Seattle Trip

Last week we went to Seattle and had tons of fun. We stayed with some friends who live in Issaquah and it was so fun to see them and hang out.
Whale watching was awesome.

Ivy's New Do

Remember This?



Well we decided it was time to part with the long tresses and since her hair was long enough we donated it to Locks of Love .



Check out that fat braid in the background.


I like it. I think she looks cute and best of all it takes about half the time to comb through the tangles.

Bryan's Birthday Cocoon

Since Idaho is arctic-like during the winter and Bryan is in scouts and has to camp in the middle of winter, for his birthday he got a zero degree sleeping bag. He was already breaking into a sweat just for the pictures.

Something New

Today Ivy asked me if she could clean the mirror and this morning Peter asked me if he could clean his room. Yes, it's true, they asked if they could do work. Lately I've been stressed over how much time my kids spend in front of the tv or on the Wii or on the computer, but getting them off of these forms of media produced so much whining, that my tired illogical self would respond with yelling. Yesterday I started a new system and so far I'm loving it. They must earn their minutes to play on something electronic. (Not bike riding or coloring or reading) The thing is earning minutes is simple. 1) get dressed = 5 minutes 2) make bed = 5 minutes 3) brush teeth = 5 minutes, 4) do a job = negotiable. I keep a list of jobs for them if they use their minutes up and want to earn some more. And yep, I have them asking for work. I win both ways. They spend less time rotting their brains and they want to help.
I just put these little foam envelopes up and then when they do their specific chore I give them a little craft stick with the number of minutes that they earned on it. When they want to play they give me their craft stick and watch me set the timer so when the timer goes off for some reason they don't argue or whine. They know that their time is up.
We'll see how long it lasts. I suspect it may just be too good to be true.