Twilight tour

On Monday Kristin called and asked if I wanted to go with her and Julie & Kayla and her friend Cherrie(sp?) to see some of the places they used to film the movie Twilight. I read all of the books and saw the movie (which was a little disappointing, but not as bad as I thought it would be thanks to my low expectations). It was pretty cool.

This is "The Cullen's House"

And this is "Bella's House"
People actually live in them, so we could only see the outside. We also went to St. Helens where they filmed the scenes that take place in Port Angeles. We saw the bookstore which was actually a lawyers office and the nearby alley, the dress store that was actually a hair salon and the restaurant that was actually a house (with a restaurant across the street) and the theatre which really was a theatre.
Thanks, Kris and Juls. I had a blast.

July 4th (and 3rd)

On Friday we played a little dress up. My mom has accumulated a lot of costumes over the years with seven kids. I only captured a couple, but they were the best. This one was one of mine. I can't remember what I wore it for though. Alysha models it very well.

This was Sarah's Halloween costume a few years back. Amy fit this very well, she even did a ninja sneak attack on Dad and Andy.

Friday night we had our own little drive-in movie. My dad has a projector and so we watched Signs (the scariest movie my parents own) out on the side of their trailer. Hyrum and Josi both fell asleep pretty quick. All of the late nights finally caught up with them.

On the fourth we sat in the back yard and watched the neighbors set off fireworks and had a few of our own. I think the neighbors must have all been illegal, 'cause they were way better than ours. Of course we had sparklers and the little snaps for the kids and Grandma also got them some glow sticks to wear.

This is our little light show with sparklers and glow sticks.

Hyrum thought some of them were too loud.

Josi seemed a little bored by it all. I think she was just tired.

On Saturday Andy also did a photo shoot with the kids and he did Alysha's senior pictures for her. I will post them as soon as he gives me copies.

Summer Fun 2

On Wednesday we drove to Astoria and Seaside, OR. We stopped at The Flavel House. It's an old house built in the 1880's by a ship captain named George Flavel. It was kinda neat. It wasn't as cool for me because I had been to that huge mansion in Canada last fall, but still neat. Hyrum and I did get special treatment though. Hyrum needed to go potty and when I asked the guy that worked there where the bathroom was he told me it was clear out by the carriage house, then said we weren't supposed to, but I could use the staff bathroom so we didn't have to go so far for the little guy. I feel special :) I didn't get any pictures of it.

Then on to the beach. We stopped and had lunch at Fultano's Pizza. Josi had been talking about going to the beach for the past few months, since I had started thinking about coming up here. The day was finally here, she was so excited. She came down in the morning already in her swim suit.

Since she had her swimsuit on already she was the first one to get in the water. While the rest of us changed into our swimsuits, Josi headed down with Grandpa. We played in the water for a while, my sisters looked for shells, with not much luck. They saw a crab in the water that was about 6 inches across, then we saw a couple of jelly fish that were a reddish brown color and we quickly got out of their ways.

This is a video of the kids playing in the water. Sorry, it gets a little hard to watch at the end, because I was zoomed in and the tiniest movement was very drastic. Josi was my usual little water baby. Hyrum tried to be tough and would run toward the water, as soon as he saw a wave coming toward him, he would turn and run away.

After a while freezing our buns off in the frigid water, we decided to go up and play in the sand for a while. Andy, Amy, Janae, Alysha and Tonya buried Josi and turned her into a mermaid, which I got on film. Later they buried Hyrum and made him a lobster. Alysha was also a mermaid and Tonya became a big fat person. I didn't get those pictures, but I am sure Andy or Amy and my Dad will share them later. :)

It was a very fun trip. It was the first time seeing the ocean for Alysha, Janae and Hyrum. And Josi had only ever seen the New Hampshire beach in the middle of December. Tonya and I were the only ones that had been to Seaside once, but T had never played in the ocean before. We all decided to save our pennies for the next couple of years for a trip to Florida and a warm water beach as well as Disneyworld, which none of us have ever been to.

Summer Fun

So we have been in Vancouver, Washington for the last week visiting with my family. I drove from Phoenix to Salt Lake on Friday and met up with Andy and Amy, then drove on to Idaho Falls that night. We spent the night at Danny's. Saturday he changed my brakes for me and then I took Naners and her new baby, Collan with us and we caravaned up to Washington. It was a long trip made even longer by the fact that Andy was hauling Alysha's (my great- grandpa's) 1955 Dodge pickup behind his truck. The fastest we could go was about 63 mph. It went pretty well though. The kids were all mostly happy the whole trip which was mostly thanks to Curious George, Tinkerbell, Hercules and a good collection of songs from Disney movies. The first couple of days we just spent recuperating from the trip.
On Tuesday we made a trip up to Multnomah Falls. I was the only one that had been there before. The kids had a ball and walked most of the 3 miles up and back. The way down was a bit steep for Hyrum's little legs so he got passed around. Josi even got a piggy-back ride in a few places.
It was a fun trip. I love the Northwest wilderness!

We had 5 of 7 of us kids there and one spouse (I am behind the camera). Andy and my dad the hobby photographers got the good pictures, so I will have to post some more pictures when they share.

Score!

I found an ad on Craigslist for a lady that had closed her scrapbooking store in Mesa and is trying to get rid of the rest of her inventory from her home. I paid $36 for ALL of this stuff. I got 114 12x12 pages (cardstock, vellum and other papers), 305 eyelets and dot-lets, 2 sets of acrylic stamps (1 mini and 1 med.), 2 acrylics blocks for the stamps, 2 pages of rub-on letters, a med punch, a border punch, a box of sticker-chipboard letters, another set of rub-on letters, a couple of pages of sticker & embelishments, a whole box of little brad style embelishments and a small ink pad. Wow! totally worth the drive to Mesa (abt 30 min.) Anyone reading this from the phoenix area that scraps, she still has tons of stuff, I could give you her phone number. She is really nice, I was even a few dollars short on cash for everything I had picked out and she gave it all to me anyway. She has it all set up on racks (except the paper, but it's all separated in boxes )so it was easy to go through.

The Old Man

While I was getting the last picture of Josi off of my phone, I found this picture I had forgotten about. For those not at my Grandma's house that night, my dad is pretending to be an old man. I use the word "pretending" very loosely :) Apparently this is not a random occurance.

Super Hero

This morning Josi has been running around saying "I'm Super Josi!" It all started when Hyrum dropped his fork on the floor at breakfast. They were sitting at the bar eating pancakes and Hyrum can't get up and down himself. Out of nowhere Josi just busted out " Super Josi will get it"
She didn't even remember she was wearing this hand-me-down Superman Underoos t-shirt.

Tiny Harvest

First of all, I got my curtain rods so now my curtains are up. I just have to hem the bottoms now. I really like how they turned out. They really add color to the room. Now I just have to make a few pillows. I didn't have enough fabric left over, like I thought I would though, so I will have to get some more.
Now to my current harvest. I was able to get 5 ears of corn off of my plants last week. They are tiny though. They were only about the length of half a normal ear, but they were the same diameter. I don't think I planted mini corns, but they all were. They tasted really yummy though. Maybe they were stunted by the chlorine water that leeched over into our yard from our neighbors pool either leaking or just draining.

And yesterday I picked these two tiny little tomatoes. The chapstick is just for size reference. I didn't realize I was planting a miniature garden. The bigger one is from a "patio plant" that I thought were cherry tomatoes when I bought them. So it is between the size of a regular tomato and a cherry tomato. The tiny one is about the size of a grape tomato. I thought that plant would be a roma tomato when it started getting tomatoes on it, but I guess they are just grape tomatoes. I don't mind, I love grape tomatoes. And there are several plants that are regular romas, they just have green tomatoes right now.

I had actually picked a grape tomato a few days ago, but I gave it to Hyrum to take inside, and he squished it.

"Date" Night and The Dude

On Saturday we all went to the drive-in theatre. Our 4Runner is the best for this. We lay the back seats down and take our pillows and snacks. The drive in is also awesome because you get two movies for less than the price of one at a regular theatre and they let you bring your own food. The kids end up sleeping through the second one, which is nice too.

This is our chill little Hyrum (rightfully dubbed "The Dude" by Nana & Papa) enjoying the ride to the theatre. He is so funny!

More of the yard and house

So I finally got my curtains done. I still haven't found a curtain rod that I like so they are set out on the couch. Imagine them hanging up. I need Karin's interior design expertise to decide what style of curtain rod I should get. Wood to match the furniture or the rubbed bronze to match the light fixture and table. Tough choices.

I also found the blocks I want to use for my retaining wall across the backyard. Unfortunately there were only 27 of them because I found them on Craigslist. Good news is they were cheaper that way. I haven't seen these anywhere else. I had the picture in my head of exactly what I wanted. Now I hope I can find more of them somewhere.

I am going to have to get a LOT more of them to go all of the way across the back. It will be a very gradual process. This is only 1/3 of the wall. And I want it twice as tall.