He's coming home today!

Colby is getting home this afternoon, he better be anyhow, and after he's home I will post lots of pictures and blogs about our week. We did a lot - it's possible I should earn some sort of badge or award for being supermom. We went to the punkin patch, a football game, downtown trick-or-treating and lots more. Of course, I have wonderful friends who helped me do much of this, but still. Baths, bedtimes, early mornings and let us not forget poopy diapers were all mine. He owes me big!

get-togethers

As of last Thursday I am batching it (do girls batch it?) until the 25th or 26th, whenever the boys decide to come home from hunting. My cousin got married on Friday night; Kira and Lex came down and spent a few nights, helped me out with the kids and were my dates to the wedding. Left the babies at home with a friend. Thank God for friends! Anyhoo, it was a great wedding. Lovely lovely lady that our cousin Jeremy married. Never met her before, but Kira and I both knew right away she was great.

This is Jeremy and Jessica with Grandma. Okay, get on with it right?! Kira and I both had such a great time and really enjoyed seeing all the family. It has been so long since we have seen most of them. Years. Most of them not since my wedding (5 years ago). It was funny because we would turn to each other and say, "okay, are you ready? i'm ready." Then before we knew it - it had been another 45 minutes. We couldn't pull ourselves away, we just didn't want it to end. Didn't want it to be another 5 years before we saw some of them again. For Jeremy it had been so long since he had seen Grandma and I felt bad for him, she has gotten so old recently. She is going to be 94 ( i think). We visited a lot and laughed even more...eventually I decided that I was going to do a family reunion. The response was great. Everyone was so excited and volunteered to help in any way they could. We thought next summer would be good...I changed my mind. Grandma's birthday is in January and then no one has an excuse not to come. :) ha! So, I'm planning a family reunion/birthday party! I'm so excited! I know it will be a lot of work, but if I don't do it who will? I don't want to wait for another wedding or funeral to see everyone. Although I wont say it and no one else will either, we all know it probably wont be a wedding...

Little Moments

My MIL, Rhonda, as most of you know has been fighting breast cancer for many years. Going on 8 actually. I've decided to make her a scrapbook for Christmas of all the things that she has gotten to do/see/experience since she's been doing treatment. Something that will remind her of all the good that has come out of all her miserable days. Quality of life has always been so important to her...and lately, she has had more bad days than good. I'm selfish and I'm not ready for her to give up yet, so I think if I make this for her, when she is having a bad day she will get it out and look at it and decide that she should keep fighting. I know I'm late in getting started so I am going to do as many pages as I can and then give it to her, and as I finish more pages I will just add them to it. I'm trying to come up with something crafty for the first page, a title page so to speak. Something about life, and the things she has gotten out of the last 8 years. (any ideas for that page would be greatly appreciated!) I'm not only going to put in the good stuff, she lost her father a few years back and that will be in there too. It's only fair to have it all in there, I mean life isn't always a bowl of cherries, right? I'm so excited to do this there have been so many great things to note....Aunt Sandie has walked in the 3 day the last two years, some friends and I walked in the Susan G Komen 5k walk this year. Rhonda is our inspiration! She is amazing.....and to quote Sandie, "We walk because we can!"

One of the crafty signs we made for the 3day!





My team!
A few weeks ago, we took this picture while Rhonda stopped by to visit for a few minutes. I hope we have a lot more moments like these.
More than half of the time I have known Rhonda she has been doing treatment of some kind. Crazy, huh? When I first met Colby she was doing treatment. And then right after I had Cadynce she started treatment again and did so for a few years. Then she had about 3 short months where we thought she had bought some time. She's been doing chemotherapy again since Camden was born among other awful surgeries due to complications of a failing body. I am so thankful that she keeps on fighting...

Is it Just My Kids?

Recently, Camden has been started on solids. Ahhh, it's so lovely, the thought of no more bottles! Isn't it funny how we wish for silly things like that, and then before we know it they are three and driving us crazy and we wish that they were small and dependent on us for a bottle?

Sorry I got a little off track -- anyhoo, Camden loves food. Suprise suprise. Cadynce did too. I will never forget one weekend Kira was watching Cadynce and she pointed out something that I had never picked up on. We get home and she asks if Caca has always put her thumb in her mouth after every bite (she is a thumbsucker) and after thinking about it, I answer yes, I just never really paid any attention to it. She cracked up thinking it was so cute, like she was pushing the food further into her mouth. I think it was for fear she might starve to death. HAHA!

Okay so here she has 2 fingers in her mouth, but you get the point right? I have always wondered if my second one would suck his thumb and yada yada, wondering how kids pick up the certain habits that they do. Low and behold, he does the same thing when he's eating. Cadynce is three, so it's not like she taught him how to do it. So where'd he learn it? Do all kids do that?

You get the jist with these pictures, it's just so funny to me.

I've been trying to write down things like these in their baby books. I'm not sure if they will find it as cute or humorous as I do, but atleast that way they have the option to.
p.s. what color do you think Cam's eyes will be?

Vegas Oct 3-5

So, we arrived in Vegas around 2ish and headed straight for my favorite place, Margaritaville. We enjoyed lunch and margaritas (okay, a few of those) and headed back to the hotel to get ready for our cocktail reception. Friday nights festivities included an open bar (woohooo) at the Caramel (see sign below) pretty fancy stuff if you ask me. I'm not too big on getting all dressed up and wearing heels as most of you know, so a few hours each night of that has pretty much given me my fill for the year.

We did so much walking around while we were there by the time we started home on Sunday my calves were sooo tight. Great feeling though, and it was nice to be out in the sunshine. We've been to Vegas before, but there is so much to see and do its impossible to have seen/done it all in one trip.

These chocolate waterfalls at the Bellagio ! Yummmmy! Makes my mouth water. The Bellagio is sooo fancy! What a great experience getting to stay there. We had chocolate croissants for breakfast one morning and an amazing chocolate dessert another night. (pictures will come of that as well)
The fountain show at the Bellagio is a grand sight to see too. It goes during the afternoon and evening, however, given the option you should definetly see it at night! Much more amazing!









We got to on this trip because one of Colby's accounts pulled the lucky ticket to be put into a drawing and out of thousands of people he was one of 9 who won the trip. He got to bring a guest and Colby and I got to go too! There were two drawings for 20,000 dollars for the 9 finalists. Broken down into 2 groups. So they had a 1 in 9 chance of coming home with 20 grand without even gambling away any money. I was jealous. Ha ha. A kid from Burlington won the 20 grand out of our group and I was glad to see it go to him. He's a single father and is going to use it for a down payment on a house. When we went to Vegas 4 or 5 years ago we didn't get to see the Treasure Island show because they were remodeling it. Much to my dissapointment we didnt' get to see it again. The winds were really strong every night and it got canceled the whole time we were there. Saturday night we even tried for the 11:30 show and that got canceled too. So we walked through the Venetian instead and got all turned around where we were and headed the opposite direction of the Bellagio. It started to pour down rain....we finally figured out we were headed the wrong direction and started back. Even though it was raining it was still very warm, not like in Washington. It was sad to leave the sunshine and come back to rain. We were only gone 3 days, but by the time we were headed home I couldnt' wait to see my kids! Funny how that works. Colby will be headed hunting for ten days on the 16th and I know by the time he gets home I will be ready to kill them, but after only 3 days I couldn't wait to see them. It's funny how those things work out...