Halloween, bed and Bread

Just updating to let everyone know what's going on around here. I'm putting up some pics of the kids at Halloween. They were REALLY cute! Teryn was a 60's girl and Walker was a Ninja! He was scary!

Next is the bed that Chris and I built together. We have this problem with our house. The stairwell is built really funny and you can't get anything bigger than a full sized bed up stairs. So we made our own bed that we took up in three pieces and finished putting together upstairs. It's pretty cool and nice not sleeping on the floor anymore!

And finally, I made bread yesterday! My first time. We go through so much bread I decided it would be cheaper to buy yeast and bread flour and make it myself! So I tried it and voila! It turned out perfectly. Setting it next to our wood burning stove to rise is the trick I think. It puts out the perfect amount of heat and the bread rose beautifully! It was a lot of fun and everyone really likes it too. Hooray!

The next thing I will be putting up is the secretary that I am working on at the moment. I'm stripping it right now and will start refinnishing tonight I think. I'll post those soon!

- Kisses!

My Little Thoughts banner

So . . . my new banner and these pics are some that I took VERY close to our house this weekend. The banner is the entire valley where we live. You can even see into Canada if you look real close. We were up pretty high! I LOVE it here! Oh, and one of these photos is slated to go into the paper next week. It was an assignment from my editor. Even going on the front page! So excited!

Bex, this one's for you! So . . . here are some pictures of my family, and where we live. The first picture is from a trip Chris and I took to Idaho to go hiking and camping. We went to Goldbug Hot Springs. The next one is all of us at Hidden Lake in Glacier National Park. That was a six mile hike and the kids were troopers! They did a great job! The next picture is our back yard. I LOVE where we live! It is paradise! The next picture is the kids on our back porch. Walker has serenaded Teryn to sleep on the swing in the sunshine. They are really becoming friends and it warms my heart as a mother to see it happening. : ) Then we have The kids and me at Mt. Rushmore. I set up the tripod and we snuck into the corner of the frame and luckily it turned out. And last, but not least we have my little fairy. Sometimes when she looks at you, the way her eyes turn up at the corners and with those lashes that make it look even more dramatic you'd just think she had lost her wings or something. She is definitely beautiful. I think she gets more gorgeous with every passing day. Oh, and by the way . . . next time any of you guys talks to her, ask her who Hunter is. She's got a little crush and its so funny!

Soldier of God

I met this man on a flight out of Detroit heading to Atlanta. He was shipping out, bound for Korea, I think he said. He was a GIANT, very tall, very strong and solid looking, quite formidable. I overheard him tell the passenger next to him that his mother had given him this bear as he left her. It was soft and fuzzy and said "Now I lay me down to sleep . . . " on it's foot. When I snapped this picture I had glanced over at him and was moved to tears by what I saw. Here was a Giant of a man, a soldier, who was everything a soldier should be - big, tough, strong - in his most vulnerable state - asleep. And who was watching over him, but his soft, snuggly Teddy Bear, obviously a Soldier of God.

Teryn's Locks of Love haircut

Teryn has been begging me to cut her hair and Becky and Jessica have been begging me to update my blog. So, here I go killing two birds with one stone. Hope you like it!

The final Harry Potter

I'm sure that those of you who know me well know that I am a huge Harry Potter follower. And the ones of you who talk to me most every day will know that I have been working on this, the last one, for a lot longer than it normally takes me to read a book. You've been asking "So, have you finished Harry Potter yet?" Well, tonight I did. And I am so sorry that it is over. I suppose that I sometimes drag really good books out and read them little by little so that I can stay in the world that I'm reading about as long as possible, but tonight I couldn't help it. I got sucked into the story and read a little less than half the book in one night.
I read the first and second Harry Potter books in Germany when they were the only things that I had for company sometimes during my long and difficult prenancy with Teryn. I enjoyed the stories so much that, on a couple of occasions, I have been one of those that had to run out and buy the new book on it's release day. I even got one of them, I think number 5, before it's release date when Kroger put it out early by mistake.
So at the end of the Harry Potter epic saga I am left a little lost and a little sad because I never read a book twice, so I'll never read another Harry Potter book again and now that world is closed to me forever . . . (sigh) ;)

Back to school . . .

I can't believe it is time to go back to school already. Walker started Kindergarten and Teryn has moved up to third grade. They're attending A Time 4 Learning at the lofts where I work. They literally go to school directly across the hall from my shop. I love it! I am able to go eat lunch with them and am able to spend so much more time with them than ever before. It's great!

I was looking through photographs the other day and I found this one. It seems like a lifetime ago that they were this small. This was Mother's Day 2002. Isn't it unbelievable how much they have both changed in just five years?! I think that time has begun to march a little faster . . . and I'm struggling to keep up. Thankfully I have these two tugging at my shirtails to help!