Spreading the Love

The other night I went out to dinner with some friends and then took in a comedy show. By the time I got home, the boys had been in bed for a while and most of the lights were off in the house. I noticed a cute little heart drawn on a small piece of white paper taped to the door of the fridge.

"That's sweet" I thought.

Then, when I went to open a cupboard, I noticed another white piece of paper containing a cleverly drawn heart.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw another one. And another one. Upon closer examination of the house I realized they were everywhere.

Can you find the 8 in this picture?

How about the 10 in this one?

 You can only see 7 in this picture of the laundry room but there are actually 15 in there.

They are bringing smiles to my face wherever I go, even if it's when I'm using the boy's bathroom.

(There was one on the toilet paper roll.)

             

I spy them when I am cleaning out the dishwasher,

   

and using the printer. The boys told Mark they wanted to surprise me. Well they sure did!

Battleship Caleb received some of the love.

As did some of Daddy's hunting stuff. I wonder if he's noticed that one yet or not.

When I came home from work on Friday, the boys had set up shop in the kitchen were they were mass producing hearts. I was informed that you could buy them for the price of a hug. I bought a couple.

There are still more so come on over and "buy" some yourself! The boys would LOVE it!

The Last Game of Pinochle for 2009

To ring in the New Year, Mark and I hosted a pinochle party. Pinochle is a HUGE deal in his family and I had to take lessons in order to marry him. If I hadn't passed my final test (playing with the fam.) I seriously don't think I would have been allowed to walk down the aisle.

Luckily enough, I am a natural (Ha!).

Once everyone arrived, we got down to business. We had a table of 4 and a table of 6. Losers had to rotate and I kept track of wins and losses in order to award prizes at the end of the night.

This is Mark, Poppa G., Wade and Mark's Dad.

Dawn was also there along with Grandma G., Mark's Mom, Harley and Johanna.

As we played, there was a pinochle necklace floating around and if you had 300 in pinochle you had to wear it. Whoever was wearing it at the end of the night won a prize.

Dad was the first to have it grace his neck.

We finally called it quits and looked over the scores to see who was the big prize winners.

The Biggest Winner: Harley

His Prize: A new deck of pinochle cards, junior mints and 12 different kinds of hot cocoa.

The Biggest Loser: Mom

Her Prize: A box of kleenex and a deck of cards with (adorable!) dogs on them.

The Pinochle Necklace Winner: Grandma G.

Her Prize: A pot of gold candy box.

It was also Grandma and Grandpa's 63rd anniversary! Woohoo!

It was a great night and a very fun way to ring in the new year! I hope all of you had a great time also whether it was a low key evening at home or a night out on the town.

 Happy New Year Everyone!!!

New Babies and Purple Tutus

Christmas has always equaled family and fun with me and this year was not a dissapoinment. Even though Mark had to work Christmas Eve and Christmas Day (both graveyard shifts) we did manage to share some special memoires anyway. Here are a few of my favorites:

1. Watching the cousins playing together. This is only Aunt McMolly's children and mine so not too many cousins, but the 5 of them make enough noise that you would think there were 20 more.

2. Meeting the newest member of Aunt McMolly's farm. Puppies are my kryptonite. Have you seen that commercial yet where the men are renting puppies by the hour so that they can use them to pick up girls? It is too funny only because it is too true.

3. Caleb's face when he saw this picture from Grandma Golter. He had asked her weeks earlier what she was getting him for Christmas. She replied by saying a ballerina doll in a purple tutu. He of course, made a sound of disgust and then proceeded to tell everyone that his Grandma was getting him a doll. Well, Grandma couldn't actually find one so she made him a special picture of one. He was not impressed and quickly passed it on to me because "it's a girl thing."

4. Mark and I buying each other the same gift for Christmas. Seriously. They are both stereos that you can use with your ipod or mp3 player. I ended up buying the one we both liked more so we took back the one he bought and he is going with his next two ideas for me instead - Obsession perfume and The Pioneer Women's Cookbook.

All in all, definitely a Christmas worth remembering! 

Merry Christmas

Created by Caleb on Christmas Eve:

Merry Christmas!!!

"The best Christmas of all is the presence of a happy family all wrapped up with one another"

I hope all of you are all "wrapped up with one another"!

Cause and Effect

Cause: The reason I have not blogged in so long is not my fault. It is because this month:

slipped into this month without my permission:

Effect: Because of this I have had no time to call my own. Well, actually, that's not true. I have had a lot of time to call my own but only about 5 minutes of that time has been devoted to sitting down in front of the computer.

Cause: In the month of December, Mark and I do this advent calendar with the boys. Each night they take turns choosing the paper from that day and we do whatever the paper says. It could be making Christmas cookies, doing a puzzle together, decorating the Christmas tree, looking at Christmas lights, etc., etc., etc.

Effect: We have been having so much fun around here! The boys are so excited each and every day and everything has been about having fun together as a family. Last night we made these: I call them "Twinkie Twains".

Cause: I have been a baking, treat-making machine!

Effect: My belly button and I are no longer on speaking terms.

Cause: Mark and the boys went up into the hills to get us a Christmas tree. They got stuck helping someone else get unstuck and when Mark's dad went up to rescue them, he got stuck too. A tow truck had to be called and by the time Mark and the boys made it home at almost 11:00 at night Mark finally said "You know, I could see where a cell phone might come in handy."

Effect: Woohoo! We finally have joined the modern world and we now have cell phones! The funny part is that Mark has totally embraced texting and we already have almost 200 messages just between he and I. Here is an example of our very important messages to each other.

Exhibit A: From Me to Him while He is at Work around 10:00pm. (I am hinting at something here and I am hoping he will get the point. Double click on the picture to make it larger.)

Exhibit B: From Him to Me.  

He thinks he is soooooo funny!

Cause: Mark has enjoyed texting so much that he sent me one at school the other day saying he had a surprise for me and it didn't have anything to do with Christmas. He just loved me. Hmmm. When I got home he gave me a piece of paper with this on it:

Effect: Needless to say I was suprised and over the moon! I love Carrie Underwood and I am so thrilled to be seeing her in concert. Spokane Family, we will be seeing you Memorial Day weekend and can you watch the boys? Thanks!

Isn't my husband the best!?

Reading

Who can describe the feeling of pride that comes over you when your children accomplish great things? To me, it feels like my skin is hot, my throat is full, my eyes are moist and my breath is short. I always like to think I feel this way when my heart gets too full and it has to send out all my love to the other parts of my body because it can't hold it in any longer.

I am so proud of this kid.

This one, who just the other day looked like this:

And now looks like this:

I had the privelege of going to observe in his classroom the other day.

His classroom. I still can't believe he's in school.

They were working on reading and writing and I loved every minute of being there. Watching them follow along with their teacher.

Watching them read the words with her.

Watching them read the words to each other.

But do you know my favorite part? My most favorite part in the whole world?

When Caleb came home and read to me.

My skin goes hot, my throat fills, my eyes get moist, and breathing becomes something I have to concentrate on. All because my heart is full.

With Joy.

With Pride.

With Love.

Oh! That's How!

So there I was...

looking down the scope of my .243, ready to take the kill shot on a big, mean-looking doe (it helps me to picture them with fangs) when all of a sudden...

Hold on. Let me back up to the beginning of the story.

Sunday after our church potluck (I don't do early morning hunts if I can help it and I likes me a good potluck!) we changed into our camo-gear mainly for Caleb and Owen's sake and we set off in Big Red. (side note - Caleb has now nicknamed our car Small, Dark Blue)

Within minutes my two scouts who were supposed to be spotting deer looked like this:

Before too long we reached our destination and they quickly woke up. We sat back and let Mark set up the blind and then we climbed in ready to sit about 5 minutes until a doe came walking towards us and presented me with just the right shot. Oh - that's not how hunting works? Darn it!

The boys were so excited and Owen kept saying "I can't believe we're really going hunting!" Well, the first part of our hunt was pretty boring. We sat behind that blind for close to an hour and didn't see much besides a herd of cows. Caleb had assembled a pile of seeds that would feed an ant colony for close to 10 years and Owen helped him when he wasn't picking stickers and thorns out of his pants.

I was pretty bored by this point and I asked Mark how much longer we had to sit there. "I could stay here until dark but it's your hunt babe so we can do what you want."

Well, dark was definitely too far away for me too sit there we we packed up the blind and decided to do some "spot and stalks". When we were driving to our location we had noticed some deer bedded down a little ways from us. We drove the truck past them and sure enough, they were still there.

We parked the truck a couple of hundred yards down the road and we slowly walked up to where we had saw them. The boys were behind me and I think they managed to step on every crackly leaf that has fallen so far this year. When I looked behind to tell them to be quieter, I saw that they were hunched over, tiptoeing and trying so hard to be quiet already. I just kept walking. If we saw the deer, great. If not, that was ok too.

It was actually another group of deer that we hadn't seen that spooked and took off running. They ended up "bumping" my little group of deer so we decided to go try some others.

We then proceeded to look high and look low. We looked around and under and pretty much all over. We stopped a couple different times and walked around - our little family train marching all over the countryside. I was the engine, followed by my little cars, Caleb and Owen and Mark was the caboose.

Finally, when we had just decided to go ahead and pack it in, we saw it.About 60 yards away from us was a big, fat lazy doe who just kept eating and didn't even really look at us. Mark and the boys were behind me as I lined up my sights. I took my time and made sure that I had everything just right. Mark was speaking to me in my head - "Take a breath and then let it out. Slowly pull the trigger.You should be surprised when it goes off. Don't flinch." Yadda, Yadda, Yadda.

I went ahead and shot.

My bullet hit the doe right in the lungs and she reared up and then fell. I had reloaded in case I needed to shoot again but Eagle Eye (that's me!) had struck again and I didn't need a second shot.

When Mark determined that it was ok for us to go close, Owen came running up to me and he yelled "That was Totally Awesome!!!" He was so siked. Caleb just kept grinning and he made sure to tell me that he was proud of me. We (Mark) loaded it up in Big Red and took it back to his parent's house in order to skin and gut it.

First we took some pictures:

Then we (Mark) got ready to do the dirty part. I told the boys they didn't have to watch if they didn't want to. They just looked at me and then shoved me out of the way so they could get closer to the blood and guts.

WARNING - GRAPHIC GUTS UP AHEAD!!

Caleb was very impressed with the size of the stomach and they both were impressed by the heart and the lungs. Mark showed them the lung that was intact and then they one that I had shot. Caleb again turned to me and said "I am so proud of you Mom!"

I'm glad I earned your approval son. It only took me killing something to do so.

While they were holding the doe's legs, I had to wonder - If I had given birth to two little girls, would they be doing the same thing?

 

I had to admit that the answer would probably be yes. Their destiny would be the same as mine. We were going to be a family of hunters whether I liked it or not. In choosing to love Mark, I also made the choice of supporting him to the best of my abilities in the things that he loves. Hunting, Fishing, Hiking. In return, I have a happy husband who will sit and read a book in order to make me happy and he will even pretend to enjoy one every now and then.