Half my new kitchen!

Gordon painted the kitchen today and it looks great!!! I had actually wanted to paint it a red "cherrywood" color, but when Gordon started, it did not look good with the cabinets, so he stopped and changed to the green that I picked. It's funny when one person picks a color and the other person is not really sure about it, but Gordon was pretty mad at me for stopping him and making him change colors, so he sent Jude and I to see the Chipmunks. When we got back, the kitchen was done, so I cleaned it all up and put it back together. It was great team work. While I cleaned and played with Jude, Gordon painted the slider wall with the red and now we will need to do the other two walls in the tan, so no pictures of that until the paint is done and the floor is in, but here are three of the kitchen with the paint...no floor yet. I will recommend to anyone that is going to do a floor, to paint before you take the old flooring out, you don't have to tape anything off or worry about spilling. So without any more babbling here are the pics:

Waiting for some snow

Jude informed me this morning that it would nice if it would snow, because he wants to try out his new snow gloves from Grandma Susan and make a snowman. I would have to agree that anything besides the glued on ice on the windshield that we had this morning would be better! It took forever to scrape it off and it was seriously infused in the glass! Maybe the snow will come and cover my dead flower beds so I won't feel guilty about not pulling up the dead geraniums yet. I will have to say that they were some of the best plants that I have had, and I got them at Fred Meyer when they had the 50 cents sale, so I recommend to all of you in this area to watch for their spring sale and buy some even though they are small, they are really healthy!

So, on to my post. Christmas was great! We had a nice Christmas Eve dinner and Gordon's Dad's house, Christmas morning at my families and then dinner at Gordon's Uncle's with his Mom. Jude had a great time opening presents and has spent the past few days re-checking what he received and trying everything out. One of the biggest hits has been the roller skates from Grandpa Boots (Swanson). Saturday morning I went to work out and came home to this:

It was so cute! Jude practiced all morning at home and then we met Mom, Dad, Ty, Tori, Brody, Tish, John, Peyton, Summer, Maile and Kai at Roller Odyssey and went rollerskating. Jude was pretty impressed that Grandpa was such a good skater and although we started out a little rough, by the end he was excited about practicing more and being able to skate backwards like Grandpa some time. It was fun to see everyone out skating. Mom took a ton of pictures, so I will have to get some from her, but I spent my time skating and didn't take any pictures. We had a great time.

I found another cute picture of Ty and Tori's little Brody from when we went to Shoji's one night.

Brody was a bit freaked by the fire at the beginning, but after that he had fun. Jude always love eating at the fire place.

A day or so before Christmas, Jude asked me if I could make a holder for his knife, so I did and the next day he picked out the following outfit, so that he would be able to have his knife on his belt, but he had to wear his Davey Crockett shirt (the top part of his Halloween outfit that I made) because it matched the holder. He told me that he wanted to wear the pants, but they didn't have belt loops, so he wouldn't be able to hook the knife on. I couldn't talk him into putting on his coon skin hat though.

Behind Jude is my new floor that is going into the kitchen, dining room and hall. I am so excited! Gordon said we might as well paint before we put the new floor down, so I picked new colors and he is going to get them today so we can get started. I am so ready for the carpet in the dining room to be ripped out!! Finally! I will take some after pictures when we get all done.

Fall festival and pumpkin carving, who could ask for more?

I have a few more pics from the Fall festival that we went to with Tish and Peyton at the beginning of this month. We went to a different farm this year and it was fun and had a lot for the kids to do, but I really missed the huge hay slide! There were other slides (all tube slides) and mazes and peddle bikes and a hay castle. All in all it was fun and Gordon came this year with us, which was great! This is the first time in three years that he has been able to join us, and he enjoyed it too. He rode Kai and then Peyton around on the bikes while Jude and Maile rode their own. Summer's sister in law Jennifer came with us too and she is in the picture with everyone (except me) on the castle.

It's been a while...

So I realized that I haven't put much on our blog since Jude started school and I need to get some events on here.

So far Jude is liking school. The first week was REALLY hard. He didn't especially like getting up for school and even after almost 2 months, that still hasn't changed. He is such a doddler in the morning and it takes forever for the stinker to "wake up" enough to get himself started on things like getting dressed! Well...maybe it will get easier! I won't hold my breath though!

On the 21st of September there were 2 fires that started within in hours of eachother. The first one started in Ashland and went right up the hill toward Auntie and Uncle Pat's and Grandpa and LaVona's houses. The fire department and firefighters tried to evacuate as quickly as possible but Uncle Pat and Auntie quickly set into action and dug a fire line around their homes. One of our customers that we fly for (who owns a fire fighting company) called Dad and asked if Mom was ok. My dad let him know that Mom and their house was safe, but that the fire was up by Grandpa's house. He sent a crew out to go set a line to surround their homes only. They stayed overnight up there after the majority of the fire was put out so that they could watch and extinguish any hot spots. I am very appreciative to Mike and Grayback Forestry for caring for our family!

As the tankers were flying out of the fire base here at work on the Medford Airport, there was a fire that started on Roxy Ann just across the runway view from us. I took some pictures of the tankers as they were leaving and one of Dad and Uncle Danny watching the fires.

Jude's first day of Kindergarten

I am still having a hard time believing that Jude is actually 5!!! He went to his first day of school today and since his school is a Title 1 school they offer free breakfast every morning for all the kids, so we made it early enough for him to eat breakfast before he started school at 7:50am! Jude did great and after I made sure that he made it to his class after breakfast he told me that I could just drop him off tomorrow and that I didn't need to come inside. Wow they do grow up! Little does he know that Gordon will be taking him tomorrow and he is going to do the same thing that I did today. I'm so glad that he actually had a positive experience the first day and wants to go back, because this summer we tried a city day camp and Jude cried most of the day, but the teenagers that were the leaders didn't call us, so there was no way that he was going back again. I was bummed because they had swimming lessons and everything, but it was just too devastating I guess. Oh well, I'm sure after he's in school for a year, he'll be ready for it and want to do all the fun summer stuff!

So here are a couple of pictures of Jude just as we were leaving the house for school and when I picked him up in the afternoon.

Professor Grandma George's Harry Potter Party

Jude sent his owl back to Professor Grandma so that he could attend her party and he was so excited all week long and could hardly wait for saturday! Mom went all out and had "Diagon alley" where the kids had their gold coins and had to buy their supplies. (She made a cape for each of the kids before the party!) The parents were the shop keepers and we gave each of the kids their supplies as they came down the alley. (There's a picture of the "shops" below.) Then after they had all their supplies they had to enter the "platform" between 9 and 10 (she had a sign on the inside that said "9 3/4" and as each of the kids came up to the door it magically opened.) She got one of the young men to perform a magic show and the kids loved that too! They each had wands with different cores (for example Jude's core was made from a wise old owl's feather, Brock's core was the lace of football, Kenna's core was the hair of a princess, etc.) but the wands deemed too delicious to save and most of them were eaten by the time the magic show was over. Then they played quiddach on the front lawn and came back inside for refreshments of pumpkin pastries and butter beer. Mom found a receipe for "butter beer" online and spiced up some vanilla ice cream then poured sparkling cider over it and it foamed up. Jude had a great time and I think the kids did too....Thanks Mom, I mean Professor Grandma George!

Where has the summer gone?

I decided that it was time to take a breath and download all the pictures off of my camera from the last part of the summer. I discovered pictures from our girls trip up the coast (not may though, because I kept leaving my camera in the car, so Tish, you need to get me copies from you camera...if it's recovered from my dropping it in the sand!) and Jude's 5th birthday. I am only going to post a few pics from each.

These are from Ft. Stevens. The kids had a great time climbing on everything. In the first picture it looks like Kai was ready to go, but they really did have a great time. And yes, it's August. I know everyone is wearing sweatshirts, but it is the Oregon Coast after all!