Nanny Jade! Nanny Jade!

Jade is getting some nanny practice in with the Cooler Schooler girls!

Then Jade made her amazing Lumpia! Here she is... so cute...

Kent (and the rest of us,too!) loves Jade's lumpia!!!

Memorial day Weekend....

 Actually this blog starts back to last Thursday. Kent has his senior culminating project to do. It is a huge project that is a high school requirement to graduate in this school district. Even tho he's home schooled, he's home schooled thru the school district if that makes any sense, and he's also a running start student who is fully enrolled in college, but to get the high school diploma he had to complete this project.

The purpose is to get the kids to think about their next step in life after high school, based mainly on what type of career they are interested in. Kent did his on 3 areas of engineering that he's interested in. The pro's and con's of all 3, how much it costs to go to school, typical salaries, he also interviewed 3 engineers, one including my own cousin Joe F.!!! Thanks Joe for helping out!

Kent decided to do a power point presentation. He was amazing. The presentation had to be between 10-15 minutes long, Kent was pushing that 15 minute envelope but he had alot to say. They also wanted the kids to dress up like they were going to an interview. So here's Kent all spiffed up in his black slacks, shirt and tie. Sooo handsome.

Halfway thur the presentation, Kent said he noticed one of the teachers (there were 3 grading him) start to nod off- in the teachers defense Kent was rambling off alot of statistics and numbers. So Kent said very respectfully "I hope I'm not boring you, I know you've had to sit thur these presentations all day"- Kent was the last one of the day. And all the teachers started cracking up. A little comic relief is always welcome! When he was done, all 3 said how amazing he was, how detailed his information was. And the lady teacher just kept complimenting him saying she would hire him in second and that he'd be successful in what ever field he choose. He really did spend hours and hours and hours on this project. He was pretty stressed about it and very happy when he was done.

Then Friday I dropped the kids off at the Smith's house. They were all going camping over the weekend, but Kyle was staying behind cause he was working- and he's not really into camping he said. Anyway Laura wanted to know if Jade and Kent wanted to hang out over the weekend so Kyle was staying solo over night for days. Jade and Kent thought it sounded like fun. So between Laura and I we have 3 amazing responsible kids. I didn't even worry for a second about them being alone. Friday night I called Jade to see how the boys were doing. And what were those crazy teens doing on a Friday evening? Napping! They crack me up!

So also Friday, Jeromy picked up Aurora. They were heading to a wedding at 7pm at the waterfront in Bremerton by the ferry. The weather was perfect. And since I was at work, just feet from the wedding I thought I'd come out during my lunch to see if I could catch the ceremony. But it was running a little late and I couldn't stay any longer- I had to go back to work. But I got to see some friends from church which is always nice and Jeromy took a couple pictures with his cell phone of the wedding.

Here's one of them: Demetrius and Alauna.... they are so cute!

 So then Saturday, with my kiddos gone at Laura's and we having Aurora, we thought we'd go see the Men in Black 3, at 3:30pm, in 3D... weird huh! It was pretty good, I thought Avengers was better tho.

I also worked on some more Vitamix dinners Saturday night. I remade the black bean soup- delicious! Then I also tried a new one: Rosemary Chicken Soup. Listen to these ingredients:

2 cups milk

1/4 cup small onion

1/2 tsp rosemary

1/4 tsp minced garlic

1 tbsp better than bullion

1/4 cup cream cheese (oh yeah!)

2 medium potatoes

1 roasted chicken breast

Does that not sound delicious?? Well, I forgot to get a picture with my camera- just know it looked and tasted delicious! Also, I got this recipe from a girls vitamix cookbook that is 8-10 years old, so I don't know if it's in all our current book, but you pretty much just throw everything into the blender- if you want the exact recipe just let me know!

I also got Jade, Kent and I all signed up to do the Sound to Narrows run! The kids are doing the 5K, and I am doing the 12K (7.45 miles). Can't wait! It's June 9th!

So I told Aurora and Jade a while ago that this weekend we'd start shopping for swimsuits. Since we had Aurora, we started with her. Let's just say 6 stores and a few hours later, we could not find a suit. She's right in the weird size, to big for girls and too small for adults, and most of the suits let everything hang out. Aurora wanted a one piece and there's not many of those. Bummer dude, we'll try again tomorrow maybe on her side of the pond before we drop her off at home.

Onto Sunday, we stopped by Laura's and picked up Kyle, Jade and Kent and with Aurora already in tow, we headed to church. We were going thur the Proverbs. Love Proverbs. One verse stuck out to me:

Proverbs 17:27

He who has knowledge spares his words, And a man of understanding is of a calm spirit.

Amen--- to myself that is. I've really been working on watching what I say and to stop myself from lashing out. To be calm. I'm a work in progress people.

After church we dropped the 3 teens back at Laura's. We decided we would have a nice dinner, movie and game night. We bought the movie Courageous. Awesome awesome movie. Then we had some delicious flank steak and corn on the cob for dinner. Then the 3 of us: Jeromy, Aurora and I all picked out one game to play- making 3 games.... yeah we were up kinda late! But Aurora loved game night!

Then Monday morning I tried another vitamix recipe: Apple Pancakes! These were pretty tasty! I  remembered a picture this time!

Then I went to the YMCA and ran 7 miles. I need to get on the ball again, cause the last 2 weeks I haven't been running as much cause of the long hours I've been working. But I think the big projects are over so I'll have more time!

Afterwards it was time to take Aurora home. We got an extra day with her cause of the holiday. Once in Tacoma, we tried the Tacoma mall to see if we could find a swimsuit for her. We looked at 3 other stores and we finally found one. But we do need to modify it! But at least we found one!

On the way home we stopped by Laura's to get my kids. They were back from their camping trip! So we came home and dropped the boys off then Jade and I headed out to find her a swimsuit!

We found one, in the first store we went to! It took us 9 stores to find one for Aurora, and one store for Jade. That was easy. And since it was that easy Jade and I went to party city to start buying decorations for Kent's graduation party! That was fun... they even had a bobble head... yeah, I got it. It already has Kent's picture in the face. He likes it!

Now dinner. We were having tilapia and quinoa and steamed broccoli.

A great Memorial Day Weekend. Thankful to the men and women who gave their lives for the freedoms we have. You know that saying that freedom is never free is so true. THANK YOU. And also:

MAY GOD BLESS AMERICA!

Boxes and Running...

So Friday I had off from work, and Jeromy has Friday's off typically. We were going to be doing alot of work around the house. Jeromy started by filling a large crack in the garage floor. The Realtor gave us a hit list of things that he spotted. This was one of them.

 He also noted the bad paint job in the hallway of the stairs. I noticed it too, but never did any thing for the 7+ years we lived here. But now, we are fixing it for future homeowners ggrrrrr. Well, Jeromy is. He's working hard. Don't like him working with funky ladders on stairs, but he's always safe...

 Jade is also decluttering and boxing stuff up, making a goodwill pile, and garbage pile.

 Jade is helping Kent go thru his clothes for goodwill, too. I'm busy working also, and not really sure Kent "knows" what should be kept and thrown away, but I trust Jade's judgement cause she's awesome like that, so she was helping him.

 I'm also boxing alot of stuff up, and decluttering. I'll be taking down my numbers on the wall :o(  but of course storing them in a safe place for the future home...

Ready to go to goodwill... then we headed to my moms to go thru her plastic and look at all her craft stuff she's getting rid off. Let's just say we had to throw stuff in and shut the doors fast to keep all the stuff Jeromy got from falling out! He's really into his puppet making and my mom has alot of cool stuff and stuff to organize it all.

 This room is the temporary storage, but most of these boxes got moved to the storage closet... just so much stuff..

 Then today, Saturday morning at 9AM we ran in the:

 Viking Fest Road Race 2012!!!

Love running with my kids. And I love that they love to do it! We actually don't run together, but we are all "together" in spirit thru out the run. I ran the 5 miles (my number is black) and the kids ran in the 1 mile event (their numbers are red).

 You can see a little bit of the water behind us. This is one of my favorite runs cause it goes along the water in Poulsbo. And the weather was perfect!

 Jeromy came and took pictures and handed out tracks, the million dollar ones telling people it was their prize for running!

Just before the run, Kent was found swinging. He's always loved to swing- I always did too. Kinda feels like you're flying.

 There's Kent- what a great picture Jeromy!

 He got Jade in motion, too! There she goes...

 Kent always takes good pictures when he's running... he ran his one mile in 8:56 awesome!

 Jade always has that look of concentration... she ran her mile in 10:23- sweeet!

Mine's the look of pain LOL

I actually got a PR (personal record) for Viking Fest- I ran my 5 miles in 46:51, that's a 9 min 22 sec mile average- woohoo!

 You know the Poulsbo bakery is right there. And Kent is no dummy, he grabbed a few dollars before he left the house just to buy that donut that's as big as his head... he's so darn cute!

 Jade is making a delicious lunch, cut up onions, peppers, and turkey sausage all mixed up in scrambles eggs... look at that face- she's so pretty!

 Kent also making scrambled eggs- gotta love those chickens out back that are actually doing their job!

Now I am resting. Why do you ask? Well, it's not cause I ran 5 miles but because I have to go into tonight at 5pm and work a 12 hour shift till 5am- I'm trying not to cry about (just kidding... mostly) going to be soo tired. Also working the same 12 tomorrow, and Monday and most likely thur the week to get this project done by Friday... prayers to keep my sanity please and thank you!

Just have to remember how much fun I've had with my family this past 2 days....

Amazing...

Aurora has her baseball games Tuesday nights. So after Jeromy works a 10-11 hour day he comes home and eats dinner- if there's time, then he drives over to Tacoma- 45 min away to watch his little girls baseball game. Is she not totally adorable??? Love that face!

Then Jeromy has to leave her game a little early to drive back home to pick Jade up on time at OC at 9pm- her last class for the day.

What a great dad/step-dad. I know he's tired and doesn't really like all the constant running around, but he does it anyway knowing he's an integral part of this family we have woven together with the help and grace of God. Couldn't do it with HIM! So thankful Jeromy is such a hard worker and takes care of all the millions of details while I have to work at night.

Some day all the kids will be grown (OK-so Jade is!!) and they will all be moved out living lives of their own, and things will slow down around here... and just maybe we'll miss the days of constant activity with the kids. Or will we?? LOL

So much fun...

Tonight (since I'm not at work haha) I'm working on the arduous task of organizing Kent's 15 years of school papers I've kept- 2 years of preschool & kindergarten thur 12th. I've been keeping each year organized by folder over the years. And now I want to condense all the stuff even more into a 5 inch binder like I did for Jade 2 years ago. You can see all the papers I'm going thru... it's so hard to throw stuff away... I kept so much, and it's so fun going thru it all.

Jade came in and started looking thru her 5 inch binder while I was working on Kent's! Kent's back there working on an assignment. Poor Jeromy is already off to bed after working a 11.5 hours shift. Darn those bugs!

While going thru Kent's 1st grade year stuff I came across a cute story Kent wrote about going to Grandma's house. Thought you might like this mom! I didn't change any of the spelling of Kent's story...

I was at Gandma's house, and lukey me I got a crocadile and it's name is Swapy and Jade's leopards name is Sneaky and Denny's tiger name is Indai and Mason's is a soft bear. And then their a game named follow the leader and the first leader was mommy then Jade, then Denny, and I was the last leader. And we had fun at Grandma house.

How cute is that mom?? You must have just bought all the kids a stuffed animal after going on a trip or something. I love my kids so much!!!

Mom's Day....

 It's been a whole week since I blogged last... been busy. We've been real busy around the house. Jeromy has been doing a ton of yard work getting the place picked up to look good for future home buyers. He bought this 14 foot pruning pole for the branches in the front yard...

Seriously, Jeromy is a one man army. Such a hard worker, he just doesn't stop, reminds me of my dad!

 Here's the before. This is taken from the front porch looking out to the front yard. See how you can't even see thru the trees or see the neighbors?

 Here's cut off all the limbs, he even cut down 4 trees (small ones) and took out several bushes. He then had all 3 kids help him drag all the limbs to the back...

 Wow-- is that amazing or what? You might want to scroll back to that first picture... amazing. We actually liked the privacy the limbs provided, but the Realtor said it would help make the house have better curb appeal to not have it totally covered by trees when people come up to see it for the first time. I get it.

Here's looking at the house from the street. I accidentally deleted the before picture- bummer. But before from this angle all you could see was the garage doors and the walls just before the front door, now you can see the whole house! Great job Jeromy and kids! The kids worked for several hours and Jeromy worked all day! He also got on the roof and was cleaning moss and cleaning the sky lights. He also pressure washed the  sidewalk around the house. What did I do? Well, I supervised, and I did mow the lawn, catch some sun- and ran 11 MILES! One hundred and ten minutes of straight running- go ahead and call me crazy!

Also I've been doing some work on the inside of the house. Mainly... DE-CLUTTERING! I have so much stuff...  I made 3 piles... "Garbage", "Maybe" and "Keeping" I started going thru the books and I was on a roll. I totally cleaned out our book cases of so much stuff (crap), while boxing stuff up that I'd want to keep while making the place look more spacious for new buyers...

 It always looks worse before it gets better...

  I totally decluttered this table. It was covered with treasured pictures, but I brought it down to 6 pictures and boxed the rest up, that was hard.

 While Aurora was working last night with her dad, she picked some flowers for me and drew a card. She did it all on her own with out her dad prompting her. She is such a little angel.

 More nanny practice for Jade. She and Aurora like playing games with all their stuff animals... so funny.

Sunday morning. Aurora convinced me to wear a skirt, she knows I never do, but I can't refuse that cute face. So I asked Jade to wear one too! So here are all of us girls. I know it looks like I'm wearing black, but it's actually a really cool deep purple!

 Here's the 5 of us. When I first saw this picture it made me kinda sad. We look like 5 adults. Yeah, Aurora is still kinda little, but we just about look like 5 adults.... not 2 adults with 3 kids... sniff sniff... they are so big...

We were all in the back with the Sunday school kids today (except for Kent who works the CD's out front). It was alot of fun. We had pictures taken of each kid and they all made a pretty card for their moms. They were so pretty in fact that I asked Aurora and Jade to make one for me!

A mother's day present I got my self, a carousel that holds all the little coffees and hot chocolates! I love it. And so do the kids, both my kids are coffee drinkers now, when did that happen?

 After church, and after laying out in the sun for a while, my mom, dad, sister Misty and Kelsey came over for a little visit.

 My amazing daughter made chocolate covered strawberries! We also had some mouth-watering pineapple and raspberries. Sooo goood!

 Just visiting!

 My cutie-pie Jade, and the guys: Kent and Jeromy....

There's Misty with her cutie-pie Kelsey.... can you believe she's almost 4? She was just born it seems like!

What a beautiful weekend. So thankful to God for all He has given me.... I have a great husband, 3 great kids, and great mom and dad and extended family.... I have my health... and my salvation! What more could I ask for? NOTHING!

Sunday Stuff...

So, let's see what's been happening. I got a picture of Jade and Kent presenting their senior pictures... I can't believe this time has come... both my kids being graduated from high school... well Kent's almost graduated...

 Poor Jeromy... he needs some good news...

 How about "DATE NIGHT"???? Whoooa simmer down there cowboy....

 That's ok- I'm excited about date night, too!

 We're supposed to have our night out last night, but I got told Friday night they needed a supervisor Saturday night for various reasons- LAME!!! So we were kinda bummed last night. But not today!(Wow- that shiny square on my forhead is large and in charge!)

Jeromy wanted to check out the Galaxy theatre in Gig Harbor. We were going to see the Avengers. Some pretty amazing special effects- probably the best I've seen since the Lord of the Rings movies.

It was in 3D... yeah, we are dorks... but extremely happy dorks...

 Guess what we found in Gig Harbor???? Oh no we didn't!!! Oh yes we did! It's my favorite restaurant! My favorite Japanese Steak house is in Tukwilla, and there are several others we've tried that are closer, but my favorite is the Tukwilla one... so far away, I know right? Well, it's the same one right here! Still a little bit of a drive but alot closer! Sooooo yummy!

 We had a great time together. We have both been working overtime, and when working oppsite shifts we see each other even less :o(  so we really look forward to our time together. I LOVE my husband!

So.. some random pictures. Kent was just too cute hanging out in his room drawing tonight. I love that my kids love to draw. Jade has always loved to draw, but I had to encourage Kent a little more while he was growing up. I know the talent was there he just didn't draw as much. Now he draws all the time and he's so creative!

 Jade is researching to be a Nanny (AKA watching the Toy Story Movie- LOL I crack my self up!) You can also see all the boxes Jeromy has been working on packing up and stuff.

 Ok, all you vitamix lovers, I tried a new recipe... Black Bean Soup- I wish this picture was a little better in showing the texture and color. Tasted delicous, and now I have lunches for the next week. I really liked that artichoke pepper dinner I made last week, but I'm forcing my self to try different ones so I don't make the same thing over and over again which I can so easily do. I have an extra dinner again mom if you want to try it out before you make it!

Here's what's in it: chicken broth, black beans, chickpeas, onion, garlic cloves, lime juice, red, yellow and orange peppers, scallions, ground cumin, chili powder, salt and pepper. YUM! Oh and poured over brown rice of course! Didn't add any meat to this one cause I figured there was enought protien in both the beans and chickpeas.

Good night!