Our Fun Filled Weekend

This was kind of a bitter sweet weekend for me. Paul was home! But I knew it wouldn't last. So, while he was here we had a lot of fun! Paul got in late Friday night and I made him one of his absolute favorite meals, Lasagna! It was so wonderful to just sit and talk with him. We talked about anything and everything. We do talk to each other everyday, but that's on the phone or a video chat which just isn't the same.

On Saturday we all kinda slept in, mostly me. Once we were all ready we headed down to Bridal Veil Falls for a picnic and hike. Bridal Veil Falls is a very beautiful place that has 2 parks next to it. So for the picnic we went to Nuns park.

As you can see, we went the easy route and just got fast food.




After our wonderful picnic was over we headed to the play area just down the road! We ALL had fun there!






After about an hour or so of playing we decided to go hike up the path to the falls. It's a very easy paved trail so it wasn't too difficult for the girls. As I said before, the falls are beautiful and the girls had a blast!









Here are some more pictures taken throughout the day!




I don't know how many of you have tried and tried to get one good shot of all your kids, I assume most of you have, but there's always at least one of them who doesn't want to cooperate. In the picture above, Amanda isn't looking at me, Ashley is slouching and Eden was crying but managed a smile just at the right moment. So, no this isn't a great picture of them and I took several more trying to get at least ONE good shot. Paul was even standing behind me trying to get the girls to look up and smile, with no luck. I got enough shots to do head swapping, but I'm feeling a little lazy and didn't do it. For me being a photographer, I think it's kinda pathetic that I have a hard time getting good shots of my own kids.

Back to more pictures of the day!





The girls really loved having their dad home again!


We took Paul to the airport Sunday early evening. I kept telling myself I wouldn't cry. Then as I was hugging him good-bye I could feel the tears trying their hardest to make my mascara run, but I fought them back. I didn't want to make things anymore difficult by crying, so I was strong and held them back till Paul was about 15 feet away from me. I did my best to wait till I was back in the car before I really let loose.

WE REALLY MISS HIM!

I just wish the government would decide exactly what their doing with the whole "bail out" stuff. Our realtor was telling us that with all the confusion, people aren't buying because they don't know if they can. I just wish the house would sell.

THE SUSPENSE IS KILLING ME!!!!!

As you know, Paul has been gone for a month now and he's finally coming home tonight!!! I'm sitting here in our front office so I can keep an eye on the road for any headlights coming. So what else can I do? Nothing too important in this post, just me trying to be patient, so I dediced "what the hey I'll pass some time doing a post." He's only here till Sunday afternoon and then he's not coming back till around Halloween, unless of course we sell the house between now and then, and then I'll be going up there to go house hunting! Although he'll probably still come down here for Halloween even if we've sold the house and just haven't moved yet.

I'll post pictures of our fun-filled weekend next week!

This is driving me crazy, I keep hearing the sounds of cars and it's not him yet.

Hair

So, the other day I was looking at someones blog (don't remember who's exactly) and they had links to some really cute blogs about doing girls hair. I checked them out and loved them all! Most of the braids and other techniques I knew how to do a long time ago and did most of them on my dolls hairs. Over time, I completely forgot about them. Some of the styles on these blogs are very time consuming and since Ashley already has to be up at 7:00 every weekday for school, I thought I'd start off with something simple. Now, these other ladies are experts or something cause their dos look so adorable! They use really cute bows to finish off the look, but of course, I had to dress Ashely in a red shirt, and we have no red bows, so this hairdo is bow-less. If I can figure out how to list blogs that I like down the side of my blog, I'll be putting some of the hair blogs up there.


The top was just 3 little ponytails going down each side of her head and each ponytail is flipped over and under.

If I would have had the time, I would have put the ends in pig tails and done messy buns on them, but her carpool was going to be here any minute, so I did the twisted braid things instead and left the rest of it down straight. I know, not the best, but I'm just getting back into it. Hopefully I'll get better as I practice!

These next 2 pictures are pretty self explanatory!
Thankfully we have a huge bathtub that holds all three of them at the same time. They love playing in the water and get along wonderfully during bath time. Does anybody else have kids that just seem to get along better with each other during bath time?

Just Some Pictures

Like the title says, just some pictures of the girls!

A Little Bit of Fun!

So, what do you do after you've spent almost 20 hours cleaning for an open house. Plus spent 2 hours at a primary program practice and your bored out of your mind? Well, you paint nails and take pictures of flowers of course!

So the girls decided to get out some polish and do their own nails.

And I did pictures of a flower. They turned out okay.

Not Just Black & White

Today I got rather bored with cleaning for the open house this Saturday so this evening I decided to take a break and do something I've wanted to do for a couple of months now.

This black shirt is mine. It was just a plain black, but I got some iron-ons for it. The cute frog is now climbing my left shoulder and the flower is on the right sleeve! They really do match, the picture just didn't turn out right.


These plain white shirts (with the puffy sleeves!) were from Walmart and for some reason they were only $2 each! So again with the iron-ons! The 2 ballerinas are for Eden and Ashley, and since the store only had two of those, I got the fairy one for Amanda.


I love iron-ons! They can dress up and change just about anything. I have a Halloween iron-on that I need to add to a t-shirt and I have a very elegant flowery one that's emboirderd that I'm going to be putting on a plain skirt that I have. I also want to get a couple to add to a pair of jeans. I've even used one to cover a very small whole I had in a t-shirt once.

Our Beautiful House, My never ending stress

I finally have all the info on our house! The MLS# is 828199. Paul did up a website that has pictures and a virtual tour. The people who did the pictures missed some of the nice things about our house! But hopefully it'll sell soon. We did get an offer from someone who wanted to move in within 2 weeks, but they just wanted to rent and then if things worked out they'd buy it. But that's a pretty BIG "if" and our HOA doesn't allow renting of your house. So here's the site that Paul did up!

http://www.besthouseever.com/

If you know anyone who wants a house, send them our way!

P.S. Congrat to Christie and Dillon on their beautiful baby girl!

Bedtime

Here are just a few pictures of the girls brushing teeth and reading before bedtime.

I guess Eden is brushing her cheek instead.

They love to read!

A Little Silly

Here's an idea I got from my sister. You google search your name with the word "needs" after it and see what comes up. The red type is what the internet said, the regular type are my comments about it. Some of my results were:

1- Rachelle needs to get more sun. Um... I don't think so. I am white because I avoid the sun. You know, skin cancer, wrinkles, all that stuff.

2- Rachelle needs $2100 in political contributions for 2008. Am I running for something?

3- Rachelle needs lasik surgery. You have no idea how much I would love to have lasik surgery done.

4- Rachelle needs to get out more. Well duh! I'm stuck at home with 3 kids trying to sell a house with my husband in Washington. I don't get out much.

5- Rachelle needs support and prayers of family members and friends. Yes, that's very true, I'd really love for our house to sell soon so we can be together as a family again.

6- Rachelle needs a cow. What!?! I never thought of that, but maybe I do.

7- The last thing Rachelle needs is any pressure to feel skinnier than she is. That's so not true. I could stand to lose 20 pounds, so please, pressure me.

8- Rachelle needs to lose weight. Which I think is funny being after #7. But it's true.

9- Rachelle needs to eat more. Okay, the internet can't make up it's mind.

10- Rachelle needs a hug. Yes, I do. Especially one from my hubby.

When it Rains...

They say when it rains it pours, but in my case when it rains, it floods. Ugh. Let me tell you about the wonderful last few days I've had! (please read that last sentence with a ton of sarcasm) It started with a toilet seat. The seat in the Master bathroom wiggled and couldn't be tightened because the screw was rusted. So Paul bought a new toilet seat which he didn't have time to install before he left for Washington. So I think, "OK, I can get my hands a little messy and change the seat myself." I got it all off but the one rusted screw. I worked for 1/2 an hour on that dumb thing. Finally my father-in-law came over and had to use a hack-saw to get it off. It took him 20 minutes with the thing. But it finally came off and I was able to put the new toilet seat on. That whole thing was an exercise in total frustration.

The second thing happened either that night or the next night, I don't remember exactly, it's all kind of a blur at the moment. We have a security alarm system wired into the house that I set every night. Well, it went off at 2:30 in the morning!!!! I'm here with the girls upstairs sleeping wondering who is trying to break into my house. So I arm myself with a knife (which I was trianed to use in my martial arts class) and checked the entire house from bottom to top 3 times. I started with the bottom cause according to the alarm a basement window had been opened. I was freaking out! My heart was pumping and I was expecting at any moment someone to jump out at me. Well, it took me almost 2 hours to fall back to sleep after that. Needless to say I've slept with several lights on in the house for the last few nights. It turns out that one of the windows downstairs was never latched properly so when it shifted it set the alarm off.

So, I've learned a lesson from that and now every night I go around and check every window and door in the house to make sure it's latched, locked and secure.

Which brings me to my 3rd and hopefully final problem/stress. As I was checking all the windows in the basement I noticed the carpet looked a little dark in one room. When I stepped on it water squished through my toes! At some point a sprinkler head had popped off right next to the window well and when it came on to water the flowers, it dumped all its water down into that window well. Which in turn meant it seeped through the window sill and into the room. I found this out at about midnight last night and worked frantically to try and get the contents out of the room and tried to get the window well pumped out (which didn't work). I finally got to bed around 2:30.

Now, with my luck, Ashley had to be up by 7:00 to get ready for school. Thankfully a very good friend of mine took her to school this morning. As I finished getting my self dressed I heard a knock at the door. Low and behold it was our Elders Quorum President and his wife with a huge shop-vac to suck out all the water! What a huge blessing!! Paul had emailed him last night after I called him bawling my head off. So, they worked down there for an hour and got a lot of water out, rolled back the carpet and got about 1/2 the padding out to the driveway to dry. It's still pretty soaked, but as you can see we've got 4 fans going trying to dry it all out.



They say bad things come in threes, so hopefully I'm done! So, for any of you who read my first couple of posts, I said to poke me if I complain too much and remind me that it could be worse. Well, if anyone pokes me I just might poke you right back! Yes, it still could be worse, but I just had to complain this one time.

Thank you, I'm done now.