Bad Baxter

This is what I found my dog doing yesterday. I looked out the window and there he was, running around the yard with a shoe in his mouth. He though he was so funny!! He just kept running (more like frolicking) away from me and would not drop the shoe. Luckily, by the time I finally got him to drop it, there had been no damage done. Good thing because those are Richie's yard shoes, and as you can see from the picture, our yard needs some help so Richie is going to need his shoes in tact to get that done.

Sweet Sophia

I just wanted to share the adorable book mark that Sophia gave me. I love it!! For one, I took that picture of her and it is one of my favorites. It was right after she had learned how to wink and she was showin' me some of her skills. Two, it is making my new book club book, much more interesting:). Do I have the sweetest niece, or what?!?! I love that girl:).

Pacifier

I always joke around and say that Baxter's Kong ball is kind of like a pacifier. He licks and chews it for about 4-5 hours a day. He loves that thing. When we have people over to our house, we put peanut butter in it to distract him from the new people that are in his space:). Don't mind the quality of the following pictures...Bax HATES the camera. He barks and starts running all around whenever I bring it out...I think the noise it makes creeps him out or something. For this reason, I can really only take pictures of him with my phone.

Here he is just playing with his pacifier, which is normally what you can find him doing... except for the other night, when I was getting ready for bed, I found my special little baby sleeping in the chair. He was cuddling his Kong ball!! It was so dang cute. I don't know if he actually loves it so much that he needed to sleep with it, or if he just didn't want Lady to play with it while he was snoozing!! (side note: don't his ears look so cute in this picture?)

Oh he is a "special" boy!! I love my Big Guy!!!!!

Mother's Day

I know, I am a little behind on my blogging!!!! This year's Mother's Day was great like always. Maybe it is because I have a GREAT Mom:). Mother's Day happened to fall on my older brother's (Kyle) birthday. So it was a special day for lots of family members.

Kora and Nick are getting married at the Olympia Country & Golf Club this August so they had to buy a year membership there. So far, it has been great to have that. We have been able to enjoy some GREAT food with a view. They also have a pool, so Kora and I will be bathing beauties for most of the summer. On Mother's Day, they had a beautiful brunch set up, which we attended as a family. The sun was out and it was a beautiful day. We were able to celebrate Kimberly and Kyle's birthday (they are weird twins with birthdays on different days) along with Mother's Day. It was great.

Here is a picture of my Mom and Dad with their three grand children. I really do have an amazing Mom, who was able to raise six children, keep a clean house, all of us fed, all of us happy, and make it look easy. When I was little, I would wake up and lay on the couch watching Seasame Street while the older kids got ready for school. She would bring my breakfast in on a tray for me, complete with a little pitcher of milk for my cereal. Once the big kids were off to school (who all had a lunch in hand prepared by her) she would run a bath for me to play in. When I got out of the bath she had my clothes all ready to go, she even put my shoes and socks on me!! Geesh was I a baby, or what?!?!? For lunch she would set up a blanket in the living room with all of my Fisher Price Little People around it and I would play for quit some time. When it was time for Days of Ours Lives to come on, she would bring my lunch in on a tray and we would watch the soaps together:). She was, and is, great!!! Everything she does has a special touch on it.

I only hope that one day I can be half the mom she has been.

Mom, you are amazing. Thank you for everything that you do!!!

Go Seahawks

Abby came down yesterday to hang out with my Mom while Kimberly went to Alderbrook for a tour. Kora also happened to have Sophia hanging out with her so my Mom took Abby over there to visit with her cousin. While she was there my Mom found Nick's Seahawk beanie and put it on Abs. I thought she looked so cute sportin' the Hawk gear. Unfortunately, the only camera I had close was my cell phone, so please disregard the lack in quality that these pictures present:).

Rock out with you Hawk out!!!! Getting ready to leave...if you can't tell, she fell asleep about two minutes after getting in the car!!

It was so great to see Abby and Sophia yesterday!! Those two girls always make me happy:).

Mom's Craft / Wrapping room

For awhile now I have wanted my Mom to get her upstairs room turned into a craft / wrapping / gift room. She pretty much has already started it, well, at least has the "stuff" in there:). Now she just needs to put things into some sort of organization mode so that it is easily accessible and usable. Her are a few ideas that I have found for some inspiration...

I really like how this room has the ribbon and wrapping paper hanging on the wall, so you can see it and it is easy to access. However, that is really only most practical for your go to wrapping paper, so some cute container to hold the rest of the wrapping paper is a great idea as well. Here is a great idea to utilize shelf space. It makes everything look neat and tidy because each item has a container to separate them.

For this last picture, I just thought it looked cute and organized. This looks more like a general crafting station, where my Mom's room would specialize in gifts and wrapping.

These are just some ideas that have been rolling around in my head for awhile now. My Mom is totally the go-to-gal for anything gifts and wrapping. She has all the supplies on hand and I know she would feel better about using them if they were more organized and visually appealing. I definitely think she works better when she can see all her supplies, so it is important to have some visual organization:).

Her and I both have the summer off so hopefully this will be a project that we can work on!!

By the way, I only have 30 days of work left until summer!!! Whoot Whoot!!!!!!! Gotta love being a teacher:).

Walla Walla

A couple weekends ago I ventured over to Walla Walla to visit my friends Tyler and Chelsea. These are just some pictures from the weekend that I enjoyed and thought that I would share with you.

This was the last day. Alyssa and Ian had already headed back home so we are sans one girl. Zerba cellars.

Getting some buds!!! Can't wait to go back in August or September when there are big, beautiful grapes to take pics of. I liked how Tyler was in the background of this picture. He was such a great wine host all weekend long. I learned so many new things!!!

Just a cool shot...

Playing would you rather, which can definitely get a little gross with our group.

Just playing with Sarah and Garron's wide angle lens...LOVED IT!!!

Pretty Denali.

It was such a fun weekend. Good friends, good food, and good wine. How could you go wrong?