Pedicures

Jayden had an optional In-House day at school today, where he could go to the eCadamy classroom and do school work and projects and have lunch with other kids his age and the eCademy teachers from 9-2.  They do these days about once a month and I usually try and take advantage just so I get a day off and Jayden gets to make some friends.  However, both of my kids have been suffering from head colds - mild ones compared to what other people around us are suffering with, but Jayden's cough was still pretty bad this morning and I didn't really want to be responsible for passing more germs around, so at the last minute Jayden decided to skip the In-House day.  That meant that he got to tag along on a special date I had planned with Willow.  Willow and I had appointments at the Fresh Spa Market for pedicures this morning.  I LOVE Fresh Spa Market!

Willow was really excited to get her nails done and she picked Brown Sugar Pear scents for her lotion and foot soak.  I told her when she was done I was probably going to want to eat her feet.

As soon as her nails were painted, she asked if she could do it again.  Do it again meaning right now, she needed to take off that color, soak her feet, get her feet rubbed and then wrapped in hot towels, and then painted again.  I'm going to assume she really liked it.  :)
The hot chocolate they also provided her with probably helped too.  She also insisted next time she came that she needed to get her toes AND her fingers done too.  I guess mani/pedi's might be next up on our girl time.

Jayden was a really good sport about it.  He sat in a chair and sipped his hot chocolate, and after insisting the whole time there was no way he was getting his feet done, he broke down at the last minute and decided he wanted a soak too.

The girl working on Jayden insisted that LOTS of men come in to get their feet fixed up.  I'm kind of hoping that Jayden talks Royal into making man-pedi's one of their special things they do together, because Jayden has the stinkiest feet.  I didn't know a 6 year olds feet could smell so bad.  And now, his feet smell like Brown Sugar and Pear.  Somehow, I just don't see that happening.  Guess it will have to be more of a mom and Jayden kind of thing.  :)

Spring Time in Winter

The weather here drives me batty!  If you're going to be winter, be winter.  If you are going to be warm and sunny and spring like, then by golly, stay that way.  Don't be all "ooo look at me, i'm all sunny, you're sitting out in a short sleeve shirt and drawing on your driveway with chalk" and then the next day be all "never mind, that didn't really work out for me, today you are banned indoors as i bring cold air and clouds and because i'm feeling exceptionally tempermental, i will have a thunderstorm for you later"  Obviously, Kansas bi-polar weather is starting to drop off of it's meds and soon will be giving us tornadoes!

So, yesterday, while it was sunny, we definitely took advantage!
Willow took full advantage by stripping off as many clothes as she could.

(anybody else notice the length of Jayden's pants???  holy growing kid...)

We also enjoyed some popcicles!  Because 63 degrees feels like summer, right?

Can You See It?

Well, can you?  Can you see it????

We have been having some really oddly warm weather recently.  And as a result, it has me in full spring fever mode.  All I can think about is my garden and what I might plant and how I need to go turn over the soil, and rip out Jayden's Marigold's from last year, and I'm spending my free time shopping for seeds, and as a result of the the 50ish or so seed packets I have on my wish list, I am going to need more room!

So, I brought it up with Royal in a manner kind of like, "Well, we kind of suck at trying to grow nice grass in the backyard and Sam just runs around and kills it, we might as well put that space to use and build more garden boxes!"  (and then of course put a big fence of some sort around it to keep Sam from eating all my food!)  Royal's response was, "Well, I'd be willing to let you have (a.k.a he would be willing to buy the wood and build for me) maybe 2 more boxes."

I took that as more of a jumping off point and I may or may not have, gone out and plotted out my garden boxes today.  And I may or may not have marked out 4 more boxes.  Go big, or go home, right?  Isn't that Royal's motto????

So, back to my question, did you see them in the picture?  If not, I've drawn them out here!

2, 4.  Potato, Patato.  Same thing, right?

I also, may or may not have gone and test drove some big trucks at Davis-Moore this weekend in order to cash in on their deal of test driving a car and get a $50 gift card to Lowe's, in order to help pay for the wood I'm going to need.

Jayden didn't seem so excited about my enhancement of the back yard, even when I promised he and Willow could have a whole box for themselves to take care of!  He went around the yard, marking off where I was NOT allowed to move my garden too.

Bring on spring!  I am so ready to plant some things!!!  Guess I should go get some grow lights and I can start growing things in my basement, just to get ready of course.  :)

Test Taking Tent

Jayden had a science test to take today.  Yet every time I looked over at him at his table, he was staring off at what Willow was doing on the computer.  So, I told him if he couldn't focus on his test, he needed to take it out of the room and find a quiet space to do it in.  Jayden opted to leave.  I found him out in the other room, with a setup inside his tent, complete with a color blinking snowman.  :)

Substitutes, Markers, and Clothes

Royal got today off from work, so that means I got to have a substitute teacher in the school room today!  Jayden does great with Royal with school, as soon as he figures out that school time with Royal doesn't mean he gets to wrestle and punch while trying to do his math lesson.

And that meant I got to do a little more one-on-one time with Willow!

Which usually turns into something like this.

And then she goes flying out of the room to play with something else.

Later on in the day, Jayden comes walking into my room and he looks strangely like a tiger.  Turns out the kids decided they were the coloring books today and it also turns out black "washable" marker really doesn't come off all that easy in the bathtub and shower.  So, the kids will still resemble faded striped creatures tomorrow as well...

(oh, and please do notice Willow's outfit change.  these pictures were all taken on the same day and within a couple hours of each other.   the pink outfit above was actually her 2nd outfit of the day, this blue one the 3rd.  Willow's clothes seem to change like magic, and this was not the final outfit of the day.  I actually just found this particular outfit downstairs by the treadmill.  does that mean she was down there running in just her underoos????  if so, she is definitely a lovingfoss!  this child of mine....)

Warm Winter Days

Even after living here for 4.5 years, I still can't get used to the weather.  In Washington, if it's spring, winter, fall, and half of summer, oh it's raining?  Totally expected that.  Here, it's winter and consistently in the 30's for days and weeks, and while sunny, it's totally cold.  Then all of the sudden on a day, right after there's been a high of 34, you go outside in the sun and it's freakishly not cold, in fact you have to take off your coat, because it's 60 degrees outside.  I'm sorry, but, what the????  Two days of 55-60 degree weather and Royal's talking about plans for our garden and my kids start dressing and acting like it's summer.  Don't get too jealous though, because supposedly we've got a high of 40 tomorrow.

Washington Wrap-Up

Holy smokes, has it really been like 3 weeks since I posted anything???? Eeeeek!  I totally had plans of posting all during our stay in Washington, but it totally didn't happen and then I was thinking I'd break our stay up into a bunch of different posts, but I don't think that's going to happen either.  So, get a tall glass of water, sit back, and enjoy an extremely long and overloaded post!

We celebrated Christmas as a family on December 22nd in Kansas.  I spent all day packing and cleaning and putting away what I could because we flew out to Washington the next day.  Holy horrible flight.  Because Wichita's airport is getting more lame and more lame (I know, I know Southwest is coming) it was going to cost our family an extra $1600 to fly, so we chose to make the extra 3 hour drive up to Kansas City and fly out of there.  So, we got up in the morning and hit the road and made it to the airport only to find an extremely long line trying to check into United, they had 6 stations, but only 2 workers helping people check in, so 1 hour later, we check our bags and make it through security.  The kids eat food and finally it's time to board our plane.  An announcement, "Our flight is overbooked, so if you are willing to take tomorrow flight out, we will give you $300 voucher per seat."  Royals like, "Ooooo $1200! That would pay for a flight out to Washington"  I'm like, "Not worth it."  We hand our boarding passes over to get check onto the plane and are offered $400 vouchers per seat if we give ours up.  I still say no.  We get in our seats in the literally last 2 rows of the plane, get the kids situated, and another announcement.  "We will give $1000 voucher per ticket if you will give up your seat on this plane."  Royal and I look at each other, and at the last minute I'm like, "We're here.  Let's just stay.  I don't want to have to explain 500 times to our kids why we aren't in Washington tonight or to their cousins who are waiting for them to get there."  Hindsight is 20/20, we should of taken the vouchers and spent the night in a hotel with a swimming pool.  We get to Denver and get to our connecting flight and discover our plane is broken and they don't know how/when it will be getting fixed.  They flew in a part from New Mexico.  It shorted out when they put it in the plane.  4 hours later, they find a different plane for us to use.  Hallelujia!  We get on the plane and they thankfully give everybody free DirectTV on the flight.  Royal watches the Seahawk game and both our overtired and hungry kids are entertained for the 2.5+hr flight.  We get to Seattle only to wait for our bags for forever and go outside baggage claim to find there is an accident and they are only letting a few cars in at a time to pick people up while the accident and firetrucks and ambulances are cleared away.  It takes my dad an hour to get from the cell phone lot to pick us up.  Blech.  But we finally make it to dad's house around 11pm.  An 18 hour travel day and it feels like 1am to our poor tired bodies.  On a good note, that meant the kids went right to sleep with no issues!

We spent Christmas Eve out at my mom's house and started the processes of eating more food than really should be humanly possible.  But most importantly, the cousins were reunited!

Christmas morning we woke up to snow outside!  We didn't have many presents to open since we did the majority of ours before we left Kansas, so the kids spent the morning out in Papa's hottub watching the snow fall.

Then Wilow came inside, put her pajamas back on and played with some toys,

while Royal and Jayden went outside to play in the snow.

Then everyone came over to Papa's house to eat more food and open the rest of our gifts.

I was not very good about taking pictures this trip, and I really need to because my memory is terrible and we cram so much stuff in I forget what we've done.  But I did manage to go for quite a few runs, one even in the snow! And I read 3 books - The Winter Letter:good, The Maze Runner:ok, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats:excellent.

One of the days, we went over to Olympia and visited my mom and sister's new studio, Let's Paint!
, and let the kids do some paintings.

I even got to go over in the evening a couple times a take a couple classes from them.
One was the LampPost

The other was Paint your Pet night, where you bring in a picture of your pet and recreate it on canvas.  It was pretty darn funny and really fun!

We also managed to be in Washington for one of Royal's favorite activities, clam digging!  His parents just bought a little cabin at the beach, so we took the kids and 2 of my nephews down for the night.  The dig was in the evening and I don't have any pictures of it because it was pitch black out, but it was pretty darn fun.  I didn't dig one clam this time because I was too worried about the kids getting overtaken by a wave, so I had them loaded up with glow sticks and headlamps and would yell at them to run every time a wave was coming up the beach.  It was freezing out, so I was really quite glad I wasn't getting my hands and arms down in the wet, cold sand.  I was just running up and down the beach with the kids carrying clam shovels and clam guns, helping them find clam holes and dig them up.  Oh, did I forget to mention I was also the pack horse?  Besides the equipment, I also had 5 clam bags tied to a belt around my waist.  One for my limit and then one for each of the kid's limit.  With 15 clams per bag, I ended up hauling 75 clams back to the truck!
All the kids were really interested when we got back to the cabin and started shucking the clams.

The next day the weather was bea.u.tiful!  It was sunny and slightly warm and no wind, so we headed down to the beach to play during daylight hours!

We spent a couple more days up in Shelton before heading down to Kelso and Royal's family.

The kids spent a lot of time in hot tubs.  Willow even started giving imaginary people swimming lessons, guess it's time to get her plugged back in!

We got to see lots of friends and their kids and we got to see our newest nephew, Myles, a bunch!

We made trips to Portland, one for a girls day of shopping - and let me tell you shopping with Norma and Lisa is always an adventure, especially when Costco is in the mix.  Royal and I went to Portland another evening to spend some time with my brother, Jordan.  We totally ate way too much sushi and then because we are gluttons for punishment, we topped it off with some of the best ice cream I've ever had!  And then we went to a movie, and non-kid movie.  It might of even been rated PG-13.  I know, living on the edge!

Jayden got to go hunting for the first time this year.  Royal and Fireball have been getting him ready by taking him out scouting a few times over the past couple years, but this is the first time he has gotten to get up early, jump in the truck with the boys, and go find some elk to shoot.  Jayden, as it turns out, was their lucky charm.  They went out 3 times and each time shot an elk.  Fireball has shot at and missed 2 elk since Jayden has left.  Norma is offering to fly Jayden out so they can finish up their hunting season successfully!  I personally had a few doubts about Jayden and hunting.  He is usually so compassionate about things getting hurt and I was worried he would have a great time riding in the truck, actually finding the animal, and then struggle when the awesome alive animal they just found gets shot.  And then not only shot and killed, but ripped open and gutted.  And then dragged back to the truck and thrown in the back.  And then hung up in a garage and skinned.  It makes me queasy just thinking about it, but I also think it is really good to know where exactly meat comes from.  What actually has to happen to an animal in order for us to eat it.  We have such a disconnect from our food and where it comes from.  Meat comes from fresh and frozen packages in the stores, not alive clucking and mooing animals, that may or may not have had clean, happy, and natural living environments.  Vegetables are bought off of cold shelves in the store, not painstakingly planted and watered and cared for and harvested and preserved (or eaten by your dog right before you harvest them).  So, as disturbing as it is for me to witness the hunting experience, I think it is so important for my kids to see and understand, so they can make their own decisions about what they will and will not eat one day.  Anyway, that's a soapbox for another day!  Back to hunting.  Jayden did awesome and I think it was a really great thing for him and Royal to do together.  It sounded like they both enjoyed each other a lot.  Jayden didn't shy away from the gruesome parts of it and asked questions the whole time and wanted to see the heart and lungs.  He played in feet of snow on the side of the road and watched Fireball get his dually, one-tun, truck stuck and then winched up a hill.  Then he didn't complain about being tired for the rest of the day, willingly went to bed early so he could get up with the boys and go hunting again.  However, after 2 days of waking up early and hunting, he got up in the morning and ate 16 pancakes.  16!  Did those hunting boys forget to feed mine????  Sheesh!  16!

Jayden got a little too close to Royal gutting the elk and Royal got a little over zealous in pulling out the guts, and it resulted in Jayden getting sprayed across the face with blood.  Ewwwwww.

After Kelso, we spent one more day up in Shelton before heading back to Kansas.  We spent the majority of the day at my mom's house, so we could get some good time in with her.

And then spent the night at my dad's house, with one more gathering of the cousins and one last soak in the hot tub before getting up at 3:30am to head to the airport.

And now, we are back in Kansas, trying to get back into the swing of things and already feeling behind the ball, since everyone else has been off Christmas Break for a week now!