CAPTURED

Okay. Everybody can rest easy. Mr. Squirrel has been captured. I repeat, Mr. Squirrel has been captured. He has been held for the past week without bail or any visitation rights. While I'm still kind of fuzzy on what he's being charged with, you can all rest easy and know that he is being treated as inhumanely as possible.

FYI: The tie is the calling card of the two little bounty hunters that put Mr. Squirrel behind bars. They wish to remain anonymous.

My Husband Likes To Hike

It's been a while since I've posted something. We have been doing some things so it's not for a lack or anything to blog about....just honest and pure laziness. But I decided that we can't go the whole month of June without one post. Here is our first hiking adventure since our move to sunny Arizona.

On Memorial weekend, we were trying to think of something to do. Erik's first response (always) is hiking or camping or a combination of the two. I've been fairly opposed to such outings until recently due to consistent whining and crying and wanting to be held by two little boys when we used to attempt to hike. Notice the word attempt.

This time I thought, why not. They should be old enough to last through a hike and then we'd just have to carry Makayla. I gave my approval of a hike and sent Erik off to plan it.

Now I've learned that around here, there is really no variation in weather. It's either hot, hotter, or I'm the freaking wicked witch of the west melting. And by Memorial Day weekend we were to hotter ( a high of 101 degrees for the day).

We gathered our supplies (food, water, sunscreen, water, hats, sunscreen, hiking shoes, sunglasses, and oh yeah water and sunscreen) and we got up early to set out for our hike.

Erik decided on a little place called Picacho Peak. Here's some fascinating info about Picacho Peak: It is the where the most western battle was fought during the Civil War and Erik informed me that it's pronounced Pee-ka-choe and not Pikachu as in the Pokemon character. I don't know why I kept calling it that.

Our journey begins. I think our trail was about 1.5 or 2 miles.

One of many rests up the trail.

We didn't make it all the way up since it got pretty steep but we were soooo close.

Climbing back down. This is just to show that I was actually there and to show off my awesome pastey white legs. :)


Even though she was carried the entire time she was still exhausted.

Untitled from Rachel Witbeck on Vimeo.

And Preston lost his mind.

All the kids did awesome! No one cried or fell or made me want to pull out my hair. I'll definitely be more inclined to do this again....just don't tell Erik.

The Graduate!

Isn't he the cutest little graduate!

This has been a rough year for my sweet Preston. To start off, he started school in Portland in September. It was only "half day" but it was more like "we'll babysit your kids for a couple hours and send them back". 8:30 to 11 am was a total joke. Not to mention he NEVER had any homework of any kind. I had to come up with my own homework for him. I think the last thing Preston needs is me in charge of his higher learning! :)

Right before we moved, I had a parent/teacher conference with Preston's teacher. She told me that he's doing really good....a little behind in his reading and sight words but he's catching up really fast. Okay. Sounds good.

Fast forward to our move to Arizona. We get him enrolled in his current school, which we have to drive 20 minutes to get to since we were living with Erik's sister for awhile, and he's immediately at a disadvantage. Not only is it a full day, which I love by the way, but they started in August....a full month before Preston. But I was told that he was doing good, right?

Wrong. The second day he was there, his teacher comes up to me and says "I'm concerned". Uh-oh. She then proceeds to tell me that he's not even registering on any level. He doesn't know anything. Now I feel like a total failure as a parent but I'm also ticked at his teacher in Portland. What the heck was all this talk about doing great and catching up?

Okay. Get over it and work on the problem. Preston then had homework every night. Books sent home with him. A lot of tears of frustration. A lot of high-fives for his successes. One very sad call from school begging me to come and get him. So many prayers for him.

It's hard to watch your child struggle and all you can do is push and pray.

At the end of the year all the kids are given a test to see where they are for the next year. We were all nervous. Me, Erik, Preston, and his teacher. He took the test.

Here we have Preston starting school not even registering at any level in reading, phonograms, and sightwords to not only surpassing the benchmark in all the areas but scoring the highest in recognizing phonograms! We were all so excited!

Preston has worked so hard and came so far in such a short amount of time. He's reading so well is doing first grade work like a pro!

Congratulations Preston! You are a force to be reckoned with and you have proven that there isn't anything you can't do!

Bryce's "Friends"

So Bryce has a few "friends". I'm not opposed to Bryce having his "friends" but they can be a very bad influence at times.

Like when I ask him to clean up his room and his "friends" decide to take all the clothes out of drawers and mix them with dirty clothes and then jump in and throw clothes around.

Or when I hear Makayla crying. There is no explanation other than "Bryce being mean" and Bryce saying his "friends" did it.

Or maybe when I find him in the family room with DVDs and video games scattered around because his "friends" want to watch something.

They even make Bryce hit kids in his primary class sometimes.

Do you want to meet these "friends"?

Here's Bryce with his "friends". What? You want to see them up close? Okay.

Meet Tenney. He is skin colored, mischievous, short spider.


Meet Razey. He is also a skin colored, mischievous, short spider. He is Tenney's twin.


I'm hoping these twins move away soon.

For You

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.

I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;

so I love you because I know no other way in which there is no I or you;

so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand;

so intimate that when you fall asleep it is my eyes that close.

~Pablo Neruda

Happy 8th Anniversary. I love you!

31

That's right. Erik turned the ripe old age of 31. And let me tell you I poured my heart and soul into this cake. Can't you tell by my awesome cake decorating/bakery skills? :)



And the kids got really into buying him presents. They put a lot of thought into what Dad should have. And this is what they came up with:

Makayla said "Numenem's". I had to translate but I think I got it right.


A blue tie from Preston.


And Bryce HAD to get him this Star Wars t-shirt. I think it was more for Bryce than Erik.

Happy Birthday Erik! Know that this little family loves you more than anything!

Just Ignore Them

I feel bad for Makayla some days. She is bombarded with boy stuff all the time. Lightsabers, cars, Transformers, Spiderman, etc. She puts on her princess attire and the little men run screaming in the other direction.

Sometimes it's a game to her.

Sometimes it hurts her.

So she and I have a date everyday to be girlie. We dress up, dance around and watch a princess movie. Right now, The Little Mermaid is her favorite but Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella are near and dear to her heart.

We love it!

But there is still a problem.

Boys.

They hear the word "princess" and they avoid us like the plague.

Or do they?

Here is Bryce just passing through to grab a toy. Uh-huh.

What I love is when boys pretend to not watch the princess movie. I'll look out of the corner of my eye and see one of them peeking around the corner and the other peeking over the couch. If asked if they would like to come and join us, the vehemently deny watching said princess movie and run off.

Untitled from Rachel Witbeck on Vimeo.

Now we just ignore them when watching the princess collection...unless it's just too tempting to raz them about it. They are too easy to tease sometimes!

I love it!

Here's another video of Makayla loving her movie and in this case Bryce is actually hating it!

Untitled from Rachel Witbeck on Vimeo.

Bribes/Motivaton

I am not above bribes. I call it "motivation" and I "motivate" my children on a daily basis and usually it gets results. But Preston is a tricky one. He thinks about what I want done and what he gets in return and decides if it's really worth his time.

The bribes are starting to get bigger.

Preston has been dragging his feet with riding his bike without training wheels. The bike he's been riding he got for Easter when he was 3 years old. He looks pretty ridiculous riding it but he would not give it up.

So I "motivated".

On the Thursday before Easter, I presented my proposition to Preston. Just note that this was taking place on the walk home from school and there were several comments from Bryce but mostly they just involved calling Preston a baby so they weren't very useful to the negotiations.

Me: Hey Preston. You see that kid riding his bike?
Preston: Yeah.
Me: He doesn't have training wheels.
Preston: *sigh* Yeah.
Me: Don't you want to ride your bike like him?
Preston: But mom, he's older than me anyways. I'll ride it when I'm big like him. Does that sound good?
Me: How 'bout you and I make a deal.
Preston: *eyeing me suspiciously* What deal?
Me: Welllll, if you can ride your bike without training wheels before Easter I might be able to talk to the Easter bunny and get you a new bigger bike.
Preston: REALLY!!!!
Me: Yeah but you gotta be able to ride it really good without stopping. Do we have a deal?
Preston: *considering the deal and getting suggestions from Bryce* Oh alright.

Here he is the next day! No training wheels!

The cheering section.


Going along for the ride but will not even talk about taking the training wheels off.


And the Easter bunny came through with a new bike. Which he tried for all of 2 minutes and told me to tell the Easter bunny to take it back. Apparently he felt it was too big. At that point bribery was out of the question and threats of losing all bikes came to pass. He then learned how to ride his new big bike. We knew you could do it Preston! You did awesome bud! Way to go!

Spring

We thought our backyard was dead. Our house sat vacant for almost a year so the yard looked to be a total waste. I was thinking of all the time and money it would take to get it beautiful back there.

Then spring happened.


Or I think it's spring. It might be some hybrid between spring and summer. But I'm not even getting into that since I'm scared out of my pants thinking about how we're going to be cooked alive this summer.


But behold! Our yard is ALIVE!

This is our fig tree. Does anyone know what to do with a fig? I'm at a loss.

Kinda Extreme Makeover

The floor in the whole house were just nasty when we bought it. The carpet smelled like dogs and amount of dog hair and urine in the carpet were enough to make me reconsider getting a pet. All the floor had to go! We got carpet right after we got the house but we've been shopping around and trying to put what's in our heads to reality. It takes time. So here's our front room we just finished. It had the ugly, horrible carpet and ugly, horrible tile.

See the urine!!!! Ewwwww! That's why I'm taking pictures and Erik's doing the dirty work. :)


Almost ready to start putting down the floor.


(View from kitchen)

Finished! It only took a week but we got it done. Well, I should say Erik got it done because my job was to wipe the glue off the floor. But I'm dang good at wiping up the glue!

(View from upstairs)

Now we just have to get the tile in and we're done with our ugly floor! Yay! And if you come over, I bet you won't be able to see where we colored the cracks with a Sharpie.