My Beautiful Days

It's no secret that we've been gone from the blogging world for awhile now.  Life just gets to be too busy to keep up, especially during the summer!  So, instead of trying to catch you up on everything I've missed telling, I'm going to sum it all up in pictures and minimal words ... We cleaned out some of our cabinets to prepare for our kitchen upgrade ...  Ethan has had some fits ...  I planted our vegetable garden ... Ethan played with sidewalk chalk and got it all over his face ... We've taken baths ...  Ethan has run around the house in just his diaper (and LOVED it) ...  Ellis has played soccer (and has done amazingly great this season) ... Colin graduated from Kindergarten and refused to smile for the camera ... We took a family (minus Ethan) vacation ... We visited Wall Drug in South Dakota and posed for pictures with fake cowboys ... We hiked through the Black Hills ... We visited Mou...

If you've ever seen "Bear in the Big Blue House" then this song is a familiar one to you.  It's one that we sing quite frequently in our home, though we change the words to sing "Oh where, oh where, oh where is Ethan?" when he is waking up.  It's a wonderful tradition that I just love because when I sing "Where can Ethan be?" he responds with a very loud "BE!" and a big smile! I digress ... I feel very much like you could all be asking "Where oh where oh where is Kami?!" because I have been gone for so long.  Blogging hasn't been on the top of my priority list as of late.  We've been crazy busy the past couple of weeks and I'm just doing what I can to keep my head above the water.   A couple of weeks ago, Monte and I spent five days visiting Las Vegas with his parents.  This was my first trip to Vegas, and it definitely is a city to remember!  We stopped for a visit at Hoover Dam ... Tak...

... Monte and I are probably there! It all started in December of 2008, on our honeymoon.  We were on the island of Kaua'i, in Hawaii.  We were to spend eight or nine (I honestly don't remember) glorious days in our oceanfront cottage, enjoying the sunshine, catching the tourist sites and enjoying the beginning of our married life.  Day one was beautiful and we spent it on Poipu beach, catching those beautiful rays.  Days two through the end of our trip we experienced torrential rainfall and the island of Kaua'i began flooding.  We had to leave our beachside cottage and fly to the island of Oahu, Hawaii in hopes of leaving the rain and finding the sun (and in hopes of not being stranded on Kaua'i!).  The flooding truly was that bad!  However, upon arrival in Oahu, we realized that we had not yet escaped the rain.  We spent many days of our honeymoon going out and visiting the tourist sites that Oahu has to offer, and we enjoyed them all in the c...

Once upon a time, about one or two months ago, Monte's brother and sister-in-law came up with the idea that they would like to have all five of our kids at their house for a weekend, and with that weekend would come a weekend of "just us" time for me and Monte.  Once upon a time we took them up on their offer and arranged to have all four of our boys go to their home for the weekend while Claire stayed at home with a friend, as she is involved in an extra-curricular activity that requires her to be home.  Once upon a time is right now.  Monte and I are enjoying our stay in a cabin near Brainerd, our children are having a fabulously wonderful time at their aunt and uncle's home and life really couldn't get much better. I will admit, however, that as much as I crave these little get-aways, it only takes one night for me to miss my regular routine of being home with all of my family under one roof.  This time away is wonderful and very much treasured and enjoyed, b...

Our bathroom is almost ready to go (in fact, much more ready than it appears in this picture) ... My awesome hubby and adorable son painted some pull-out drawers for inside our cabinets ... Claire was a villager in "Beauty and the Beast" ... Iain, Claire and Ellis enjoyed some pool time while visiting Grandpa and Grandma in Arizona (Colin did too, just not in this particular picture) ... We toured Luke Air Force Base.  This is Monte trying on a helmet with night vision goggles ... This is our whole family (including Grandpa and Grandma) at Luke Air Force Base ... We hiked near Canyon Lake and got some amazing photography opportunities ... That's our life in a nutshell.  So, how are you?!

Hello hello!  I have just a couple of minutes of spare time (who am I kidding?  I have all the spare time in the world!) and figured it was time to hop on the hotel computer and give you a little update on our vacation!  We have kept an extremely busy schedule while we've been here, which has been good, as I've discovered our kids have a tendency to quickly bore of things!  We have taken hikes up mountains (and prayed that the rattlesnakes stayed away!), visited a ghost town, visited the Luke Air Force Base and received a tour compliments of two very awesome air force employees.  We have eaten out and eaten in, spent many hours in the pool and much time in the sun.  I'm hoping to come home with this beautiful burn I've got going on :) Through all of this vacationing, though, I must admit that I miss home and am so very ready to head there tomorrow!  Thank you Woody and Marion for an amazing vacation!  It has been fabulous :)    ...

Well, I've been gone for awhile, but it's entirely my own fault.  You see, I've been unable to get to a computer with internet access.  We brought our laptop with us to Arizona (did I mention that my family is currently on vacation, visiting my inlaws in Arizona?!), but unfortunately we are still having problems with the internet connections on it.  For some reason our wireless card will detect the networks available, but won't give us the option to connect to them.  So, that is a problem I will deal with when we get back home.  For now, I will just enjoy my vacation, enjoy this beautiful 87 degree weather, enjoy the peace and quiet of spending the afternoon with my daughter and my mother in law. Did I mention that I'm using my inlaws' computer to type this?  Because I am. I've been thinking about this blog post for awhile now, wondering just how I'm going to encompass everything that I have to share - and I decided to be brief about it.  However, ...

What do you get when you mix two boys with shaggy hair and a step-mom with a shears (that desperately needs sharpening)?  Well you get haircut night, of course!  Two nights ago, Iain and Colin were victimized by my shears and they are shaggy no more!  Here is Iain saying a sorrowful goodbye to his shaggy hair (I have yet to figure out WHY he loves his hair so overgrown and out of control!). Colin didn't mind the haircut quite so much. When it was done, Iain was all smiles! All in all, I would say it was a successful operation! Beyond the new haircuts, a lot has been going on around here!  Monte and I just returned from a wonderful weekend away at a resort in Brainerd.  It was a great and relaxing time for us to be away together!  When we got home, we heard a great report from our babysitter and even saw some of the pictures of the chaos that reigned while we were gone, including this picture of Colin the warrior: I guarantee you I wouldn't want...

YES! We are FINALLY home! :) Not that I'm at all complaining about the wonderful vacation we got to take, but let's just say that the road trip home was hair pulling, poke-my-own-eye-out frustrating a little bit stressful. I think we were all just so sick of being in the car and our youngest child (dear, three-year-old Colin) was going positively crazy. So, we rolled in a little after 4pm yesterday and I was MORE than ready to be here! We unpacked - we rejoiced at the fact that we didn't have to mow our lawn (thanks to our good friend, Chris, who mowed it for us while we were away!) - we were excited at the fact that we got to have a REAL meal tonight instead of eating out (I will be SO happy if I don't have to eat out again for a YEAR ... with the exception of my date to Benihana with my good friend, Becca !) .. but I think the BEST part of coming home was that we received our Engagement Pictures from Moments In Time Photography (we were at fault for not having...

I have several things on my heart to write about, so I'm hoping to combine them all into this one fabulous posting! Colorado has been beautiful, wonderful, restful ... everything that I could have wanted it to be. Yesterday, Claire and I went horseback riding through the Rocky Mountains. It was SO wonderful! I will admit there were times when I was a bit nervous - times when the trail we were on was a little too narrow and the fall next to it a little too steep for my liking. Thankfully, God was and is in control and we made it through the ride without any problems beyond a good case of saddle seat for both of us when we were done! Today was a wonderful and very full day of biking. Our entire clan (Monte, me and all four of our kiddos) left Breckenridge at 10:30 this morning on one very long bike ride. We rode to Frisco, had lunch at A&W, ran a few errands and returned our bikes and rode the shuttle back to Breckenridge. All in all, we rode 12+ miles in the beautiful Ro...

At very long last, our 'long drive to get there' part of our road trip is complete! We left Kearney, NE around 8:30 this morning, stopped for a couple of bathroom breaks and a half hour lunch break, and rolled into Breckenridge around 2:30pm. It had been a long day in the car, and since it was our second day of travelling, I know the kids were starting to get antsy! This came to life after we got here - they were running around and screaming like nobody's business! I was close to turning them loose on the city and telling them to come back when they were tired (side note: I'm not a terrible parent, I would never DO that!). But instead, we all went on a hike to wear out some energy, played a game of tag, ran around some more, went to dinner, walked a lot more and came back for bed. Now, I'm sitting here in bed with swollen feet! I don't know if it was from walking in shoes that weren't the best (when we set out for our hike we weren't intending on ...

Today marks the end of the first day of our family vacation to Colorado. We are currently in Kearney, Nebraska at a hotel. My husband and two of our kiddos are downstairs in the pool, I am upstairs in our room with our other two kids, watching a baseball game and just relaxing. What a day it has been! We hit the road at 6:30 this morning, which was a half hour later than we had hoped, but we didn't mind. We drove straight through to Kearney with the exception of a 45 minute lunch break at a rest stop (we packed sandwich makings and other yummy food for lunch) and a couple of quick bathroom breaks/driver switches. Monte let me drive for a majority of the trip, which I LOVED! I'm kind of a nerd like that, but I truly do enjoy driving quite a bit! Now I'm just waiting for the kiddos to get that pent up energy out of their system so we can go to sleep and enjoy another long day in the car tomorrow! We made 10 hours of our trip today and have about another six to go tom...

Today I woke up and found myself here: Not that it was an accident by any means. I am in my hometown, visiting with my mom and step-dad. My boys decided they wanted to take a trip "up north" to do some fishing for the weekend, and thus a trip was formed. Now I'm sitting here enjoying the company of my mom and my step-Bob, loving the sight of my boys fishing from the paddle boat in this frigidly cold cool spring weather, and looking forward to another evening of playing cards late into the night. *SiGh* It feels so good to be here and just rest - particularly because I'm trying to kick this bronchitis I've got right out the door. Tomorrow we're heading back home and begin another busy week of soccer and baseball games - only to head out again on our family vacation to Colorado this coming Saturday. The funny thing about it all is that I am by no means stressed out by everything on my plate - by the loads of laundry to be done before we go, before the pac...