Happy New Year!...a month late

I have spent the last few days and several hours of my life copying my blog posts and editing them in a word document to print off. I read snippets of my posts as I was editing, realizing how much I have forgotten and how happy I was that I had written some of those memories down. So one of my new goals it to do a better job keeping my pictures organized and blog more, so I can print those memories off, and maybe even replace that as my scrapbooking! I'm starting to like this idea.
So I'm backtracking a bit to Christmas. Better late than never I guess.
It was a good Christmas spent here in Oregon. Christmas Eve was spent at Kristin and Alan's house eating good food, playing Dr. Mario, and some fun with "Minute to Win it" games.





We slept at George and Nancy's house and had to get up and go to church at 8:30 in the morning! When we got home, we got back in our pajamas, and spent the rest of the day opening presents. It was fun spending time with George, Nancy, Mark, and Tracee.







January is my LEAST favorite month! Coming off the holidays, and the dreary Oregon weather with the length of the month make it hard to live through. Luckily it hasn't been too bad. We were blessed at the beginning of the month to find a new car! This is the 2nd car we have bought in the 7 years we have been married, and it feels so nice to have a car that doesn't kill my back to put the kids in. I feel very spoiled indeed. We got an amazing deal on a 2006 Honda Odyssey with all leather interior, and I love it. It was more an answer to prayer that we found this car than anything else, and Dave and I feel very blessed to have found it. It has made life a whole lot easier.

Sammy is back into Joyschool and swimming lessons which she loves. The holidays were hard because she didn't have any scheduled activities and everyday she would ask "when is Joyschool going to start?"
It's funny to think Taylor is almost 2! Just in the past few weeks she has learned so many new words and communicates so much better! Both girls are very funny, but sometimes Taylor can be a bit of a bully to poor sensitive Samantha. But they do love each other and sing songs together during the day when they play!

We are looking forward to a fun Superbowl weekend spent in Sunriver, Oregon with friends eating yummy food, and enjoying the great company!
Happy New Year!

A Merry Joyschool Christmas

Sammy has had a wonderful last few months with her Joyschool group! We have done a lot of fun things, including last week when we had the opportunity for the kids to serve the elderly their lunch at the Art's center up the street! It was so cute, and they did such a great job! They all got to wear their cute caps, gloves, and aprons and after they served the old people their salads, they went up on stage and sang a bunch of their Joyschool Christmas songs, which of course the old folks thoroughly enjoyed. One lady even came up and gave me $20 to give to the kids!! I really tried not to take it but she was insistent. But we put the $20 to good use where we bought gifts for the kids to exchange at our Christmas party, as well as use it for a gift we bought for a less fortunate kid that we were getting a Christmas present for, so we felt good about that!

Our Christmas party was really fun too! The kids got to dress up and put on the Nativity, which they loved doing, and then of course they had to sing all the songs we've learned from Joyschool. It was a really fun party spending time with friends, and seeing how much fun all those kids have together! Looking forward to good times next year.

Is anybody there??

Hello fellow bloggers! So I took a little break over the summer and it extended a bit into the Fall. What a fun summer it was! So much to post but I think I'll just start with Halloween.
I was a little too ambitious for my sewing skill level in my attempt to make homemade Halloween costumes. Sammy wanted to be Ariel and we already had a costume, so that became the theme for our family. So I had her costume taken care of, I bought a lobster costume online for Taylor so she could be Sebastian, and then I thought I could make mine and Dave's costumes. I was going to be Ursula the seawitch and Dave was King Triton!

It ended up turning out okay! I was happy and I think if there was an award for best dressed family, I think we would have won! It was fun dressing up together. I don't know if I'll do it again next year, or ever again. It was hard because again, my craftiness only extends so far until it's very hard and stressful to try and make something from reading instructions from another blog. At least it turned out okay, because if it hadn't, and I'd spent all that time in making them, I would have been mad!! I have had plenty of unsuccessful attempts of making other projects, and I didn't want this one to go the same way.
The same week of Halloween I was in charge of Joyschool and had to put on a Halloween party with all the kids. It was really fun and we had a costume parade with all the kids. Sammy loves being in Joyschool with all her friends!
Hope you all had a great Halloween this year!

4th of July!

It's always nice to have a beautiful sunny day for the 4th of July in Oregon! It doesn't always happen but yesterday it did! The whole weekend was quite nice weather wise. We spent a lot of time downtown hanging out at different water fountains and Saturday's Market. Yesterday for the 4th we went hiking in the morning at Silver Creek Falls. What a beautiful place to be. It was only the second time I had ever been there. Because we had two kids hiking we didn't go too far but enjoyed the waterfalls and playing in the water for a couple of hours.
Afterwards we went to the Bell's house and celebrated the rest of the day with birthday cake, delicious food, water fights, motorcycle rides, fireworks, and good friends and family. Happy 4th to Everyone! God Bless America!

Preschool Performace

This last year Sammy got to attend the Westside Academy Dance Preschool which she loved. She was so happy to go to Preschool where she did Gymnastics and Tap Dance two days a week. It was so fun for me to have her there just as much as she loved it. At the end of the year they do a dance performance, and yesterday it was at the Newmark Theater downtown. Sam was all dressed up in her dance outfit and her Preschool group did a dance during the performance. It was such a proud moment for Dave and me, and we loved watching her up there dancing and singing! So proud of our Sammy!

catching up

Well usually I'm good at posting a bunch of pictures when a lot is happening, and lazy when I don't have much to post, but lately I have been lazy in both respects. So instead of recapping all the pictures from Easter, and Mother's Day, I think I will just start from this last weekend, which was so much fun for us!
Dave participated in his first ever 100 mile bike ride from Beaverton to Pacific City on Saturday. Luckily for us, our friends have an aunt who let us stay at their beach house which was literally down the street from the finish line! So Sam, Taylor and I drove to the beach on Friday with our friends the Montgomery's and the Cinquinni's came later that night. We were there waiting for Dave when he crossed the finish line! We spent two nights hanging out playing on the beach a lot where it DID NOT rain on us at all (pretty unbelievable for Oregon weather) and we had sooooo much fun. Dave finished his race in about 6 1/2 hours and was pretty tired afterward. He even shaved his legs, arms, head, and face for the event. I have never seen him so hairless!
It was a very enjoyable weekend with good food and great friends! So much fun for us.