Chubbuck Days

We had a local town celebration today, with freezing cold weather and lots of rain. There was a parade, a Police vs Fire softball game, and music and food. This was the third parade me and the kids have attended this year. The Newton parade had a great candy to float ratio. The Pocatello parade had no candy and was really short for the amount of time we spent waiting for it to start. Every single business in town particpated in this parade. Me and the kids huddled under a raincoat waiting for it to start (check out the Idaho State Journal tomorrow, a photographer took about 20 pictures of us huddled on the side of the street!) The softball game was fun to watch and Mike did great. I forgot to take any pictures of the parade, the kids loved seeing Mike drive the fire truck in the parade and the people around us were suitably impressed. What's the best parade you have attended?

p.s. our picture didn't get into the paper but it did get onto the newspaper's webpage .... http://journalnet.com/galleries/chubbuckdays/

I Can't Believe Ian is 5!

It doesn't seem like 5 years ago I had Ian. In some ways it seems 25 years ago and in some ways it seems like yesterday. It all started back in July of 2004. Mike, Jan and I drove from Fairbanks to Denali National Park on July 31st. We stayed the night in the White Moose Lodge and Sunday August 1st we took an 8 hour bus ride into the Park to see the sights. We saw some wolves, Dall sheep, a bear. It was a LONG and BUMPY ride. I wasn't due until the 15th of August. But it was LONG and BUMPY ride. That evening we drove back to Fairbanks. My contractions started about 1 am, my mother-in-law flew home about 6 am. At 10 am I sent Mike to go buy a car seat. I went into the clinic around noon or one. I labored there until about 10-11 pm when it was decided he was stuck. We then relocated to the hospital about 1 block away where they also decided that he was stuck. Then about 1:30 in the morning on August 3rd, I had a C-section to get the stubborn kid out. I still remembered the first time I heard his cry, the overwhelming happiness and astonishing thought of "oh no, what did we do..."

Ian has been begging me, I mean BEGGING me for He-Man pajamas. Since they don't exist anymore and my time machine was broken, I had to get creative with my printer and iron.

Ian is such a nice brother, he let Eliza open one of his presents! I don't think I would have ever been so generous!

To top off the day we invited some neighbors over to eat Ian's cake with us. I didn't realize the frosting had melted in the heat and pooled all to the sides! We ate it anyways. Ian loves to decorate his own cake and he went crazy with the sprinkles.

We are lucky to have such a great kid. I had to add in this picture of Ian and SO rock climbing in Newton. Didn't they do a fantastic job?

Wedding Bells

Here are my favorite pictures from our mini-vacation / wedding trip to Utah last weekend. We had a blast, the kids got to play with lots of cousins and stay up late and we got caught up with a lot of fun relatives.Eliza insisted on wearing her new pink flip flops from Auntie Cris, brought all the way from Brazil. They clashed terribly but she loves them!
Ian was a good sport but extremely bored during all the picture taking and waiting, waiting, waiting.

It was sooo bright out and the kids were done with pictures by this time. But it's nice to have a new family picture!

I guess I should add at least one picture of the new couple.....

Congratulations to Richard & Janae!

July again!

It's hard to believe that it is July already. And it is still rainy rainy rainy here! The good thing about that is we get to see a whole lot more of Mike because there are NO fires anywhere.

I finally took some pictures of our rock climbing adventures at Ross park. I didn't climb this time but our friends and Mike and Ian did. Ian loves his new harness, and it gives everybody a lot of piece of mind!

The little girls had a ton of fun just scrambling around on the rocks.

Ian climbs all the way to the top of this rock cliff. He really is good and can climb harder things, wedging his little feet into cracks. He climbs up up up and only slows down when coming down, we have to keep reminding him to keep his bellybutton toward the rocks. We also had a nice 4th of July, this is the first 4th of July in four years that we actually got to spend with Mike. It's also the first 4th of July since about 2002 that I've actually bought fireworks! We had barely shot all of ours off at 7:00 pm when a huge rainstorm hit, which ended up flooding quite a few houses in the neighborhood. At times like this I enjoy having a 2nd floor apartment.

I had to include this picture. Eliza has adopted my ironing board as a bed for a her baby. I think I am going to have to go to my parents house and retrieve the baby cradle I had as a little girl if I ever want my ironing board back. Eliza is constantly shushing us when the baby is sleeping and Ian delights in attempting to wake the baby up.

I hope everybody had a wonderfully independent 4th of July!