$1.97 gas!!

Yep, your seeing that right.  Friday night our gas went below $2.  I am so pumped.  Ya, so I lost all my money in the stock market, but I don't remember the last time I filled up my car for 25 bucks!  Just thought I would rub it in and tell everyone how excited I am.  

Went to costco today and it is now $1.83!!!!

Happy Birthday, Grant!!

Today was Grant's 1st birthday.  It really snuck up on me being the very next day after Halloween, but it was nice having the whole Saturday.  We got to open presents and hang out and dig into his little bday cake.  I think his favorite thing to play with were some balloons we blew up and he could throw them and chase them around.  He is such a fun, sweet, smiley boy and I can't believe it has already been a year!  

Here are a few pictures of him with his presents and his fun celebrations.

Happy Halloween!

Hope everyone had a good Halloween!  We sure did try.  Ali was a cute little witch.  We tried tried to put green paint all over her face, but when it was all on Ali decided that didn't make for a very cute witch so we washed it off.  

Grant was a chicken and I dressed up like a farmer for Ali's school party.  

We headed out trick or treating around 4 o'clock to the local businesses and we got out of the car and it started down pouring rain before we even made it to our first store.  It poured and poured and didn't want to let up.  When it was finally just raining instead of pouring we went on the move and got some treats.  An hour later we headed back to our car and finally saw some blue sky coming.  This is a picture of a soaked Ali and her friends Emily and Kaitlyn.  They were cold and wet, but were excited to get popcorn from one of the last stores we went to.  

After the rainy trick or treating we got to go to the church to a much drier trunk or treating.  Ali had a lot of fun and Grant was a good sport through it all.

PuMpkiN PaRTy

Saturday night we had a couple of friends over for a little pumpkin carving party.  It wasn't much of a party, but we had some soup, doughnuts, and carved our pumpkins.  We had a lot of fun carrying on our traditions with some friends.  I try and keep the tradition of having soup, because I love soup for those cold fall days and Daniel thinks soup is an appetizer not a meal.  So he keeps the doughnut tradition alive to help him fill up after the soup.  Then Ali takes pumpkin carving very seriously.  She picks out just the perfect pumpkin and then finds a pattern on the Internet.  She chose a lizard this year.  She traced the pattern all by herself with the poker and cleaned her pumpkin all by herself.  I did have to help her a little with cutting it out but she did a very good job.  I also had to buy Danny a mechanical carver this year to persuade him to carve a pumpkin.  It worked pretty slick, but ran out of juice pretty quick.  So here are some pic. of our night.

These are our pumpkins mine (Trisha), Danny's, and Ali's

I'm sure you can guess who's behind the pumpkin.

Can you believe how excited Danny was to get his picture taken?

Grant slept through all of the excitement the night before, but got to put potato head attachments to his 2 pumpkins the next day. 

HappY FaLL!

Fall is finally here.  Ali got to go pick out a pumpkin the other day to carve on Saturday.  She stayed home sick from school yesterday after running a fever and just being really tired.  Grant has been crabby ALL week until finally today.  He cut all 4 molars this week and didn't like it one bit.  I was happy when he woke up today and was willing to play around by himself and not make me carry him around all day.  A little update on Grant:  He now says hi every time the phone rings, barks at all animals, like to patty cake and roll it and toss it in the air, LOVES balls and playing catch, and is still too chicken to walk on his own. 

 Lastly, this is a little video of Ali entertaining Grant.  He got a kick out of her performance, maybe some of you will too.  

I'm looking forward to going to Spokane tonight with my friend to see Phantom of the Opera.  It will be a little different than what I am use to with Ali's little performances, but I am excited to leave Danny to babysit and put the kids to bed.  A little happy late birthday to me :)

my little helpers

We have been really busy the past couple of weeks doing odd ball things.  I haven't taken too many pictures, but I wanted to update my blog.  I took this movie clip the other day of Ali and Grant cleaning out the dishwasher.  Also listen for Grant to bark for me.  That is one of his new tricks.  Whenever he sees an animal or we say doggy he barks for us.

This is how my husband puts things together.  While I was painting the kitchen cabinets, my new bedroom furniture was shipped.  So Daniel decided it was his job to put it all together.  I love doing stuff like that, but had to finish my cabinets.  The funny thing is that we do things totally different.  I just dive right in and start putting things together and glance at the instructions.  This picture was taken after Danny spent 45 min. just laying everything out for our dresser.  As you can see everything is neatly lined up and laid nicely on styrofoam (even the drawer rails).  I was going crazy inside knowing that he was spending so much time on 1 of 4 bedroom pieces. 

And after 3 days of Danny putting it all together we finally have bedroom furniture.  I know the walls are bare, I just finished painting the room when I took this picture.  Hopefully now I can do some shopping and decorate.

A little face lift

So, I have been in a weird mood lately.  One of those moods where you feel like your whole house is dirty and needs some work.  So instead of just cleaning it I decided that I was sick of my ugly orange kitchen cabinets.  Ever since we put in the wood floors I felt like the cabinets were gross.  So I told Danny something needed done.  We can't even think about being able to afford all new cabinets so I was determined to find a way to give them a better look.  After much trial and error, this is what we came up with.  They may not look like it in pictures, but they are a much needed improvement.  So for almost the past week I have been painting, painting again, staining, rubbing off the stain, staining again, rubbing that coat off, and then putting on polyurethane.  I am very pleased, if I do say so myself.  This color is much more calming than the orange was.  So, I wish I could say next are the appliances, but I can only dream for now.  Danny just bought me new bedroom furniture for my birthday so now I move to the bedroom and work on it for awhile.

(Before)

(during, top is done bottom isn't)

(After)