Ode to Grammie

My mom was here a month or so ago and bought some peeps for us to roast over the campfire.  We finally did.  The kids had fun.  I thought they were good.  Thanks mom/Grammie!

Side note: Aren't the horses beautiful! 

A Beautiful Day

We had a fun weekend. One thing we didn't do very well in Oregon was go out and explore.  This was mostly due to the lengthy hours Eric worked.  So now that he doesn't work crazy hours, we like to get out.  

Oh and we got a Dog!  She is 1/2 German Shepard, 1/2 Husky and 100% perfect for our family.  We got her last Wednesday.  We named her Denali.  We call her Nali a lot of the time.   I found her from craigslist and we felt good about her, so we brought her home.  She is the best dog I think I have met in my life.  She is so good with the kids and she listens so well.  We took her hiking on Saturday and she hiked up the whole trail without a leash and listened to us when we would tell her to wait.  She is pretty cool.  She is getting along well with Fred and we feel very blessed to have her in our family.

 Back to the hike.  Here is Tara on the way there.  She is such a character!

 Mr. Alex.  Always smiling!

 Pre-hike photo.  This was the beginning of "mom, picture".  I think I took about 50 pictures before I told them "three more, then your done"

 Let the posing begin.  Morgan was the most eager to have his picture taken.  But as soon as he would say, "mom picture".  Alex and Tara would chime in.  It was cute, but after an hour got annoying.

 

 This one is just thrown in there.  It is another picture of Denali.

Just a note.  Tanner was on this hiking trip.  Even if you didn't see one picture of his cute little face.  Bad mommy for not taking a picture of you!

Family Hike and Fred

We had a fun weekend.  Friday Eric and Morgan slept out on the trampoline.  Saturday we went on a hike and played at the lake.  Minus the mosquito bites, we had a nice time.

 And our kitty Fred (came with the name) likes to go on the trampoline.  He is a great cat, which I never thought I would say.  He acts a little bit like a dog and since we are more of dog people, it works for us!  We love him!  Poor thing is over loved sometimes.

Guests

We have summer residents living in our back pasture.  Meet Angel and her little baby (who the kids call Ella).  We love having horses with the benefit of not having to pay for them.  The kids love interacting with them and trying to get Ella to come to them.  She is still timid and trying to figure the world out.  She is 1.5m old.  Her owner said she is a $10,000 horse because of her breeding.  Wow.  I often have to tell the kids "sorry we can't keep her". Angel is gentle and very sweet.  We feel very blessed to have them and have this experience for the kids.  They will stay until October.

Settled and Loving it

Sorry for not posting in quite a while.  As most of you know we have moved (yes again).  Our 2-3 year plan for being in the St. Louis area turned into 1 year and we are sad (to leave the Christensen Grandparents), but extremely happy to have our dream finally coming true!  Yeah!

It is a long story how it all worked out.  But basically we were planning on transferring within company (back West) in a few years and with a miracle it turned into 1.  Thanks goodness.  I don't know if I could have handled another summer with humidity and no yard for the kids.

Anyways we moved to the Sandpoint Idaho area.  We love it!  There is skiing, lakes, camping, hiking galore, we are close to Canada, close to Seattle (Eric's Brother), close to Helena (my mom and sister), the kids school is great, the church is close.  I could go on and on.  We also found a home on 5 acres and we feel like we are in paradise.  Here are some shots of the kids from the past month.

A cute Tanner.  Growing up too quickly.  Ten months already!  Where does the time go?

 Little Miss Tara having her horse ridding lesson.  She and Morgan have started taking two lessons a week.  They love it.  

  Grammie is feeding Tanner some yummy Oatmeal.  Although I didn't take any pictures, my sister Lauren and her little girl Kaiden came to visit us this week.  We love being close to them.

 It got really hot the other day and the kids were playing in the water.  I came out of the garage and saw Alex like this.  It made me laugh.  He was walking around with this huge planter on his head and squirting water.  It made me laugh.

 Smiles from Tanner.

 Cute girls!

 Brothers. 

 Daddy and his little boy.  That hat makes his head look way bigger than it really is.

 Coloring Easter Eggs.  We had fun having our own easter egg hunt around the property.