Busy with school

It's been over a month since my last post and I swear we're all alive and well over here. We're even doing lots of fun stuff, but we've been so busy focusing on school this year I haven't been getting online much. Last school year kind of fizzled out around the time we moved in may, so we decided to hunker down and get caught up and just skip ahead in some subjects. This year we have a 5th grader, 3rd and 1st graders and Elizabeth is doing pre-pre-K (i.e educational playtime). 

I planned a back to school party and a first day of fall party for the kids, but neither of those came to fruition. We've been doing some fun projects and been working on some really exciting new endeavors for our family.I hate to tease (actually, no... I love it), but I can't divulge that information at this time. I'll let you know later. And NO! We are not pregnant, it's something else. ;-) 

Hopefully now that we're getting into our routine for the school year, I'll be able to get on here more and get more posts up. Oh, and just a note... I've deleted the couponing blog I've been doing. I'm not able to do all the deals others were getting in the larger metropolitan areas, so I just decided to quit the blog.

Her favorite thing...

Elizabeth's summer can be summed up with the love for one animal in particular... she has developed a love for horses! I'm not sure if it's just a girl thing or a her thing, but everywhere we go she finds horse toys, pictures, etc. Anything she sees with a horse on it, she exclaims "my horsie, for me!" LOL.

She rode them in Eastern WA



she rode them in Covington, WA



she rode them at the NW WA Fair in Lynden



she rode them at Shanel's party in Olympia, WA


 She loves them so much we did her birthday party with the cowgirl theme and the horse barns are where we spent most of our time at the NW WA Fair. While we were in the horse barn near the arena she spotted one just her sized and I'm pretty sure we sat there for nearly 10 minutes, just starring at that little pony. Oh, how I wish I could buy her one, but until that day we'll stick with the ones that only cost a quarter or two to ride!

The Fair

It's nearly the end of summer which brings one thing every year... The Northwest Washington Fair! We go just about every year, with the exception of last year... I think it was like 90+ degrees all week long, so we stayed indoors with A/C. ;-D

This years fair trip was extra special because it was on Elizabeth's actual birthday (we celebrated w/ her party a day early) and she was all dolled up and enjoying all the attention she got.

I know I've shared this story many times with people, but Elizabeth was nearly born AT THE FAIR! I had a surge of pregnant energy that year and took the city bus out to Lynden with the boys and met up with my mom and walked and walked hoping to get some real contractions going... and I did. Spent about 5 hours there walking around before Josh got off from school and met up w/ us to take us back home. As soon as I laid down at home my water broke! Called my mom (not more than an hour since we left her at the fair) and asked her to come get the boys. The next morning I was holding my baby girl! Ah, what great memories!

This year the weather was nice, sunny but not too hot. We had some yummy fair food treats, rode "big kid" rides and saw all the animals. Horses were Elizabeth's favorite. We saw lots of friends and just had an all around good day. Thanks for going with us this year, Mom!

Here's some pics of our day:

First my horrible fuzzy cell phone pics:



posing with a dairy cow




she liked the pink tractor




possible future as a dairy farmer?



Gabe playing the strong man game

 Now the pics with my moms fancy camera:

ready for the walk from grammas to the fairgrounds

my silly kiddos

my little milk maid

showing off their spoils

zonked out in her new wagon

Happy Birthday Elizabeth

So as I mentioned in my last post I've been busy planning and prepping for Elizabeth's birthday party that we had on Sunday. Overall it was a great party and Elizabeth had a blast! Turnout was small with just some cousins, Aunts and my mom and dad attending. But in a way it made it more special because the cousins were all from out of town, so our time could be solely focused on them and not our friends who we tend to see more often. Not that I wouldn't have loved having all her little friends there as well!

The party was at Pioneer Park in Ferndale, which just added to the "Vintage Cowgirl" theme I was going for. The back picnic shelter at the park had actually been turned into a stable, so it was fun to have that as our background and a place to do a hay-find game. The kids loved digging through all the hay looking for candies. We also played "pin the tail on the cow", where the kids earned a Cow-tail candy bar and each family got to take home a jar of Bakerella's Cowgirl Cookies.
Our party ended up happening in two parts because a member of the women's group that does the tours of Pioneer Park came over and said we had to be out by 5pm. So we packed everything up and did cake over by the playground off the parking lot, which is open until dark. While walking over to the other picnic tables the parks guy from the city came by and told us we could have stayed and he would have left the gates open until we were done (information that would have been great BEFORE we moved everything!). But, we went ahead with wrapping up the party at the playground anyways. Thanks everyone who made it!



Stole this pic off my sister's blog... isn't she a great photographer?