I'm so bad!

Ugh, I had high hopes of blogging on here, recording our family memories.  Who was I kidding when I never ever finished a baby book for any of my kids?  Let's see, since my last post, Sam turned 13 (I'm the mom of a teen ager!), Ben is 12, and Nate is 10.  In a couple of months Darya will be 7.  Good grief, time flies!

A few highlights from each month since last summer:

July: Joel turned 38
August: I turned 37, Joel sent me to California on a week long trip sans kids.  It was the first time in who-knows-how-many-years that my twin sister and I were together on our actual birthday.
September: Sam turned 13.  Joel took Ben on his special 12 year old father-son birthday trip. They went to California and spent time up in Big Bear.  You can see pics on Ben's blog: https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=42229954066678569#overview/src=dashboard
October: I can't remember anything off the top of my head
November: We went to Universal Studios for Down Syndrome day. It was awesome and we enjoyed the Harry Potter world a lot.
December: Joel's parents came out and spent the Christmas season with us (they flew back to California on Christmas Eve).
January: Post Christmas blues?
February: Nate turned 10
March: Ben turned 12. I went on a Bahamas cruise with my sister, Janene. It was amazing!

Homeschooling is going fairly well.  Sam and Ben are pretty much exclusively using FLVS and Nate is pretty independent, too.  Darya is in kindergarten in the ESE classroom.  She seems to be doing well there.  I'm spending quite a bit more time with selling on eBay, and that money definitely helps.

I know I'm missing a whole lot. But this should satisfy my guilt for now.

Family Photos

Yeah, this is a little late, but better late than never!  Last September we finally had new professional family photos taken with Darya in them.  The sweet and talented photographer, Lindy, is another Reece's Rainbow family who has adopted three adorable boys with Down Syndrome from Ukraine.  Here they are in no particular order:

**sigh**

Wow, I really had good intentions for this blog!  I guess we've been quite busy, so that's a good thing, right?  I last posted about our trip to California LAST summer!  Let's see, since then:

Sam turned 12 on 9/25/13 (and will be 13 in a few months!)
We went on our annual Daytona Beach vacation
We had Papa and Lala visit us in November (Joel's grandparents)
Nate turned 9 (2/27/14)
Ben turned 11 (3/27/14)
Grandpa & Grandma came for a visit (March '14)
Joel and I went on our first cruise in April to celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary. It was amazing!
Darya turned 6 on 6/9/14

That's it in a nutshell!  Hopefully I will have some free time where I can share some of these events, lots of pictures, and everyday stuff.

The Boys' New and Improved Bedroom

What do you get when you put three boys in one bedroom? I wish I had a clever punchline for this, but let's just say that it's a  Category 5 natural disaster.  Lego land mines wherever you step, dirty and clean clothes strewn about the room, crumpled paper and colored pencils everywhere.  You get the picture.  It was a hard beast to tame.  I felt like we were always on the boys' cases to clean their room, but without a good place for everything and more floor space, it was really difficult for them to do that. I really wish I had taken a "before" picture, but I suppose with a little effort you can imagine what it might have looked like.  But after a week of hard work, we are finished! Let's just hope it stays like this.

Joel cut the legs off the bottom bunk so we could stack them three high. This gives a lot more floor space and no space under the beds for "stuff".  The boys love it!

The bookshelf was made for Joel when he was a boy by his grandpa. We painted it red and it gives the boys a place for some of their random small stuff.

We bought matching dressers off of Craigslist and painted them all blue.  They each finally have their own dressers!  These two are Ben and Nate's. (Nate was using underbed storage drawers for his clothes and sharing a dresser with Ben).

Sam's dresser is on this wall.  You can't see it in this photo, but to the left of it is Marley's dog crate (nice to have it out of the master bedroom!).

Joel built this awesome laundry basket dresser. The boys will start doing their own laundry (maybe now they'll be more aware of how many clothes they go through!).  Joel also put two poles on the left side to hang Ben and Nate's clothes.  We put Ben's bearded dragon, Norbert, in the closet, too.  Those blue bins are for their shoes.

West Coast

We just got back from spending a month on the west coast visiting family and friends. It was a wonderful time with lots of new fun memories made.  The kids and I flew out to LA and spent the first few days with Joel's parents.  Grandpa went hiking with the boys daily in the nearby hills/mountains (usually stopping off for a cool treat somewhere) and Grandma sang lots of songs to entertain Darya.  We went out to the desert where it was close to 110* (dry heat, thankfully!) and swam in spring fed pools followed by a trip to a children's museum.

We were greeted at the airport with balloons

It's hard to see them, but the boys are at the top with Grandpa

Enjoying the pool in the desert with Grandma

Nate painting a car at the museum

  
After that, we spent the weekend visiting the Franciscos in Oceanside.  It's always great to spend time with their family!  We went to the beach one day where Sam had his first surfing attempt. He actually stood momentarily a couple of times!  Darya loved jumping in the shallow waves, while Nate and Ben spent hours searching for sand crabs.

Sam and Emma

 Darya and Andrew

Ben and Nate searching for sand crabs

Eating In-N-Out in the Franciscos' back yard

We made our way up to Turlock to spend just over a week with my family.  We went rafting at Knights Ferry on the 4th of July.  My mom watched Darya, while the rest of us enjoyed a relaxing (sort of) 5 hours on the river.  It was super hot, yet the water was super cold. My daredevil Sam jumped off the cliff and rope swing, of course.  4 out of 5 of my siblings went rafting, as did my dad and his wife (and their two chihuahuas).  And all but one of my nephews went, too!  I hadn't seen Jack in at least 6 years and now he's a grown man.  Goodness how time flies!   My sister and I also took our boys to pan for gold up in Jamestown and the boys had a blast.  Joel then joined us and we went on a double date with my BFF from high school, Tonia, and her husband Brandon.  It was fun but too short!

Grandma Charlene with some of her grand kids

Cousins! (Simon, Nate, Sam, Ben, and Joey)

Then, for the first time in my life despite having grown up 2 hours away, we went to Yosemite.  It was more beautiful than I imagined!  I would love to go back one day and spend several days there camping and enjoying God's amazing creation.  On our way back down the trail we ran into some old friends of ours, Jeff and Helen.  Joel and Jeff went to seminary together and interned at our church in La Jolla at the same time. Joel was a groomsman in his wedding.

The day after Yosemite, we made the 12 hour drive up to Oregon. We saw Joel's grandparents (Thomas and Violet).  Darya's current favorite song is "If You're Happy and You Know It" and while at their house, she got everyone to sing it for - her including Great-Grandpa (she called him out on it when he wasn't singing along) - while she did the motions.  What a ham!  Great-grandpa let the boys pick out some things from his rock collection.

Our next stop was to Olympia to stay with Brett, Jen, their four girls, and the Naves (minus Erin and Naomi).  It was a wonderful weekend with old friends!  A funny story - Joel's 37th birthday was on our day of departure.  He had been talking with Brett about an iPad mini while we were there and our whole drive back down to Oregon, Joel kept talking about getting one. He considered buying one while in Oregon since there's no sales tax.  At the end of the day, he decided to wait on it. Well, just as I was going to bed, I checked my email on my phone. I got a message saying I won an iPad mini from an adoption fundraiser!  (It arrived the other day and Joel is thrilled).

We drove back down to central Oregon to see Dan's family again (we went blueberry picking), then headed up to Portland for a reunion on Joel's mom's side of the family.  The big outing was to go on a cruise on the Columbia River and some sight-seeing along the way.  I forget how beautiful Oregon is!  It's definitely one of my favorite states.

Sam, Ben, and Nate playing with Joshie on the boat

Joel and Darya at one of the many Oregon falls

After the reunion, we made it to our final destination. We stayed with Joel's best friend, Mark, his wife Heather and their three kids.  We haven't seen them in five years.  It was great spending time with them!  Oh, and while there I won another contest :)  This is another funny story.  In the afternoon, we made a stop at Mark's favorite coffee place (his second time that day - he and Joel went earlier and came home with free mugs in celebration of the shop's anniversary).  Anyway, Mark and I went in and just as we were about to leave, one of the employee's called out my name. Apparently he had drawn my name out of a contest that Joel had put my name in earlier that day.  It wasn't an iPad, but it was still fun! I got a few small things. :)

Darya and Millie eating breakfast - they aren't too thrilled for the interruption of a photo!

Finally, after four weeks we had our long day of travel home.  We had a wonderful time, got to see lots of people, go to lots of fun places, but it's great to be home!

Nate-isms

Nate has a panache for creating new words or his own pronunciation of words.  This post will be an ongoing work of some of his words. I wish I could remember all of them, but it's better late than never to start recording them!

1. Dramastic - a combination of dramatic and sarcastic (age 7)
2. Sumama Mooladin - Osama Bin Laden (age 8)
3. Skworwol - squirrel (age 6)
4. Chickidy deshay - means "awesome" - Nate's variation on something Jackie Chan said in The Spy Next Door (age 7)
5. Shimberly Limbers - what pirates say (I think he meant, "shiver me timbers") (age 8)

Happy 5th Birthday, Darya!

This is her third birthday with our family - yay!  She is growing into such a beautiful little girl.  We love you, Darya!

The boys had their second annual piano recital last Thursday (a post on that to follow), and afterward we celebrated Darya's birthday.  The boys decorated her cake with colored marshmallows (it's a rainbow and flowers).  And the pictures of her in the dress were taken this afternoon after church.

 Dancing with Daddy

After church in the evening, some sweet young women brought some Elmo cupcakes and balloons for Darya.  Thanks Micaela, Kiara, Nora, and Shaina for making her birthday extra special!