Finally . . .

. . . the boys give up the computer long enough for me to get on. Seriously, they can spend all day playing on Playhouse Disney. So, here's the scoop. I have A LOT to catch up on. So, I am going to post several entries and put them in order and leave this one on the top for a while. Then, once I feel caught up, then I will move on. So, it's only a couple of days until Christmas. I think the boys are excited - Christmas could really be any day and they wouldn't know the difference. Gunnar peaked at one of his presents the other day. He comes to me and says, "I know what Grandma and Grandpa got me, but I didn't open it." So, he says he was just a little impatient and so he just ripped the corner of the paper. He did rip it enough to peak - sorry Grandpa. He'll still be excited when he gets to open it. So, there are several things that I have missed blogging about over the last several months - Gunnar's first day of school, the move to Oregon, Gunnar starting a new school, new job, scrapbook retreat, fall leaves, new house, home projects and probably several other random photos of the boys.

So, here it goes . . .

Venom & Diego

Halloween was kind of a crazy time for us because of the move. The movers were packing up our stuff the day before halloween and had to finish up on halloween. They were orignally were going to deliver our stuff on the 1st of November, but they finished up and were able to deliver on the 31st. We found out the HS had a trick or treat thing that night, so we had hoped that we could make it to that. Luckily before we moved Aunt Ann gave Gunnar a venom costume one day randomly. So, Gunnar was stoked to be venom for halloween. Paden on the other hand really had no costume. We were in our old town on Halloween finishing up loose ends and while at Fred Meyer, we found an overpriced Diego costume and bought it. I also bought fleece pants and jacket since the Diego costume was really thin. So, off we drove three+ hours to our new town and got there as the movers were starting to unload the semi. They finished just around the time we had planned to go over to the HS to the trick or treat deal, so everything worked out pretty well. The HS had about 35 candy stations throughout the entire school - everything was all decorated and the HS kids were handing out candy. It was pretty neat actually. So, here's presenting Venom and his sidekick Diego:

Gunnar got to wear his costume without the mask to school that day, he was pretty excited. Paden wore his Diego shirt for several days even though we kept trying to get it off him to wash him.

Fall Leaves

The house we lived in for the last several years had NO trees - that's right - no trees. How could that be? Well it was newer development with small houses/yards. So, we had no trees and no leaves. So, we moved into a rental house that had several trees with lots of leaves and we were there just in time for them falling. The boys wanted to rake leaves and have fun, so why not! We had actually seen people cleaning up the yard once before - it wasn't really our responsibility to clean up the yard, so I wasn't really worried about the boys making a mess with the leaves. It was kind of fun. They piled them up and ran and jumped in them. They were in their pajamas, it must have been a weekend. Anyway, they had a great time.

Tooth Fairy's first visit

Not too long after we moved and Gunnar started his new school, he lost his first tooth. He was really brave. Neil pulled it out after several days of it wiggling and Gunnar playing with it with his tongue. So, we put the tooth in a snack size zip lock bag and put it on top of the microwave. Once the boys went to bed and we were laying down trying to get to sleep, Neil said to me not to forget to put the money under Gunnar's pillow. I said sure and promptly fell asleep. So, the next morning Gunnar woke up and ran out saying that it didn't work, the tooth fairy didn't come. Luckily I was able to say that he forgot to put the tooth under the pillow. Phew! I was off the hook. So, we remembered that night and Gunnar got his dollar from the tooth fairy. We weren't really sure how much money the tooth fairy was supposed to bring, so a dollar sounded good. Again, Gunnar really didn't want to have his picture taken. He's such a gem!

We moved!

Well, we already mentioned we moved when I took a job with ConAgra-Lamb Weston. So, we put in an offer on a house and we weren't able to work out all the details before the new job started, so we found a rental for a temporary solution. So, we packed up enough clothes for a week and showed up at the new town and new job. It was quite the experience. We went back the first weekend to wash clothes and get more stuff. The first week was kind of like living in a hotel. We wanted to wait to have the movers move all of our stuff until we got to move into our new house. Well, that didn't work out quite like we wanted and we had to have the movers on halloween move all of our stuff into the rental. So, we lived in a three bedroom storage unit stacked with boxes. It wasn't all that bad, just crowded. So, while we miss our friends and family, the move has been good for us. I am sure that I'll have more on this subject later.

Gunnar's First Day of School

Gunnar turned 5 in August just in time to make it for Kindergarten. He wasn't too excited about it during the weeks leading up to the first day of school. We took him shopping for new clothes and surprisingly he picked out some more stylish than he's worn in a couple of years. There was a period of time he would only ear $3.00 plain colored shirts from wal*mart with a hooded sweatshirt and plain wal*mart jeans. But, this time he chose some character shirts like Ninja turtles, Cars the movie, Spiderman, etc. He became excited about school, somewhat. It took him few days. It was hard when I dropped him off in his classroom on the first day and there were two little kids sobbing in the corner. He made it OK. He was in all-day kindergarten and the first couple of days, he was really tired after school, but he got used to it. So, here's a couple of pics from his first day.

So, he really doesn't like to have his picture taken. He was not really upset at school, he was upset at me taking his picture.

Family Reunion

Just a quick note about family reunion because it's quite amazing that Neil's grandma is 100 years old. She turned 100 in August. That is remarkable. She still lives at her house and she's still on top of sending out birthday cards, anniversary cards and christmas cards to ALL her family. She's got over 60 grandkids. She's got such a strong testimony of the church and she shares it every year with the family. She's quite amazing. She's ready to return to home to her Father in Heaven and her husband. Here's a picture of Neil with his Grandma. I don't think I really took any other pictures at reunion.