The Birthday Boys!

We have a lot of Birthdays in the month of June for our little family. Alan's was the 16th and Michael's was two days later. Since we were flying out to Alaska on Michael's Birthday we decided to celebrate it a day early. With everyone being sick and the big trip coming up we didn't get to do too much for their Birthdays but it was still fun.

Alan requested the usual (strawberry rhubarb pie). I couldn't find rhubarb in the stores anywhere so I ended up having to buy one. It was really.... good, especially since I didn't have to make it! =)

I actually let Michael make a huge mess with his cup cake and he loved it. I think most of it ended up on the counter or the floor instead of his mouth but it wasn't too bad to clean up.

We bought Michael a hiking back pack, a quiet book and some clothes for his Birthday. He kind of got spoiled but most of the gifts were for us so what can I say. We can now take Michael on hikes with us which is a lot of fun! The quiet book was a purchase in hopes to help keep little ones quiet and still during church. We tried it for the first time last Sunday. It worked for a while but I guess I can't expect too much. Church is a long time for little guys. Michael really is a pretty good boy and we sure do love him!

What was I thinking!

So I decided to go crazy and cut my hair. I have had my hair the same way for so long that I was getting really sick and tired of it. To some this hair cut might not be too extreme, but to me it is! I really don't mind the length of it now, but the layers didn't quite turn out like I was hoping. You can't see the shortest layers in this picture but take my word on it that they don't look good. Lets just say that I won't be wearing my hair completely down for a while.

(I used the timer on my camera to take this picture. You just can't beat the run and strike a pose real fast experiences. Not to bad for the first try hu!)

Camping Trip

Alan's brother's and their families came here for Memorial Day weekend. It is always so much fun to have family around! Friday night we went camping around Walla Walla. Here are some pictures of Michael in and around the tent. We took him camping several times last year so I thought it would be no big deal this time. Ha, can I just say that the crawling/learning how to walk stage is really hard out in the woods! The spot that we found had lots of thorn plants all over. Michael couldn't crawl around freely like he wanted to and he was putting everything in his mouth. One night was plenty for the two of us.



As you can see in the background we still have little old "Mighty Max"! I am sure that we will have to buy another vehicle in the near future, but while he is still running we will continue to run him. It is a good thing we have a truck because I don't think all of our camping gear would of fit in our car.

Here is Michael and Eli helping pick up our camp site. They are such great little helpers!

House Hunting Again!

For those of you who did not know, we put an offer on a house about two weeks ago. They accepted our offer and we were all set on buying it, that is until we had the inspection done on it. We knew that it had "problems" but not as bad of problems as it does. Lets just say the house had foundation issues, roofing issues, and a lot of mold! The inspection was well worth the $300 that it cost. I am just so..... glad that we were able to get out of the deal. Phew!

So now it's time to pick up our scattered dreams and start searching again. I am sure that one of these days we will find something that is perfect for us. Until then we will continue saving, searching, and swimming in the apartment complexes swimming pool for free. Yes!

That had to hurt!

As you can see Michael has a black eye. Last night he feel down hitting his face on my elbow. Ouch! There was an instant bruise off to the right of his eye. Michael takes after me and bruises quiet easy. We wondered if he would get a black eye from it. Sure enough, this morning it was there! He is such a good sport though. He hasn't complained about it one bit. As you can see in the pictures he is still happy and up to the usual mischief. Hopefully it doesn't hurt as bad as it looks. Now if only I could learn to not complain so much!

Play time!

Michael loves having friends over to play. This is one of our next door neighbor's kids. I was baby sitting her so that her parents could go on a date that night.

All they did the whole night was eat toys and then eye each other's toys for the next round of eating.

Sharing is a hard concept to grasp right now, but Michael would rather share his toys any day then have to play by himself. You just got to love him!

Easter

This Easter we ran out of time on Sunday to look for our Easter baskets so we ended up doing it for Family Home Evening the next day. Michael didn't quite understand what he was supposed to be doing, but with a little bit of help he figured it out. They ran out of plastic eggs at the store so I bought these plastic jelly beans instead. Boy did Alan make fun of me! He kept calling them jelly slugs. Anyways we hid several of those for Michael to find that had fish crackers and baby puffs in them. He also got this cute green hippo. I probably like it more then Michael does but that is okay!

(That bag of candy is not Michael's. I don't want you to think that I give my little guy candy at 10 months old!)

My old roommate and friend NaeDene came to visit us for a week. It was a lot of fun to have another girl around! She was such a good sport about finding her Easter basket. I knew that Alan wouldn't be too thrilled if I made his too hard to find so I decided to make NaeDene's the hardest. I ended up having to tell her where I hid it. There are a lot of great places to hide things in our piano. =) This year Al hid my basket pretty good as well. I had to unscrew the panel on the wall that holds the air filter to our apartment. It was behind the air filter sitting there between the framed walls. Next year I might not be able to find mine!

NaeDene took this picture for us. We have VERY FEW pictures of all of us together! This one isn't that great but at least it has everyone. I love Holidays! Thanks to everyone who went along with my idea's of family traditions! It really means a lot to me.