Such a sad loss...

As I'm sure anyone who'd be reading this already knows about Levi passing. I'm at a complete loss for words as to what I feel right now, my heart breaks for his sweet little Jeremiah and the rest of the Duncan family. All I can say is we LOVED us some Levi, he was an extremely close friend to us( as he'd have to be, I mean who else would we let show up at our wedding in a white "wife beater" and overalls,lol!!), as he was to so many people. He was always a guaranteed laugh if you ever needed one, in fact he still is I was just going through my photo albums and just seeing him made me smile! I am now so thankful for Chris having got to Az when he did and take back cursing that the dang house wasn't quite ready because maybe he was just meant to be there a week early for a reason. Chris got to visit with Levi yesterday and confirm how he was going to come work for Chris this next week... We're now so thankful that he got to spend some time with him. Here's my favorite pic I found on my computer from last summer.

What a Hellish Week!

I won't go into every detail but believe me when I say I feel like the world is against me right now! I seriously don't know whats up and NO it's not me just whining cause Chris is gone, I did this same situation twice last year and I'm strong and made it through just fine but geeze this year is another story! So the icing on the cake yesterday was having to put down our dog that we've had for 9 years! Anyone that knows me knows I'm not an animal person at all, but Dexter was the exception! He was definitely part of the family, I mean how could he not be, 9 years is a long time! I feel horrible for Chris, that was his baby especially before we had our real babies. The kids are going to be heart broken, they think he's at the vet right now and I'm keeping it that way til the weekend! It flat out sucked yesterday, nothing like calling for help about Dexter being a blubbering mess with no voice, I never get sick but of coarse here I am no voice feeling like there's 500 lbs sitting on my chest, coughing up... well believe me you don't want to know!

Pity party over, here's some pics of our ugly mutt that was the bestest dog ever!

So because I'm bored and the kids are asleep here's the little run down on how we got him! Well we were living over by the High school and one morning Brandon P. and Matt O. showed up to see if our dog Taton was at our house. Well he wasn't, I had just let him out and turns out the school bus had hit him well Chris had just had surgery on his knee so he was not mobile so they completely took care of everything for us with that situation, so very grateful for them that day! Anyway Chris was bummed and was soooo bored being off work for weeks and just so happened that one of my moms friends down at the realty place dog had puppies that were ready to go.... So the rest was history, we went there picked him cause of his one blue eye and he ended up being the best dog ever!

Deja-vu

So here we are, exactly where we were last year at this time... me and the kiddos in Idaho and Chris in AZ building a house. As proud as I am of Chris and his business and people actually willing to pay someone 2 states away to come build their house cause they love his work so much, it still sucks! For some reason it's just harder this time, not too sure why, maybe it's the kids are older and are more aware of dad being gone, maybe it's the awesome routine we've gotten in over the last 8 months with Chris working right up the street from home always taking and bringing the girls to and from school , him taking Lexi to dance, maybe it's Preston constantly running to the window looking for dad, all I know is that he's a HUGE help in running this house and it's only been 3 days and I'm already feeling it!

The girls didn't have school Thursday so they got to spend some quality movie watching time together before dad left and poor Lilly would literally not leave his side for a minute, as she napped there for hours.

I finally dragged my butt out of PJ'S and took Lexi and Tanner bowling with a few of the Farrells last night. I'm sure they were so dang happy to get out of the house!

Our seeexxxyyy shoes!

Lexi had a blast and seriously wanted to take her shoes home!

her lucky ball that got her coming in dead last.... but hey as long as she hit 1 pin she thought she won!

Wednesday night we had an invitation only open house for the "flip" house

the turn out was fantastic, with great people and yummy food!

so here's just a few pics as we were setting up!

this house was definitely a labor of love and we all feel greatly attached to it! Chris definitely says he's going to miss it, I thought to myself " this is just like child birth, it's only been a few days and he's already forgot "that feeling" of I'm never doing this again" lol



and here's just a little thing I got to do last Saturday, it was National Scrap Pink Day! It was super fun and it can't get much better then scrapping to raise money for Breast Cancer!!!


So there you have it, I'm caught up once again even though I failed to mention I've already made one crying call to Chris cause Preston flushed and clogged our toilet with a hot wheel, also failed to mention we only have 1 bath and we've already gone through 3 brand new toilets in the last 6 month for this exact same issue (thanks Preston!), oh yeah and I also don't know how to change out a toilet and once again where did I find him racing his cars today??? yep the toilet! Oh yeah I'm not mentioning these things cause they still make my eye twitch just thinkin about it!!

Me and my Lilly

My SWEET

Lilly...

is loving...

all this attention...

while Lexis at school...

and I'm loving it too!!!

My Trip and tons of pics!

So here's 20 things I've come to realize while on my trip!

1. There's NO parachutes for you on the plane! (yes I'm being serious!)

2. I had no idea all planes weren't 3 rows wide!

3. 2 rows are a little ummm... close...

4. Flying through the clouds are amazing!

5. I'm glad I don't have to use Public transportation every day!

6. NEVER wear any sort of heel while sight seeing in Seattle!

7. You will be scrubbing the black off your feet for days if you walk bare feet for 10 mins on the streets of Seattle, YUCK!!

8. Seattle has so many fun things to do for any age!

9. Maybe not such a great idea to try out some Mexican food from a place you don't know!

10. I've encountered the best seafood I've ever had!

11. I'm forever going to be craving me some Seattle seafood!

12. The shopping is amazing there!

13. It's truly a great place to window shop!

14. I really think I'll have a scheduled foot massage if I ever go back there, I've never walked to much!

15. People at the crosswalks weren't that friendly, nobody smiles there!

16. It really is gloomy and rainy there!

17. Two girls walking the down town streets at night is probably not such a great idea!

18. There really is a coffee shop in every corner!

19. Pikes Market is the coolest thing EVER!

20. I missed my family like crazy!

first plane ride!

waiting for the bus!


our Hotel, it was so beautiful!

one of the stands @ Pikes Market, how would you like to eat all that fresh fruit everyday??? The life...

one the Ferry ride back to Seattle, man it got cold!

Nothing like a self portrait to realize you've got some major roots going on! Seriously why didn't I see this before I left???

The space Needle

The Seattle Aquarium

Me and Mel!

Relaxing waiting for our plane!

So first and for most, huge shout out to Collected Memories for sending me on this awesome trip! Thanks Eric your the best!!

We had such a fun, exhausting time! We left our houses @ 5am Friday morning, left Boise @ 7am, arrived in Seattle @7:20 am, loved gaining that hour! We thought we'd be adventurous and try the bus system. This little project was fully on Melanie, I can seriously hardly read a map, so all the credit goes to her for finding our way in the BIG city! 1 city bus, 1 Monorail ride and about a 4/5 block walk later we arrived at our Hotel, checked our bags and then we were off to the Fabric show! So we then back tracked to basically where the Monorailed dropped us off at to the Seattle Center/ Space Needle. For the next 8ish hours we stared at fabric, sounds boring but it was actually fun! After the show we went back to our hotel to change and got ready to head down town to see the sights! This is where I pulled the most stupid thing ever, I wore heels... I seriously had stupid written on my forehead that night! We once again rode the monorail back to down town and just decided to walk towards the water, which seemed so close (everything does) but believe me my feet beg to differ! We made our way through Pikes Market, man I'd just die to have a place like that to buy the most beautiful bouquets of flowers any time I wanted for 5 bucks! Then we were off to catch the Ferry to Bainbridge Island, so fun and amazing to me that people really ride that every day to get to work and back home! By the way don't eat the Ferry Food, just saying... So after that we were trying to make our way back to our hotelish area cause it was getting mighty scary on the streets, kinda reminded me of Vegas, bums galore! To end the night we went to this Mexican food place that we had our eye on all day to check out, we thought it would be perfect for us cause they didn't close til 1:30am, no need to rush anywhere cause we'd for sure be able to eat there. Turns out the place was quite the happening party/bar, very surreal actually girls in tiny black dresses, the whole nine yards! If your wondering it definitely wasn't our scene BUT the food smelt soooo good... At this point I would have rather ate at Taco Bell over that place cause the food was so spicy neither one of us could eat out dinner. SERIOUSLY it burned our stomach and we are definitely not wimpy Mexican food eaters, we love us some Mexican food! The next day we were up bright and early off to the show we went for a bit then it was time to squeeze in some more sight seeing before we headed home! We hit the Seattle Aquarium and had some excellent sea food! What a great time!

A week behinde again...

Well since I uploaded all my pics backwards, that's how I'm rolling with it today!

I'm super excited to be saying I'm hopping my very first plane EVER and headed to Seattle bright and early Friday morning! Melanie is headed there to a HUGE fabric show for work and I got invited to tag along!

Last weekend my Aunt, Aimee and I had plans on heading up to Silver City , a little ghost town nestled back in the mountains dating back to the 1800's. There's several homes still standing and I guess 2 times a year they do tours of everything that's left there. So Aimee got this crazy idea Sat. at about 4:00 to go buy a ton of fabric so we could make skirts and everything we would need to look the part of being "back in the day" and take pictures for a scrap booking project she had in mind! So needless to say we got hardly any sleep Sat night and we took off on our adventure bright and early Sunday morning!

This is what I started the day looking like...

And the after! It was definitely fun playing "dress up"! Everyone loved it, people even asked to take pictures with us, too funny!

I'm so not usually into the whole graveyard scene, but this one fascinated me It was so old and beautiful. It's so amazing to me the headstones they made back then, so huge and such beautiful carvings and another thing I noticed was that they put the date of birth and death and also wrote out the persons age like 4yrs 7months and 6 days old, just different...

So one thing I have come to realise is no wonder the women back then were so skinny, it was so dang uncomfortable with all those layers and layers of clothes in the hot sun beating down on you as your walking walking walking... sweating sweating sweating...

in the old school house

And another thing all those layers of clothes were the most unflattering thing, I swear I'm not 12 mos. prego :)

me and Bryce at a little BBQ we had for them on Monday!

us getting to meet Bryce for the first time Thursday morning

Lexi just seriously stares at him the whole time he's here

Preston seriously didn't know what to think, he was completely amazed by him!

I'll probably be falling behinde once again since tomorrows crazy busy and I'm off as of Friday so I shall return, with a crap load of pics I'm guessing and hopefully with no crazy stories about us in the big city or about Chris being solo with the kids!

Bugs in my hair...

Lexi came home from school Monday saying in a voice of disbelief " Mom they were checking for BUGS in my hair!" I had a split second of questioning " did they only check you??", nope they were checking everyone, man what a sigh of relief,lol. I'd hope I'd notice if she had lice! So anyway I had to explain that sometimes in school or day care kids can catch bugs in their hair called lice so on and so on... She was very disgusted, what a girl!

Tuesday morning was a morning that could never replay itself anytime soon! Lexi informed me that she didn't want to go to school because "it takes too long" and she just wants to stay in her jammies and watch her shows... Lilly was on the other hand excited about school but was definitely on the whiny side! Preston threw the mother of all fits when Chris and the girls left for school, he just wanted wanted his dad and man did he ever let me know that. Then about 15 minutes later I hear banging at the door and a VERY loud screaming Lilly, I'm freaking thinkin something happened to her but nope it was that she didn't have school! Chris had this look of horror on his face saying that's how she was as he had to carry her out of the school, screaming crying at the top of her lungs that she wanted to go to school! I was so freakin ticked, I called the school about 15 times (no lie) then finally got through to see what the heck! Everything I have says she has school Mondays and Tuesday 8:50-11:50, they put me through to her teacher and she says "ohh didn't I tell you on "meet the teacher"night that I switched her to Wednesday instead??? NOPE I'm pretty sure you failed to mention that, thanks! So yeah that morning pretty much sucked!

Oh and I was probably the last person on earth to not have an Ipod, but not anymore!! Chris got me the new little nano for my anniv. gift, I think this was the first year that I really had no clue! I never really wanted one, never thought I'd use it but with going to the gym it'll definitely come in handy! Now I know I was definitely the only one there without an Ipod! I broke it in last night while I was doing laundry, it was great but I told Chris maybe I shouldn't have one cause alls I could see were little mouths moving saying "MOM", "MOM", the great thing is i didn't hear anything but music,lol!! This little thing could get me in trouble! Awww it was great, I was in a whole different world, the laundry went by so much faster and funner!