Kayla gives a tour of her new bedroom

Alyssa's school picture

Alyssa got her school pictures today.  For some reason they messed up on Kayla's order and only gave me her class picture.  I will post her picture as soon as we get it all figured out!

Alyssa gives a tour of her new room

Our trip to Taylor Creek

 Today on the way home from Reno we went to Taylor Creek.  Alyssa's school will be going here on a field trip in a couple of weeks but we can't make it then.  We decided to stop by today and check it out!

The kids had a lot of fun!  Alyssa has been learning a lot about the Kokane salmon in class so she shared some of her knowledge with us.  We loved how easy it was to see the salmon and how close you could get to them!  We plan on going back every year!

More salmon viewing

Kokane slamon at Taylor Creek

Our trip to Reno

This weekend we met my brother Tim in Reno for the annual Street Vibrations.  He planned on going to this event over 8 months ago and since Reno is not too far from our house it was the perfect opportunity to meet up with him!  We hadn't seen him since 2007 when we met up with him in Crescent City to go camping!

The girls had so much fun playing the carnival games!  I can't believe how many cheap little stuffed animals they won!  Way too much clutter that will hopefully go out the door soon...LOL.  

Flying chickens game at Circus Circus

Summer's 15 month old pictures

On Friday Summer turns 15 months old!  I took her to the Picture People to get her pictures taken today.  She was quite the little ham!  Funny thing was she didn't want to sit still!  She just kept walking off the photo area.  She took some great pictures though!  I can't wait to hang them on my wall!

Summer went pee on the potty

Summer has woken up with dry diapers in the morning for the past month or so.  I decided first thing in the morning would be a great time to put Summer on the potty.  Sure enough on Monday morning I put her on the potty while I went and she went too!  Woohoo, I was so excited.  She is only 14 months old so for now I am just going to introduce her to the potty in the mornings.  I just want her to get the idea of what it is for. 

Kayla's 2nd game playing forward

Kayla's second soccer game

 Kayla did better this week!  She tried her best in every position and ran her heart out!  She was even close to making a goal!  She got to play goalie the last quarter of the game so she was super excited!

Kayla on a run!

School Pictures

 The girls had school pictures today!  Wow, when you have three girls it sure is a lot of prep just for a single picture!  Of course we had baths the night before and both girls wanted to sleep in rollers so their hair would be curly the next morning.  I picked out outfits for them the night before.  Kayla was fine and loved what I picked for her but Alyssa kept changing her mind.  She finally decided on the red dress!  Meanwhile the baby sure isn't liking all of this attention I am paying on getting the girls ready for their pictures!  It sure does make for a stressful morning!  Especially since we have to be out the door by 8 so we are not late for school!  We did it though and they both looked adorable!!!

Our new art board

We decided to hang a bulletin board for the girls art work.  I am one of those people that just can't stand it on my fridge!  So this is the perfect solution and everyone is happy!  They are having so much fun filling it!

Daddy's company party

Today was one of those crazy busy days where you just aren't going to be on time to anything!  The girls both had soccer games at 9 this morning and hubby's company party started at 10.  There was no way we would make that on time!  We got there just at lunch which was great timing for us!  We had a great appetite!  After eating we went to Fairytale town.  Then we took a break and went back to the party and found out we won a $50 gift card to Best Buy! 
After that we went to the zoo!  The girls had fun there but poor Summer was so tired!  She hadn't gotten a nap yet!  She finally fell asleep for about 45 minutes!  Everyone had a great time and on the way home Daddy stopped by Best Buy and spent his money on an FM antennae so he could hook up his outdoor speakers to the radio!

Summer wants to feed herself

LOL, Summer wants complete control now when she is eating!  This means a big mess of course!  Oh well, I suppose she get the hang of it soon right?

The girls have their first soccer game!

Alyssa and Kayla had their first soccer game today!  Kayla had a 9 a.m. game at IC and Alyssa had a game at the same time at HG!  It made me so sad because I can only be in one place at a time!  I went to Kayla's game and Daddy went to Alyssa's game.  Kayla and Alyssa both like playing goalie the most!  I wonder if this is a popular position with all children???  I used to like playing defender!

Kayla had a rough start.  She was put in as a forward and after about 2 minutes of running and chasing the ball she didn't want to play that position anymore.  She kind of gave up.  I felt so bad for her teammates.  So then her coach tried her as a defender.  She tried for awhile but I think she wasn't quite sure of what she was supposed to be doing.  Once the coach put her as goalie her whole attitude changed!  She was in HEAVEN!  She loved it and gave it her all!  She tried so hard and loved every minute of it!  Now we have to teach her that even when you aren't playing the position you love, you still have to try your best and be a good teammate, otherwise you are letting them down. 

Alyssa has a bye next week so I won't be able to see her play.  The week after that she will have to miss her game because we are meeting my brother in Reno.  So, I have to wait until the first weekend in October to see her play and capture it all on video!  I know you may be wondering why I just didn't go to Alyssa's game today.  Well, two answers really.  Today was Kayla's first soccer game of her life and Alyssa played when she was 5.  Also, Alyssa decided she wanted Daddy there since I get to watch her at every practice and he hasn't been able to since he works when we practice.   

Kayla Playing Goalie!

Kayla playing forward in position

New Chairs

I saw these chairs a couple weeks back at Big Lots.  They are rocking chairs.  I sat in one and fell in love.  The only problem was they were $80 a piece!  So, I couldn't afford that and didn't want to pay that much anyway. 

Lucky for me Big Lots was having a great Labor Day sale!  I bought four of these chairs for $20 a piece!  Can you believe it?  I was so thrilled!  I would have bought 5 but they only had four left!  They have a couch and table but they were only 50 percent off so I will probably check in once a week and see when they go to 75 percent off and get at least the table then.  BTW, so happy Kayla finally wanted to be in a picture!  I think they had just finished having icecream!

Berry Picking

 For the past two weeks we have been able to go berry picking on our property every 2-3 days.  Alyssa and Summer love the berries.  Kayla doesn't like them but she loves helping us pick them.

Ed's Plants

 Ed brought over a total of 300 plants from the old house.  These plants that he has temporarily on the front porch all had to be brought over in a truck because they were too tall to fit in my SUV.  He plans on planting them this fall after he figures out where he wants everything.  He has big plans including adding more flower beds near the house. 

 Ed took some picture of the outside of our house and the yard.  This first picture is of the pond in the back of the house.  The bench was from his Dad.  If you look in a previous video I posted you can see how the waterfall comes down over the bench area.  If you click on the picture and enlarge it you can see some of his pond plants he added.

 This is our view from our front porch!  We absolutely love it!

 A view to our turn around driveway.

 Another view from our front porch.

 See that little blue dog toy?  My Dad bought that for Alyssa when she turned one years old 7 years ago!  So glad we have had it through all three kids.  I miss you Dad, I think of you every time Summer uses it!

 See the river rock next to the fence?  Ed had that delivered to fill in the bottom of the pond.  He is worried that Summer could fall in and drown.  Now he has filled it and still has water in it but it is shallow enough it wouldn't be a problem.  He also added a safety lock on the sliding glass door so the kids couldn't open the back door and accidentally let the baby out.

A view of our garage.  Do you know what is cool.  They built the garage so that you could have an attic above.  You could use it as a small studio if you wanted.  For now Ed is going to put plywood down so we can use it as storage.

 We bought this dog kennel for the dogs.  It is really awesome!  It has shade coverings for three panels and a roof.  We are hoping someday to be able to afford to fence the yard so they can mostly run free.  Even though we are on 5.5 acres the dogs could run off and we don't want that to happen.