Daddy Daughter Campout

Chris and Sam try to go on a summer campout

with their friends every year.

This year they had a late start and drove up to the

trail head to spend the first night.

The second day, they hiked in to the lake and stayed there.

Aren't the dads and their daughters so cute . . .

Bernt and Tessa

Gordon and Brooke

They hiked and made funny faces

They fished and made more funny faces

They ate and made more funny faces

Sam really likes to make goofy faces, if you can't tell by now

They hiked to a waterfall that still had snow around it

And they came back smelly and happy

They also took pictures of their dads asleep

and they took the camera in the middle of the night and took some high quality blackmail photos, but I will wait to post those for when she actually starts dating or her wedding or something.

Sam's Sixth Grade Graduation

Sam graduated from Sixth Grade

I think Chris was a little sad she is growing up

This is her teacher Mr. Blume, he rocks by the way

Sam's friends all received the presidential award, go girls!

Lauren came to show off her new princess dress

This is the boy Sam likes. Chris embarassed them both by taking their picture although they both really wanted it taken. Now I will embarass her by posting it on our blog :)

~ I love you Sam! Good luck in middle school ~

I know, I know, I'm a loser

I am really not so great about updating my blog. I keep thinking about it, but that is as far as it has gone. Maybe one day . . . Here are some highlights on how the last two weeks have been at our house.

We just moved again, I know it sucks. Our new house is great and I love our new neighborhood. Moving is always eventful for us. This time, Justin set down a heavy box on another box and all of this smoke started to fill the U-Haul. Justin ran to Chris and told him about it. Chris thinks "Great, there is a fire and I opted out of the extra insurance." Chris investigates and finds out that Justin put a heavy box on top of the fire extinguisher. So lucky we had no fire, and no chance of fire, but they still had to evacuate the U-Haul for thirty minutes waiting for the smoke to clear.

In March, Shanna had scheduled an appointment for Sami to have her hair done at a fun salon downtown and of course it happened to be right in the middle of when we were moving. I went to the school to pick up Sam and of course she is in the middle of ISAT testing. I am one of "those moms" who not only ignores the notes that come home telling you to pay attention to when the testing is and make sure that your kids eat and sleep well before the testing, I schedule a move and a hair appointment during the ISTAT testing. My kids were sleeping on matresses on the floor and certainly did not get a great nights sleep and probably didn't get breakfast either. Do I win mother of the year award yet? The school looked at me like I am so messed up. Luckily Sam had time to finish her test before her appointment because I needed to use the next hour hunting down Chris's mom's dog that we were dog sitting and ran away. There were two other dogs in the neighborhood that it ran after and a sweet lady down the street picked up Bella so that she wouldn't get ran over. It just took so much extra time to find her when she would have been able to just walk home.

Finally we are moved and I am back at work and the school calls to tell me that my son has been suspended from school because he had fireworks in his backpack. He has had them in his backpack since Spring Break - thanks again to his counsins for supplying my son with fireworks. One just happens to fall out of his backpack and a kid found it and showed the duty, who asked my son if it was his and luckily for him he was honest. I would have been more angry with him for lying, but did it really have to happen now. The poor kid felt horrible and I am really shocked that the school would suspend him for fireworks, but whatever.

Jared really likes to play with suitcases and they are all stored under the stairs. The crawl space door is also under the stairs and he thought it would be cool to pull it up. I thought under the stairs smelled funky, but I thought it was maybe the paint because it doesn't have any ventilation. Not so much, there is a dead rat in my crawl space. I decided that some days are just dead rat kind of days.

My mom ended up finally closing on her house at the end of my moving week. Karen came up with her four cute kids and stayed with us so that she could paint my mom's house and possibly help move. We worked all week painting her house and I had to work at my real job too. Finally Friday we finished painting and Saturday we were able to move her in. Yeah!!! Her house is cute and the painting turned out great! My sister is a master painter. I really really wanted to paint her hair so that she looked like a candy cane, but it would have been really rude, so I kept my paint to myself all week long. Maybe I am growing up a little after all.

My niece Lauren really loves playing at my house and she thinks she needs a minimum of eight hours if not a couple of days before she has to go home. Then it takes her a while to unwind once she gets home. My sister calls my house the baby crack house.

Mother's Day was great because I was able to finally take a day off and sleep in. Chris and the kids made a fabulous breakfast and sang Happy Mother's Day to the tune of Happy Birthday. They were very sweet. I even had lunch in bed. It was great.

Monday we went to the Nickelback concert and it was awesome. Chris wanted to go really bad, so I bought him tickets for Valentines Day and the concert came at a great time. We both needed a night off. We were on the floor and it was super fun until this hoochie girl pushed her way up in front of us and made some very hoochie like comments. I didn't mind any of that so much, it was her stupid bag that was driving me crazy. She had this mondo bag that she brought with her. We were all squished on the floor at this point and didn't have much room to move around and she thought that she could dance a lot from side to side with this huge bag and she kept shaking her hair on me. She was making me nuts and I elbowed her a few times. I really wanted to throw my gum in her bag and I am still regretting that I didn't. Luckily for me she liked the boy standing in front of me, so she kept eyeing him and started shoving her bag into him instead of me. She must have ignored his wedding ring because she is a hoochie. The rest of the concert was amazing and I am so glad that we went.

He's Turning Into Justin

The other day Jared kept grabbing Sami's papers and laughing at her. She was annoyed and said you are starting to turn into Justin.

Later he was trying to get grandma backpack to laugh. He tickled her and she laughed. He scared her and she fake screamed. Finally he took some kleenexes and got them wet and put them on her back. She shrieked and he thought it was hilarious so he did it again, and again. Finally we started to wonder where he was getting the water from. All I have to say is that grandma is lucky it came from Sam's toilet rather than the little boy's toilet. Sam said, he really is turning into Justin.

As I am typing this, he is farting on my lap and laughing about it. I think I have to agree. Jared really is turning into Justin.

Cell phone trauma

Most people have problems with their cell phone because they drop it in water or simply break it. My problems aren't quite the same. I put my last phone in salsa. It toasted my battery and didn't survive. On my way home from Wyoming this weekend, I dropped my phone in my melted vanilla shake. I took it apart and put it in rice and hoped that it would survive. I could make calls and text, however, ice cream was stuck in the speaker so nobody could hear me. Chris took it in and the phone guy was able to fix it - my phone just smells like vanilla now. I can handle vanilla, I am just crossing my fingers that it continues to work.

Father's Day

For Father's Day, (Yeah I know I am posting a couple months late) Chris really wanted to go fishing in the Columbia River. So he brought his two work sidekicks with him.

Travis caught a fish.

Greg and his daughter Jessica caught a fish.

So what did Chris catch?

Wait for it.

Yeah, there's no picture, because it is hard to take a picture of NOTHING.

But never fear, we took care of him and made him a really yummy dessert pizza.

You probably can't tell but it tasted really good.

Well at least Sam thought it tasted good anyway.

Trust me, fruit pizza tastes way better than fish on any day.

I know I like to tease my husband and he takes it really well - just ask him about what I did to him at Red Robin. He really thought it was hilarious, well I thought it was hilarious anyway. All joking aside, we really are grateful that he is such a good dad. Here are some of the things that I appreciate about him.

I love it when he takes the kids fishing while I am at work and I come home to an empty house with a free evening to myself.

I love it when he teases Sam and gets her to smile when she really doesn't want to.

I love it when he gets really worked up about our kids playing sports and he is trying really hard not to jump off the bench, and he cheers really loud (even though it is almost to the point of getting kicked out). He always makes sure the team has gatorade or powerade. It is really sweet to see how well he takes care of his daughter's basketball team, his son's football team, his nephews basketball game (where he really did get kicked out), or his cousin's sons' baseball game. He is very supportive and he actually likes going to practice.

I love how he can make anyone feel good about themselves.

I love it when he stays up all night with my sick babies so that I can sleep.

I love it when he holds me and rubs my head while I am sick too until I fall asleep.

I love that he laughs at my jokes even though they are really dumb and he listens to me talk and talk and talk even though he is really tired.

I really love it when he hides me notes or sends me e-mails or flowers or cards in the mail when he is gone.

I could probably go on for a while about what a great dad Chris is, but I will let the experts tell you how they feel.

Jared says: Daddy is awesome.

Devyn says: Dad buys me stuff when I have a football game. He brings me to the football game. He buys me powerade and krispy kreme donuts and other stuff. He gave me my first gun out of the whole family and it is really cool. He takes me to boondocks and fishing and let me skip school to go hunting. I love him but I too embarrased to say it.

Justin says: Dad is the best dad ever because he gives us awesome presents and he cares about us alot, and I love him very much.

Tanner says: I love Dad because he's nice. I really miss him when he's gone, but at least I get to sleep in his bed because it is really big and I really like it. I like it when he lets me ride in the front seat and takes me to the store and buys me candy. I like it when he takes me to ride on a jetski.

Sam says: He takes me on daddy daughter campouts with his friends and their daughters. They are really fun. He let me drive his truck twice after we went fishing. He takes me out of school one day a year so we can do something fun like skiing or going to gameworld and go out to eat. Sometimes he brings lunch to me at school so that I can have something better than school lunch and we can spend time together. He is really silly and likes to play jokes on my mom. He tried to take me to put toothpaste under her door handles while she was at Wal-mart. Too bad mom came home before we had the chance to go. It would have been really funny. I think he is the best dad in the whole universe and I love him very much.

Rub-a-dub-dub

Rub-a-dub-dub, there's a naked baby in the tub