Movie time!

A few weeks ago Nate and I went to see a movie which is a big deal in our household. I can count on one hand the number of movies we've seen in theaters since Taylor's been born. My friend forwarded me this site and I checked out it. It's a powerful date night movie that can enhance your marriage. I'm not sure where it's playing still but if you can it's worth seeing on the big screen. Less distractions. Although it is a serious flick, it also had both Nate and I dieing of laughter. I attached the link to the website where you can see the trailer. And yes girls, Nate liked it too!

http://www.fireproofyourmarriage.com/

Mexico Finally!!

Well I am finally getting around to posting some of our fun pics from Mexico. I can't begin to tell you how much fun we had getting away. We had no idea what to expect being that we bought the trip from an auction but turns out we were in an amazing hotel and had great company, that was the one thing that we could count on. :) This is my favorite picture. We just stopped quickly on our way back from shopping and had someone take this photo on a pedestrian bridge headed back to town.


One of the things that made this trip so fun was we did little shopping and invested instead in activities which were amazing. This dolphine experience was unbelievable. The guys almost passed on it and sent Shannon and I but we were ALL very glad we went.

We got to feed them and learn signals.

They took us on a ride around their pool, you would jump on them like you were getting on a horse, it was crazy!

This is Nate's favorite picture.

Our last night we went on a dinner cruise where you take a cruise along the bay to a secluded area all lit by candles, watch an amazing live and authentic Aztec show and then have the best food we had eaten the whole trip, and we ate a lot of great food.

This is what happens if you bring up the name Mickey in Trevor's presence.

This was our last day. Nate and I had a few hours before our flight took of so we wondered around downtown.

We were on the boardwalk here. Most of the streets are paved this way so it made for some bumpy rides.

This was the zip line adventure we took. It was a ton of fun and like nothing else we had ever done. It was well worth the hiking involved.

As you can see we had a wonderful trip! Our hotel was amazing. Thanks to Shannon and her wheeling and dealing upon arrival we learned we had side by side separate suites with hot tub sized private pools on our balcony's. We spent most of our time just relaxing and enjoying the great company. We look forward to taking another trip with the crazy Thompsons!!

Halloween!!

We had a great time this year for Halloween. It was the first year that Taylor really understood what was going on and was truly excited about her Halloween costume. She had been wearing it for weeks in advance and I think I'm going to have to at least leave the dress out because she continues to parade around in it. Surprisingly her blue Cinderella dress has taken the back seat. Obviously she was ready for a change just as much as I was.

We weren't quite sure what Jade was going to be until about 4:00 Halloween day when I finally woke her from her nap. We have accumulated a few toddler costumes, this adorable bumble bee was courtesy of my sister Michelle, (thanks again Michelle). Taylor had it narrowed down to the lady bug or the bumble bee and Jade made the final decision. Despite the fact every door we went to told Taylor she had a cute brother, which she didn't catch onto or understand, we thought she looked adorable and they both had a great time scurrying from door to door. Thanks also to Grandpa Dutch and Grandma Kelli for the Halloween treats!

One of Taylor's requests that we ALL dress up which at first I was against. She brought in a pair of little wings that she wanted me to wear to be a butterfly. I fortunately remembered that I did have a pair of adult sized wings left from college so she was pleased that I was participating. I tried very hard to get Taylor to bring this little pink poodle costume consisting of just a head piece with furry pink ears and a pink tail for her dad, she's the only one who could have gotten him into it but she was certain it was too small. We brought him his Denver poncho he bought on our trip to Mexico, (yes I will be posting about our trip soon) and his broncos hat and that was good enough for her. We met in Keizer and ate at out favorite Mexican restaurant La Hacienda with our fabulous friends Ross and Debbie and then went back to their house and our old neighborhood for trick or treating followed by Wii golf and darts. Of coarse a Wii is now on Nate's Christmas wish list. All in all we had a great night and look forward to hanging out with Deb and Ross again soon. Love you guys!!

I mentioned that Nate had gone on a hunting trip previously. Well here you have the actual man camp. He went out in the woods in an area called Murders Creek, very fitting, archary hunting for elk. Luckily they had bought a few extra tags because that was not all they found.
Here you have the elk Wayne shot. Nate was calling it in and I guess the plan worked out perfectly because we have a freezer full of elk burger.
I believe this is the second bear they shot. They shot it late afternoon and couldn't find it. When they went back the next day a mountain lion had found it first and had it buried up to it's neck in pine needles and leaves.
This is the bear Ezra shot down in a creek bottom.
Here they are hauling it back to camp.

Although Nate didn't shoot anything I know he had a wonderful time out tromping around in the woods. And I think you all know that I don't mind not having to find a place to hang another one of his "trophies". We missed him but we know there are few places he'd rather be than in the woods.

Birthday Bash

Taylor had a birthday last week and I'm pretty sure she is completely confused as to how birthdays work. She had been asking for months when her birthday was so it was highly anticipated. Nate still thinks I had a choice as to when I had her and complains every year that her birthday is during the best week of archery hunting. Well this year he took off for the week and hunted while we postponed Taylor's birthday party, kind of. The girls and I took off to stay at my mom and step dads for a while including the actual day, September 23 as Taylor will tell you. So pretty much every fun thing we did that week was for Taylor's birthday. We went to the beach which has been highly anticipated all summer. I wish I had pictures to post but I am having trouble getting them off my parents camera. This trip included shopping, beach frolicking and an ice cream stop on the way home. Tuesday, the actual day Taylor woke up and my mom told her that today was her actual birthday. Taylor's response was "well you had better make me a birthday hat then". Later that day grandma did bring her a purple tiara and balloons which continue to be a hit around our house, and Taylor got to choose where we ate, so off to McDonalds we went. We then went to Auntie Alex's soccer game vs the dreaded South Salem rivals and although they lost we all went to ice cream afterward. We came home the next day, Wednesday and daddy returned home very late Friday night. Sunday we had the closing ceremony as I like to call it. The cake was the end of the birthday week. Everyday, 6 times a day all I heard was "when are we having my cake?".

I'm really not sure who enjoyed the cake more. Below you can see Taylor's favorite present.

Being the daddy's girl that she is dad had her convinced that getting a bow and arrow for your birthday would be the best. So the last present of all was her very own bow and arrow, as you can see she was thrilled. It matched nicely with the great camo sweatshirt grandma Kelli made her. This was even more supported by the conversations that took place while Nate was packing to leave for his trip prior, but that's a whole other entry. The scary part is Nate bought this little set up last year for her and I convinced him she was too young. The box says for ages 8 and up, I guess 3 is better then 2. He was just too excited to wait any longer.

This is the outfit Great Grandpa Chuck and Bobbi got Taylor for her birthday. She calls it her birthday dress and I'm sure that everyone at church will be seeing it quite often. I have to admit she looks pretty darn cute in it so I can handle her wearing it often. Thanks Great Grandpa and Bobbi!!!

What do you think?

Well, nearly three undistirbed hours later I have composed something I am satisfied with. I love viewing everyone else's blog and was finally tired of being the boring blog on the block. Although I have a dozen things I should have been doing with my 3 hours of childless time, I throughly enjoyed dabbling in the world of blog design. I'm loving it, so what do you think?

Divas

Jade has taken after her big sister and loves dress up. She and Taylor tear through the drawers of dresses and love modeling them with their plastic high heels. Taylor almost always chooses the blue Cinderella dress and Jade has just recently realized that we actully have one that is her size. She loves parading around after her sister.

If the dresses weren't enough, she also loves shoes. Whether it's Taylor's flip flops, my slippers or our favorite, dad's shoes, Jade has to try them all on and clunk around the house.

And of coarse what divas would be complete without their STAR sunglasses. We keep these in the car at all times and the girls wear them almost everyday.

Off to the fair!!

Well I have to admit I got a bit distracted the last bit from just about everything, including blogging. I finally got tired of listening to everyone rave about these darn Twilight books that I borrowed them, yes all four and I am in big trouble!! I read the first one in a week which I thought was pretty speedy considering the amount of time I usually dedicate to reading for pleasure. The second one, all 563 pages I read in 2 and a half days. Can you say obsessed, because I totally am!! I have forced myself to take a week off before I start the third because my house is a total wreck, I have laundry up to my eye balls and Nate is going to kill me if I continue to have my nose stuck in these books 24/7. Needless to say the books are excellent and I am looking forward to the remaining 2.

So other then that we did get to have an evening of fun at the Oregon State Fair last month. Last year we had a blast with the Bluths but since they have moved away to Utah I ended up being the lucky winner to go on the rides with Taylor, at least the ones that Jade couldn't. Technically Jade couldn't go on anything but of coarse Nate did some talking and got her on a few.

Here are the girls on their first ride, the canoes which was one of the only two rides Taylor was able to go on last year.

I totally remember loving this contraption when I was a kid so I had to take Taylor on it. Somehow it just wasn't as fun as I remember. Surprisingly Taylor did great on it, I thought she might get a little scared but she thought it was great.

This is the other ride Nate managed to get Jade on. He belted her in tight and at first she wasn't so sure about it but after the initial shock wore off she enjoyed herself quite a bit.

This was the dreaded balloon ride. If I had known how small the little basket was I would have steered her to something else. Definitely meant for kids but Taylor had a good time.

So this is Nate and I with our good friends Ross and Debbie. They were our neighbors in our first house in Keizer. They have pretty much become part of our family and we love hanging out with them. This is a picture taken at the Tracy Lawrence/Chris Keagle concert Nate won tickets to on the radio. When Nate called the radio station to verify the specifics they told him we had 4 tickets so we invited Ross and Debbie. Well... unknowingly we pretty much snuck them into this concert. We never read but the first ticket in the envelope and it turned out that two of the tickets were for the fair entrance. We told the fair entrance people the radio station forgot to give us the entrance tickets and when we got to the concert entrance and they wouldn't let us in with fair tickets we started to figure out what had happened. As we were discussing this one of the admission people came up and said we were good to go so without hesitation in we went and we all enjoyed the show. There were plenty of open seats so I think the radio station just said go ahead. Anyhow, we all enjoyed the concert, (Chris was better then Tracy in my opinion) and had more fair food then anyone should eat in one evening. It's a good thing we only go once a year!

We're having a heat wave!

So for those of you who live in the NW, I'm sure you are well aware of the HOT weather we are having, for those of you who don't we are in the midst of a spell of hot hot days. Today is supposed to be the hottest I believe at 104 degrees. Yesterday is was cooler, if you can call it that at 103 degrees and tomorrow is supposed to be somewhere in the hundreds as well. We do get hot here in Oregon, however it's not typically for multiple days straight. Needless to say we stayed inside most of the week.

I was busy cleaning up in the kitchen and had let the girls watch their current favorite movie Cinderella. When I peaked in to see what they were actually doing because they were so quite I found them snuggled in their chair together actually watching the show. Taylor was mad because I was trying to get her to look at me instead of the movie she was engrossed in so her expression didn't turn out so well.Later in the afternoon I was trying to kill some time so that we could actually sit down and eat a meal with dad so I took the girls on a wagon ride down the street and back. They LOVE riding in the wagon.Today we did some bargain shopping at the local garage sales before going to the grocery store and managed to find a slip n slide. We already had plans to hang out at the neighborhood pool, (The Rae's kiddie pool) So we brought the slip and slide along and had a great time beating the heat.
Taylor wasn't a huge fan of slipping on the slip n slide but she did like walking on it and trying to drink the water. We did convince her to go down once with the two girls but as you can see she was still thirsty.

Enjoying the river

Most of you know we live on the Molalla River. Although we have been here for well over a year yesterday was the first time that I took the girls down to the river for fun throwing rocks. Thanks to my wonderful neighbor Rhonda who I would go insane without out here, we all headed down to the river for an eventful morning of rock throwing. It's a rare occasion with all the maintenance and work on our house that I take time out to do things like this and just let the girls have fun and relax for a half hour so I was grateful when Rhonda called with such a fun idea.

The kids sitting at the waters edge throwing rocks. Holly and Hunter are two of Rhonda's kids.

The crew snacking on cereal thanks to Rhonda. Taylor and Jade were so mesmerized by the river I had a tough time getting them to look at the camera.

Taylor and Holly hand and hand headed back to the house. Taylor of coarse couldn't stay out of the water so she is in her frilly undies.

Bunco anyone?

So some of my long time soccer buddies and I had been having a hard time staying in contact so we came up with the marvelous idea of starting a bunco group. There are 12 of us in the group and it consists of half of us girls and the other half our moms. What a great time we all have bouncing around to each other's homes eating great food, visiting and of coarse playing bunco. There are some of us who are more competitive then others. Joene, who brings lots of excitement to the group not only when she is winning but when anyone around her gets a bunco we all know it. We all have a great time.

So this month I hosted and I had had a dessert recipe for literallyyears that I thought was so fun but I never really had the right opportunity to try it out. I figured bunco would be great since I knew exactly how many people were coming and had help from others (thank you mom and Melanie) who brought some of the food. So I did finally create my little Martha Stewart desserts and if I don't say so myself they turned out great. I have to admit I hated eating them because they were so cute and most of the gals thought they were just little plants set up for decoration. My friend Melanie talked me into taking these pics so I figured I'd throw them up here for all of you to see. They really weren't that tough so if anyone is interested in the recipe let me know.