Sunset Dinner Cruise...

For my parents b-days this year, we decided to take them on a sunset dinner cruise on Lake Coeur d'Alene. It was a lot of fun and nice just all being together to enjoy dinner. (minus Jason & Kayla in Utah, of course-sorry guys, we missed you) :) I think that the usual enticement for the cruise is the fresh seafood dinner; but my dad is such an amazing cook and we always have fresh seafood, so the food wasn't all that exciting for us. There was this little man playing his guitar the whole time, and the birthday folk even got sang to! Nathan and Angie also got serenaded by him. He was a funny little man. We all had a great time together and the sunset was beautiful!

I will Survive...

How any woman has survived being a mother to an almost 2 year old is astonishing to me. Tuckers favorite phrases right now are:

'Want that, want that, want that...' and

'Right NOW'

I am very patiently trying to teach him to always say 'please' and 'thank-you' which is very hard at times. He's had to spend a considerable amount of time in time-out lately; and 'sorry mama' is quickly becoming an automatic response of his when I even just look at him. This child will be the death of me, I swear.

He seriously thinks that he runs the show around here, I have to constantly remind myself that I am the one in charge here.

Good thing he's so darn cute, or I would have told him to hit the bricks a few times this week. :)

Here he is with his new friend, Will. Needless to say they had a pretty good time playing in the dirt and eating yummy Oreo Popsicles. (the combination of the two, not so good)

I walked into the living room to find Tucker seriously just chillin' on Ben while watching Barney and eating a cookie. Its a rough life.

So sometimes when I am putting Tucker down for his nap in the afternoon and it is hot, I don't put his shorts on after I change his diaper. I just let him sleep in his diaper and a shirt. I figure its a little cooler and a lot more comfortable. Well, after church on Sunday we all took a little afternoon nap. Ben woke up to Tucker yelling in his crib (while I was soundly asleep). Ben walks into Tuckers room to find that he had taken off his diaper and smeared poop all over his crib. He also took off his diaper today during his nap, luckily there was no #2, only #1. Note to self: don't let Tucker sleep in just his diaper anymore. Lets hope he doesn't learn how to take off his shorts.

A Day at the Lake...

We finally made it out with Angie and Nathan on the boat. It was actually a few weeks ago now, but I had to post these cute pictures! Have I mentioned that Tucker L-O-V-E-S swimming?

This was him on the boat last Summer, he loved that flag:

When people tell me now that they love his big cheeks, I laugh--and say, 'these are nothin' compared to his butterball cheeks last summer!' I miss those big cheeks!

This time he felt really cool when he got to drive the boat with Angie.

He's still not a big fan of the life jacket.

Here he is complaining about it.

And now he's a happy boy, jacket-free.

Ben's dad sent him this cool Super-Man outfit with built-in floaties. This was his first time testing it out, I wasn't sure how he'd like it. But I think that he liked it better than the life jacket.

Just floatin' around on the surf board with Uncle Nathan. The water was too cold for Angie and I but these two were having a great time in it! He loves him some Uncle Nae-an.

Lots and Lots of Visitors...

Ben's mom has been here for the past week. We had such a great time enjoying time with grandma that we all woke up this morning just a little bit depressed from missing her. Tucker kept on pointing down the stairs, saying, 'gama, gama' and when I told him she went bye-bye he he got the saddest look on his face and ran up to me and put his head on my shoulder and gave me the biggest hug. It was really sweet. Since we hardly ever get to see her, and Tucker already has a grandma up here, the poor guy was really confused all week, mostly when we were together with both grandmas. We ended up going up to my parents house on two different nights for dinner, and both of those nights, Tucker wouldn't even look at Ben's mom, like he had his grandma already and did NOT need another one. I felt really bad, but she's a pro at the grandma thing, having 11 grand kids, so she knew what to expect. The time that we had with Ben's mom at our house all to ourselves though, Tucker fell in love with her. Grandma was so good to him and they had such a good time together.

Grandma just wanted to relax and enjoy her time with Tucker, so that's exactly what we did. She spent every single morning playing outside with him- for hours. They jumped on the trampoline, she gave him rides in his wagon, they loaded up the dump trucks with rocks, and they played in the rain. We also did a lot of BBQ'n and a lot of movie watchin'. I am so glad that she was able to come so Tucker could get to know her better, he had such a great time!

Our weather this week happened to cool down a little, and it was seriously like an Alabama winter. She couldn't believe it. The weather was totally comfortable to me, if not a little warm, and she was freezing the whole time; but she did leave 106 degree temperatures.

{No, I do not make my guests put on their make up in the living room, she said she could see better out there, and Tucker didn't mind because then he could sit right next to her.}

We did venture out a few times, we saw 'The Dark Knight', and we went to dinner, we went to the park, and did some shopping.

Grandma loved the big pine trees up here, they don't get this big in Alabama.

We went to the Japanese gardens at Manito Park (Ben's mom served her mission in Japan, and I thought she might like it) and watched the coy fish swimming around.

We fed the ducks.

Tucker was interested in the bugs more than anything else, and stopped many times along the way to pick them up and play with them.

Thank you so much for coming and playing with us Gama, we had such a great time and miss you already!

Our other visitors were my cute cousins: Lori, Rachel & Amy. One lives in the bay area, one lives in Missouri, and one lives in Provo. It was fun seeing them. We went up to my aunt and uncles house for the day and went swimming and had a BBQ.

{Amy, Angie, Me, Rachel & Lori}

{Tuckers smile face}

{still not sure what to think about that slide}

He loved his second cousins, he swam a lot with Ruby (above) and shared his ice-cream with Rachel (below).

And last, but certainly not least, 2 of my cousins on my dads side, from Alaska came down to visit. Well, they came to visit their grandma in Portland, but made a day trip to Spokane, and stayed with my parents. But I have not seen them for like 6 years!

Here's everyone that was at my mom & dads house:

Mom, Dad, Calen, Ben, Stormee, Me, Trinity, Kristen, Tucker, Scott, Kathy, & Bryce

Bryce & Calen are my two long lost cousins visiting from Alaska--I couldn't believe how big they were!

So its been busy for us around here for the past few weeks. And its not going to end any time soon, we have a lot of family coming in town and staying with us for Nathan and Angie's wedding. But I love visitors and I love going and going and staying busy, so I'm enjoying it. It will be nice to get back to some sort of routine though. Tuckers already been napping today for like 3 hours, the poor child was so sleep deprived because he's so social he hates to miss a thing, so never wanted to sleep while grandma was here. I should probably use this time to get going on the 15 loads of laundry I have to do and the 5 loads of dishes and the vacuuming and the dusting and the mopping and the...

'Tis the season of weddings...

So, I'll start with the most important one: Nathan & Angie's, of course! They didn't actually get married this weekend, but we had her Bridal Shower. Mind you, I went to all of these events within a 24 hour time period!

Here's the bride-to-be, isn't she cute? I see a Victoria Secret bag, can't go wrong with that! :)

I had to include a picture of the food. It was beautiful and SO good. Her sister went to culinary school, and made it all. I was seriously at that table all night! (those that know me know how much I LOVE food)

Just some girls I grew up with: Rachel, Stephanie and Jolee-it was fun catching up.

And the Campbell girls: me, Kelli, mom & Angie. We missed you Kayla!

Wedding event #2: TJ's wedding. He had it up at Mt. Spokane and it was beautiful! Before the ceremony we took Tucker down to a little stream that ran right behind where they said their vows. He threw his little plastic Monkey toy right in. Bye-bye Monkey. We've lost a lot of toys that way this summer, in lakes, in streams, in rivers, wherever he can find.

I think in this picture we were debating if it was worth it or not to go down and save the monkey...nah!

The cute couple: TJ & Carly.

Some of you may remember Jamie Miller (Reese, now--she married Jeff). She was there, and it was fun seeing her.

We had to book it out of there like right after the ceremony to make it to Wedding event #3, but I snapped this pic with the couple really quick.

Wedding event #3, Tucker and Carly! OK...not yet. But luckily Carly was at this one, so Tucker was OK with being there. It was a girl that I grew up with, who is also my friends niece. (who will always be like 10 years old to me, so it was kind of crazy, you know how that goes!) :) But she was beautiful and very happy! I don't actually have pictures of them though! oops!

Love these girls...

(two of them are sisters of the bride, and therefore bridesmaids, so that's why they are wearing the same dress, FYI)

Love these girls too...

So we're not quite so young & spry, we're still cute...right? :)

Summertime Hobbies...

Are you jealous that I've been picking and eating sweet peas from our garden with Tucker all morning? They are so delicious! First lesson learned about gardening: don't plant 4 rows of onions when there are only three of you living in the house. Next year: not so many onions, and WAY more sweet peas, we've been snacking on these all day!

Although the other day when we had hamburgers for dinner, it was so fun being able to go outside and pick an onion, slice it up and eat it on my hamburger! And it was SO good! And my cilantro has come in so handy for making dips all summer long-yum!

While I have been loving gardening, Tucker has found a new love of his own: torturing poor helpless little insects. He just LOVES bugs! It kind of grosses me out, but he has no fear, and loves to pinch them in between his little fingers and 'play' with them. He doesn't mean to torture them, what he does is- when he sees them crawling around, he picks them up and puts them on his arm to crawl on him. Luckily the June bug in this picture is pretty tough and can handle it, but most of the time, by the time the bug reaches his arm, its not alive anymore.

Evidence for our case...

Now, I tried and tired to find a picture of Rosie, any picture (for payback) but I could not find a single one. :) I'm sure I will have to dig around up at my parents house for some REAL good Jr. High photos--and there's bound to be one of her up there-and I will find it! :) For now, these will have to suffice.

So, I have gathered some evidence to build our case against Cookie. I know that she is a little hesitant to come ALL the way up to Spokane to visit old friends, so I'm hoping that these will nudge her over the edge and convince her to come. If this plea doesn't convince her that we DESERVE a visit, I don't know what will.

Cookie, we have been so loyal to you through so many stages of your life. How many of your friends can say that? Any friend that sticks by you through Jr. High is a friend indeed.

Think of the hours that I let you lay on my bed talking to your 'boyfriends' (and I use that term very loosely). So what that we only had 'boyfriends' by phone, we couldn't actually meet them in person, we weren't 16 yet.

All of those Girls Camp memories...apparently eye-brow waxing wasn't invented back in the early '90's.

Basketball at Horizon Jr. High??? First of all, what were we thinking trying to play basketball? And second of all, who would still be your friend after seeing how you played? :)

OK, so maybe you are one of the few people who can actually pull off short spiky platinum hair, and black hair with bangs, but that doesn't mean that it had to be done. :) But we still loved you. We have loved you through about 289 different hair colors and styles, and we deserve to see you now.

We were your friends when you wore tie-dyed shirts DOWN to your knees and white tube socks UP to your knees? (see pic.#1) We were your friends through countless hours of 'buns-of-steel' workouts on your bed. We even called into 93 zoo FM and requested a song from the 'Reality Bites' soundtrack (I can't remember which one) when you were sad about breaking up with a boyfriend. How many friends would have done that? We were so cool together! We could sleep out on the trampoline, just like the good ol' days--you and Jessy remember the FUN that happens on trampolines, right? So, we're not in the 9th grade anymore, we can make out with our husbands now. (will that convince Jason to come?)

PLUS... We want to see that little Olivia of yours so that we can share these (and many more) wonderful memories with her. She needs to know who her mama was in Jr. High! So you tell Jason that we DESERVE a visit! We have earned it!

Love you Cookie! (please don't hate me) :)