Dallas is 10!

We celebrated Dallas' 10th birthday by driving to Salem for the weekend. Mike had a two night gig with Idol Eyez so we took the whole family and went to visit my family. Mom and Derek made Dallas a super cute cake with a skate park on it. We enjoyed spending time with them and making fun memories. We took Dallas on Saturday to pick out his birthday present from us. It was a skateboard with a green underbelly-Dallas really likes it and even named it Dagger. We went to a couple fun parks where Derek had fun taking pictures of us with his new camera and Dallas enjoyed trying out his skateboard. Grandpa Cooper even made us laugh by almost biffing it while walking...he was looking backward and I think he hit the curb with his foot (of course his hands were in his pockets) but luckily he was able to outrun himself from falling-you really had to be there but it's something we'll look back on and laugh at for a while.

Bride to Be

Tonight I threw a bridal shower for my sister, Desi, who in two weeks will be getting married. I stayed up late last night making homemade truffles, and frosting cupcakes...trying to make her bridal shower special. I think everyone had a good time. Desi's friends brought finger foods so there was lots to eat! We played a few games, a couple memorization games and then a who knows the bride game. It was fun to see everyone trying to concentrate and get the answers. Well I'm beat...hope you enjoy some pictures from the party.

1st Day of Kindergarten

(Waiting for the bus to come)


Elijah had his 1st official day of Kindergarten today. We waited and waited for the bus to come but after about 25 minutes decided to drive him to school. We are still working out the kinks with the bus system but he did ride home on the same bus with his brothers and even sat by Cody so he was glad about that. We asked him how he enjoyed Kindergarten and he said it was fun. He colored a picture and got to play on the playground. He didn't have any treats though.

Back to Routines

Today was a busy day for us. Dallas (4th grade) and Cody (2nd grade) both started school and Elijah had his kindergarten orientation this afternoon. *Elijah's official first day is on Friday and he gets to ride the bus*




All reports so far have been positive. The two older boys were especially excited because Fat Jackson wasn't driving their bus today and they had a nice lady driver.
Mike took Elijah to his orientation today with Brandon as I was at work but looks like it was a fun time!

My Boys

This post is dedicated to my friend, Desiree, who made me promise I would take a picture of this and send it to her.

( I had been dusting a dresser and this picture had been laying on it so I picked it up and just set it against the glass of this frame since I didn't have a picture in the current frame. Well my friend Des was in town visiting and while I was giving the tour of my house she saw what I had done with the picture and started laughing hysterically. Up to that point I hadn't even given a second thought as to what the frame said. Now I see why it was so funny.)

Well as many of you know I am a "Room Attendant" for the Holiday Inn Express in Puyallup. I thought that taking a cleaning job would be a piece of cake after taking care of 5 boys for the past few years:) Let's just say it's not...there are a lot of time limits, specifications, rules, etc. that you have to follow. So much is going on in a room that all you have time to do is think, think, think! I lost 10lbs. my first 2 weeks there with all the hustle and bustle (which isn't a bad thing).

One of the perks of the job is tips! I never knew before that many people leave a tip for the room attendant. It makes me all excited when I go into a room and they have left a couple of dollars by the nightstand. I have even scored a few $10 tips. One day I received 2 bouquets of flowers with a note attached saying to have a great day.



Other times the room may be totally trashed and not receive a single thing-oh well...that's the breaks. I love the people I work with though-they are great and make the work bearable...especially when we meet up in the break room and chiff about all the nutty guests or crazy things we've found in our rooms that day.
I am taking a daycare orientation class in October and hopefully will get my daycare license soon after so that I can be home with my kids all day!

Das Ist Gut Ja?

We took the kids and went to Leavenworth last weekend. It was our big trip for the summer. Mike had a gig with Idol Eyez on Saturday night so we went up on Friday to enjoy the weekend.

We took the kids to a community pool with a child friendly slide and mushroom looking thing that had water pouring out of it, a fish hatchery where we got to see live Salmon that were huge. We also walked around the little Swiss village quite a few times and enjoyed the shops and local cuisine. We even tried Gelato which is an Italian ice cream (we thought it tasted just like sherbet though) and we tried some pastries from an authentic danish bakery. The boys really liked the nutcracker museum which had hundreds of nutcrackers of every shape, size, character, etc..
One cool souvenir we got was a magnet with the Stone family crest on it. It was a really fun place and Mike and I decided that it would be a fun place for the two of us to go to on a weekend sometime.
*Mike had so spend time working on his final paper for english while we were there so it was non stop busy*