iron-on crayons

I have soooooo much bloggin' to catch up on. But here's a bit from our day today. After work the boys and their friend, A, made their own iron-ons to put on t-shirts. They had a blast!! A was so proud of herself that I thought she might pop. She ran across the street 3 times to show her dad her t-shirt. Aren't they a cute bunch? A has Hello Kitty, J has a flying dragon, L has Spongebob and his pet snail Gary.

My mom gave me several boxes of these crayons a few years ago and we still pull them out and use them (thank you, Mom!). This is the first time A has tried them and she said she would go home and dream all night about her next design. The kids drew/traced their pictures and colored them with the special crayons and then we simply ironed them onto their shirts. Very easy. Very proud little creators.

Hello!

Hey there!

We disappeared for a while, huh? DH decided that we were able to swing a quick trip back to visit my family in Oklahoma and Missouri. It was totally spur of the moment. DH decided it on Thursday the 5th and we packed up that night and left. Always easier to start out a trip at dark when the kids sleep and we can put many miles behind us before they start asking "when will we be there?" We had a wonderful time visiting and introducing Little Sister. I wish we could have stayed much longer, but I started back to work yesterday. We drove back there, a bit under 2,000 miles each way. The kids were good in the car, and little E is quite the traveling baby. She was great and loved sitting in the middle with her two brothers on each side. She smiled and cooed and laughed and slept. J continued reading on his "Unfortunate Events" series and L chatted and played with dinosaurs and cars. We made many stops along the way there and back to stretch our legs, eat (no eating in the car!! doing our best to keep it clean), and let the boys run. My favorite state to drive through is Utah. I absolutely love rocks and Utah has a lot of them!! I love to see the buttes and wind and water swept dry canyons. Just beautiful! The pictures above are of the boys at a stop along an exit from the highway in UT. They needed that run! I'll have more to post about our trip, but wanted to say hello before going to bed tonight.

I have many more pictures to share too.

I returned to work yesterday. It went well, and it was really great to see all my friends and co-workers. I had trouble remembering passwords, I have a bunch in my job doing payroll and reports. The trouble was that many changed just before my leave and I couldn't remember what I changed them to. And several cannot be the same as another, so again, I have a lot to remember. I was able to get them reset or remembered and the day went by pretty well. I did miss my family, but I emailed pictures to my work email to put on my computer so I could see my kiddos throughout the day. DH was home with the kiddos for the first time by himself. He took them all to church too! He said it all went great. Sister was a bit fussy and I think she missed me :0)

Long time no chat! Sorry about that, has been really busy around here. Just before we left for camping, I made an enclosure for our chicks and mama hen. We didn't leave until the next day after we had planned. Too afraid that the skunk would return for another chicken dinner, so we stayed home an extra day to build the enclosure. It's not pretty, but it's sturdy with a double leayer that little skunk hands cannot reach through. DH made an extra sturdy plywood top and an extra heavy door. So far, we still have all 8 remaining chickies and a happy mama hen!

Here are a few of my favorite pictures from our trip. I'll post more, but this is a start. We drove up to Seattle to see DH's sister. Hi, Kelsie! She recently moved back up there has a great place. We also visited REI up there, I HAD to! It's a two-story HUGE REI store. We all loved it. They have a great restaurant where we ate Thai, there's a climbing rock in a separate building area, and you can see that the boys loved that! J was just awesome, in the literal meaning of the word, not just slang. When I asked how far he thought he might try to climb, he told me he would go to the top. And that he did and rang the bell. Shocked the belayer below, the guy that helped him into his climbing harness and holds the ropes. The rock is 65 feet high... that's like 6 and a half stories tall!! It was so tall that I could not get the whole thing in a picture! He scurried up so fast that it was hard to get a picture of him. My sweet little L climbed too, but only a little ways up, and I was proud of him too for giving it a try.



Below is a picture along the Oregon coast. Was so pretty! Little E was a good baby as usual on the trip and slept well in the the tent. We saw a lot of beautiful ocean and mountains. DH fixed our dinner and breakfast on the cobb grill, gotta love that thing!



Talk more later. Sending you hugs. Have a good night from the 5 of us