2011 Highlights

I am really pumped for a new year of fresh starts, new goals, and new memories to be made. 2012 came faster than I anticipated, creeping quietly in as Christmas came and went in the blink of an eye. Before I get to some of my personal goals and also some of our family goals for the year, I thought I would first give some props to 2011 and list some of the higher points for our family:

*2011*

Sarah:

20 pounds lost and going strong

Celebrated 9 years of marriage

Treated myself to a new treadmill

Attended her first ever professional soccer match

Went to see Wicked for the 2nd time and loved it even more

Harry Potter

Turned 31 and feeling fabulous.

Riley:

High school boys soccer team won first ever league and regional titles and capped it off with a 4th place finish at state.

Landed a huge account at work that his company has been trying to get for years.

Took his girls club team to a college showcase tournament in Las Vegas.

Said goodbye to coaching club soccer. (for now)

Turned the big 3-0

Got to see one of his favorite soccer players of all time, Wayne Rooney score a hat trick in person.

Kendle:

Played her first season of basketball and loved it. Dad bought her a basketball hoop.

Played softball for the 2nd year in a row and her team took 4th in the end of the year tournament.

Fell in love with all things Wicked

Was the only 3rd grader in her school to receive 3 awards at the end of year assembly -- 2nd place in AR, Student Council, and an excellence in academics award from her teacher.

Got her ears pierced

Turned 9 with a fabulous girly bubble gum themed party

Rollerblades

Undefeated soccer season

Got to do some shooting practice for the first time on Thanksgiving

Mindy Gledhill concert

Santa bringing her a new ipod

Morgan:

First year of swim lessons and loved it

Turned 4 years old and couldn't be sweeter

Planted his own garden and actually got some peas and potatoes to grow

Got to go on a solo trip with dad to a soccer tournament in Seattle and get really spoiled

First set of stitches right between his eyes

Riding a big boy bike and almost ready to take off the training wheels

Taught himself how to do flips on the trampoline

Was the ring leader for sitting around the fire pit and making smores every night during the summer

Fell in love with all things Star Wars

Got to go hunting for the first time with dad and was a trooper

Cooper and Kale:

No more bottles!

Kale got stitches

Went swimming for the first time

Got to start going to nursery at church (not big fans)

Were my tomato pickers during the summer months

Loved the ocean

Learned how to jump on the trampoline and ride their little bikes

Ate 2000+ popsicles

Loved trick-or-treating

Turned 2 years old and devoured their cupcakes

Played in the snow for the first time

Cooper loved Santa, Kale not so much

Started potty training (yay!)

Family:

4th of July parade and BBQ

Beach vacation

New trampoline

Fire pit and smores summer nights

Family pictures

Christmas carriage ride to look at the lights

It was a great year, and I can't wait to see what's in store next!

*Tomorrow I'll be posting my personal and family goals for the year.*

The rest of the week I hope to do some backtracking and catch up on the month of December and all of our Christmas fun. I have lots and lots of pictures to put on here and get caught up.  

Trip Down Memory Lane

One of things I wanted to do and be better at this year is keeping all of my photos organized that I have stored on our computer. I've been weeding out and deleting ones that aren't worth keeping and making sure dates and things are correct and so on. While browsing through some way old ones, I found this gem that was in a random folder:

This one was taken of Riley and I on the 4th of July in 2002 at my grandparents house in Hermiston. I was just a month or so away from having Kendle. That was a really fun day we spent with lots of family and my aunt had bought everyone matching shirts. It was a gorgeous day and we stayed until dark to watch the fireworks from the backyard and I stretched out on a lawn chair to prop up my swollen feet.

This is another favorite I found that is of Kendle and I when she was only about two weeks old. It was a sunny September day and we were laying on a blanket out in the shade in our yard. I was soaking up all the snuggles and hugs that I could. I thought she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I was really exhausted, but I loved becoming a mother. I think this is one I scanned into the computer since you can see some spots on it. Notice my wedding ring on my pinky? Ya, my fingers were still so swollen it wouldn't fit on my ring finger but I wanted to wear it anyway. Silly?

Maybe if I get really ambitious in the next little while I will pick out some of these old photos and get them framed to hang in our house.

Baking Powder Biscuits and other Ramblings

Back in my college/younger years I dated a guy who's grandmother made the BEST baking powder biscuits that were so flaky and light and melted in your mouth practically. The family all called her NeeNee and she was from New Orleans. She had the best accent and stories and would tell me about all of the great food to be found in Louisiana, specifically one instance where she had the best "Poor Boy Sandwich" down in the French Quarter - which is New Orleans oldest neighborhood. She also made us eat a spoonful of black eyed peas on New Year's Day which is supposed to bring you good luck through the year. She was a bit on the eccentric side, but boy she could really cook.

What got me thinking about NeeNee and her biscuits, was that I happened to stumble upon a really good baking powder biscuits recipe that I've used about three times in the last two weeks (not so good for the old waistline) that is very yummy. It's the best recipe I've found yet for them and VERY easy to make. So if you're in the mood for making something homey and cozy this weekend, try these out:


Baking Powder Biscuits
2 cups flour
2 1/2 tsp. baking powder (you can add a bit more depending on your preference)
3/4 tsp. salt
5 T shortening
3/4 cup milk


Preheat oven to 450 degrees. In a large bowl mix dry ingredients together. Cut in shortening until mixture is crumbly and in little pea sized pieces. Add milk a little at a time until a ball forms and dough pulls away from the sides (not too sticky). Roll out on floured surface and cut into biscuits ( I would err on the thick side depending on your preference). If desired brush tops with butter, and then bake 12-15 minutes or until golden brown.

I like that it uses ingredients I always have on hand and they come together in minutes. Leftovers are great reheated for breakfast and topped with scrambled eggs and cheese.


I am looking forward to having a somewhat relaxing weekend. Something to celebrate - Saturday is the last day of hunting season for Riley. Hurray! No more dead birds in our driveway, huge loads of hunting clothes to wash, boring recounts of the days hunt that I somewhat pretend to listen to, and getting woken up at 4:00 in the morning when Riley leaves. He was pretty stoked that today he was getting to go hunting with some famous guys. They are going to be on a hunting video. One of the guys invented the "Final Approach Blind", if any of you don't know what that is , I'll just tell you that is a VERY big deal. He would be like the Bill Gates of the hunting world. Riley has shot three banded geese this year (which is pretty much unheard of I guess?) so I think he is quite content for hunting season to come to an end. Now we will have a few slow weeks of nothingness until soccer starts up.

That's all for today - have a great weekend!

Grade School Flashback

Today while I was on the treadmill I was watching "The View" and their special musical guest was..........


get ready.........


oh no they didn't...........





New Kids On The Block

They have gotten back together and are attempting to make a comeback. They performed their song "Single" off their new album "The Block" and I have to say that I was bopping along with it as I ran. Not only that, but they brought back some of their sweet dance moves for the performance. At the end of the show they performed "Step By Step" from the old school and I'm not ashamed to admit that I remembered all the words.


Them back in the day:
















Now:

















While interviewing them, Elizabeth Hasselback was totally flustered, because like me she had been a huge fan back in the day. I always had the biggest crush on Joey McIntyre and I used to have a large poster of the NKOTB on the outside of my bedroom door that I think one of my brothers ripped off in some disagreement we had. (anyone want to fess up to that one?) I probably had it coming after making my family endure endless hours of "Hanging Tough" and "The Right Stuff".

As I was watching the grown women in the audience singing along to the songs, I thought back to an Oprah show where she had David Cassidy on and all of the middle aged women were going wild. I couldn't believe they were still ga-ga over some guy that was popular in the 70's. Now, admittedly, I am one of those people enthralled by the possibility that my favorite boy band from grade school could be making a come back.

I remember in the third grade I literally thought my life was coming to an end because I wasn't able to go to the Tiffany/NKOTB concert. I had to listen to my friends talk about it for weeks while I seethed in silence.

Yeah, I know there is a certain amount of cheesiness that is associated with boy bands, but sometimes I like a big slice of cheese. It's that inner-suppressed-teeny-bopper that's just dying to get out.

10 years ago....

I mentioned in a previous post that my ten year class reunion was this last Saturday. Since I wasn't able to go, I took my memory back in time a little, and here's some blasts from the past:

*If you turned on the radio you were likely to hear any of these songs:
Iris - Goo Goo Dolls
I Don't Want To Miss a Thing - Aerosmith
I Want You Back - N*Sync
Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life) - Green Day
My Heart Will Go On - Celine Dion
Ghetto Supastar (That Is What You Are) - Pras Michel

*You might have watched some of these movies:
City of Angels
Romeo and Juliet (My favorite movie and soundtrack of senior year)
Titanic
Hope Floats
The Wedding Singer

*You might have been wearing:
Baggy Jeans
Doc Martens
Polo
Tommy Hilfiger
Tall socks (not a good time for fashion in my opinion)

I found one of my old memory books they gave us around graduation and I didn't write very much in it, but here are a few things:

*Best moments: Decorating the senior tree, Girls nights out, Cruising, Homecoming Court, Sadie Hawkins, Beating Baker @ Baker in Volleyball.

*Unforgettable moments: Cheerleading half-time show, Cheerleading squad helping host "Hot 9 @ 9 on 107.3 FM, Dying our hair on volleyball trips, State championship game for softball

*Where will I be in 10 years: An undercover FBI agent married to Leonardo DiCaprio. (What was I thinking?! As Riley pointed out, that just goes to show how out of touch with reality you are at that age)

*For class favorites I was voted: Best dressed, and All-American (whatever that meant)

*Favorite classes: Speech, Creative Writing


It is really funny to me to see how cheesy a lot of what I wrote really was. I had fun going back and looking at some pictures from my senior year.

This picture cracked me up. Who is the mystery guy that I cut out of the picture?! Was I that mad? Does anyone else have a picture like this?

Softball senior girls left to right: Jill, Kristi, Brooke, Me, Rachel

My locker, usually looked like a bomb went off. And there usually weren't flowers in there. I wonder who those were from?

My sister's baptism

The most important part of graduation, getting the diploma

I also saved some of these:

Our class motto inside our graduation announcement was a line from "Free Bird" by Lynyrd Skynyrd :

"If I leave her tomorrow

Would you still remember me?

For I must be traveling on now

'Cause there's too many places that I've got to see"

Pretty telling about our class, there were a lot of wanderer's and free spirits among us. :)

I think one of the best reasons my senior year was so great was because I did NOT have a boyfriend for the majority of it. I dated a few people, but mostly I was just playing sports, hanging with my friends, and having a blast. I wish I would have taken advantage of that time more before heading into the world of rent, bills, and car payments.

Doing this post has made me realize how fast time really passes us by. I wonder where I'll be in another ten years..................................

Growing up in a small town

I find myself often comparing the way I grew up, to how my children are being raised and the environment of a larger town contrasted to small town life. And when I say small, I mean a town of less than 3,000 people. As children, my siblings and I would run and play until we were too exhausted to move another inch. We had a huge backyard with tons of trees to climb, and lots of places to hide. My mom loves to garden and we always had tons of beautiful flowers and plants growing all around our home. As a kid, I just loved my life.






















We had lots of freedom to roam, ride bikes, take walks, daydream, and use our imaginations. I remember during the summer time racing my bike up and down the little slope of a road in our neighborhood until it got too dark to see where I was going. We knew most, if not all of our neighbors (we still laugh about the ditch man and his mean dogs) and there was always something to do. We would have sword fights with our awesome home made shields and wooden swords (that should be a whole other post), made forts in the backyard, played army, ran through the sprinklers and played catch.


As far as the town itself went, we had one semi-grocery store, a gas station, a mini-mart, two taverns, a post office, a grade school and junior high, one movie store or another, a shady motel, and that's about it. We lived close enough to the grocery store that we could walk or ride our bikes and get a pop or a candy bar. As a kid, what more do you need? We hardly ever ate fast food since the nearest McDonald's or anything else was about 20 minutes away. One of my earliest childhood memories of going into "town", was to see the movie "E.T." at the old Hermiston Theater. I think I was about two or three years old at the time. Mostly everyone in town knew each other and I went to school with a lot of the same kids all the way from kindergarten through high school. At the time, I thought that was kind of boring not having very many new people to meet, but looking back now I think it was pretty neat.


As I got into my teenage years, and my younger brother and sister were the ones roaming the neighborhood, times were starting to change. You had to be more aware of where they were, who they were with and so on. I had one terrifying experience when I was babysitting and my little brother went off with some friends without telling me and I did not know where he was. I couldn't find him for over two hours. There were some pretty questionable people who had moved into the area around that time and I was beside myself with worry. I thought I was going to kill him when he finally came back home.

Today I am very careful about where my children are and who they are with. I let Kendle ride her bike, but only in front of our house where I can see her. Sometimes I wonder if I am being too overprotective. I am kind of a worry wart about those type of things. I feel sad she won't have the same experiences that I did growing up. I wish my children would have room to roam, places to explore, and the freedom to run the day away. Like the old saying goes, "you don't know what you got till it's gone".

So ya, I grew up in a podunk, boondocks town. We didn't have sidewalks, cool stores, or a place to get a decent burger, but what we did have you can't buy nowadays.

F-U-N.

Summer Break Starts Today

Hurray for the last day of school! Here's to sleeping in, no more driving to the school and back twice a day, popsicles, staying up late, taking walks to the park, swimming lessons and more. We made a family list of fun things to do this summer and hung it on our pantry door where we would be sure to see it every day. Some of the activities included:


-Making home made ice cream

-going swimming at our secret river spot

-exploring a new town

-watching fireworks

-slip n' sliding

-and taking our trip to the coast


Mostly, even if we're just hanging out in the backyard playing with our dog, I just want to have some nice relaxing fun with my family.


As excited as I am that today was Kendle's last day of school, it was a little bittersweet knowing today was her last day being a five-year-old kindergartner. Next year she'll be a big first grader who's gone all day long. I had to take a picture of her last day:

Happy Summer to ALL!!!

Happy Birthday!

My wonderful mother turns 56 today! I know she won't mind me sharing her age because she looks and feels much younger than that. I wish I could be there to help her celebrate, but since I can't, I'll celebrate her a bit by sharing who she is and why she is so loved.

A few years ago she gave me a book titled "Mother's Memories, For My Daughter". Inside she included pictures, facts, and memories about her life and mine. I treasure it. I pulled it out this morning, and some of these thoughts come from there.

My mother was born in Blackfoot, Idaho at the Bingham Memorial Hospital to Max and Eddis Covington. This picture of my grandmother holding my mother was taken five days later when they returned home from the hospital. Can you believe my grandmother's tiny waist?


























She grew up catching frogs, climbing trees, and running around with the neighborhood kids. They played in an area that encompassed about 10 blocks and she's sure her mother didn't know where she was half of the time, but you didn't have to worry like you do now. She also developed a love of reading at a young age and liked Nancy Drew, Robert Louis Stephenson, and poetry. She wanted to be Annie Oakley.

























The house she remembers most from growing up was on Shilling Street and it was a huge house with 2 fireplaces and chandeliers in the front room and dining room. There were 4 bedrooms upstairs with a huge sun porch on the back of the house that later became her bedroom. It had a scary basement and about 2 acres to run on with pine trees and lilacs all around.

Her teenage years were a lot of fun. She had lots of good friends and they were always staying at each others houses. They liked to go to dances, movies, or just drive around. My mom wrote this about her first kiss: "Morgan Adams kissed me on my cheek at a dance party in the 7th grade." Too cute.

She babysat a lot from the time she was 10 or 11 and had her first potato combine job at 13. She got her first guitar at 14. She wrote that she loved going to visit her aunt at Flat Head Lake, and another favorite trip was to Salt Lake to see Led Zeplin.

They didn't have a lot of sports for girls back then, but she was really involved in the church sports programs and also some of her high school's drill/dance teams.

How she met my dad:

She writes "I first set eyes on your dad in Jr. High. He was so cute. Later in high school we had the same group of friends so I would watch the girls fall all over him. I didn't really think I had a chance so I just tried to be friendly. One night after I had broken up with a boy, he sat by me on my friend Sarah's basement stairs and told me not to feel bad because someday he would marry me." She told her friends and they all had a good laugh about that. My mother was 17 at the time.

One of my favorite stories from the whole book that she shared was this one:

"My grandmother Marie was taking care of us while my mom and dad went to San Francisco. I was about 7 or 8 years old and was playing out in the back yard when suddenly I got this feeling that I should go look for her! I went into the house and looked in the kitchen and front room and finally found her in the twins bedroom. The window had fallen on both of her hands and she couldn't get them free and did not want to yell and wake the boys from their naps! I helped her get out."

I wish I knew all the great stories from my mother's life, but one thing I do know is what a great person she is and what an amazing job she has done taking care of our family through the years. She is the type of person that makes it impossible for you to be in a bad mood when you are around her. She has a sensitive heart and has always looked after and befriended those that needed it the most. It always amazes me how she develops such good friendships wherever she goes and is always able to soften up people's hard edges.

If anyone deserves a special birthday it's her.

Happy Birthday Mom!

Remembering summers past

I thought until I got pictures on here from last weekends graduations, I'd make a little post about some summer memories I have. Summer has always been somewhat of a magical time for me.

We used to camp out in the backyard, or sleep on the trampoline and look at the stars. When I was about Kendle's age our family used to play this game called "No Bears are out tonight". I can't remember the exact gist of it, but basically someone was the bear (usually my dad) and we'd end up getting scared silly and having a blast running around our big backyard from the "bear". Our family trip to visit our grandparents in Idaho, was always a summer adventure we couldn't wait for. We were always pretty free to roam around as kids during the summer. There were many times we'd still be out riding our bikes at ten o'clock because we could still barely see where we were going. As I got older there were always summer slumber parties and swim parties. BBQ's, picnic's, parades, the 4th of July and fireworks, the fair....there are so many things I love about this time of year. The smell of grilling food, and the sounds of children laughing and playing. Smelling the freshly cut grass, and hearing the spray of sprinklers. I played lots of summer softball in the hot heat, double headers in high humidity and I loved it. Now that I'm a parent I want to make sure my kids have as many fun summer memories as I have. Summertime gives us a chance to be kids again and make our own family traditions our children will look forward to every year.

This song, I put on here got me thinking about this topic in the first place. "Tim McGraw" by Taylor Swift makes me very reminiscent about being in high school and being young and in "love" and all of that good stuff. I just remember that feeling of not having a care in the world for three months straight. This summer make lots of memories with your family, and maybe even fall in love with your sweetie all over again.