June 2013

With the month of June means that the joys and craziness of summer is beginning.

1. I had the opportunity to play golf with a good friend from high school and her mom in a golf tournament put on by our local hospital. It was so much fun. They had free food and drinks on every hole along with games to play to win prizes.

2. This year the group of girls that I had been coaching since 7th grade graduated from high school. Man does that make me feel old. It has been so fun to watch these girls grow and mature into adults. They were a fun group of girls and I will miss all their teasing and joking.

3. Trey had a fathers day BBQ at his school. It was a chance for the dads to go and spend time with their kids at school and enjoy some great food.

Man I did not do a good job taking pictures this month!

4. Trey is still playing baseball. He continues to improve and is starting to figure out the game and its rules more.

5. I had some great friends that gave us free tickets to a Portland Thorns game. (The women's professional soccer team in Portland). It was so much fun and we got to take the kids along with us.

6. I had the opportunity to go and watch a wonderful speaker named Ann Corwin. She has a great program called Pocket Full of Feelings. The whole point of it is to help teach kids to learn about and understand the feelings they have, why they have them and how they can deal with them. It has been fun to not only apply this at home but to also apply it to the kids I coach. It is amazing to see how many people don't understand the feelings they experience and how they can express them appropriately.
Check out the site for  more info. http://www.pocketfulloffeelings.com/

7. My in-laws have season tickets to the Portland Timbers (the men's professional soccer team in Portland) They are willing to share the tickets with us and sometimes some of our friends. We had the opportunity to take some great friends of ours the Wilkinson's to a game with us. However, their youngest got sick so Kristen stayed home. But we still had fun with Ryan and their oldest son.

8. We had an eventful father's day this year. Kestley was up all night screaming that her stomach hurt and it continued into father's day. We ended up taking her to the ER because she wouldn't stop and wouldn't eat or drink. After a few hours up there, and IV, xrays, and monitoring they sent us home with some medicine to try to help clear out her system. She had a large block in her intestines. After a few hours at home she started feeling better. Needless to say Kestley and Jeff spent the afternoon taking a nap together. HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!

9. Our two older kids and two cousins went on  a camp out with grandma and grandpa Hodges to the Dufur campground. They got to test out grandma's new camp trailer and spend the weekend playing and eating lots of good food.

10. We had a fun and exciting multi family yard sale at our house. The nice thing is that we can get rid of all the stuff we don't need and we get a little bit of money in return.

11. We had the opportunity to go out to the Kent's house. They are a great family in our church who have a big ranch with horses lots of fun activities for the kids and a huge water slide down one of their hillsides.

12. Tenley is a year and a half old. She is in the 50% for height and weight. She has been such a joy and blessing in our family. Her smile and eyes light up our life. She is very strong willed and knows exactly what she wants and when she wants it.

13. I had the opportunity to help out with a soccer camp for the high school team that I help coach. An elite coach from Portland came up and worked with our girls and the coaches. It was great to get some new info and insight into the game.

14. Trey started taking swim lessons. When he started he was nervous about putting his face in the water but by the end of the two weeks he was jumping off the diving board.

15. Our garden is already starting to produce. We have raspberries and zucchini and squash.

 16. Since my In-laws are season ticket holders for the Timbers. Trey, Jeff, Steve, Matt and Mike got to go meet the players, play games on the field and wander around the stadium. Trey even got his hat autographed by a bunch of the players.

 17. Since it is starting to get hot here we are getting more and more creative with our water activities. I decided to take the slide off of their play structure and move it out front with the pool under it. The kids had a blast but we quickly discovered the pool was too small. So next on the list is a bigger pool!

May 2013

1. The kids had a play lunch at Grandpa Hodges'. They pick up grandma from work, eat lunch with her then take her back to work and go back to play Skylanders with grandpa. Then he takes them to buy them a treat before they come home. (Now they think they need a treat anytime they go for a ride with Grandpa Hodges!)

2. Both kids had dentist appointments. Everything went well and their teeth look great. And the kids think it is so fun to go to the dentist.

3. I went to a girls night at church. We made some yummy food, played some fun games, and got to play will all sorts of new kitchen toys.

4. Tenley had a crazy rash all over her body. It would come for a day or two and then go away for a week and then come back again. We finally took her to the dr. for it and they ran a bunch of tests and couldn't figure out what it was. We decided that we think it was from the sun screen we had been using because since it ran out she hasn't had a rash again.

5. Our family went for a hike to the Mosier tunnels. The kids had a blast discovering nature. Tenley was determined to walk the whole way. Luckily we got her to hold off until the way home so it was all down hill.

6. We planted our garden. We had been growing our veggies inside the house for weeks. So it was exciting to plant them outside. As you can see Tenley is overly helpful. Luckily she just picked the roses and not the newly planted plants.

7. Trey went to his first friend birthday party. It was in Hood River at the bowling ally. He had so much fun spending time with kids from his kindergarten class and from his baseball team. He even got his first strike.

8. Trey's class had a tea party for mothers day. I got to go to his class and listen to them sing a song. He read a part he wrote about me. And then they gave us punch and cookies and we got to listen to the teacher read the book Love You Forever.

9. Jeff took Trey to the father son campout that our church was having. They also let Grandpa Sox tag along. They all seemed to have a great time. Trey kept calling it a Father OR son camp out.

10. For mother's day this year we had dinner at our house. We had lots of yummy food and got to enjoy spending time with both our mothers.

11. Kestley had two celebrations for her 4th birthday. The first party we had was on Sunday with the family. She had a princess party and was so excited by everything. Then on her actual birthday we had a tea party and we took her to Mcdonald's for dinner.

12. Trey still had more baseball games. He is loving it and is getting better and better each game.

13. Jeff had a long weekend off work. So we decided to go for a cram packed extreme fun weekend. We made a trip to Portland and made a few stops on the way. We stopped at Bonneville Dam and looked at all the fish at the hatchery. They have a huge sturgeon that the kids were fascinated with. We then went on to Multnomah Falls and hiked up to the bridge. We then had a shopping trip in Portland. The next day we took the kids to Sorosis park, played baseball and went for a ride in grandpa Sox's new boat. On Sunday we played basketball, frisbee, and played kickball among other things in grandma Hodges back yard. The next day we went for a bike ride, played more basketball, and went for a Hike along the river front. The end of our extreme fun weekend was a scavenger hunt finding historical things around The Dalles.

14. Trey's class went on a field trip to the fire station. He was so excited that he got to use a fire hose and even got a "real" Fire fighter hat.

15. Tenley was being very quiet one day. When I went to find what she was doing I found her in Trey's bedroom with a red dry erase marker. She didn't even skip a beat when I came in, she just kept right on leaving her mark all over his room.

16. When I would go to pick up Trey from Kindergarten I would pick up their cousin Gavin and we would take him to the babysitter on our way home. This day we decided to walk up. As we were walking I looked up to see all three of them holding hands. We are so glad that our kids live close enough to get to spend sometime with their cousins.

17. We took an all girls shopping trip to Portland. It was my mother in law Teddie, Sister in law Stephanie, her daughter Jaynee, My mother, me and Kestley. It was so fun to get to go shopping and let the girls have a special day with their mothers and grandmas.

18. After we planted our garden we discovered that we had a family of squirrels living in the bushes below our house. They seemed to think that our garden was their personal salad buffet. So we decided to take matters into our own hands and trap them and relocate them. As you can see we caught a few other things besides squirrels. We ended up trapping 12 squirrels total and there were still more.

19. Trey had a Jog-a-thon at school. They had to run laps around the field in 90+ degree weather. He ended up doing 19 laps which was 3rd best in his class. It was so cute to watch him run and run and run with a big smile on his face the whole time of course!

April 2013

So I have all my posts saved on here, I just haven't had time to download the pictures to go with them. So technically I am not behind!(or something!)

1. I have been coaching basketball one on one with a Junior at our high school. She is being recruited by Navy. So I had the opportunity to meet with the Navy coach, give her a tour of the school and visit with her for over an hour. I learned a lot about the Navy and it was a great experience to meet with her.

2. Trey has more baseball. He had his opening day, which is a fun activity where they introduce all the teams in all the leagues and talk about the little league program.

3. My mom and Dad celebrated their 46th wedding anniversary. So we had them over for dinner. My parents have been such a great example to me. I am so grateful that they have been married for that long. I am grateful for all the opportunities and experiences that they were able to provide me. I hope that I can live up to their example.

4. The kids and I spent the afternoon planting seeds for our garden. I saved up our egg cartons. We filled them with potting soil and seeds and we had our own little indoor garden. It was fun to watch the kids wake up every morning and run to the cartons to see if anything was growing yet.

5. Trey had student led conferences at school. He was so excited to show me everything and tell me about everything he does in school. He truly loves school but I think it is more for the social aspect than the learning side of things. He has learned so much this year it has been fun to watch him grow. He can write his first and last name, he can write his numbers to 100. He is doing a good job with his reading, and is doing great with math. He also loves going to music class and PE. He goes to the library once a week and he has been bring home encyclopedia books about different animals and he loves to read them and look at the pictures.

6. One of my friends from high school had a baby shower. It was so much fun to get to see some old friends. I also go the opportunity to go see my best friend from high school's house. They had a fire in their house over a year ago and they finally got the keys to their house about a week early. It was so much fun to walk through it and see all that they were able to do. They changed the entire layout and made it much more useful for their needs. We then went out to dinner. It was great to get to catch up with her and her family.

7. We took the kids to Chuck e Cheese. Jeff had a furlough day so we took this opportunity to spend the day with the kids in Portland.

8. We went to the cherry festival parade. Jeff took Trey to watch a high school baseball game. He was so excited to see the big kids play. Then we took the kids over to the parking lot at our church and I took Trey's training wheels off. After about 5 minutes of me helping him a little bit. He took off and he hasn't looked back since.

9. Our Neighbors were putting in a new driveway. In the process the contractors knocked down our retaining wall. They attempted to put it back together with bits and pieces that were left. However it didn't look very good and looked like it was going to fall down. So we upgraded the whole wall to better blocks, which looked much better.

10. I received a gift card from my basketball team. So we had a free date night to Double Berry. Tenley was lucky and got to crash our party. Some how she ended up eating alot of my ice cream. Lucky for her she was being very cute so I was willing to share! (As if I didn't have enough!)

11. While I was out working on rebuilding our retaining wall Jeff was inside playing with the kids. They first had a very serious basketball game which was quickly followed with a silly hat tea party. In which you could only talk in a silly voice. I am not sure I have seen the kids laugh that hard before.

12. The kids kept asking for basketball jerseys so they could play a real basketball game with daddy. I found some online and we had our old numbers put on them along with our last name. The kids have to get them out anytime we get a basketball game going.

13. I was sorting through a bunch of old magazines and had a big pile on the ground. One of the kids came running in and stepped on one and slid across the floor. Needless to say it quickly became a game and before I knew it we had about 15 magazine ripped into pieces and an instant slip and slide in our living room.

14. We finally had a day warm enough to get out the new slip and slide and new pool for Tenley. The kids love spending time outside playing in the water.

15. This is Kestley's new favorite doll. She has to sleep with her every night and takes her with her every where she goes. It is funny how she goes through phases with different toys that she has to drag along.