mad skills. 

As does Austin!  We have such great friends and man was this a fun shin-dig.  We played all afternoon and ate til we were ready to burst.  Then we busted out the water balloons!  I got soaked and filled up a ton of those suckers.


So, I tried to get things right on this batch, what do you think???
Well, they look fantastic to this girl.

Austin and Ethan's spring soccer

Having these 4 boys can be crazy, loud, exciting, frustrating, and wonderful.  Sometimes, all on the same day!  This spring Austin and Ethan wanted to play outdoor soccer at the Huber YMCA.  We have Ethan on "gold" .

 

A dozen 5 and 6 year olds trying desperately to score a goal can be pretty intense! 

Naturally, since we are out here in Ohio, the weather was predictably freezing most mornings we had games. Yep, that is 3 layers of clothing right there.

 

Austin was on "Orange" and being a little older, they may have added their own little name, like "orange thunder" or something amazing like that. 

 

 

 

 It was pretty great to see Austin out there being on defense, he really is a speedy fella.

 

Austin's team may have won a game or 2, but thankfully at his age right now, he isn't terribly focused on that part of being in sports.

Spring Break in Missouri

We have some pretty easy going traveling kids.  They have been at it for the majority of their lives in fact.  When we decided to hop in the car and drive 9 or 10 hours to our Uncle Adam's house in Missouri for Spring Break this year, it was no biggie.

 We love spending time with Adam and Tiff's family.  They have 2 little girls that think the boys are the best, funniest, coolest kids ever.  They recently had a baby boy and it was our first time to meet him. 

 It was Easter weekend when we got to their place and of course, we were prepared for some good times hunting for eggs, not something we usually do after church, but we counted it as FHE.

 

 

Here is little Miss Olivia, she was just tickled to find one egg.  Easy to please for sure.

Check out that egg! That bad boy was the Jack Pot egg. It was full to the max with candy. Grace is just so darn cute.  She has the littlest voice and its sorta scratchy sounding.  I love it.


Since the Joplin tornado a couple years ago Adam's family relocated to Carthage, just 15 minutes away. I was really thankful we had time to go back and see their old neighborhood, which was right down the road from the hospital.

 The hospital is gone, its been relocated.  Their old neighborhood is rebuilt.  The trees are still scary looking and basically the area is barren for greenery.  All of the new homes have storm bunkers right behind them now,  it was pretty incredible to see this area and then drive over just a few miles and it wasn't nearly so devastating.

 

You can tell right away the trees in the back ground have all their branches still, this is just a couple miles out of town.

 

 

We had to brave the rain and climb down to these great little places to throw rocks and hike around.  Just a week earlier, Justin's mom and her hubby visited the same spot and they had all sorts of sunshine.  Not fair. 
 

Grace was a trooper, she totally lasted outside longer that Justin and I did.  She had to be with the boys.  As much as possible.

I was super excited this shot worked out!  I had Jeremy's little Kodak, not my Coolpix, not too shabby.  You can see his hoodie is getting rather wet, I had my trusty umbrella.

 Never leave home without it.

 

Finally their little red noses had enough and we had to go, but it was an afternoon of super, boy geared fun, dangerous rocks to climb & rocks to throw into a river; perfection.  Love my boys.