The inside of our house is AWESOME.  I love it more and more every day and rarely find anything that I don’t like.  It is wonderful not to have buyer’s remorse.  The outside of our house, though, needs a lot of work. 

The first big project was dubbed The Monster Bush.  It is actually Wisteria that has grown over the arch on our backyard gate.  Apparently people grow it over arches all the time so as to give the yard an enchanted garden look.  But ‘those people’ do not homeschool four young children, have only one weekend day to work on their yard, AND, they pay someone to keep it trimmed and looking beautiful and enchanting.  Ours was not enchanting.  It actually gave you the feeling of walking into the mouth of a giant monster that was eating you whole.  It was just about to gobble up our roof, our air conditioning unit (several feet away from the actual arch) and the neighbors house as well.  I tried to trim it a month ago and didn’t make hardly any progress on the look, but had a humungous pile of branches to show for my work.  A month later it had grown back to its original size!  That’s when we decided the whole thing had to go.  Or our home was going to look like this in a matter of months:

Today we decided to kill the beast once and for all.  We took drastic measures.  Rather than hack at the branches intertwined with each other and the arch any more, we just cut the arch off the fence!  Here is the before picture: (note, over the past week Rock has cut the branches enough so that none of them were connected to the ground and so it was dying and only a shadow of it’s former monster self.
 

The branches and leaves used to come down past Rock’s head.

After lopping off the arch:

And the  huge pile…that we now have to figure out how to get rid of.

I will say that demolition work like this is actually fun.  It beats weeding any day!

We went to the Western Idaho State Fair last week to see the boys entries in the youth photo, cooking, and drawing contests.  They actually won some prizes!

Reagan entered these two photos in the fair:

He won 2nd place and $2.00 for this one.

He also entered some Snickerdoodles he made.

He won $2.00 with these too!

Cade entered a drawing of a Lamborghini and won 1st place and $3.00!

We watched the motocross, which Cade loved the most.  No surprises there.

He even got an autographed poster.

Then we enjoyed some yummy fair food. 

She did end up sharing some.

We always get an elephant ear too. 
But for the last two years, I’ve been rethinking that tradition as we roast in 100 degree weather while eating it. 

Maybe we’ll change our tradition next year to this:

The Idaho Ice Cream Potato

You’d think that Liberty would be interested in the huge pumpkins.  No.

By the end of the afternoon we were all exhausted.  I wanted someone to carry ME home.

The boys are already planning their submissions for next year!

If you know anything about my parents you know they aren’t really wild in any way, but it makes for a good title.  After our reunion on Whidbey we headed down to Olympia to see my parents.

The boys lived their dream and slept in a tent in the backyard all week.  One night we even roasted marshmallows and made smores!

Smores a’ la grill.  Yeah, pretty pathetic I know, but it was so much easier than camping!

If you don’t look too closely at the fence in the background, it almost looks like we are really camping.  But then you see that my mom is in the picture and you know we couldn’t possibly be camping. 

Liberty was a dainty little smore eater.  She got NO food on her clothes and hardly any on her face.  Grandpa made more of a mess than Libby.

We also played on the Puget Sound one day.
Rock Skipping Instruction

Our belated anniversary date.  It is next to impossible to get a serious picture of this man.  But, I think he’s better looking now than the day we were married so I put up with the goofy.

Chillin with Dad

We went for a hike at one of my favorite places on earth, Staircase at Lake Cushman.

Reminds me of Alice in Wonderland

We love Washington…for visiting.  It is gorgeous for three months out of the year.  No, it’s gorgeous twelve months out of the year, but only dry for three.  Whenever I’m there in the summer I almost feel bad we moved and then I remember the February it rained for 28 days straight and I don’t feel bad any more. 

Thanks for a great trip Mom and Dad!

We recently got back from Rock’s family reunion on Whidbey Island in WA.  It was lots of fun.

We woke the kids up bright and early and hit the road on our 12th anniversary.  Note to anyone thinking about getting married at the end of July.  DON’T.  There will ALWAYS be a family reunion on your anniversary.   And if you are an airhead like I am, you will totally forget that it’s your anniversary until your husband walks in with flowers….two years in a row.  But the kids gave us a wonderful present for our anniversary this time.  The BEST road trip we’ve ever had with our kids.  Everyone was great! 

Reagan is going to enter some pictures in the Southern Idaho Fair this month and so he was begging for the camera every five minutes of our trip.  Here’s one he caught of the sunrise that morning.

Pretty good for an amateur, eh?

On the ferry ride over to Whidbey.
Liberty has never been on a ferry and so when we told her we were going to ride a ferry she got really excited and said, “A ferry princess??”

We stayed at Fort Casey for the reunion.  Reagan took this picture of the deer out in front of the inn.

This is the amazing and cool family tree that Rock’s mom put together for the reunion.  I just love this.  I love seeing that ALL these people came from Grandma and Grandpa.  What an awesome thing families are!

Here’s our branch:

Three of my favorite people in the whole world.

Admiralty Head Light House at Fort Casey

Attempting to keep the kiddos quiet at 6:00 in the morning so they wouldn’t wake up the whole of Fort Casey.  Yes, we drug our children sometimes.  It’s called TV.

Our family photographer, Sam Hymas took the official family photos for the reunion.  You can check out more of his work here:
Classic Essence Photography

Families are Forever.

Cade turned nine at the end of July but we’ve been traveling and so I am just now getting these up.

For his birthday party he took two friends to see the movie Turbo.  It is about a snail….that races. 

Yeah, I know, the thought of such a plot would make most of us roll the eyes and cringe at paying to see such a movie.  But the boys have talked about nothing else since.  Apparently it is THE GREATEST MOVIE EVER MADE.  So y’all just might want to change your date plans for Friday and go see that one instead.  For Cade this movie was right up his alley.  He has never outgrown his love for cars and though I was sad to see him grow out of calling them “go goes”, I am glad that he has grown into such a nice boy. He is bright and friendly and determined as all get out.  My mom tells me that I used to hound her about things I wanted to do constantly.  Well, this kid puts me to shame.  If my mother could experience his hounding on a daily basis I think she would not only agree that he puts me to shame, but she would laugh wickedly while doing it.

We had Cade’s favorite birthday “cake that’s not a cake”, Heavenly Dirt.  Perfect for all 9 year old boys.

Yuck!

Our present to Cade was a trip to the craft store to pick out a craft to make.  He loves to do any kind of craft and…hounds me about them all day long.  He chose one that was a car, naturally, and then went home and proeceeded to…hound me about it putting it together.

He couldn’t do it on his own, however. 

So Grandpa H came all the way from Colorado to help him out.  Grandpa comes from a long line of model car makers.  Thanks, Grandpa!

A new Bumble bee Transformer was the Pièce de résistance for this boy’s birthday.  He has eaten, slept, bathed (ok, maybe not bathed) and played with this thing 24 hours a day since his birthday.  Can you tell he gets a little obsessive? 

Sarin’s gift was the best, though.

His own bottle of Gatorade. 

We love you Caderade!  Thanks for making life interesting at our house!