Reptile Rascals

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 bouncingup 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.