One wild, crazy, long, & fun week!

Sorry, no pics this time, just boring writing. But we had an interesting week as you can tell from the title. So it mainly started on Wednesday and it went like this:
Wednesday - leave Pullman at 9am to take the kids to Tri-Cities for my parents to watch them while I took a class on fetal heart monitoring (for L&D). Stayed for a couple hours, then headed back to Pullman by myself (another 2 1/2 hour drive, for a total of 5 hours of driving in one day!) But the good thing is Than and I then went out to dinner, CHILD FREE! Which hasn't happened in I don't know how long. That evening driving back from dinner in Moscow (Tucci's, where the old Wingers was, is pretty good!), it started snowing like CRAZY! Which made me very excited for my commute to Colfax at 6:40am the next morning for my early class!
Thursday- drop Than off at the bus stop, then head to Colfax. Well the roads where pretty crappy, but I didn't even get to the Highway 26 just outside of Pullman before stopping in a long line of cars. At first I thought there was just an accident, and they where diverting cars around one lane at a time. Well after 20 minutes of waiting, I called the hospital (they have a scanner and can hear everything) and they told me that 26 from south of Pullman to Colfax is closed due to ice roads drifts with white outs at times (the wind was blowing pretty good). Great! So I turn around and decide to try again in a while, meanwhile missing some of my class, that we are to have a test in! Ahhh! Well by 8:45 I heard the road was open, so braved the roads. Well 45 minutes later (normally takes 20 minutes) I arrived safe to my class, only 2 hours late!
Friday- another day of class, then once it was out at 2:30pm, headed to the Tri-Cities to get the kids. Hung out, and spent the night.
Saturday- woke early to pack and get kids ready, and we left TC by 8:03am. Headed back to Pullman, picked up Than, then headed to Spokane. Got lunch to go at KFC, took it to our good friend Shannon Banks house, ate lunch, then she watched our children while Than and I went to Mamma Mia! It's a musical written around Abba songs (which I really like). I LOVED it! Than even said he liked it and had a good time (he was sceptical at first, but being a wonderful husband indulged his wife in alittle culture. My first musical, other then Hanford High School productions, but I have to give them credit, the did a great job on Joseph and the Technicolor Dream Coat and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers). I will never look at the songs the same, I'll always remember them in the text of the musical! And have had them stuck in my head now for 2 days! Then we spent the rest of the evening with Shannon since her husband Aaron is eyeballs deep in tax season. Then headed home, 1 1/2 hours.
So LOTS of driving in the last several days! But I couldn't have made it without our duel screen DVD player for the kids and Harry Potter! I am addicted to Harry Potter on CD! I listen to it all the time; driving, cleaning, dishes, all the time! But it was a blast seeing Mamma Mia, spending time with family, and visiting with a good friend!!!
Now this week getting ready for our trip to Sea Side Oregon with Than's family (unfortunately he can't come, in trying to get school stuff done), but yet dreading saying goodbye to some good friends the Gotfredson's. I am already getting teary! We are really going to miss them. Why do we have to grow up and get jobs and join the real world? But thank goodness for the Internet, blogs, and emailing! Hope you all have a good week!

Last day of school at our house

So this past Tuesday was the last day of school at our house, because the Gotfredson's will be moving to Wyoming in a couple weeks. Hooray for graduation for them! But we will GREATLY miss them. Trestin is in love with Maren! He prefers her over his own mother when given the chance. I think it's funny! Anyways, we talked about friends. "Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold." And that Kody and Jack will make new friends in WY, but can still be friends with Garrick and Aleksia by emails, letters, and phone. Then they made friendship bracelets for each other, and painted picture frames that will hold a group picture (last picture). We will miss you Gotfredson's, but happy for you to be moving on to the next phase of life, "The Real World." We won't forget you!

Aleksia painting

Jack

Garrick

Kody

Group photo!

Finally!

Finally, our 14 1/2 month old is starting to walk on his own! At the most he'll only take four steps, and then ease himself to the ground. The little turkey. All his other friends around his age are running circles around him! But in the meantime he has become an amazingly fast crawler!

Starting out from Dad, taking a few steps.

Here I come Mom! Do you like his eyes? They match his clothes. I forgot to correct them since I didn't use the red eye flash, sorry. I swear he's not possessed!

You made it!

Even if he falls, he still gets an applause.

Whoo Hoo! Your doing it!

Easter Slide Show

View Album

Get your own

Wow this was a busy Easter with alot of pictures. Here they are! First we went to an Easter Activity with the Mickelsen's (to our old University Stake), the to Pullman's Egg Hunt with the Mickelsens (the girls came with us because Jeniel and Ira didn't know if they'd make it in time because they were doing the final paper work to sell their house. Horay for them!), then Easter at our house. Enjoy!

Here is how I did it...

Many of you are wondering how I changed my background. I have to give the credit to Jeniel Mickelsen, who showed me, but here is how:

http://cutestblogontheblock.blogspot.com/2007/12/new-stuff.html

This web site not only walks you through it (on the far right side below "You Must Do This First) but has some pages that you can use. I created my own from digital scrapbooking stuff I have (all free from the web!), saved it on photobucket (after creating an account), then from photobucket I could get the html code to put on the "direct link" like it says on the website instead of puting one of theirs in. To create my own (I used Photo Shop Elements 4.0, again from a friend, I have the BEST friends!!!) it took alot of trial and error in trying to size it correctly, but was worth my time. The title "The Huston Family" I also made in PSE, but saved it as a JPEG and added it directly from my computer. Hope this helps! Enjoy!

How do you like it?

Well I think I did it! It took alot of trial and error, but I think I got it the way I want it. All this digital papers and embelishments really came in handy! I'm not too thrilled with the top title bar. Maybe at the Houston temple I'll get a nice family picture for the top (like Jeniel's) and make it cute (like Janene's). But until then, this will have to do.

Trying to find my own "Look"

Sorry for the multiple looks of my blog. I am slowly figuring out how to cutomize it! So at times it may look alittle crazy or mismatched, but hopefully in the end (with Jeniel's help) it will look better!

3+1

3 boys + 1 girl = 3 super heroes & 1 princess

Garrick had gotten some batman and superman pj's from one of my co worker's son's (thanks Liz). Which I have had a tough time tearing the batman one off Garrick when it's time to go anywhere. So when Kody & Jack came over to play, it was little boy heaven! Seeing as they typically play super heroes anyways, now they would have costumes! Then with some scraps I had, I whipped out a batman cape for Kody (even thought he was wearing a spider man costume he didn't care) and a super man cape for Jack. Then that left Aleksia, the perminant princess that they are constantly saving from the "Evil Villains!" They are quite funny to watch and listen to!

The back sides of the capes.

The fronts of the Super Heroes & Princess

"Show me your muscles!"

Ice Skating

On Thursday WSU grad students got to go ice skating for free at the Moscow Ice Skating Rink. So despite feeling like crap and Than fighting a migraine, we took the kids. We went once long ago when Garrick was small and Aleksia was in the stroller, and Garrick didn't even wear skates he just ran on the ice. We put them both in skates, to see how they'd do. Aleksia took two steps on the ice just holding onto the stroller and started FREAKING OUT! Garrick held onto the stroller pretty good (all the red "walkers" where all being used). So after a few rounds Aleksia got brave and tried with the red thing. So then they where both hooked! Needles to say Mom & Dad only lasted 1 hour out of the 2 possible hours, and the kids slept pretty good that night. They must have had a good time, because before we even left they where asking "When can we come back!"

"Look Mom! I'm skating good!" she'd yell at me as she is draped over the top of the red thing as I'd drag her along.

Trying to keep Trestin warm in the ice rink. It was actually warmer outside then inside the rink!

In their skates with red cheeks after skating (yeah the pictures are kinda backwards)

I was pretty ingenious in coming up with this get up. The back tire of the stroller is in the red thing, so I could "help push" Aleksia as my left foot stayed next to the outside of the red thing to keep it strait (are ya following me?), the Garrick would use the stroller as support, and my right leg would propel us.

Than taking Aleksia and Trestin around. You can see the back tire in the red thing "helping" Aleksia.