a little catching up

So, it may be a while, but I will catch up on this blog... I swear. As for the 365 blog... well, I think that's going to be turning into a Project 52 blog at the beginning of the year. Angie and I talked about the 365 thing quite a bit before we decided to do it, and we said that we didn't want anyone feeling bad if they couldn't finish... so here I am, not feeling bad. I admit that it was too much to take on for me.

I figure that 52 pictures (1 per week) is a little more manageable for me right now, and although I wish I could keep up with the 365, I'm not going to let myself feel bad that I couldn't complete it. This year has been a busy one for our family and I'm just happy that I got some pictures in, period.

So, here we are backing up to September... that's right, September. Better late than never right?

Kyle's boss has been very impressed with him and the hard work he does. If you've met Kyle you would know that he's one of the hardest working men alive. He gives more than 110% every day that he goes to work... and I think in the entire 8 1/2 years that we've been married, he's called in sick once (whether it was work or school). He even went back to work the day after he broke his collar-bone... to do construction work.
He's a good one. And lucky for us, his boss knows it. It didn't take long for them to figure out what kind of a person Kyle was and they have been trying to show him their appreciation since he started working for them.
As a token of their appreciation, they decided to send Kyle and me and the boys on a trip.

The location: Carlsbad, CA.

And may I say that it is a lovely place to visit at the end of September. We were put in a condo just a block away from the beach and the vacation was lovely.

 Porter's first view of the ocean. He was so excited to try out the boogie boards.

 Bridger was excited too, but was a little more hesitant than Porter.

 He thought it was pretty funny when he'd write something in the sand and the water would wash it away. We spent hours doing this... the boys gave up on the boogie boards pretty quickly.

I just realized how many pictures I got of Porter and how few I got of Bridger. All this time that Porter was playing in the ocean, Bridger was chasing seagulls. And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get a decent shot of him and the birds.

 As the sun started to set the boys got a little chilled, so Kyle buried them in the sand. The boys loved it, and asked for it again and again.

 It was a gorgeous first day at the beach.

Halloween

We had two defenders join our family this year.

One, a public defender, keeping us safe here at home.

And the second, an intergalactic defender, keeping our planet safe from the Evil Emperer Zurg.

 While this one was practicing his flying.

 This one was protecting us from bad guys... and trees. He's handcuffing that one right there.

 I have to admit that I've never liked Halloween, but man it's fun to watch these sweet boys go trick-or-treating.

Bridger, I mean Buzz, has been sick for the last few days. We made it just around the block before he wanted to go home. He has an ear infection and hasn't been feeling very well. Porter was just so excited that people were handing out candy. He loved it.
It's becoming a better holiday the older I get!

3rd of July

 I worked on the 4th of July this year, so we decided to go camping on the 3rd. A possible new tradition. These boys love camping. We headed through the campground and had to stop and wade through the creek.

 Which meant throwing rocks and making big splashes.

The campground was beautiful and so close to home that when Bridger spiked a fever at 11pm, we were able to run home and grab some Tylenol.
In the morning we sat down and made some paper airplanes.

It was a really fun night. The boys haven't stopped asking when we can go camping again.

five

He's huge.
It's like overnight he became this huge kid.
A huge kid who turned five.
It's been a little while since the birthday, but let's just say that this summer has been a bit hectic, chaotic and busy. So I'm sorry that it's late, but at least it's here.
Here he is in all his 5 year old glory.

1. What's your favorite thing to eat?  Peanut butter and honey sandwich
2. What do you want to be when you grow up? A daddy and a doctor, to take care of your heart.
3. What do you not like to eat? strawberries
4. What makes you laugh? Funny things. Like what funny things? umm, I don't know. Funny things.
5. What's your favorite thing to do? play with toys and help you cook and clean
6. What's your favorite movie? Kung Fu Panda
7. What's your favorite show? Curious George
8. What's your favorite color? Green
9. What's your favorite book? My map book!
10. What's your favorite song? You are my sunshine
11. What's your favorite fruit? Watermelon!
12. What's your favorite game? Angry birds.
13. What's your favorite game to play with me? Slap jack
14.What's your favorite animal? Rattlesnakes. I thought you were scared of Rattlesnakes? No, I like them.
15. What's your favorite drink? apple juice
16.What's your favorite thing to eat for breakfast? Oatmeal.

-This kid is just full of personality. He's so cute and sweet and helpful. He loves to help me clean anything and willingly does his chores everyday. 
-He love to go hiking and climbing, he's a big fan of being outside and doing anything that is physically challenging.
-Porter loves motorcycles and loves dirt bikes, I'm sure he'll be riding them on his own before too long.
-He is so excited for preschool to start again next week, he loves his teacher (he had her a few times last year) and so do I. He's also really excited to go to school with Bridger (going at the same time, different classes).
-He's a good big brother. When he's not teasing his brother, he loves to read Bridger stories and they play really well together most of the time. 
-He's a little obsessed with anything that has to do with Angry Birds. 
-I've been listening to the soundtrack to Wicked ever since I went to the play and I just realized yesterday that Porter sings every word. He knows the entire thing.
-This kids memory is impressive. He's awesome at memorizing sight words and anything else he sees.
-We love to watch Phineas and Ferb... partially because it's one of the cartoons that I really enjoy too (there aren't many of those) and since it streams on Netflix, it's pretty easy to watch when I'm trying to get a little sleep after a night shift. We've made it through all 3 seasons twice now in the last year and are on the third go around.
Not only can Porter tell me everything that will happen in the episodes that are playing as soon as he sees the first few seconds of the show, but at the same time he can tell me what will happen in the next episodes if we were to keep on watching. He knows the order of all the shows. It's really cool, and a little creepy.
-Not sure where the obsession with maps came from, but he loves them. He loves to know where we are and where we are going and where every city is and what roads we need to get there. He loves the atlas that we got him and he now has maps from Lagoon and the zoo that have been added to the collection.

He is just too cute. Such a sweet five year old. 

365

A while ago I did a 30 day challenge, a photo a day for 30 days. Because I can't ever do anything on my own (ie... this) I was discussing my plan to do the challenge with Angie and we decided it would work better if we did it together.
I made it a solid 30 days, while Angie went on for a whole year.
I've always wished I had been able to do it too. Looking back on it, I realize that it would have been impossible to do at that time.
I was working full time and I was away from home for almost 8 days in a row, two times a month. It was not the best set up for taking a photo a day.
After seeing Angie's post I thought that it might be a good time to give it a go again. I want to improve my photography and I want to document our lives more. What better way to do that than a 365 challenge?
Angie and I chatted for a little while and decided we should do it and invite/challenge our other sisters to join in.
They happily said yes.
So here we go.
For the next 365 days I will take a photo each day and post it on a separate blog. I will continue to post on this blog as well, but if you wish to see my daily pictures you can follow the link to the right.
Today was day one... 

the attempted hike

We started out with plans to hike to some beautiful waterfalls and the boys were thrilled. Unfortunately, due to time limits (and my inability to realize that hiking with 2 boys would take us twice the amount of time that I had estimated) we were not able to make it to the falls. We definitely plan to go back and try again another time... like when we have all day to hike 4.5 miles.

But we love hiking. Every last one of us, and it was a beautiful day for a hike. So, even though we didn't make it to our intended destination, we had a lot of fun along the way.

We searched for bugs.

They held hands. (And in case you are wondering, that thing around Bridger's waist is a bungee cord. He found it in the car and wanted to wear it like a belt for the entire hike.)

We threw rocks in the river just to see how big a splash we could make.

On the way, Kyle was looking for some walking sticks for the boys. Bridger was attempting to help him when he picked up a stick about 6 inches in length and held it up to Kyle.

"Look, I found a good walkin' stick, Daddy!" And then, looking at it with a little disappointment he said, "It's missing some pieces though."

It was about an hour before it would get dark when we ran into the first hikers coming the opposite way. We asked them how much further to the falls and they kind of laughed at us, "Ummm... you've got a ways to go..." 

So we abandoned the hope of getting to the falls and decided to head on out.

It was a fun afternoon up a really pretty canyon. Hopefully next time we'll make it to the falls.

the fish

When we were preparing to go to the carnival, I prepared the boys for all the excitement. It's so much fun to get them excited for something big like the carnival (I mean, these kids get excited for PB&J everyday for lunch, so something big like the carnival was really something to get excited about.)

I told them we would go on rides and play games and eat treats, and their eyes got bigger and bigger and all day long they asked me about the carnival.

As luck would have it the rides were much cheaper than we thought they would be, but the games were still quite pricey.

I really had a problem paying $6 for Porter and Bridger to swing a hammer and see how strong they are.

So for most of the evening we rode rides and ate cotton candy and had a lot of fun.

As we were headed out of the park, Porter reminded me that we were supposed to play games. I had told him that we would play games, and not wanting to go back on my word, I set out to find a game that was less than $6 a pop.

We came upon a classic carnival game. The one where there are hundreds of fish bowls set up with water in each of them and you take ping pong balls and you try to throw the ping pong ball into one of the bowls. And it was only $2 for both the boys.

Kyle grabbed my arm as I headed to the game and said, "If they win, they get a fish... do you want a fish?"

"Of course I don't want a fish, but they aren't going to win one, nobody wins this game. They'll play it and we'll go home."

As Bridger picked up the last ball to throw, the lady who was running the booth came over and picked up a bowl and held it right in front of Bridger's face for him to dump the ball in.

Kyle's face was priceless, and I'm sure mine was as well.

The lady walked over and picked up a bag with the tiniest fish I have ever seen swimming around in it.

The boys were ecstatic.

We started walking home and coming up with names for our new little pet, when Porter turned to me and asked (very enthusiastically), "Can I eat him tomorrow Mom? Can I?" 

"Porter, we don't eat him. He's a pet."

"Mom, when you catch a fish, then, you eat the fish."

"Porter, we didn't catch the fish, we won the fish. He's a pet and we don't eat pets."

He seemed pretty content with that answer and he started to get even more excited that we now had a pet.

We got home and put the little guy in a mason jar for the night with plans to go out and get a little fish bowl and food the next day. 

We named him Max.

Porter woke up the next morning, thrilled to see and feed his pet. When we got downstairs to the mason jar we saw little Max with his belly floating at the top of the jar. Porter asked me if he was sleeping and I said no. Then Porter asked if he had died and I told him yes. Max had died.

And then, with the saddest little eyes I have ever seen, Porter turned and asked me the question that would turn my $2 miserly splurge into a $25 investment.

"Mom, will we ever have a pet that doesn't die?"

"Yes, yes we will. In fact we'll get you a new fish today!"

And we promptly headed out to get us some fish.

And that's how Kevin and Russell joined our little family. 

I'm proud to say that they have now been alive for well over a week, and Porter has finally stopped asking every morning if they are dead.
The boys are so excited to have the fish and they take great care of them.

I'm also proud to say that I've learned a couple things from this experience. 

#1.  Kyle is almost always correct.

 and

#2.  A $6 hammer swing is actually cheaper than the $2 fish game.