Just for Nana

Hi anyone who might be reading this. My mom is in Fiji, and so she never gets to see me, or my kiddies or the house that I am building - so this post is for her. This post is all videos that I don't want to post on facebook simply because it would BORE everyone.
Eddie on the beach


Tommy swing surfing


Tommy diving


Mr. Chin

Mama Mia Remixed

Sammy LOVES to sing Mama mia, when he was even smaller and could barely talk he used to sing 'super trooper' all the time. People in stores would come up and ask me "is your kid singing ABBA?" and I would answer "yes, yes he is" - Naturally I was very proud of him. Now he loves to sing 'mama mia' and he always requests it - it was even our opening song for family home evening last week. This video is a treasure to me, and will always remind me of his 'mama mia' phase.

Hit the Road Jack... and by Jack I mean Raccoon.

So, as you all know from my last post, I had a mama raccoon and her baby living in the area around my hot tub. Awesome. Now, here is the true story about what we did to finally rid ourselves of our unwanted guests.
We have this amazing home teacher, Mike, who rarely visits our home to share a message, instead he comes over every couple of months to help us with some problem or other. He was the one who initially caught and carried out the Rat from our crawlspace (I don't want to talk about it), and then he came over and hung a light fixture in my kitchen, and he rebuilt the bench on our deck, so it was only natural that we call him when we needed help with our newest problem. So, a couple weeks ago Mike came over one morning, and he and Jesse jammed broom handles into the den, (previously known as our hot tub) and banged all around it and decided that the coons must not be in there anymore, so they sealed up the hole where the Raccoon was getting in and out of. Later that night the mama raccoon, in desperation, broke out of the sealed hot tub. Apparently they were just being really quiet. So we piled some of our kid's toys up against the new hole, to make in more inconvenient for mama to get in - although we now understood that she was pretty serious about living there. It was at this point that Jesse conveniently went away on business for a week. So I bolted all the doors covered all the windows and pretended we didn't even have a backyard.
When Jesse got home he knew he had to find a way to get the mama and the baby out, and THEN seal it all up, but how?? We decided to make a party of it all, and invited Mike and his family and our other good friends Candise and Kevin and their kids over for dinner and a raccoon hunt. Everyone chatted and ate tacos, and then the wives and kids all went to the park while the men stood around with a rake, a bat and shovel and tried to figure out how best to get the coons out. They decided to drill holes in the back part of the hot tub where the raccoons were camping out, and then they rammed the broom handle in the hole and sprayed febreeze in. Then they heard a deep rumbling growl, apparently they now had the mama's attention. The kept spraying stuff in there until the mama finally stuck her head out. Wisely, the men backed off and let her make the next move. When she decided they weren't going to hurt her she called in for her baby to come out, and that's when we found out she had FIVE babies in there with her. Apparently the babies were really cute and loved playing with all the toys on the deck, and just like human children, it took the mom a long time to gather them all up into one group at the bottom of our fence. Then the mama took each baby one at a time in her mouth and climbed over the fence and hid them somewhere - presumably in one of our neighbors hot tubs.
HORRAY! I am so happy to be done with them all. And so happy that neither the raccoons or any of us were harmed in the process.
Now I just have to deal with the bird that is stuck in my fireplace. Fantastic, I love being a home owner.

The Raccoon

We have been painting the outside of our house (pictures to come), so Jesse went around tearing pieces of our house off that he thought were rotten, and then talking of plans to replace and fix it all...we'll see. Anyways, he tore a piece of the surrounding off our hot tub off , and since it made no difference to the hot tub, he said he would replace later. A couple days later, we were out in the backyard - still painting - and I saw Tommy walk over to a very small grey fluffy thing. Then I saw him reach down to pick it up. I watched him put his had right on it to pick it up, and meanwhile my brain was trying to figure out what the little fuzz ball was that wasn't running or hopping away from my 4-year-old boy. Just as my brain registered the coloring we all heard a hissing coming from the bushes by Tommy, and then the Mama raccoon came out just as I started yelling for Tommy to come back into the house. We all got in the house behind the sliding door just in time to watch the mommy coon pick up the baby coon and jump into the hole by our hot tub left there after Jesse tore that piece of wood off. seriously?!!

So long story short, we have mama and baby raccoon living in the dark warm area around our hot tub, and we keep a shovel by the back door - to protect us in case the mama comes out. Of course it costs minimum $245 to get someone to catch the raccoons, so Jesse is planning his own Raccoon Catching Mission, we'll see. We'll see.

I'm Back!

Okay, I realize that I haven't posted anything for a really long time...just over 9 months probably, and that is because I was busy. Yes, as you all know, I had baby boy number 3 - or Edward, as some people call him. I'm not going to lie, it was a super tough pregnancy, for me and my family! I was sick at first, then tired, then cranky, and generally really uncomfortable. At one point Jesse said "I don't know if we should have any more kids, I'm not sure if I can handle it." Ya, I didn't cook supper, clean my house, dance to the radio, or stay up later than 9pm for most of the pregnancy, so I can see how that was tough on everyone. But I am happy to say that I feel like myself again! I am baking cookies, dancing and singing around the house, painting picture frames, doing laundry and blogging apparently.

My newest little guy is so sweet! He is gorgeous first of all, with dark hair and blue eyes (for now, we'll see if they last). He has a bit of Tommy and bit of Sammy, both in looks and his behavior. He loves to sleep, like Sammy, but when he is awake he is very active, just like Tommy. The older brothers LOVE him, in fact I have recently started hiding Eddie while he sleeps, so he isn't attacked with boogery kisses and very tight hugs. Sammy is always walking around the house asking "where is Eddie?" it's kinda cute. Tommy calls the baby "bam bam" and loves to pat his back, and gets excited when he burps because he knows baby's need to get their burps out. If it wasn't so smuthering, it would be really adorable.

But enough chit chat, here are some pics of my little boys.

Tommy on a two-wheeler

For Christmas last year my dad gave Tommy a 'running bike', which is a bike with no pedals and no training wheels and you just run a bit then lift up you legs and ride the bike. They are how Europeans teach their kids to ride bikes in stead of training wheels. They totally work! He was awesome on his running bike, and really loves it, then one of your neighbors gave us a two-wheeler bike with no training wheels, so we decided to let Tommy try it. He rode around our culdesac on the very first try, all by himself! It was amazing. He is not yet 3 1/2 and he can ride his two-wheeler like a pro. The whole culdesace has come out to cheer him on and talk about how cool it is that he can ride. The only problem is that he is still a little bit too small for his bike so we have to help him get on it, so I try to get him to ride non-stop as much as he can around and around the culdesac.
This is Tommy telling me how many times he has ridden his bike around the culdesac so far. This is Tommy's very first try.

More mediocre talents

As many of you may know I love to learn to do things, yet I have neither the natural talent or the patience to become really good at any of these things. For example: playing the piano, singing, dancing, crocheting, doing hair and make-up, sewing, cooking, baking...really the list could go on. And I am very excited to let you all know that I am adding to that list by learning how to knit, and also gardening! I was first inspired to learn how to knit when I read the book "The Friday Night Book Club" which is amazing and you should all read it - if you haven't already. So Candise and I and a few other moms in my ward and some of my young women are learning to knit and my first project is a Griffindor scarf in honor of the new Harry Potter movie coming out - woo hoo!

I am also learning to garden - I am really proud of all my tulips and daffodils that I planted last fall and they all came up - this was a real miracle to me, because I have never made anything grow before. I am really pumped and might even plant a small vegetable garden. We'll see. But for now I am loving all the beautiful flowers that grow so easily in Vancouver weather.