May Catch Up

I hate when I get behind on our family happenings on our blog.  I hate going backwards, I like to post things as they happen because I can obviously remember details so much better, but oh well, backwards a few days we shall go.  I have missed posting some pretty important things happening around here!

Royal's parents arrived on May 1st!  And Willow wasted no time in wrestling with grandpa.  She woke up from her nap, said hello, and then promptly told grandpa to sit "right there" on the floor because she was going to jump on him.  At least she's honest!

May 4th was Royal's 34th birthday!

One thing about the Lovingfosses is that they are hard workers!  And I'm pretty sure Royal had the best birthday ever because all we did all day was work!  We started out the morning at the strawberry patch and managed to pick around 45 pounds of strawberries!  (more pictures of that adventure coming)  Norma spent the majority of the rest of the 90 degree day inside the air conditioned house washing, hulling, freezing, and making pies out of the strawberries.  Royal and Wayne spent the rest of the day staining our fence.

I spent the day turning over the garden boxes, adding compost and peat moss, and then finally getting the rest of my plant starts in the ground and the rest of our seeds.  This year in our gardens we have basil, lavender, oregano, rosemary, tomatoes, peppers, garlic, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, carving pumpkins, fairy tale pumpkins, cantaloupe, zucchini, yellow squash, and cucumbers.  I think that's it....here's to hoping most of it grows!

More evidence that Royal's parents were here is that we were all pretty much spoiled rotten.  Food and groceries were bought for us.  I got to go shopping for my birthday present, Royal got more birthday presents, and each of the kids got to go shopping and pick out whatever they wanted - toys, clothes, whatever.  You have 5 bathing suits, but want another?  Grandma will buy it for you!!!!  It's pretty awesome and the kids, especially Jayden, are picking up on this and love when Grandma offers to take him shopping.
This is one of the outfits Willow picked out.

The purple shoes with the flower on the ankle are shoes Willow has been talking about for weeks.  Sometimes I think it's good to walk away from things the kids say they really want in order to see if they are still talking about them down the road.  Willow saw these shoes and she knew she had to have them.  A couple weeks later, she was still talking about them and  Grandma came to town and she got to go back to the store and get them!

The kids also got to pick out a new pool for the backyard.  This is pretty much an occurrence every time Grandpa and Grandma come to town. It always seems to be warm/hot and we've managed to pop the pool they bought us on the previous visit.  And since 75 degrees for Grandma is too hot, and 90 is just ridiculous, a new pool we got!

Grandma and Grandpa left yesterday, and now we are on a countdown to the end of school (11days!), a couple quick camping trips with dad, and then our big drive out west for the summer! 49 days to go!

Birthday Shenanigans

I totally forgot to wait until I had a 'blowing out your candles' picture before I posted Jayden's birthday, so he gets 2 in one day!

And I never did get that 'blow out your candles' picture.  I lit the candles, we sang, my camera was ready, and while Jayden took a big inhale, Willow blew the candles out - she claims she just wanted to try them out.  So I relit the candles for Jayden, but then he blew them out as fast as he could before Willow could get to them again, and I had no time to pick up my camera.
This is his, "I beat Willow to it, this time!"

For Jayden's birthday dinner, we had a very spring PNW dinner.  Jayden wanted salmon, and then I cooked up asaparagus and rice.  For dessert, (he hates cake remember???) he asked for an apple crisp, which I was alright with!  De. Licious!

After dinner, since we'd already opened presents, we decided to use some of those presents (thanks Aunt Lisa and Myrons!), and the kids and Royal had the first water-gun fight of the summer.  I automatically get out of having to do it because I get to be the picture taker.  :)

Happy Birthday Jayden!  We just love you to pieces!!!!

Happy Birthday Jayden!

I feel like I have been planning and celebrating Jayden's birthday for weeks now!  And it's finally here!!!  But isn't that how everybody likes their birthday celebrated?  I believe I declare the entire month of June my birthday month! 


Today, Jayden turns 6!  But on his last day on being 5, Jayden finally lost his dead tooth!  It has been hanging on for way too many days now and I am so glad to see it gone!

I let Jayden open his presents before we even ate breakfast today, because I find it's just torture to wait.  Both Royal and I grew up having to wait to open our presents until after school/dinner/whatever/too late in the day, so I decided since I am a grown up and can do whatever I want, I was doing it early this year!  And it is fantastic!  I'm totally keeping it this way from now on!   We are now living in a sea of Lego's and Angry Birds, but I love it!

Pirate Party

Today, we had a birthday party for Jayden's 6th birthday!  His birthday isn't until Tuesday, but who wants to have a party on Tuesday????  Not me!  This year, he wanted a pirate party and I thought that was something I could get behind!  There are lots of great things out there for pirates!

We had a big surprise for him this morning that arrived a couple hours before the party started.
Here are my pirates, dressed and ready for the party, trying to figure out what in the world it could be. (Jayden drew on his and Willow's beards, in case you were wondering...:))

A huge jumpy pirate ship!  (check out Jayden's face! :) )

 

 My mom and I made Krispie Pirate Head Pops!

And we had a pirate dress up station, with bandanas, eye patches, ear rings, tattoos, and a blow up cutlass!
  Here is the ship full of little pirates running around!

 Then we also had a treasure hunt for gold coins!  The kids were "suppose" the find gold coins in 5 different locations around the yard, then show their coins to Pirate Royal and he gave them some treasure.  I forgot to get a picture of the treasure, but it was a little treasure chest full of gold and silver necklaces, rings, gold coins, and gold wrapped candy - rolo's caramel kisses, and peanut butter cups.  The 5 locations included the dog house(not shown), the sand box, underneath the slide platform, in a bucket under the willow tree, and on the balloon wall, which to get to the coin you had to pop a balloon!

And we had a pirate ice cream cake!  Jayden has decided he does not like regular cake at all, so ice cream it was!

After everybody left, Royal got in the ship with the kids!

Pretty sure Royal had as much fun as the kids in there!

The Wandering Goose :: vol 1 :: The Wandering Begins!

Today, we finally bought our travel trailer!  It only took me 3 years of hard, hard work of convincing Royal that this is going to be So. Much. Fun!  And I'm not sure he's convinced, but he's at least sick of me talking about it and showing him pictures and talking about it some more!  :)

I really wanted to name our trailer Hazel, because that is what my Papa Jim named his trailer and I always remember riding in his big blue truck on the way to the ocean to go camping and him always talking about the "Hazel Suckers" a.k.a Semi-trucks.  But Royal was not keen on the name, so we had to come up with something else.  Because a trailer HAS to be named!  (at least I think so...:) )  And we ended up settling on Goose.  Goose is what Royal and his family always called his Grandma Mary.  Grandma Mary bought Royal lots of savings bonds while he was growing up that are just starting to come due, and we used some of his savings bonds to help pay for the trailer, so in part Grandma Mary helped fund my trailer dreams and I'm just sure she would have wanted to go camping with us!  At least she would've had somewhere warm to come and sit while we dug her limit of clams at the beach!  :)

The kids are really excited, they already have picked out their beds and also spent a couple hours in it this afternoon watching a movie.  And then we ate dinner out there.  You have to do some dry runs before you head out on the road!  :)

 

Where Royal and I will sleep!

 

Where the kids (and potentially cousins/friends!) will sleep!

We aren't quite sure yet where our first camping trip will be, but it should be within the next few weeks.  And you can bet I'll be posting pictures for sure!  :)

Promotion

Tonight, Jayden was officially upgraded from this


to this!

Under Royal's supervision,  Jayden mowed the whole yard all by himself!  Just in time for his birthday party this weekend!

Walking Home

The weather here for the past couple of days has been so great!  I guess that tornado on Saturday blew in some nice calm weather!  (fyi, that tornado ended up only being a couple miles away from our house, which if it had been during daylight hours, we totally could of seen it!  And you know I would of ran outside to get a picture of it just to put on our blog.  Because those are the things I am going to WANT to remember!!!!  but don't worry, I was in the basement with the kiddos glued to the weather man trying to find out how bad it was gonna get!)

But anyway, back to today.  Jayden wanted to walk home from school, so Willow and Sam and I walked to his school to meet him.  I brought the stroller for Willow to ride in, but on the way home Jayden kept complaining of his feet hurting, so he decided to ride in it himself.  Uhhhhhhh, he's a little big now, he's feet practically drag on the ground....

Then Jayden decided he wanted to walk Sam, and then that made Willow want to walk with Jayden too.

And. Oh. My. Gosh.  The walk home took For. Ever!  Jayden, my little environmentalist got really concerned about all the litter (or as he calls it, 'glitter', he won't listen to me about how glitter is pretty and litter is not, he keeps telling me I'm wrong, it's called, 'glitter', so for now, 'glitter' it is!) that was on the side of the road, so he started picking it up and putting it in the basket under the stroller.  Eventually we found a plastic bag on ground and he started filling that up too.

When I was trying to hurry him along, "Oh just leave that there!  For goodness sake, I want to get home already!  You've picked up enough, lets just walk faster!"  Jayden says, "Mom, God would not be happy about all these people glittering on the side of the road and ruining his earth.  He's gonna be glad that I picked it up for them"  And then I was quiet.....