Arachnophobia

Doesn't this look like a spider that you don't want hanging around your house? Well we have two of them! This one is outside my garage door in the back yard. If you don't duck you will get web all over you. Daniel thinks they are pretty?!?!? I have to admit that when we took the pictures, and could see all the details and hairs, it's looks really cool....but it still makes me cringe. I mean just imagine that thing crawling on you! Daniel doesn't want to knock the webs down because he says they catch all the other annoying bugs flying around. The only reason I have agreed to it is because if they are on their webs, then I know they aren't in my house! You keep your friends close and your enemies closer right?

This is the one outside my kitchen window. What should I name him/her? Does anyone know how you can tell the sex of a spider? Maybe I will read up on them.

I thought this was a cool shot. It looks like the spider is on my camera lens.

Now moving on to pumpkin carving

Seriously these two crack me up.

Isaiah's design, Daniels work. Great pair.

If Obama becomes President

For those of you who think I am going to get all political on you and share my views, don't worry I'm not. I just have a funny story to tell about how Isaiah will know Obama if he became President of the United States.

Now that it is getting colder outside Isaiah and I take Daniel to work in the morning since we only have one car. I like to listen to NPR. Evidently Isaiah listens as well because when he heard the name Obama he said, "Mom that's you!"

Daniel calls me Mama Obama all time.

Pumpkin Patch

This year I took Isaiah on a impromptu pumpkin patch trip. I had gone to Hillsboro to throw a baby shower for a friend, and my sister Michele asked if I wanted to go with her and her kids. I decided that would be fun and I ended up taking all of my sister Lindsey's kids with me as well.

From left to right: Tanner, Isaiah, Connor, Dallen, Emma, Bailey, and little Jeffery front and center.

He's such a cutie

These two are peas in a pod

He is so me!

Isaiah's smile is very fake here. He was scared to death to go on this train ride. The train takes you to the pumpkin patch and it passes through a very short, decorated tunnel. He thought for sure something was going to jump out at you. I think some of his cousins knew he was scared so they told him that to scare him even more. Even though Isaiah is an only child for now, he still gets doses of what other siblings are like through his cousins.

My beautiful sister Michele!

I am somehow notorious for snapping these photos with out realizing it until later.

(Notice the "keep off" sign)

I told the kids they could take home any pumpkin they could carry back themselves. Tanner actually carried this thing all the way back to the boat!
Isaiah rolled this thing all the way over to me only to get my disapproval. I finally gave in and got a wheel barrel.
Jeffery kept it small and simple. It was getting close to nap time so he was happy as a clam sitting on that pumpkin.
This is the boat we took back to the farm.
When it was time to go Emma turned into a witch. She was TIRED. She wanted to hold the kittens, she wanted to ride the train again, she wanted to play on the hay. When we passed by the popcorn stand she wanted popcorn. I told her no, and this sent her into a crying fit. I noticed they were handing out samples so I offered her some. She said, "I want a bag." I just laughed because she really is such a sweet girl, but man if she is tired she turns into a pill. I started walking towards the van and I looked back to see she had accepted the sample size offer and was happily stuffing her face as she walked toward the van. As soon as we pulled out of the parking lot I looked back to find Emma fast asleep with the cup suctioned to her chin. I had to pull over and snap a picture. The boys and I had a good laugh.

Story Time!

Daniel and I had another weekend alone together. Again we had a great time. Friday night after dropping Isaiah off with his bio dad, as I like to refer to him, we went to the temple. Afterwards we went to get a bite to eat at Stanford's. That whole night we kept running into people doing strange things and we couldn't help but laugh at the things we wanted to say or do to these people. I will give you one scenario. At Stanford's we sat in a booth in the back of the restaurant. There was a man and woman eating in the booth beside us. The woman's back was to us but I could see the man. He spent the entire dinner dumping on this poor lady. Most of it had to do with his ex-wife and how she left him with a huge amount of debt. He kept saying how he is in this huge pit and trying to claw his way out. He went on and on the entire time and of course he was using horrible language. I wanted so badly to walk over to him, get real close to his face, and say, "waa, waa, waa." As they were walking out Daniel was just starting to say, "maybe it's his sister." Right after he said that the man proceeded to slap the woman on her rear, to which Daniel said, "Oh, she is most definitely not." I just hope that lady gets a brain and gets away from that guy. Anyway....

Later that night I was in a lot of pain. I figured these are the reasons: 1. I had stayed up until 4am working two nights before, 2. I have been a major slacker in the exercising department. The day before I decided to go all out at the gym. I did 45 minute cardio and then my "Jessica Simpson" workout. It's the work out she did to get into shape for Dukes of Hazard and it's major kick butt. Needless to say I could hardly walk the next day. Well lucky me Daniel offered to give me an hour massage. What a sweetheart huh? Well this put us to bed way late. Daniel had to get up at 6am to go into work. When he woke up it was dark outside, so of course he had to turn on some sort of light. Daniel is also not known for quietly opening or shutting drawers and doors when he gets up early. Well it woke me up and man was I a grump. Later when I really woke up I immediately called Daniel and apologized for being so grumpy. I mean come on, the guy just gave you an hour massage the night before when he knew he had to get up early for work. Thankfully he wasn't mad at me:)

Daniel asked me to meet him for lunch that day. We were both irritated we were working on Saturday but we tried to make the best of it. Well Daniel had taken the car that morning so I had to catch the bus to meet him downtown at his work. I missed the bus by 4 minutes and the next one didn't come for 30 minutes. Well since I haven't been working out as much I decided this could be an opportunity to get some exercise in. I thought I could probably make it the 4 miles to Daniel's work before the next bus could get me there. As I started walking towards town the thought crossed my mind that maybe I should run home real quick and change my shoes. I was wearing Birk's with no socks. I decided to just go because now, in my mind, this was a race to beat the bus and going back home would take too much time. I felt fine for a few blocks. At a mile I starting getting really hot so I took off my jacket but it didn't help much because I was wearing a sweater underneath. At mile two my feet were killing me! At this point I was scolding myself for being so stupid and trying to walk this far in those shoes. At mile three I came upon a bus stop and thought I had gone far enough, and I was going to take the bus the rest of the way. I got into my purse to get out my OSU i.d. which gets me on the bus for free and it wasn't there. Well I wasn't going to pay when I knew I could ride for free so I continued to walk. Once I hit downtown my feet were numb. I'm a major people watcher so this distracted me. Just the day before Daniel decided to teach Isaiah about bums. When he said the word "bums" Isaiah giggled so Daniel changed the word to transients. I thought that was better anyway. Corvallis has quite a few transients for some reason. The first one I came upon was a very dark man, wearing all black clothes, and pushing a baby stroller with all his stuff in it. When I passed him he was smiling and seemed quite pleasant. As I came up to the transit station I was walking behind another transient. He pulled out a cigarette and lit up. He noticed I was behind him and stepped to the side and said, "sorry about the smoke," as he let me pass. I was so impressed. I don't think I have ever come across a single smoker who has ever cared one bit about blowing smoke in every one's faces. The last guy I saw was taking a nice nap in Corvallis' Central Park. It was a nice day and he seemed quite cozy. At this point I was now near campus and came upon the college students. All I saw were tight jeans, mini skirts (I know, like it's that warm out), and I heard a lot of foul language. So by the end of this walk I had huge blisters on the pads of my feet and a new appreciation for the transients of Corvallis.

That night Daniel and I went bowling at Corvallis' very out of date Highland Bowl. I'm not kidding this place is ancient looking. We encountered another interesting man. This was a dad bowling with his teenage looking boy and girl. This guy was intense. He would line up and get his perfect form. In his follow through he would kick his back leg all the way up in the air and to the side. This guy was like 6'5" and his arms extended below his knees. If he didn't knock down all the pins he would basically throw a fit. His daughter tried calming him down the entire time. I told Daniel I wasn't bowling when he went up in fear he might attack me. Anyway here are some pics of our night.

My form. Not so great.
Great follow through.
Daniel told me he hates the "awkward" walk back after bowling. I don't know what he's talking about. I usually take that opportunity to dance my way back:)

I'm not a big bowler but I might consider purchasing shoes. I feel so gross every time I have to put on those shoes that you know a million people have worn.

Can you believe that score?

Proud Mom

I have just been loving life lately! I have a husband who does so much for me and for Isaiah, and I have such a good little boy. I'm not saying that they both can't be little stinkers at times, I am just taking the time to enjoy the good times. I love the above picture for two reasons. One, we were at a gorgeous place enjoying great weather. Second, Isaiah calls the rays of light you can see, "Jesus light." It makes me smile every time he points them out to me.


We have two huge trees in our front yard that produce falling leaves from fall until spring. Daniel gave Isaiah the job of raking up the first batch of leaves this year. We dropped Daniel off at work and he told Isaiah they had to be done before he got home that evening. When I picked up Isaiah from school I asked him how his day was. He said, "It was good until now. Now I have to go home and rake up all those leaves." Once he got started he was a raking machine. I was so proud of him and how well he did. He worked for an hour and a half and he even scooped all the leaves into the yard waste container. I didn't help him at all (as instructed by Daniel earlier:). When I checked on him, he was just raking and practicing his alphabet sounds in Spanish and English.
I even got him to get up on the roof and scoop out all the leaves in the gutter. Seriously, this kid impressed me that day.
The company Daniel is working for has a contest they run every year for kids. They put together a calendar with drawings from employees kids with safety sayings on them. I don't know if you can read Isaiah's picture but he chose, "Always wear your hard hat." The reason this makes me so happy is that I used to have to force Isaiah to sit down and color. I was always sad he had no interest in it. Lately he and his friends have been coloring after school. I love the details in his picture. The tree has roots coming out of the bottom and he even drew a little puddle of water so the tree had something to drink. He drew Daniel with his tool box and a Hoffman flag.

One more story that really touches me. Usually Daniel reads scriptures with Isaiah at night and I read a different book after. Daniel has been super busy with work and school. He left this morning at 6am and it is now 9:30pm and he is still at the library studying. Tonight I did the bed time routine alone which included reading his scriptures to him. He is reading in the Old Testament right now and the story we were on was the story of Hannah. It starts by saying that Hannah went to the tabernacle to pray and that she was sad because she had no children. Hannah asked God to let her have a baby boy and she would teach the baby to obey God. As soon as I read that Isaiah turned to me and said, "Hey mom, why don't you ask God to give you a baby?" I really do feel like the luckiest mom in the world just to have him. Of course I want a lot more children, but if that never happened for me I would still count myself as very blessed.

Dating Again

While Isaiah was gone last weekend, Daniel and I had a chance to date each other again. We had a really fun weekend. We didn't do anything big, we just got to spend the whole weekend together without any distractions. It was really nice. On Friday night we went out to dinner at a nice restaurant on the river front.

After dinner we went to our favorite dessert spot Francesco's. We love gelato year round!

Daniel loved sitting at opposite sides of this huge table they have upstairs.

The next morning we got up early and drove to Longview, Washington for eye appointments. My Uncle is an eye doctor and he takes care of us for free, glasses and all! It is really nice of him and it gives us a chance to see him since he lives so far away. The first thing he said when he saw us is, "Where's Isaiah?" I've been going to him since I was a kid so it made me feel really old.

After our appointments we were probably there for another two hours trying on glasses! The funny part is it was Daniel who was being so fussy about his glasses.
These are the pair that he really wanted but I wouldn't let him get them. He kept going back to them until we walked out the door.
These ones really brought out the color of his skin:)
Here are our old people glasses. Seriously these glasses age us about 50 years!
The scary thing about these glasses is they cost $500.00! I don't know if you can see the bling on the side but that is why. The brand is Diva. I tried on every pair that they have. I loved them because they were all so "blingalized" as my nieces would say, but every pair made me look like an 80 year old lady.

That night we ordered pizza and watched a movie. I know it's not anything big but it just felt nice. It seriously felt like we were dating again but with all the benefits of being married:)

The Last of Crater Lake

The last day we went fishing the water was like glass all day. We had never seen the lake like this before. It was so calm and peaceful the entire day and the water so clear and beautiful.

The water is actually really deep in these pictures.

Our friend Kirk camped with us the last two nights. He has a dog named Oly. Isaiah loves her. He played with her nonstop.


Daniel getting ready for his daily swim. This was on the non clear day and it wasn't quite as warm.

I love this picture. Daniel fished all day long. It's hard for me to believe him when he says he really doesn't like fishing that much.