April 2014

Happy Birthday to Cade!  He turned 15 this year. Hard to believe he is 15 years old already!  He is really growing up and becoming a great young man.  We celebrated with a BBQ in Warden and lava cake and ice cream.

 



 

Carter made his wrestling comeback and took 3rd at the championship tournament.  He was so happy to be back into sports and doing what he loves (his dad was pretty happy about it too)!

 

 

I ran the Wenatchee half marathon again this year and was able to drop about 6 minutes off my time from last year.  I'm very glad it's over.  Kids activities and sports make it very hard to train.  I love running with this group of girls, we have a lot of fun and they keep me going.

 

 

Cami has been playing spring soccer.  She loves to score goals and scored in every game this season!  Her team went undefeated except for one game in a jamboree they played in.

 

 

We dyed eggs for Easter and the boys hid eggs for the girls to find.  I hard boiled each kid a dozen eggs. Cade wasn't interested in dying his so he gave them to the girls to do. 

 

 

Cass was very into making each egg just perfect. 

 

 

 



 Carter just wanted to eat his dozen.  He sat there and ate about 8 of his eggs.  Guess he is a growing boy.

 

 

The chickens have grown up!  Cassidy is the expert chicken catcher around here when they escape from their cage.  This bottom picture is of Willow.
 

We went fishing at Oasis Park and Carter was the only one to catch a fish.

 



Cade made the high school JV soccer team and is starting right mid fielder.  His team doesn't have a very good record this season but he has had a lot of fun playing.

 



March 2014

 We started out March with Cade learning the joys of parenting a newborn.  He got to bring a baby home for the weekend for his growth and development unit.  He happened to get a fussy baby who needed to be patted and fed often, especially in the middle of the night.  The baby amazingly survived and he did well.  After the weekend his thoughts on parenting were along the lines of sticking the baby in a closet with a pillow over it's head.  Over the next couple weeks we saw several other high schoolers with their babies crying in the store or restaurants and had to laugh and be glad his project was over!  

 We were in the farm supply store and they had the cutest baby chicks!  How can you say no to that fluffy little thing?  We got 6! 

Here's the girls picking out what kind we want and learning about the different breeds of chickens.

The chick above is Willow and she is Cassidy's chick.  We also have an all white Leghorn named CJ for Carter Jr.  The rest of the chicks names vary depending on the day.  The girls, especially Cass are loving holding them and watching them grow.

 

Carter was able to have his cast removed and went into a walking boot and was able to return to full sports 2 weeks later.  Just in time for the last half of wrestling season.

 

 

 Over Spring Break we went skiing and snow boarding at Mission Ridge. The kids had fun and Carter was able to snowboard without any ankle problems. 

 

My running friends and I ran in the Ephrata Canal Caper 10K race and I took 1st in my age group. 

 

We are becoming quite the farmers here.  At the end of March we picked up our four 4H pigs. 

 

The pigs have really warmed up to the kids and come running to the fence now whenever the kids go near them to see if they have a treat to feed them.  So far Cami has named hers Hermione.  Carter's is Big Red.  Cade's is Pig.  Cassidy's is named Blackbeard because it has a black chin, although Cassidy insists on calling HIM Vanessa.  They will have to learn to work with their pigs and take care of them until fair week in August. 

Feb 2014

Chris took Cami to the Daddy/Daughter Dance put on by the rec center.  She was so excited to be going.  They went out to a fancy restaurant for dinner and Cami's Sprite came with a fruit skewer. She was very impressed with the real table cloths and napkins.  Guess we aren't too fancy here at our house.  She's been folding the napkins into different shapes for us now at dinner, trying to make us classy people I guess.  After dinner they went to the dance and danced every song except one.  Chris even got his picture on the front page of the local paper!  Sadly Cami was behind someone and not in the picture.  Cami was shocked her dad had such awesome dance moves. 

 

 My running buddies and I signed up to run the Wenatchee 1/2 marathon again this April.  Our last several long runs have been in the snow.  Good thing I have these girls to run with and motivate me or I may have just laid down on the side of the road and stayed there in a frozen lump.  Can't wait for spring to get here! 

 

Cade and the rest of his wrestling team all bleached their hair for the District tournament.  Everyone told Cade his hair looked the best.  Probably because his mom did an awesome job!  More likely because he is one of the only blondes, most of the rest of the boys have dark hair and so their bleach job just looks orange.  I may have burned his head just a tiny bit.  But I figure the bleach killed all the impetigo and anything else he's picked up from the gross wrestling mats.  He deleted all of the "after" pictures.  But it is very white.  He looks almost albino, a little freakish,  just like the rest of the team.  I really don't understand the "coolness" of all of this.

 Cason and Cael spent a couple days with us while their parents were at the State Wrestling Tournament.  The kids had a Life marathon one day.  My kids always love to play with their cousins and we love living closer to Chris's family so they can get together more.

 

Cade earned his Varsity letter in wrestling!  His coach had a lot of positive things to say about him at the awards dinner.  I'm glad he decided to stick with it and do his best this season. 

 

Our big excitement in Feb. was Carter and his broken ankle.  Sunday Feb 9th Carter and Cade were messing around and play fighting/wrestling downstairs which led to Carter going to ER.  The ER doctor couldn't see anything on the x-ray and told us if he was still in pain in a few days we should probably take him to the pediatrician.  Yea, sure thing doc.  The next day we got him an appointment with an orthopedic specialist.  They redid the x-rays and saw he had a fracture in the growth plate.  So he got an awesome Ephrata Tiger cast for 2 weeks.  After 2 weeks he was sure they would take the cast off and he would be going to wrestling practice that night.  No such luck.  They did more x-rays and decided the growth plate had not healed enough to not be casted and they were also able to see another fracture in the bone that hadn't shown up before.  So they casted him for another 2 weeks and then will see how things have healed.  This time he got a Patriots cast.  Poor guy was so upset to be getting another cast.  He had to miss the end of his AAU basketball season and also at least the first wrestling match.  Hopefully he will get it off at his next visit and be back to sports and whatever other chananagins he is always up to.  I don't think the cast has slowed him down too much.  I've heard reports that he has been playing kickball at school.  He holds himself up on the crutches and kicks the ball with his good leg then they give him a 10 second head start to the base.  He is also hopping all over the house on his good leg.  Life with boys is never dull. 

Jan 2014

Cade has been wrestling the past several months for the high school team.  He has had a chance to wrestle as varsity in several matches.  While wrestling is not my favorite sport, it has been fun to watch him compete this season.  He has done a great job.

 

 In Jan. I took the younger 3 kids and went to Las Vegas and California for some much needed warmth and sunshine.  Chris and Cade stayed home because Cade had wrestling tournaments and Chris had to work.  It's become very hard for us all to get out of town with Cade in high school and having sports and too much school to make up.  We missed them but had lots of fun.

Uncle Steve stood in line forever for the girls to get to meet the princesses from Frozen.  Cassidy said it was her very favorite part of the trip.  Thanks Uncle Steve!

Cassidy went on Space Mountain for the first time this trip.  I wasn't going to take her because I thought it would scare her but she wanted to go and she loved it!

For Christmas the boys got tickets to an indoor air soft arena in Spokane.  On MLK day we were able to go to Spokane and the boys and Chris spent a few hours playing airsoft.  While they were shooting each other the girls and I got pedicures and did a little shopping at Cami's favorite stores - Justice and Claire's. 

 

After being open almost 4 years Chris has hired a full time physical therapist to help him out, who's name also happens to be Chris.  Chris just graduated from PT school and as of last week is officially a licensed physical therapist!  We are so excited for him and his family to be here and for the help he will be to Chris.  My Chris might actually be able to not work 12+ hour days now.  We moved here with the hope of seeing about 40 patients a week but we now almost reach that number on Mondays alone.  It's a good problem to have, but another therapist was very needed! 

2013 Part 2

JULY

  

Carter turned 12 this year.  He's such a handsome guy - even when he doesn't smile for pictures.  He received the Priesthood from his Dad and both his Grandpas and many of his Uncles were able to stand in.

Our main excitement in July was moving into our new house.  Strangely we don't have any pictures of the new house or of moving except this picture of our first snow of the year - which didn't happen until November.  We moved slowly over the course of a week since we were only going a couple miles down the road.  Although it seemed to last much much longer.  I almost think it was worse doing a few loads every day.  We love our new house and all the room we have now. 

 

 

AUGUST

 My dad came up to visit for Carter's birthday and took Cami home with him.  She thought she was big stuff getting to go to Grandma and Papas alone for a couple weeks.  The boys went off to scout camp at the end of July and Cassidy and I drove to Vegas to pick up Cami and hang out.  Cass kept me entertained the entire drive chatting about all kinds of random things.

 Once we got to Vegas we got to meet little baby Christian and the older 3 kids got to meet Emi.  There's nothing sweeter then new baby cousins to snuggle.  I had to fight my girls all week to get my baby fix.  They both loved holding Emi and Christian.

After scout camp the boys and Chris meet us and we were able to spend another week at the beach, Disneyland, Lake Mead, and just hanging out with family in Vegas.

 

 Cassidy and Abby - our travel guides.

 It's a rough life at Grandma's house.

 Everyone wants to ride with Grandma!

 Pretty matching girlies!

Fun at Disneyland

Cami on "Jingles" - Mary Poppins horse.  It's always a fight when we are at Disney over who will get to Jingles first.

 The boys had a great time boogie boarding at the beach

Lake Mead tubing, wakeboarding and jet skiing.

We were able to take some of the kids to visit my Grandpa while we were in CA.

 

 

 

On the way home from California we went through Arizona to visit Chris's Grandparents.  It was the first time since we moved to WA we were able to see them and the first time they had met Cassidy.

 

SEPTEMBER

Once we got home from Vegas it was time for school to start!

 Cami started 3rd grade in Mrs. Jones class at Columbia Ridge

 

Carter - ever so thrilled to be having his first day of school picture taken - started 6th grade at Parkway School.  Seriously, can it be that bad Carter? 

 Apparently it really is that bad, Cade wouldn't even come out for a picture.  This is the best I could get of Mr. Cool who started 9th grade at Ephrata High School - and even this was a fight.

 Cassidy was more then happy to model for her first day of school picture.  She will be attending Hosanna Preschool this year and is so excited to be going to school.

Another exciting thing that happened in September was getting our dogs.  We hit the jackpot with these dogs.  We got them from a friend of a friend who wasn't able to keep them anymore.  They are a lab (Marlee) and a boxer/lab mix (Rocky).  The lab is the boxers mom.  They came very well trained, we are just hoping to not ruin them.  The kids love them. 

September also means fall sports.  Carter and Cade both played tackle football and Cami played soccer.

 Cade played on the high school freshman team (#6) so we were able to travel every other Monday to watch his away games.

 Chris coached Carters 5/6th grade team  Carter was #5

 Cami did awesome playing soccer this season.  She played much more aggressively then before and loved scoring goals.

This fall Cassidy started violin lessons.  That has been interesting.  She is a perfectionist and expects to be able to play as well as Cami.  She has had several meltdowns because she says, "her violin doesn't sound pretty!"  But she is enjoying trying to make pretty music and is learning some songs.

 

OCTOBER

In October Allison and her kids and my parents came to visit.  We picked tons and tons of apples and pumpkins, made applesauce and pie filling.  Alexis and Cassidy had a lot of fun painting pumpkins and playing together. 

 Cami turned 9 this year.  She had a makeover birthday party with her friends.  We had some teenage girls come and do nails and hair.  The girls did makeup, sang karaoke, and took tons of pictures in the photo booth.   

 This Halloween we had Supergirl, a 50's girl and some kind of camo guy (not quite sure what Carter was suppose to be) 

My friend Kelly and I ran in a Halloween fun run.  I got 2nd place and she took 3rd.

 

NOVEMBER

 

In November the girls and I went with a bunch of my friends and their daughters to see Disney Princesses on Ice.  We had a fun girls day shopping, having lunch and watching the show.

 Cassidy turned 4!!

She was so excited for her birthday.  She had a little party at Time Out Pizza with her friends and loved it, until they sang to her.  Then she melted into a puddle under the table dying of embarrassment.

 

 

DECEMBER

 

 December was spent doing "Christmas stuff."  Cooking, shopping, wrapping, having fun with family.  Here are the girls in their Christmas dresses. 

We made and ate lots of yummy treats.

We cut down our own Christmas tree.

Christmas morning fun. 

 

We had a great whirlwind 2013.  Hopefully I can do a better job at keeping up on 2014!