Happy Birthday Tanner!!

Tanner is now 5, and even a little bigger too!

We had a wonderful day, starting with our traditional waffles with ice cream for breakfast.
Lunch we had a picnic at the park, and even though it was quite windy. It was fun for everyone. It was a nice sunny park and we were there by ourselves which was enjoyable. I asked Tanner that morning if he wanted me to see if our friends from playgroup wanted to come for the picnic, and he said, "No, let's just go as a family." So, we did, but when we got to the park Tanner said, "I wonder when our friends will be here?!" I explained to him that he told me not to call them. "Oh yeah."
It was a LOOONNNNGGGG day to wait for Daddy to come home to have our birthday party. Nearly unbearable. But he brought a balloon home for Tanner, although Braden wouldn't even let him touch it. Loud screams came from him if we even looked like we might touch the balloon.
We had spaghetti for dinner, and he let us all know that we didn't get seconds because he didn't want to wait for us to eat.

Finally we got to open presents. Tanner got lots of fun stuff - a transformer, a Book of Mormon, farm set, horse book, new bath towel, and cowboy hat.
It is kind of sad when you don't have any friends to invite for a party, so we were glad that Cami and Grandma could join us.Then for the cake and ice cream. We had an awesome FIVE cake, and it was delicious.
Isn't is great to be 5?!?!

Happy Father's Day

The other day when I was buying garden stuff at Home Depot I saw a BBQ grill that was beautiful. I have been wanting to buy Dave a new one for a long time, and we left our grill when we moved because it was basically junk. I guess there was a big sale the weekend before at Home Depot and they had the Pro Series Brinkman Grill for $199, regularly $349. I had the manager come talk to me and he told me that there was 5 left and he would sell them for the sale price until they were gone. I was ready to buy one, but all of the grills were assembled, and I knew there was no way I could fit it in my van by myself, and then get it out and hide it for Father's Day. So, I snagged and ad with the specs and came home and confessed to Dave my ideas. On Saturday we went back to Home Depot and they had 3 left, one which had a dent in the top. We asked the kid if he would give us a discount if we took the damaged goods. He said, "Sure, I'll give you 10% off." Dave wheeled it to check out, and we got out of there with a new grill for $193 total out of pocket. Dave was smiles from ear to ear.
It was a little tricky to get it home, and get it up the stairs, but it is very fancy.
The manual says it will grill 39 hamburgers, (Dave said they must be McDonald's sized,) but I say, I can't wait until we have that many friends to grill a hamburger with.
We have eaten some tasty steaks and pork chops. Amazing to have a grill that cooks so evenly!! We even had asparagus tonight cooked on the side burner. Delightful!!!

Feeling Blue

One of the things we love to do is go to the library. Kennewick has a very nice library and we go at least once a week. We pick out a big stack of books, and read read read. They also have some fun quiet toys that are fun to play with, and they have 2 computers set up for kids to play games on. We have a very fun time. They also have story time 3 times a week, and we try to go to at least one of them. It is a good time!!
The other day we got a book called "Grey Mouse".

It is a book about a mouse who feels blue.
So, we talked about what that meant. Colty said, "I feel blue too." I said, "Why?" He said, "Cuz I miss Matthew and Emmie." Then we read a book called "We're all in the same boat."
And we talked about what that meant and that we are all in the same situation and we all miss our friends and our Sugar City, but we can find new fun things in Kennewick too.

I hope they call me on a mission

Living in the "mission field" is a different experience for us. Our ward is assigned a set of Elders and they serve only our ward. And, they need to be fed every night. So, there will be lots of opportunities to have them in our home. The apartments on both sides of us are on the missionaries route as one is an inactive and one showed interest in taking discussions, although they have ditched the Elders ever since. So, our house has become the pit stop for a glass of water. (Sadly, every time they come the house is a DISASTER!!! I can't believe just how fast our little space gets a mess. But, both times they have been here it has been the worst it has ever been. Today Braden had just dumped popcorn all over the floor, and last week I was getting ready to vacuum and had cleared the table and picked up the chips by the wrong end and dumped them all over the floor. It was awesome timing.)

The boys love it! They can't wait to go on missions and use it as incentives for each other..."Whoever brushes their teeth first gets to go on a mission!" After they left last week the boys wanted to dress like missionaries, so they put on their ties and got backpacks full of the essentials - legos, train tracks, cars - and were missionaries for the day.
The Elders also gave them pass along cards that the boys treasure. They carry them everywhere. The Elders told them they could pass the out to people to tell them about Jesus, but that will never happen as the cards are far to important to them to give away.

The farmer in us all

We may not have a yard, but we're going to have a garden. Tanner and Colty picked out the seeds we are growing flowers and cucumbers from seed in an egg carton,Carrots, lettuce, and spinach from seed in the barrel, and tomatoes and peppers from plants. It is hard to be patient and wait for them to grow, but we are diligent about watering them and they will be delicious!!
Even Braden had a good time!!

Our new place

Things don't always work out the way I think they should. I am trying to be patient as I await for Heavenly Father's plan to work out for us...

The original plan was to move into Dave's 2 bedroom apartment, then we decided that we should look for something else, and found a home we love in Hermiston, OR that we wanted to buy, but since we haven't sold our home in Sugar City, we asked the family if they would lease their home to us. At first they agreed, but then they got scared.They didn't trust us, and we can't really blame them, because it is hard to know who you can trust. So, after they asked us to jump through too many hoops and pay crazy attorney fees, we told them to forget it, so we went back to square one and planned on living in Dave's 2 bedroom apartment. But, the week before we moved, a 3 bedroom apartment in the same complex opened up and we jumped on it. The great thing about it is, we don't loose our deposit and we get a much bigger and nicer home. So, here we are.

It really is a pretty nice arrangement. The bedrooms are good sized. The walls are freshly painted, and it feels clean. But, I miss my carpet that hides everything, my storage room, and my washer and dryer. We are settled and are making this our residence, but somehow this just doesn't feel like home. It kind of feels like we are on an extended vacation with all our stuff. We are living in about 947 square feet, and to have all the stuff from our 2018 square foot house plus garage and yard, it took 2 10X10 storage units to contain our items. As the kind brethren from the ward here helped us unload, it was almost embarrassing how much stuff we had. But, IT ISN'T JUNK!! It just takes a lot of stuff to raise a family.Once we got most of our stuff unpacked, I realized that the box that had all my clothes in it was missing. So, Saturday Dave and I went to the storage unit to start digging. It didn't take too terribly long to find it, and a few other things we realized we should have at the apartment, and then we went to the park.

There were lots of kids there, which my boys don't like, so we just enjoyed the sunshine and wind and walked around.

Goodbye winter...hello spring

So, this is what we loaded in on Saturday in Sugar City, ID...a blizzard most of the day, lots of snow, and the coldest wind ever.


This is what we unloaded in on Monday in Kennewick, WA...sunshine and dandelions.

Happy Easter

Sunday we stopped in Rupert and spent the day with Grandad and Grammy enjoying conference, having is delicious lunch at Aunt Sherma's with the Poteet cousins and Aunt Susan too, and then having an egg hunt with the younger cousins. The Dad's played the Easter bunny, and the kids made a killing. It was very fun to spend time together. Maybe I am feeling sentimental, but it is so fun to do stuff with cousins. Who knows how often these kind of events will happen.We had to take pictures of the grown-ups too. The men of course have to be "bums" about it...