Illuminatea

This past halloween was the second year that we have let the children go trick or treating. I had a few simple rules for their costumes, 1 They had to be creative and 2 They had to be cheap or homemade. This is what the end result was. Treanna as a Jedi Knight. She originally wanted to be Shaak Ti but struggled with the time to get my help making ...

Treanna as a Jedi Knight. You cannot of course see many of the really nifty details like her riding style boots or her fun star wars inspired hair do.

Alaric as the 9th Doctor from BBC's Doctor Who

This seems almost like a dream. Especially when just this last week I took this: While I am excited about November, Summer seemed just like yesterday. Tomorrow I shall post Halloween costumes!

Devin and the kids at Agate Beach in Newport Oregon.

Man. Just shoot me now, because not only am I about to blog about Miley Cyrus, I'm about to defend her. Yup, that's right. I, as a parent of a girl about to be a teenager, am willing to go on record and defend the already infamous photo shoot which has been characterized as the result of villainous Vanity Fair exploiting a minor to sell ...

We found out today that Alaric has a second set of armpits. No, it's true. You and I would call them ''elbow joints'' but in Alaric's world, they're ''second armpits.'' Bet you didn't know that.

Recently, we decided to do something about a problem we've been noticing with our kids. While they're both avid readers, they both tend to re-read the same books -- tens of times serially if we'd let them. Alaric was not happy when we temporarily banned him from yet another end-to-end re-read of the Harry Potter series (by this point, he's easily ...

In November we took a family vacation. I don't know if we had ever taken a vacation where we went somewhere on an airplane that wasn't to visit family. We like visiting family but we also wanted our children to experience a vacation where we went somewhere on an airplane, did touristy things, and stayed in a hotel. We were gone for an entire ...

I just uploaded a couple of photos from our Vegas trip in November 2007. I am slowly working on figuring out what I want to blog. This picture was taken on our way out to baggage claim at the Las Vegas airport. There are some neat large statue like things of various desert animals. The children being the geeky kids they are decided they wanted ...

Wrote this Christmas 2007 newsletter over two weeks ago and forgot to link it here until now... ...blame the meds. 

For Christmas 2007

INTRODUCTION Merry Christmas to you all from the cold and wet northern Puget Sound region, the jewel of lovely Western Washington and the place we like to call home. If you've seen our fair state on the news lately because of all of the flooding, you can rest assured that we came through just fine. We are grateful for that; many roads up in our ...

Not even sure where to start. Alaric had a birthday and a party with friends. We have been tearing through the house and cleaning more.  Did our room and Alaric's room. Still have the girl's room to go. I finally fixed the shelves in my craft cabinet and made small amounts of progress on my personal hell hole. We all had a 2 day virus ...

Some days you feel like if you had a camera or a tape measure you could actually watch your children grow. In the last 10 days both of my children have filled out to the point where pants that fit are too tight. On top of that they both probably grew about an inch. Treanna seemed to have grown about an inch in the length of her arms alone. With ...

There is a blanket of dead leaves over my grass. There seem to be dead dry leaves everywhere around my house. It took quite some time to clean them out of the carport today. There are lots and lots of spiders and their little egg sacs everywhere too. I cleaned off the cobwebs and what spiders and eggs I could find while cleaning up today. I spent ...

I don't know that I talked about the release of Harry Potter 7 and events surrounding that. First off we did go down late to the big Borders store in the Redmond Town Center. I was amazed at the sheer amount of people there! The children wanted everyone to get dressed up. Devin and I went as muggle parents of a young witch and wizard. The ...

Tomorrow is the first day of school, my darling's birthday and the day things really get back into the routines of the majority of the year. We have been attempting to get back on schedule for several weeks but things keep interfering. Overall I am proud of the progress we have made. I have the kids mostly ready. We have all the required school ...

I was going to be updating more but life happens some days and weeks. Instead of updating or writing I am going to relax and play Lego Star Wars 2. I am now on the final episode and more than 60% of the way complete with the game. I am also looking for what the next game I am going to play is. I am currently leaning towards Syberia. I think Devin ...

I really should have updated more just was not sure which of the many things to update. We went to an Aquasox game in Everett the beginning of the month. We even saw the Goodyear Blimp and I took a picture. Otherwise we are just ramping up for school in about 2.5 more weeks. We in fact just got their teacher assignments in the mail on ...

Despite the fact that my weedwhacker needs a mysterious new part that I have not bothered to discovered what it is I still managed to get part of the lawn edged. I remembered that I have a pair of old fashioned scissor like sheers. So between that and just flat out pulling out the weeds along the front flower bed the front beds are now edged. I ...

This morning at about 9:45 I was woken from sleep by a very loud crack of thunder. About 5 minutes later it started to rain. It nicely cooled the air and gave a drink to my garden. Treanna was slightly terrified from the sound as she was very much asleep before the thunder. Alaric of course was like OOOH I thought I saw a blue flash first! The ...

No, you are not chopped liver. Since I did not have prior permission I did not use your name in my post! Now you know! You have to admit its funny when your family reads your blog to keep up with your life. Its hot today. I am sure glad I have electricity and plenty of fans to help keep the house cool. Not quite air conditioned cool but cool ...

Transformers was awesome. The kids both enjoyed it as well. Heck even my Mom called and told me she loved it! We wish we had enough in the budget to go and see it again! Now of course we are excited that the next one is apparently already in the works and will be directed by Michael Bay again. Also this week we have been having a good time with ...

Mommy school is going ok so far. Their typing skills are definitely improving. We got to see friends from out of town last week and it was awesome! Plus I did a lot of work on the house and got it caught up back to manageable levels. This week Devin is on vacation all week. In addition we get to have my little brother up visiting for the week. ...

We finally got the Amazon order my son was waiting for. He saved his money for a Lego Droid pack and so was very excited when they arrived. Tacked onto the order was the Fifth Element on DVD which we needed to replace the VHS with. In addition was the 2nd book in a series by Dennis McKiernon. I had picked up Once Upon a Winter's Night a few years ...

Well Friday night I was able to go watch Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer with Devin and Nick. I was suprised at just how much I enjoyed the movie. It was funny, serious and definitely entertaining. I think my favorite part though was some of the personal interactions that you get a hint of in the trailers.  There are so many more ...

Today is just a good day. I did well going to yard sales this morning, the weather is beautiful. I picked up yet more clothing for myself, a gorgeous heavy glass cake plate cover and a rolling duffel bag to replace the giant suitcase we have that almost always goes overweight.  I don't feel as beat up by the allergies. Its just ...