James, Rox and the Boys

Reptile Rascals

2009-07-22T22:30:00.000-07:00

Since the boys love reptiles of all kinds, I had to show some shots of the reptiles that they have enjoyed the last few months. The have had many blue belly lizards, 2 ring neck snakes, skinks, and alligator lizards. Sorry we don't have shots of everything. We have asked them to just keep them in captivity for a short time and release them so that they can catch something new and keep the reptiles free and alive :) We have joked about what that the lizards in the area might say if we could hear them when they are captured and later released by Soren and Isaiah. We figured the lizards might be telling their family and friends about the two horrific weeks they spent in the glass prison. How their captors held them and stroked them for hours, left them to starve for days on end and then how they were then let go for what seemed to be no apparent reason. Soren even wrote a story to enter in the Authors Fair about his reptile adventures and titled it "The Three Little Lizards." We are sure it will be a classic someday. Friends that you may not recogize in these shots are Sophia and Elias. Sophia goes to Fall Creek Homeschool with Soren and Elias is her little brother.

Cousins Come to Town

2009-07-22T22:12:00.000-07:00

Natalie, Andy, Max, Sam, Ben & Eliza came to visit us earlier this year. It was so fun to have them here. They were good sports about being smashed in a little space with our 7 kids :) Nat said our place reminded her of a modern Swiss Family Robinson, so I guess that might help some of you visualize it! We took their family to Henry Cowell Redwood Park. This park has a redwood tree slice that shows enough rings to date it back to the birth of Christ. There is also a Steam Train that runs from Roaring Camp next door, so that is why we have shots of the kids on a train car. We had a lot of fun and the kids always ask when we are going to see their cousins or when we are going to move by them. As usual we don't have any good answers :)

Semi Annual Blog Fest

2009-07-22T21:51:00.000-07:00

I doubt that I am going to regularly post things to my blog, considering how long it has been since my last entry. So I have deemed this the "Biannual Blog Fest" in order to release me from further self imposed expectations :) It is hard to remember everything that has happened in the last months, but I will put in a few of the most memorable. We are still enjoying our mountain mobile home in the redwoods. Summer is hot here, but not unbearable. It is nice and cool at night and in the early morning. Since my last blog, Soren had his front tooth removed. We didn't get to pull it out with the doorknob because it had been dead for sometime since he hit it on the tub when he was very small and so it needed to be taken out. It has changed his look, but we love it. Isaiah got some silver "bionic" teeth like Soren. Mom and Dad feel like failures in the dental arena, but we are trying to do better with Ian.

The boys spend their days riding their bikes, jumping on the trampoline, playing in the plastic turtle pool and building with Legos most of the time. Ian is full of personality and has a hilarious fake smile. He is growing up and wanting to do everything his brothers do, so luckily they look after him really well. He seems to be very into sports and would carry his baseball mitt with him everywhere if he had someone to throw a ball to him 24/7. Isaiah is in a stage where he asks me for chocolate every morning when he wakes up, every day I say "no." I am not sure what this says about him, but you can't blame him for trying :) He wishes he could sleep on the top bunk, but since the manufacturer directions say no one under 6, he is doomed to wait. He loves to ride his bike, which has training wheels. He wants to take them off all the time, so Dad does and Isaiah quickly decides he wants them back on again. Soren has learned how to clean our the dishwasher, load it, vacuum the car, mop the floor and do other chores in order to earn money to support his Lego habit. He got stung by a bee recently, his 2nd sting in a year, so he is now suffering from the idea that every bee is out to get him. They are growing up so fast, it is sad. We are trying to relish every smile, tickle and tear.

Visiting My Sister Suz in St. George

2009-01-13T07:48:00.000-08:00

On our way to Pleasant Grove, we stopped to see my sister Susan and her family in St. George. It was great to have a few days to see them and enjoy sunny St. George. While we were there, I (Roxane) turned another year older. I was pampered completely by Suz the day of (Sunday), she would not let me do any work and James made an awesome salmon dinner that everyone loved. The next day he surprised me to celebrate my birthday, our 11 year anniversary, and Christmas. First he sent me to get a pedicure at a local spa and Susan got to come with me. It was really relaxing and I was thinking "what a treat!". On the way back to the house, he said he wanted me to meet someone who was staying in the Best Western. I had no idea what he meant, but when we got to the room, he said "Oh, I guess they aren't here, but I have a key let's try it." We walk in and find this beautiful suite and he has roses and sparkling apple cider on ice. He had been planning a night away for us and I had no idea! He found this amazing room at a steal of a price since travel had slowed and it wasn't booked. It had a fireplace, huge jacuzzi tub, and a massive plasma flat screen. My sister's family watched our kids and we went to dinner at Anasazi and had fondue and cooked our dinners on Australian lava rock. Overall, it was an amazing celebration thanks to a thoughtful sweet man! Thank you James!

Grandma's Visit

2008-11-30T23:21:00.000-08:00

In November, Sue was able to come and stay with me while James went to work in Hawaii again for 10 days. She had to watch the boys for me while I worked on the weekend nights. It was a lot of fun to have her around. She read Soren all the Magic School Bus books he wanted. Some of the other things we did were, we visited some Asian grocery stores, carved our Halloween pumpkin that we didn't get around to doing at Halloween since we had just moved, watched "Singing in the Rain" together. I included a video clip of Soren as Gene Kelly. One of the days we were able to go to the Oakland Temple too. We miss you Grandma!

Mobile Home Living at its Best

2008-11-30T22:29:00.000-08:00

Some of you may know, that a couple months after moving to California, we decided that we could not continue paying $2100/mo for our 2 bedroom place in Ben Lomond. Our house in Hawaii has been up for sale, but no luck with that so we were forced to look for another place. This was a difficult thought since we were just settling into our house and starting to get used to having less space than our place in Washington. As we began looking we decided it would be best to stay in our ward so the kids had some sort of consistency in at least one area. Our price range was so low, it was almost impossible that we would find any 2 bedrooms places. We started looking at trying to live in a 1 bedroom apartment. James loves his job, so we knew we had to find a way to make it work here even though it is expensive. Some of the 1 bedroom places we looked at were so scary! After much searching, the Lord answered our prayers. James was looking at a nice 1 bedroom apartment and he was excited about it, but he was hoping that landlord wouldn't panic when he heard we had 3 kids we wanted to squeeze into it. Fortunately, the landlord had 3 kids too, so they knew our plight and said they would rent it to us if we wanted. Then they presented another option, they had just bought an old campground that had a mobile home on it they were going to update and charge $1300 including utilties for and it had 2 bedrooms. We decided that this wasn't our dream come true, but it was what we had asked for and it would be better than living in a 1 bedroom place. Life in a mobile home has been interesting, but it feels like home now and we are grateful to have it. The campground itself has been a lot of fun for the boys to explore, so they are literally in little boy heaven! The mobile home was bought in 1962, so we have some serious retro brown wallboard, a tiny brown kitchen sink, a mustard yellow tub and very linear fixtures. We have started a list in honour of our new home called
You know you live in a mobile home in the Santa Cruz Mountains when...
1)You have tail lights on the outside of your house and a license plate
2) You get to boogie in the kitchen when you are running the washer because the electrical pull turns the kitchen light into a strobe light
3) You can't just flip a switch to turn on the lights you have to walk around to four lamps in one room since there is no overhead lighting
4) You get to hear and see your neighbor yelling at his wife just next door
5) You hear a gun go off outside repeatedly and find that another neighbor is killing racoons with his 22

Some of you have asked to see photos, for those of you who do not care ...sorry there are so many! Some of the shots are dark and its not the camera...the kitchen is just dark :) The picture that says Skyline, is showing our funky doorbell.

Halloween in Boulder Creek , CA

2008-11-30T22:13:00.001-08:00

I made Soren and Isaiah Jedi costumes this year and they wore them quite a bit before Halloween, so that was fun. They would continually fight over who got to be ObiWan. Ian got to wear an old costume that was Isaiah's when we were in Hawaii. He still looked so cute as our little pilot man. We had a ward party the week before Halloween and Ian was very popular because he spent most of the time during the trunk or treat jammin' out. One of the cars was playing some pop music and he was in the zone. It was especially funny because he would change up his moves, not just the usual bouncing up and down. Too bad we didn't get video, but try to imagine it, if you can! We trick or treated on Halloween in Boulder Creek, CA. We had just moved the weekend before and the town has a tradition where all the Main Street businesses give out candy. So there were crowds of people going up and down main street in this little mountain town. It was nice because most of the houses here are spread out, so going from house to house would be a drag. We look forward to doing it again next year and getting more pictures of Main Street.

Labor Day 2008 Camping at Lehi Park

2008-11-30T21:50:00.000-08:00

We were able to go camping for Labor Day at a Church owned campground on the mountain just above our house. There was hardly anyone there and the campsite was $5/night! It had real toilets, running water, and a playground. The kids had so much fun building fires, catching lizards and looking for spiders and insects to kill/torture. One of the photos shows Isaiah holding tightly onto the bottle they used to capture the Western Blue Belly Fence Lizard. We took it home and let it go in our yard, but it was never seen again. We made Boca burgers and had some corn cooked in the fire like my Dad cooks it. Of course, we didn't get much sleep but it is a good memory nonetheless!

Don't Mess With a Missionary Man

2008-11-30T21:45:00.000-08:00

Some of you may know that Soren wants to be a missionary right now! He is known to sleep in his suit many a night and he loves to go to the visitor center by the temple in Oakland and watch all the clips. We started inviting the missionaries over for dinner once a week since we are in a smaller ward here. The boys absolutely adore them.

Its only a flesh wound!

2008-11-30T21:41:00.001-08:00

Isaiah did a nose dive off one of our benches in the back yard and smacked his head on the pebbled cement. It was a pretty good gash. We had to clip the hair around it to get the herbal ointment on, so the end product is this lovely photo! Yum-yum! Soren was such a great big brother, without being asked he decided it might help Isaiah feel better if he read to him while Mom and Dad operated. It was really cute!

Ian's 1st Haircut

2008-11-30T21:35:00.000-08:00

I had to post these shots to show Ian with his long hair and without! Overnight, he aged 6 months when we cut it. We knew this would happen, so we put it off as long as we could. Now no one stops me in the store to say how cute my little girl is, so it is probably for the best! Some of you might agree that Ian with long hair looks a lot like Roxane when she was little. Poor child! We love you Ian!

Living in Ben Lomond, CA

2008-11-30T21:10:00.000-08:00

When we first arrived in Ben Lomond (yes, its an odd name, I know) I couldn't quite get used to the rural surroundings, no sidewalks, no landscaping, etc. Our neighborhood in Washington was beautiful and I was just a little spoiled. There was no grass in our back or front yard, so James planted some seed and as you can see in the pictures, it came in nicely just in time for us to move! Here are some shots of Soren, Isaiah and Ian our pride and joy. The top photo shows Soren and Isaiah with their stuffed animals and the bears Grandma Bybee made them. They started dressing their animals one day and they had so much fun with it. That must be what it is like to have girls, but it only lasted for a day or two. The other two are of them posing together wearing Thomas the Tank Engine Shirts. Soren orchestrated these shots.

James 40th Birthday Surprise

2008-11-30T20:13:00.000-08:00

James turned the big 40 on August 1st and in the past we haven't done anything too special for birthdays, so I decided to plan a surprise weekend away. My niece Lauren had been out to help me with the kids in Washington when James had to go to Hawaii to work for a few weeks for Telsource, so she agreed to come out to watch the kids for us for 2 days! I planned a weekend in San Fran since we were only an hour and a half now. I told James Lauren was coming out because she missed the kids and then he thought we were going to get to go out on a date for his birthday, which he was very excited about. When I told him it was for a weekend in the city he was completely stunned! We haven't had a weekend away since we went to Boston before Ian was born, so it was about time :) We got a hotel in Union Square and because there were no non-smoking rooms still available at our reserved rate, they upgraded our room to a corner suite and our view was amazing! Its funny when you haven't been without the kids much, we got to our room and we looked at each other and said "the kids would have loved this, we should have just brought them!" We changed our minds after we got used to the freedom again, walking to our restaurant without having to use a stroller or drag someone was really nice! We found this hole in the wall Indian restaurant that was fantastic! Our dinner was under $25 and it was only a few blocks from our hotel! Thanks to yelp.com!

The next day we enjoyed Chinatown a bit, then we called one of James' long time friends Kirt and his wife Michelle. They came and met us. We got talking so much we practically walked the entire city until we finally settled on a place for dinner. We were so tired! It was a really fun day and we actually got our friends to take some pictures of us so not all of our shots are too close ups!
We got to hear, smell and see the Sea Lions at the pier at Moss Landing too.

Leaving Gig Harbor, WA

2008-11-30T19:16:00.000-08:00

In July 2008, we loaded the moving truck with the help of several kind neighbors and ward members and headed off to a new adventure in California. For any of you who didn't know, James had been working for Target in Washington and he decided to get back into the tech industry. He got a job with a company called Telsource. When he was offered the position in Washington it was temporary. After his first few days of work, they liked him so much they offered him a permanent position in the San Francisco Bay Area.

This was not our biggest move as far as miles, but it was our first with 3 kids, a massive moving truck and a 2nd vehicle in tow. We were not sure how it would go...

Come to find out Soren and Isaiah felt like kings riding in the enormous moving truck with their Dad. They rode with him almost the entire 16 hrs! The only trauma that we experienced was when Soren left his favorite blanket in the hotel in Washington and we didn't realize it until we were already in California. He must have really enjoyed the ride, because he said "Let's get in the truck and go get it right now!" After a few nights of crying himself to sleep, he decided it was time to move on.