One and a Half and Full of Sass!

Nora Liv officially turned 18 months a week or so ago. She went in for her check up last week and we found out that she's in the 25% for height, weight and head size. We knew she was a peanut--but that's uncharted territory for our family! My back is oh-so-thankful she did not follow in her brother and sister's growth patterns.


She calls all shoes "boots" and boots are, indeed, her favorite kind of footwear. She especially loves to wear her pink cowboy boots with shorts--she knows more about what's in style than her Mama does!
Taking dollies for a stroller ride is one of Nora's favorite early morning activities. The more babies she can fit in the stroller, the better.

We do love our little Tiny . What she lacks in size, she makes up for in attitude. With all that colic, I suppose we should have known what was coming. She started talking a couple months ago and now she says just about everything. No, don't, stop it, mine, hi, bye, Zezra, Daddy, Car-kine, Mommy and Grandma are her favorite words. I love listening to her little voice. I know that someday it will disappear and she'll sound like a grown up kid. For now we just drink it in.

Don't grow up too fast Nory Pory Puddin' Pie!

15 Days

Fifteen more days until I send my baby off to kindergarten. Fifteen more days that I can keep him all to myself. Hold him whenever I want. Squeeze him whenever I want. And then we begin the slow release. Five and a half years have rushed past in the flutter of an eyelash, so I know these 15 days will be gone before I can take a breath. I'll walk him to school and wave good bye as he walks through the door. And then I have to turn and walk away. I've done school before. I've been a student. I've been a teacher. Now I enter the final frontier as--the parent. Eek!
When you are first expecting a baby they tell you it will be wonderful and scary and beautiful and ugly and amazing and terrifying and fun and awful. And you listen and nod. But they can't tell you just how much love is injected into your veins the second that slippery baby is flopped on your belly and you catch a fleeting glimpse of the Love of God towards His own. And you sit up at night nursing that tiny bit of silky soft sweetness watching him breathe and listening to him grunt and you stand at the edge of the ocean of comprehension. But you still don't get it. You hurt when he hurts. Your heart breaks at his failures and soars with his successes. You start to understand what your mother and father feel for you. You cry at weddings now--because someday--you finally realize--you will be the Mother or Father of the bride/groom and you'll have to let go.
Still you hold on to that tiny baby, that wobbly toddler, that confident pre-schooler. And then the day comes when you have to begin the apron string cutting process.
My Ezra could not be more excited for his first day of kindergarten. He's been counting down the days for the past year. I'm glad. But it won't make it any easier to watch him walk away. When you are expecting your first child they can tell you how much you'll love your baby. But they can't make you understand.

It's Probably Summer Time If

...You are doing leg lifts to look nice in your swim suit.

...You are being eaten by a dinosaur?
Oh wait...If you are making frequent trips to the zoo (where they have a temporary dinosaur exhibit that costs $3 a person...which I didn't know about when I promised the kids we'd go in).


...There are pretty flowers on the front porch to be picked and sniffed.

...You are wearing a cute sundress.
...You are eating a hot dog and watching Major League Baseball.



...Your Mom sets up the slip 'n slide with some dish soap on it in the back yard.


...You are eating a red, white and blue firecracker Popsicle while standing by an American flag.
If you are doing any one of those things (even if it is cloudy)...it's probably Summer Time!

A Little Vacation

If you like pictures--this is the post for you. I could not figure out a slide show. Thank you for your help, Heidi : ) I have been putting off this post for a week thinking maybe I could figure it out. Rather than break this up into four posts like I should--I'm just going for it! Here's the south-eastern Idaho vacation comin' at ya.
The kids and I left Coeur D'Alene the 5th of July and headed south and east. Tadd, on the other hand, stayed in the CDA/Spokane area for a day of work and then headed home to make the money to support his family while we vacationed. What a man. I thought I would be making the 8 hour drive through the beautiful, yet middle-of-no-where-Montana alone with the kids. However, I ended up having some help in the form of Mrs. Brown--praise the Lord. She climbed all over the van giving kids snacks, cleaning up spilled yogurt and reading. She also did some driving for me. We were able to make the trip with only one stop.
We spent our first week at Uncle Alan and Aunt Heather's country estate. What fun we had.
The kids slept late, got up, ran to the sand box and played the day away in the yard on bikes and stayed up late then repeated the whole process.



Boy did we enjoy having another taste of country life. We sure do miss it.
I don't know if I've ever seen such a striking mix of coloring as that there boy has. Those eyes--oh those eyes. And then you add the white blonde curls. Guard your daughters, Mamas--this boys gonna be a heart breaker!
The Night Gown Ladies had a girls only slumber party. It involved nail polish. A lot of it. And remover. Even more of that. Fun was had by all. How could they not have fun? They were high on fumes for twenty four hours!


They even set up shop. When a customer commented that $20 seemed a little steep, they changed it to .20 and added a free back massage and back scratch to the end of the pedicure process. I can honestly say it was the most unique mani-pedi I've ever had.

My fabulous and fun hair dresser lives in Idaho. I drive all the way there for a hair cut. Because no one knows my hair like she does. Okay, so I don't care that much about my hair. But she is a friend. A good friend. The kind of friend who goes way back. And our girls are friends. And I can sit on a chair in her kitchen and have a great gabfest while she cuts. And she doesn't care if I have to feed the baby while she cuts. And she doesn't care if I have a newborn on my lap who screamed for an hour and a half straight while she cut my hair, not that that ever happened. And she does happen to be very good at cutting hair. Styling too--she did my most favorite hair style ever on my hair when I was in my brother's wedding. One night my sister-in-law invited The Hair Dresser's family over for dinner. The kids lined up all the adults after dinner and made us have a race around all the farm equipment. What does it say about us if our kids are worried enough to force exercise????

Doesn't The Hair Dresser have beautiful girls?
Friday night of our first week, the Daddy Man arrived. Saturday morning we headed up to the hills for a fishing trip. It only took half the day to load up kids and gear.



We brought bait. The kids thought it was lunch.


Cool clouds, eh? I would love to tell you what lens I used and how long I exposed it and what filter was used. But I can't. I can tell you that my sunglasses were involved. And the camera was set on automatic : ) Aren't I talented?

That's a whole lot of grandkids. Nine to be exact. Nine grandkids all within 6.25 years to be exacter.
We were even on the boy to girl ratio until Nora was born and tilted the scales in favor of the females. The boys are pretty good at making their presence known, though. I'm sure you didn't notice.

We caught enough fish to make a supper out of them. Well, after we added in a few pieces of chicken. And a couple hamburgers. Okay, there were enough fish for each of us to have a taste.


What's up? We're just going for a drive. No need to worry.
This picture was taken half a millisecond before that fish wriggled and writhed in his death dance and Ella and Lucas squealed like little girls.
That there picture makes my heart squeeze in my chest.


Uncle Alan kindly snapped a family photo for us. That might be the only photo I'm in out of all 250. I'll have to go back and check on that.
The second week of our little vacay we moved over to stay at the Grandparents Idaho's house. Aunt Megan and her small fry were there as well. We were quite the merry crew. I'm not sure if Grandpa and Grandma have yet recovered. I'm hopeful.
One blistering hot day Aunt Megan and I loaded up the kiddos and went swimming at Indian Springs. What fun it was. We swam and swam and sat in the hot sun and delighted in the wind. That's the beauty of not living in Idaho anymore. I can actually delight in the wind again.
Don't worry, Lucas did not enter the ladies room. I just thought it was a funny picture. Ezra did enter the ladies room. But he didn't know it wasn't the men's room until after he went about his business and exited. No one was harmed. Can someone tell me why it's spelled "ladies" and not "lady's"? Now is not the time to remind me what I majored in, by the way.

Mia is quite the little swimmer. She's quite the little everything. I'm just in love with that little thing quite frankly. If her mom ever gets sick of her she has a home here! Just kidding, Megan. I know you'd never give up one of your kids.
We chose not to pack a lunch that morning--mostly because when I say "morning" I mean around noon. And if we had taken the time to pack a lunch it would have been about two before we got out of the house. We were on vacation time for sure. Anyhow...we ordered lunch from the swim-up window and it was pretty fun. Hot dogs and soda on the side of a pool in the hot sun makes for--well, crampy tummies and sun-burned shoulders. But it's fun.

Back at Grandma's we raided her landscaping to make some floral arrangements.

And rode Grandpa's motorcycles.
And the above picture was a little picnic for two. The ladies and I were the only ones left home that day and we simply relaxed and enjoyed a quiet afternoon together. It was delightful, I tell you. And as soon as I snapped that shot my camera died. And since I was on vacation, I never got around to digging out my charger (would have involved work, and I was not working). Therefore--no more pictures were taken. And aren't you glad! I cut out a lot of photos from this post--lucky for you. But I left a lot in too, as you can tell.
And now--big breath of relief--I finished blogging the south eastern Idaho vacation pictures!