what a beautiful mess

This is Pike Place Market... I can't believe I wore sandals. Dumb idea.  I love the ocean. and I miss the ocean. Trevors favorite part was the ferry ride to the island.  This was our view at our "fancy" dinner; view was great, dinner was not.  We loved Seatlle. Thanks Candice and Crystal for emailing these pictures to me!

Our front room right now is kind of a mess: Trevor has a lot of work to do...starting with putting in the wood stove. It's going to be so nice to have one really warm room in the house. Right now, I am sitting here in 2 sweaters and wool socks and I'm freezing!

We made it to 14 years~all the naysayers be darned! Our anniversary was nothing short of awesome. Trevor took the day off and I couldn't have been happier. We mainly shopped for home stuff (wood stove, tile...) but we had such a good day doing just that. We had Mexican food and Chinese food and watched The Saratov Approach. Mexican, Chinese, Russia...you could say we were well cultured that day. How can life ever possibly get any better? Well, maybe if we could learn to take a decent picture...

It's the little things that really make a day worthwhile. Although: my ankles hurt, my knee hurt... but I could still run and that means I'm getting better! That's such good news to me.

It keeps rambunctious boys entertained.  My Josh read to his friend Josh for a good hour  and there was no wrestling involved.  So that means there were no heads banging against the wall,  no punches or kicks to the face  and no loud thumping.  It was quietly peaceful. 

So admittedly, it is not our favorite thing to do but we do it each year because:  1. It's expected. What parents don't carve pumpkins with their children?  Bad ones.  2. The kids love it.  Any way possible for us to win extra points with our kids is a no brainer must-do.  Trevor did most of the work with the kids.  I got to make dinner and take pictures.  Now we have one more item we can check off of our  Lets's-Just-Get-Halloween-Over-With-And-Move-Onto-The-Good-Holidays list.  All I have left is finding Annabelle a costume and  convincing Trevor to dress up.  One of those two things is gonna happen and it involves Minnie Mouse. Stay tuned...

Our house has officially sold!!!!!! That sentence deserves so many exclamation marks! Trevor and I signed the paperwork yesterday and the buyers sign tonight. I cannot even adequately express how excited we are to finally be done with that house. It was a great home and we have a lot of happy memories from living there. But it has been so stressful for the past three years to still be owning it. And now because it's sold, we can do some updates on our house now. We have a big list of things that need to be done: bathroom added, floors replaced, doors replaced, coop finished, wood stove installed, knocking out a wall and adding a wall, texturing done, some walls painted...The list would almost be exhausting if we weren't so excited to be able to do these things! To celebrate the end here are some pictures of my favorite parts of the house:  The fireplace before was just sheet rock so Trevor updated it with wood and a new mantel~ I loved it.  Trevor also built us a wi...

I took Carl in to get groomed on Monday and instead of him looking so great when he was done, he looked like this: I think I can detect some embarrassment in his expression, can't you? I made sure to leave the bandanna on until Trevor came home so he could act appropriately upset about Carl wearing something "human". The rule in our house is Carl can absolutely never be wearing anything that even closely resembles something a person would wear or else...Carl dies. Trevors rule, not mine. We all got a good laugh out of the bandanna and Carl is luckily, still alive.

The weekend after the marathon Trevor and I headed up to Seattle to spend a weekend together without the kids. Candice watched our kids for us the whole weekend... the day that we left, she got sick and then Joshua got sick and then Stephen....Poor Candice! But she claimed that our kids were awesome and so well behaved. I hope she's telling the truth (she's not a liar so I'm pretty sure she's being honest!) Trevor and I rented a car for the trip which was the best decision. It was super nice and it had Sirius which was so fun. We could listen to whatever we wanted to. It took us about 8 hours to drive from Boise to Seattle but we love road trips together. We use to take road trips a lot. We'd buy beef jerky and soda and listen to music and have so much fun no matter how long of a drive it was. We stayed with some friends who had a condo rented out for the weekend. Our first night we went to a "fancy" restaurant. It felt like the food was second to the ex...

It was the hardest thing I have ever done. That includes both labors without the epidural. Seriously it was freaking hard.  But it was so amazing. And despite how hard it was I plan on doing more in my future, if I can only heal from this one.  I ran it with my sisters Jessica and Candice. We spent months and months training for this and we were so excited. Three weeks before the race, I injured my leg and so I stopped running and started biking. I was going to the Physical Therapist but he didn't have much hope for it being a good race for me. Before I injured myself, I had only gotten in an 18 mile run. I should have done a 22 mile run the week after that but I couldn't. I was pretty nervous for those three weeks.  We went to St. George early to make sure we had plenty of time to visit with our family. Unfortunately, I was so scared that I wasn't going to be able to finish the race or even run it, that I was not the best company. The night before Trevor gave me a ...

And so I will start with what's one my mind first. I love my sisters (and brothers but sorry P.J this ones for the girls). When I think of our differences, it makes me realize all the ways I wish I was more like them. For instance they are super healthy. Like really healthy. Candice keeps a bag of almonds, semi sweet chocolate chips and craisins around for a snack. And she drinks green smoothies.  I have butterfingers in my cupboard (or I did till Trevor and I ate them all last night while watching Raising Hope..) Jessica drinks Crio Bru..some kind of cocoa bean drink that is healthy. I drink hot chocolate with lots of sugar to make it taste good. Amy drinks smoothies and protein drinks and works out two hours a day. I drink Diet Mountain Dew while I watch Raising Hope. And my sister in law Mckenna? You should see the healthy food she makes (follow her on instagram and you can: mckennasfood). It looks amazingly healthy and edible! So what's my point? I love all these g...