vroom, vroom, vroom

my day of testing came as a mother and i failed miserably. but the pressure was too great. there were tears and puppy-dog eyes and some really, really good arguments. in the end i caved and we now own a honda crf 50 (that's a kids dirtbike for those not used to motorcycle lingo). according to the boys in our family this small piece of metal will have great power "to draw our family closer". i'm expecting great things!

as Kai rode around with donnavan you could barely make out over the dirtbike noise the sound of "vroom, vroom, vroom" coming from his little mouth. yes, boys have sound effects wired into their system at birth.

so you may be wondering, why the sudden desire to blog. it begins with the sun which allows me to enjoy being outdoors which gives the boys a chance to play uninterrupted for hours which causes me to want to take photos of their highly imaginative play which drives me to want to share these photos which leads to a blog post.

the following may appear to be straight out of a vampire novel. and if vampires were to feel comfortable anywhere, silver falls would be the place with its moss laden trees and mist covered ground. we were there in February for a conference for Don's work. black and white was definitely the only way to go with these pictures.

i chose to live here

i used to kneel by my bed as a little girl and pray with all my heart that it would snow the next day. i loved snow! i loved missing school. i loved sledding down the big hill in front of our house at lightening speed. i realize now that i was a naughty little girl. for somewhere over in idaho there was a poor freezing soul that would give anything for the snow to cease. who’s little boy would look out the window one should-be-spring day and with awe and delight exclaim, “hey mom, what's that green stuff i see coming out from under the snow?!”. yes, no longer am i that innocent little oregonian. idaho has robbed me of my love for snow and showed me the realities of this incessant pest. i have to keep telling myself that I did choose to live in this cold climate and can only wish for spring to hurry itself up.

luckily our cold winter has been more than eventful. christmas was laid back and perfect. (yes, santa did forget me in his note to everyone but he more than redeemed himself with an amazing lens for my camera.)

ahhhh... the stockings.

the wonderful tradition of reading the other wise man christmas morning.

the first picture with my awesome new lens.

i LOVE christmas!

our winter also included a trip up to canada. now i want you to know that canada is a very “special” place. this is probably the only place on earth where people would CHOOSE to go out in -30 weather to visit a zoo (a zoo of all places!). and it’s not like just a few people do it. i believe the whole country was there. as usual though, we had an awesome trip to the cold white north as you can see in the photos.

a wild sledding trip!

tears included.

our little king of the world.

jeff and zane ready to head down the slope.

supermodel sloanie...

and an intense jace.

and of course, lights at the zoo. only canadians and the crazy tourists.

well, hopefully that will be all the winter i will have to document on. not likely… but hopefully.

i chose to live here. i chose to live here. i chose to live here…

sabbatical from the blog ends

i believe i said something about life calming down a little once summer ended. i was wrong!!! so today, with rain streaming down the window panes and hayden wreaking havoc at preschool, i figured i had a moment to do some updating. donnavan's only been checking daily to see if i have updated the blog yet, so this is for you donnavan...

a man who has the most amazing face in the world

who loves to be tough but really is the most gentle and caring soul i've ever met

who would do anything for his wife and children (including dishes and taking care of the kids while his wife has a meltdown and takes a break from it all)

who i love forever and ever and ever.

so the real reason that donnavan wanted to see the new blog so badly is that we have had a very monumental occasion in our relationship. donnavan and i went hunting for the first time. yes, it was both mine and donnavan's first time hunting. now those of you who know donnavan may be a little perplexed by this statement. i mean, this is the man who was born wearing camo. who shot his first gun before he could walk. so let me explain myself. yes, donnavan has shot many an animal but hunted them he has not. unless you would be willing to call hunting: seeing a moose off your back porch, jumping up, grabbing your rifle, running out the back door barefoot and in your underwear, and making your shot.

(okay, just so donnavan doesn't kill me, i better tell you that i may have exaggerated this last portion slightly)

here is my great hunter!

here i am with my great hunter. i must admit, for a girl who didn't handle her first gun until she was 25 and cried everytime she watched bambi, i really enjoyed hunting. (that may have had to do with the fact that we didn't actually shoot anything :)) all in all it was a really awesome 12 mile hike.

for fear of writing a post that could compete in length to novels such as les miserables, i will only include two other autumn activites.

now "she plans her time well" will probably never be a phrase written or said about me. i tend to try to squeeze every last drop out of my day. sometimes it's worth it... but not usually. ikaika's first birthday was the perfect example of my overplanning skills. we had planned a family birthday party for him starting at 6:00 in the evening. preparing for that alone probably should have filled up my day. but oh, that wasn't enough for me. for a long time we had been planning to go to the pumpkin fields with our dear friends, the coon family. the only possible day to do it fell on kai's birthday. not just on his birthday but we planned to leave at 2:00 in the afternoon. with the pumpkin fields over an hour away, you can do the math. luckily, everything worked out perfectly and we'd never miss an outing with the coons.

this is kai on his first birthday. luckily he did not at all seem bothered by my overplanning.

here is the coon's maddy (better known as hayden's future wife).

the last two pictures i took at a costume birthday party for hayden's cousin kali. seriously, this amazing party tannea (kali's mom) put together would be enough to make any mother there want to hire tannea for their next child's party. Included in the package was: one homemade doll cake, hand painted princess decorations that looked as if they were done by disney himself, and invitations printed on the wrapper of chocolate bars. most importantly, the kids had a blast. awesome job tannea!!

(can you find hayden in this picture?)

two handsome firemen cross my path

now i am not the kind of girl to get all crazy over a guy in a uniform. i am a suit kind of girl. my dad wore a suit to work everyday and so i definitely have a thing for guys in a nice suit. i love the movie ocean's 11 for their suits alone and am constantly trying to dress my poor hubby accordingly. now donnavan is far from a suit kind of guy. when we first met, his idea of dressing up was putting on his full biker gear. he cringes if i even mention a shopping trip together. if life had gone according to his plan, his work suit of choice would have been a uniform and included a gun and shiny badge. but life loves to throw us for a loop. recently though, donnavan was able to spice up his life a little and help fulfill some strong male testosterone urges (along with use some of his amazing skills and talents in helping people in critical need). enter two handsome firemen. you see donnavan has become a volunteer firefighter for our community. at every possible chance he dons his firefighter gear and is very much an asset to the fire department.

now you may be wondering who the other handsome firefighter i saw was. no, i have not been eyeing any other men in donnavan's department. the other firefighter in my life is much younger and his stint will end shortly after halloween. you see hayden wanted to be a firefighter for halloween. okay, so "wanted to be" might be stretching the truth a little. after being declined the opportunity to be a fighter pilot and spiderman due to sizing issues and mother's disapproval, a firefighter was one of the few choices left. but let's not mention that to donnavan. it would break his proud father's heart.

the two handsome firemen.



every little boys dream come true!

would have been a way cooler pic if the firemen cleaned their trucks every once in awhile (j/k, okay kind of).

while donnavan was out of town one day, i got the "brightest" idea to get some sillhouettes of my boys. about 6:30 at night i pulled them out the door because the sunset looked gorgeous. of course, by the time we actually got somewhere that you could see the sky the beautiful sunset was turning into some gray clouds with pink tinges. not quite worth all that effort. oh well. live and learn.

and last but definitely not least...

yes, my baby is turning one. i made up these little invitations to send to family. isn't he simply the cutest (aside from hayden of course!). this next one i loved but it was not near as cute when i tried to make it square for the invitation.

okay, i'm done already!

donnavan, giggly girls, and an ar-15

i love my husband! he is amazing. he works hard at his job, is an awesome husband and father, brings me flowers... oh, and teaches gun safety courses to a bunch of giggly teenage girls for me. you see, in church i work with the young women who range from ages 12 to 18. for an activity this month it was decided that the girls would have a gun safety course. i quickly volunteered donnavan's name (yes, the same donnavan that can barely catch a breath of air being so busy with work, church, etc. but i knew he'd love to do it). now the girls i work with are seriously delightful - but gunhandlers they are not! so you see, donnavan had his work cut out for him. first thing he does is to strut from the car decked out in camo gear and toting an ar-15 and 10 mm handgun and proceeds to tell the girls that if they drop his guns he is going to be very, very angry. you should have seen the girls eyes pop out of their sockets... and needless to say the girls were VERY attentive and careful.

before i continue on with the endless babble, let me slip in this awesome picture my dad took of our family this summer. thanks dad! (okay, so getting a natural smile from donnavan and hayden is impossible. we were ecstatic to get just one.)

its been one of those summers where you feel like you're caught in the surf being thrown back and forth and you just have to lay back and enjoy the ride. the ride was enjoyed. we now lay on the beach after being thrown up on shore and have a few minutes to rest. oh wait... never mind. rest is highly overrated. i think i'll take a photography class instead. but let me just say, it was definitely worth missing out on some rest. it's been a long time since i have done something like this just for me and i loved it. the following are some fruits of the class.

as i mentioned earlier, hayden and smiling don't always work out so well. i decided i would have to take a more serious route with him.

for part of the class they took us to these most amazing gardens. i thought you could only take so many pictures of flowers. oh but not when there are a thousand different kinds...

on my way to the photography class one evening this old barn caught my eye. barns are just cool and old barns even more so. this one i believe only has days left to its life. so even though i was late to my class i thought it worth my while to stop and snap some photos of its last days

and this is why we live in north idaho!

okay, so that kinda' crazy... kinda' fun part of our blog title has definitely been in effect the last few weeks. everything from camping and hiking to donnavan's birthday have taken place and kept me constantly checking my calendar, sure that i am missing something totally important. let's start with the camping portion.

almost every year we hike up to a gorgeous spot called moose lake. it's one of those places where in the middle of the night moose clomp by your tent causing your soundly sleeping husband to bolt upright chambering his shotgun in one very dramatic move. it's also a place where only hours later your head is sniffed (i know, numerous times i've been warned to not wear deoderant) by a very "friendly" grizzly bear who gratefully decides the smell is not quite what he was feeling like for breakfast that morning. all the while your husband is sleeping like a baby due to the very exciting moose episode a few hours before. yes, this is moose lake... and we love it. but now we have two kids in tow and even the short 2 mile hike seems like an everest climb when thinking of all the stuff we would have to pack in. so we decided on something that we could drive to while keeping away from the dreaded "campground". thanks to my husband's increasing technological inclinations, we found char falls on google earth.

here is char falls. this place is so perfectly picturesque it makes you want to cry. and there wasn't anyone camping anywhere near this place!

this was our campground. to the right you can see the river running past our camping spot.

this is a better view of the amazing little river next to our campground. we are camping directly to the left of this picture.

this is an incredibly hot man who allowed me to take a picture of him. he was so good with kai too. i love you donnavan!


so on saturday morning breakfast was to be delicious pancakes. now pancakes are good but pancakes with freshly picked huckleberries are amazing. yep, those were some dang good pancakes. hayden stood guard over his pancake until it was safely on his plate and into his tummy.




donnavan brought is gold pan along and he taught hayden some truly amazing, canadian gold panning skills. he even found some gold ("i found one! ohh, it blew off my finger. wait, wait i see it. no, it's just a fleck of dust.").

welcome to north idaho! this is our piece of heaven.

peaches... mmmmm...

wake up. look outside. it's sunny. yessss! must get out of house. after having been couped up in our 300 square foot (i'm barely exagerating) home for what seemed like an eternity, while the clouds got every particle of rain that could be in their AUGUST systems out, we were definitely ready for an outdoor excursion. peaches are ripe. a day in the orchards allowing kids to roam free while i stock up on one of my favorite fruits. perfect. and perfect it was. i managed to bring home 4 (well, 3 and a half by the time we got home) boxes of deliciously ripe peaches. hayden and kali (his cousin) only had moderate amounts of physical altercations and enjoyed climbing dangerously high ladders and eating peaches until their bellies ached.

isn't Kali adorable. there's something about little girls that is so much more peaceful than little boys. plus they really enjoy posing for the camera!

a moment of peace and cooperation between the two crazy kids. not that either of them aren't total and complete angels. they're just angels in training.

my little hayden is growing up so fast. definitely the handsomest boy around (well of course aside from his hot father).

well the day has ended and so has the sun. we are back to the rain and another day of finding creative indoor activities that don't ultimately drive poor mother insane. wish me luck!