While the Wife's away the Husband will...

.... Work! Last week I was in Chicago visiting my sister and her family for 6 days (more on that later). When I got home, I was surprised to find a newly painted bedroom and bathroom in the "master suite" (if you can call it that, if you've seen my house you know what I mean!) I am only posting a picture of the bathroom right now because still need to finish decorating the bedroom. The bathroom used to be a bright-ish blue. I liked the color okay, it was getting a little old, but the biggest problem was the terrible paint job. I can't even explain how bad it was. It was like that 4 1/2 years ago when we moved in, and we just hadn't gotten around to fixing it. We had started talking about paint colors before I left but I didn't know he was planning to do it himself.

He painted the yucky wood cabinet black, and the walls are a creamy-greyish-taupe, although they just look cream here, they do have color. I love the simplicity of it! If you know me very well you know my motto is "simple, yet elegant", and this fits the bill. Thanks honey, you done good!

The flowers are from my rose bushes in the backyard. Aren't they gorgeous? I put them in the bathroom because I already had a huge boquet of roses from Ryan in the other room. Isn't he just the best?!!!!

I just picked out this shower curtain last night from Garnet Hill. I like the bright colors, and I was getting tired of the stripes on my last one. I've had the last for like 8 years, it was time for a new one!

Haiuku?

We've been working on Big D's Faith in God Award for Family Night lately. Tonight we wrote haiku's about God's creations or a gospel principal. Here are a few:

At eight years of age
Baptisms are done on days
Cleansed by sacred prayer

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Waves softly roll in
My feet are buried in the sand
Dozing off to sleep

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Without works it dies
As small as a mustard seed
It can move mountains

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A great ball of clay
Circling among the stars
A witness of God

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Regret fills my heart
I promise never again
I know he forgives

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Vast open canyon
His creation is awesome
I know he loves us

Let the countdown begin!

Aunt Carrie, Ryan's sister made us an awesome chain-link countdown calendar for our upcoming trip to Disneyland. We started it yesterday!

What a good boy, am I!

BubbaGoo has turned out to be an awesome sleeper! I moved him out of our room and into the crib 3 days ago and he is doing great. He sleeps 7 hour stretches, on average! I took this picture this morning at 8 o'clock. He was still sleeping even with all the kids running around making noise and the dog barking!

The next picture was a week or so ago, he was napping on my bed and i went in to check on him, beacuse he had been asleep for a while. He found his thumb! So far he is not a pacifier baby and to be honest I rarely ever need him to be. He is so good. But I really don't want him to be a thumb sucker! You can't take a kids thumb away, when they're 5 and still sucking it! Thankfully he has not found his thumb since that day.

We are still playing with nicknames: Mister Maser, Buster, Bubbers, BubbaGoo...Chubby. (Any suggestions?) At 2 months old he is bigger than some 3-6 month olds I've seen lately. Maybe that's why he sleep so well. O-Dog was a skinny little thing and the worst sleeper ever!

Soccer

O-dog is playing soccer for the first time this year and it's so fun and funny to watch him and all his buddies. Most of the kids are from our ward, our old joy school group and in the same kindergarten class, so they know each other well! It's nice to go as a family and support him. At least their games are pretty quick - not like baseball season!

End of Summer

The weekend before school started we took the kids to Dillon Beach.

One last hurrah.

We were joined by Grandma and Grandpa Lewis and Aunt Carrie.

There's always a little mystery as to what kind of weather you'll get on the coast in Northern California, but we lucked out that weekend and it was gorgeous. A tiny bit windy, but it gave us a chance to fly our kite, and it died down after a while. By the time the fog started to roll in, we were done and ready to go home.

We even managed to take Cooper on his first family outing. (if you didn't know, Cooper is the dog, not the new baby.)

The Baby did awesome, by the way!

Goodbye summer, next year we will be able to enjoy you more! We already have lots and lots of plans for you!

School's in session

The boys started school over a month ago. Crazy how time flies! Miss P was a little sad about her brothers leaving so she had to get her picture taken too.

Thanks Grandma Lewis for the Back-to-School shopping spree!

O-Dog was so excited that he sat right down by his friend and forgot to put his backpack in his cubby. He is doing great and loves going to school.

Big D is an old pro by now. Most of his best friends are in his class so he was happy about that.

Miss P recently started pre-school (with some of the other families from church that live in our neighborhood - and Michelle!) she loves going and I am enjoying the quiet time while she's there.

Maybe I should be a little sad about my kids being gone, but I am enjoying some peace and quiet and so proud that they are learning and becoming more independent - not that they ever had a problem with that!