Just in case.....

...you missed the first announcement!

Can you tell we are excited around here?

It's a........

What a Mess

A few months back we had water coming into our kitchen from the kids bathroom upstairs.

We finally had to tear apart some of the ceiling to try to find the leak.

Low and behold there was really no leak...

just kids not being overly careful and some missed caulking when we redid the floor up there.

Interestingly, the worst leaking we had was when the young men from the African choir were here...I guess they have a hard time with shower curtains too :)

We had a lowered ceiling which I was not too fond of anyways, so we used this as an excuse to raise the ceiling to the height of the rest of the house and take out the fluorescent lighting.

We also removed a whole bank of cabinets from right there where the silver venting is.

Now it is open from my kitchen right into my front room.

That makes one happy lady :)

The only real bummer was when I was pulling down one of the last pieces of sheet rock I was showered with mouse poop!

I had found the dehydrated mouse earlier---Yuck!

I took one heavy duty shower and covered myself with vinegar!

I am very glad not to be housing any mice (that I know of) now and we got all the black mold out :)

How do mice get in between floors anyways?

More pics in the days to come.

Science Overload

This last weekend on the way to Stanford to watch Drew's race we decided to stop at a few science museums.

Stop one was Turtle Bay Museum in Redding.

Caleb loved the feeling of being behind the wheel as you can see!

Caleb ever the guy to try to figure out how things work.

Oh and notice the football I had to carry through the rest of the museum in my purse because Mr. Fidget could not keep it in his hands!

They were doing a Dr. Seuss special show while we were there.

I took a picture of the kids by their favorites.

Hannah and Horton :)

Caleb with Green Eggs and Ham

Just try them Sam I Am!

Goofy eyed Caleb with some goofy eyed Seuss critters.

Watch it buddy!

Notice Caleb's charming personality with this hawk.

The pose was his idea.

Then the next day we went to another, which I can not remember the name of in Sacramento.

Hannah learning how to make a dinosaur rubbing.

This museum had worksheets to do on all the exhibits.

One of mine was NOT happy that we asked him to do this.

Then we MADE him do it.

It is good character training.

Being silly...

I just love it when I see my kids initiating contact with us.

It has been a real long time coming.

I feel so blessed to have this amazing man in my life!!

Remember When....

Do you remember when you were little and some other kid would have something you thought was SO cool?

Well as embarrassing as it sounds this is the first memory I have of another kid having something I thought was SO cool, and I never got!

UNDERWEAR WITH THE DAYS OF THE WEEK ON THEM!

Well I obviously survived with out them and learned my days of the week despite this HUGE hole in my life!!  LOL!!

My little treasure, though, is now the proud owner of some pretty special panties!

First words out of her mouth---  "Now I can learn my days of the week!"

We can only hope!

Actually that would be a great side benefit...

The original plan was just to get some underpants that would stay of when she pulled her pants down to change in a changing room.

I have had too many 'shots' of her little chocolate behind in those small dressing rooms.

And she just giggles.

Just please don't ask her what day of the week is!!!!!!

Seriously she might just sneak a peek to tell you!!!!

So goes the life with the odd thought process with our youngest treasure.

What a Race!!

 Warning: absolute, total picture overload coming

 So if you thought there were a lot of laps in a 3000m, just wait till you see a 5000m!

 Did you find Drew?

 Pictures from the front are red and white uniform with WSU.

 From the back it is gray and red.

 Drew ran the first mile mixed in with the last four in his heat of 32 men.

 I knew he was running with lots of guys with amazingly fast times and he had not run this race on the track since his junior year of high school, so I was not too surprised to see him there.

 There were 5 heats of 32 guys though out the day.

 Drew was in the second fastest.

 Many of the guys in the first heat were not college athletes, but professionals.

 At the beginning of mile two Drew made a sudden move that moved him up to 16th place.

 He sat there for the next mile comfortably.

 I say comfortably, but he does have an assortment of spike holes in his legs from this race!

 So I started to wonder if there was more of a plan to his positioning.

 I also noticed his coach standing on the corner where Drew made his move.

 So was there more to his racing tonight then met the eye.

 Then with about a mile to go--at the same place.....

 ....another surge to about 12th.

 OK---I will admit that I was getting pretty loud at this point.

 And with 800m to go he surged again.

 See the pain as he surges to 7th!

 He closed with a 61 second final lap!

Drew ran over a minute PR!

He broke 14 minutes!

He ran 13:59!

That puts him in with the big boys legitimately!

Congratulations Son, we are so proud of you.

You can watch it here if you are so inclined!

A Retry...

 On our second try to the science museum we got it right :)

It was fun to see where each of the kids landed with their favorites.

The girls both walked up and played with these mirrors a couple of minutes, but Caleb...

He spent quite a lot of time her seeing all the different ways he could 'fly'!

 Rachel is very athletic and she loved this room with tested strength and agility.

We came back a second time to this room.

 Then there was the lesson in team work.

 Rachel tried this alone.

Then with just Hannah helping.

But they relized they needed all three of them to make it work.

 Caleb also loved this spinning disc that tried to get the smaller discs to spin on.

It was the only thing he really wanted to do in this room.

 Rachel in the tunnel bubble.

 Caleb in the tunnel bubble.

 Caleb's tunnel bubble popping!

 This was Hannah's favorite room, but not a good room to get pictures.

 I have always known Caleb loves science  and figuring out how things work, but it was amazing watching him spend so much time at certain exhibits trying to figure them out.

 Did you see the floating ball move through the hole in the yellow post?

All with a blower and directional movements.

 Another test of strength and there is Rachel :)

There were three chairs with different #'s of pullies.

 Caleb liked the hardest one, just to prove he could do it!

We had a good time, till they all got very hungry :)