My dear second child has quite the imagination.  And obsession with superheroes.  In one day he was at least 4 different superheroes, the orange one being "Orange Man", aka the superhero that hits bad guys with oranges till they stop being bad.  And he is followed by Buzz.  I don't always have my camera, so I didn't capture him as his other alter ego: Super Girl (a superman costume with a 70s wig James bought for halloween)

 The park we live in has a beach, though I don't know if there's a name for it.  It has a functioning light house on it that makes the scene super nice.

This picture of the beach looks straight out of twilight to me.

 I did something crazy, and I'm really not a crazy person.  I chopped off all of my hair.  In high school it was down to my waist.  That's the kinda person I usually am----long rod straight hair and muted earthy tone clothes.   As I've gotten older, I have branched out of my comfort zone and had some fun.  Here's another thing I can now say I haved tried: the pixie cut.  It was kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing, I decided that day to cut my hair and by 6 pm it was gone.  I didn't take any before pics, so these two silly/sweet pics with Micah are the best I have.

It's been a week yesterday and I'm slowly getting used to it.  Everyone says it's probably so much easier to take care of, but I haven't figured out how I like it best so it takes me a while to get anywhere.  I like it OK, but I'm not planning on keeping super short hair.

Home shots

I finally took some pictures around easter time of one of the floors of our house, here is the living room. This is one of the four fireplaces. I love all the windows! We haven't put up any wall hangings, I don't want to mess up this house at all! (it was built right around 1900) but I'll probably get over it soon. There are two staircases, this is what we call the grand staircase. It only goes from the main level to the second, not to the basement or the upper floor. Notice the Harry Potter room under the stairs, the first week we were here, my boys had to play in there with their flashlights.On the left side of this next pic is the front entryway.On the left side of the next picture is the room with the stairs, I'm told the foyee, or however you say it, and to the right is part of the dining room, with a built in hutch. This is the first time I wish I had fine china to display. I don't really have much to put in it to display. I forgot to take a pic of the kitchen, though it's nothing grand, but you can see the counter on the left, and to the right is the second set of stairs. From the main level this looks down to one of the two back doors and to the basement.

Here is a picture of the dining room from the living room. The hutch is on the wall opposite of the fireplace.

We love this place!! We are trying to see how we can finagle(is that a word?) staying here longer than we originally intended. The fact that this house is in a state park is just icing on the cake. The only thing I can really complain about is that it's pretty hard to keep cleaned...especially with three little boys who aren't quite ready to help with sweeping. I need to invest in one of those big brooms. ( : I'll try to take pictures of the second level with all of our rooms sometime this week.

Rainy Day outing

On another chilly, rainy day....we went to the science center and showed our guests around. These pics are all from the insect area:

Lucas's face... haha. I think he was looking at a mirror image of himself as a grasshopper unaware of Uncle Ryan taking his pic.This one of Micah is my favorite! He was on my shoulders in the butterfly house when a butterfly landed on him. He was so calm and loved looking at all of them, when this one landed on him he just watched till it flew off. So adorable!

Happy St. Patrick's Day

We love a good reason to do fun stuff, and St. Patty's Day is another. I found this link to free printables for sorting and graphing lucky charms. I don't normally buy sugar cereal, but the boys were in for a treat! I also bought mint chocolate chip ice cream under the premise that it's green. ( :

And one of the perks of our home, a huge cast iron claw footed bathtub. All the boys love to take baths in there, as you can see. Actually, so do I but with hubby gone it's not something I have been getting to enjoy. Next week Aunt Jackie and this little cutie Reagan are coming to stay with us until their house closes. (Uncle Ryan is driving up.) We are so excited to see the newest addition and .....to have family nearby!!! Yay!!

We are settling in to our new home. There is one problem with a ton of space...my toddler has the frequently used nickname of Sneakyboy. Micah is often in the snack cabinet, which is going to be moved to a higher one, I just haven't done it yet. There are also some ways you just can't baby-proof some homes. The day after we got here, my legs were so sore from carting things up and down stairs...but my body has finally gotten used to the stairs, which is good because it's the only workout I've been getting.

Last night we had some friends over despite our still messy-from-the-move house. They have kids just about the same ages as ours and all 4 big kids played hide and seek while we chatted. They were having so much fun we heard no complaints from the kids all evening, and it was so cute to see them decide to do it. We'd only played one one floor before, but they decided to play on 3 levels.

DH is leaving tomorrow for a week and a half...I'm a little nervous just being in a new place by myself so soon. Keeping myself busy is the only thing that makes the evenings pass better. Oh yea, I have an audiobook I've been ignoring, time to charge my ipod!

I can hardly contain my excitement. In two days we get the keys to our new home. (rental-as always) We took a paycut for this new job, and so we got a smaller, older home. Not just older, but not in the best condition. It wasn't bad, well except that it only has one bathroom. I'll never make that mistake again. Here are the photos-the blue being our current, the yellow being our new:

We had tried to get into this house before, but it was still occupied. We might be eating a couple of months rent in the old home, but we think it's worth it. Also- the old home is in an ok, but not so great neighborhood, while the new one is in a state park!!! Oh yea, we can see the beach from our front porch! Some more stats-old home: very little storage, 3 bedrooms, 1 bath. New home: 3 bedrooms, one office, 2.5 bath, cellar for washroom, storage, and oh yea, and extra floor with 4 rooms-I'm thinking playroom, storage, workout room, music room. I don't even know yet. The office will allow us to dedicate a room to homeschool. Right now half of my bedroom is taken up with two desks and books and computer stuff. The pictures are a little misguiding because the new home is actually a duplex, we will get the left half. The blue home looks teeny, but it is really narrow and long. There are three bedrooms, and two living rooms. One more plus is that we don't have to take care of any lawncare, since it is a park. woohoo! So we've been packing, packing packing. I think I'm done counting the moves since we got married.

A couple of weeks ago my husband planned a special date night for us. He didn't tell me where we were going, but to dress up. We went to a masquerade waltz ball! We had to wear masks for a portion of the evening.....kind of dramatic, but this was put on by liberal arts people. We don't have too many expensive dates, but it's really nice to do things like that every now and then.

And lastly, I got a couple of pictures of our house cat: ( : He makes me smile.

Holidaze...

Wow, that all went by so quickly. It was oh so enjoyable though! Our preschool coop had a nativity act with a couple of songs at a retirement center. Cobin isn't actually part of the coop, but he got to participate by narrating (since the 3 year olds could never have memorized any parts.) Lucas and Cobin are on the right side back row.

In the Seattle Center, right next to the space needle, there was a miniature town with 2 trains. It was awesome, the boys loved it. It even had a hot air balloon---Lucas was ecstatic. I snapped a sweet photo of Micah as one of the trains approached.A snapshot of our Christmas day chaos:One of the gifts most beloved to the boys was a couple of nerf dart guns. I think Cobin was done away with in this picture.Lucas's shirt came off because they were running around so much, here he stopped for a reload.
Christmas morning with homeade lightsabers. To make Christmas a little more special, we each crafted something for everyone else. This was Daddy's gift to them. I think Lucas was probably making sound effects in this pic.

Christmas day was on a sunday, so we had a short service at church with music and a speaker or two. That time helped remind me of so many special things to be grateful for. I am so grateful for Jesus's birth and look forward to celebrating it every year!

As for our New Years' celebrating? We've never really cared enough to stay up late. We went to bed at our normal, pre-midnight hour. The next door neighbors didn't. They also didn't observe that fireworks are illegal, but oh well. We rang in the new year with fireworks lighting up our home from right outside! Happy New Year to everyone!