Coryn Turns 7

 I sent them on a Lord of the Rings quest which involved clues and a couple of props... like I printed out an Ent face and put it on a tree, and stuck a giant Halloween spider at the top of the rocks to be Shelob.

 Yay for Bundt pans! writing by Natalie (who won prizes for cake decorating at the fair in Boise)

 Friends and craziness.

There she is!  Keeping an eye on the kids.

Halloween 2012

 Jovey loves to paint... she loves anything in the arts fields as a matter of fact.

 And we painted pumpkins

 Went trunk-or-treating (Jovey is a baterina, Coryn a zombie pirate, and Carter is obviously Kwazii, the pirate cat from Octonauts)

 I carved a pumpkin (or three because they don't do knives yet)

And keeping with tradition, Coryn changed outfits between events, here he's a blue-haired mad scientist.

More than Just Classes

 We tried to make sure to spend some special time with the kids since we were both away all day...

 Like dates to the beach

 We also enjoyed the local festivities like the butterfly parade

 Where every year the school kids dress up as different things representing the area and show off their costumes, and there's always this guy who entertains the crowd with giant bubbles.

Coryn was an otter.

Prepping

 Jackson's way awesome sister Natalie came to live with us for year while Jackson and I learned to speak Thai. 

 Which means she got to do this with the kids before we started classes...

 While I felt like this...

 Doing this....

That's right mom, I do know how to clean a room, it just doesn't stay that way.

Our Lucky Find

We love our house.  The owners are great, it is roomy, has a garage, kids can walk to school, great neighborhood, and so much more.  That being said... it has character.

 Character in the living room...

 the dining room

 the sitting room/toy room

 the bathroom

 the master bedroom

 master bath

 bedroom #2

 and #3

and other bathroom.  A LOT of character.

Discovering Local Favorites

Its always a new adventure when we move, meeting new friends, learning new routes, where things are, and so on.  We always like to make sure we find a few places or things that we end up frequenting such as...

 the beach...

 tide pools...

 park we can walk to...

 the best park on the peninsula (Dennis the Menace of course)...

 natural history museum...

 complete with giant bird nest...

and some eateries like Peppers (which sadly had a fire a few weeks ago, but they are working to fix it).

Moving On...

Alright, its been over a year since my last post, but here we go again.  So we moved.  Again. This time to 'sunny' California!  Okay, its not quite the sunny part, but we did get to spend time with family along the way.

 Swim in the pool...

 Jackson's maternal grandparents...

 and paternal...

 Then we moved on to our final destination

In a lucky find of a house.