Atticus Turned 3!

 Atticus is obsessed with garbage trucks, so for his birthday I talked to the people at Murrey's Disposal and they set up a special tour for Atticus!

 That afternoon they had 2 garbage trucks for him to look at, a rear loader and a side loader. The side loader was a big blue one, and if you know how much Atticus loves blue you know how thrilled he was.

 At first he was a little hesitant. We couldn't ever get him to sit in the trucks, but after a while he warmed up enough to run around them and jabber about how great they are. 

 

 Hanging out with Pa

 

I uploaded a bunch of videos from our adventure onto our youtube channel, but here's my favorite one.

 

 After we finished with the trash we went home and opened presents!

Nana spent so much time working on this I-Spy quilt, and it is fantastic! Atticus and the girls will lay on it and look at all the pictures. 

 Above is a what Atticus calls his scoop, it's a little car demolition play set. 

Below is the dump truck from Grandma and Grandpa Hall! As much as he loves it, I think Jane and Lizzie love it more. They keep trying to sit on it and ride it around the living room. 

 

 Lizzie getting excited to go outside and do the pinata!!

 Atticus gave it his best shot, but it turns out that it was a very well built pinata. 

 So Daddy helped out.

 

 And of course, the trash truck cake. 

 Atticus eating the way he eats everything: start by shoving as much in as he can, then forgetting about it halfway through and leaving it on the table.

Happy 3rd birthday baby boy! We love this guy more than he loves garbage trucks!

Easter and Mother's Day

 Easter! How 'bout that? When was that, last month? Well, better late than never. 

Our kids had 3, count 'em, 1-2-3 Easter Egg hunts. We only have pictures of the last one that w actually did the week after Easter when Gigi and Grumpy came to visit.

 Are these outfits not the cutest twin thing you've ever seen? Nana got them for the girls, and I love them. 

 Of course the girls found their chocolate bunnies first and munched on them while they looked for the hidden toys on the lawn. 

 Atticus, like last year, found his first egg and was pretty content to chill out and play for a while. Then he realized that ALL the eggs had something fun in them and he got more into hunting them. 

 On Easter, the twins had these beautiful poofy dresses that, once again, Nana found for them. They looked like little southern belles, especially when they were wearing their hats. Unfortunately they wouldn't wear their hats for longer than a couple of seconds, so no pictures of that. 

 My delicate ladies investigating a slug before church. 

 The best front view I could get of the dresses. 

Last Sunday for Mother's Day we went back down in Port Ludlow to have dinner and cake with Nana and Pa. Here's how that ended. My kids are gross, but I love the dirty faces next to the fluffy pink skirts. It just makes me laugh. 

By the way, Trevor got me the traditional flowers, chocolates, card for Mother's Day, but most importantly, he got up with the kids and let me sleep in. Thank you husband! You're a wonderful father!

Nearly Every Single Night

95% of the time, I am the silly, feather-brained one and Trevor is the serious level headed one in our relationship. The exception to the rule happens every night in our queen sized bed at 10:30 p.m.

10:30
Michelle: "Goodnight babe, love you"
Trevor: "Love you too"
Light goes off.

 10:31
Trevor: "I can't sleep."
Michelle: "You haven't even tried yet!"
Trevor: "I can't sleeeeep!"
Michelle: "Try relaxing from your toes up"

10:33
Trevor: "My toes itch. How can I sleep if my toes itch?"
Michelle: "Maybe you should scratch them. If that doesn't help, then put some lotion on. Go to sleep."

10:34
Trevor: "Should I go deer hunting or elk hunting this fall?"
Michelle: "For the love of... I don't know, whichever sounds more fun."

10:35
Trevor reaches over to his alarm clock to make sure the volume is turned up. He turns it on.
"Hey! I like this song!"
He starts to dance. In the bed.
Michelle: "I swear if you don't turn that off and stop disco dancing I'm going to smother you with my pillow"
Trevor: "I'm not disco dancing, that's 80's music"
Michelle: "Yeah, but you were doing that little finger thingy, that's disco dancing"
Trevor: "But it's 80's music!"
Michelle: "Go to sleep!"

10:37
Trevor: (singing) "I'm with yooooou, Scout! Because we help each other out! Yeah I'm with yoooooou Scout!"
Michelle: "What. Are. You. Singing."
Trevor: "It's from that one dumb show with the blue and purple puppies on the alphabet farm that Atticus likes. The song is catchy though"
Michelle: "GOOD NIGHT."

10:40
Trevor starts to snore.
I heave a sigh of relief, roll over and get comfortable again.

10:43
My mind starts humming "I'm with yoooou Scout..."


And this is why I wake up later than Trevor every day. Because after I started humming that dumb song, I started thinking about how if I'm going to listen to a story about a Scout, then that story had better also involve Calpurnia, Jem and Boo Radley. Also, there is no such thing as a blue or purple puppies, and if you see one it's probably because it's been through inhumane testing at a cosmetics facility. So, the moral of the story is always put sedatives in your husband's dinner.

So...

Where do I learn how to do this?

So What Else is so Great About Port Angeles?

So what else is so great about Port Angeles? ALMOST EVERYTHING. 

The Olympic Discovery Trail is across the street from our house. It's a really nice trail that runs across the top of the entire Olympic Peninsula. Well, at least our section is really nice. If you turn south from our house, the trail takes you to a bridge that crosses the creek that runs all through our neighborhood (right behind our house too, in fact).

 

The view from the bridge. Right now it's a little more like a river than a creek because of the spring runoff. See all the moss? It's kind of like having outdoor carpet everywhere you go.

From the bridge you can get down next to the creek where there are some fun places to play, and it's beautiful! The kids mostly like to throw rocks in the water, but they also like to climb around these roots. 

 

Doing the aforementioned rock throwing. 

 

 If you turn north from our house, it's a 10 minute walk down the trail to the beach. I can't tell you how much I love this. Anyone who knows me knows that I have always wanted to live next to the beach, and better yet? When it's windy the waves here are big enough to boogie board on. The beach is really rocky, but it's still wonderful! Also, we can see Canada from here. We only get Canadian TV and radio here. It's weird. 

There is a GREAT park in Port Angeles. It's huge with all kinds of fun toys, and this great dragon slide. I'll have to get more pictures of it, because it's really great. 

Other great things about Port Angeles? Wal-Mart is like, less than 5 minutes away from our house. Seriously, if I didn't have to fight my through the ridiculous forest and sheer cliff across the street I could walk there. You can laugh about proximity to Wal-Mart, but with 3 toddlers we always need more diapers or milk or something. 

Also, that line about ridiculous forests and sheer cliffs isn't a joke. They could have filmed The Hunger Games right next to our house. Living in Washington has convinced me that if Sasquatch exists, he's hiding here, probably just 5 feet off Highway 101 eating McDonald's leftovers. The forest is THAT DENSE. You can't see anything! If a Squatch is hiding in the woods, I hope he comes and eats the deer that pooped on our walkway.

The New House

 We moved! Again. This time we moved into our own house, and we moved to Port Angeles, so Trevor is done with his 3 hours of commute every day. Our good camera is still broken, so here are some pictures from my phone.

Guys. Our yard is huge. This picture only shows about a third of our yard. It's a good thing Pa was extra extra generous and gave us his old riding lawn mower, otherwise I would have to explain to our neighbors about how "letting grass go to seed is just the circle of life, dude."

The backyard with the hot tub gazebo. I don't know if the hot tub works yet.

Our long living room. I love all the light from those big windows.

FIREPLACE. I don't really like the rock on this fireplace, but I don't know what I want to change it to either. Suggestions may be left on pinterest!

 The Playroom. I love the exposed brick, I hate the paneling. No biggie though, we had to rip paneling out of our last house. I'll have my revenge over 70's home trends if it kills me.

Kitchen! That is a nice big greenhouse window, and my plan is to grow an herb garden in there until I inevitably kill all the plants.

 

Another kitchen view. Most of the cupboards have the shelves that slide out and I love them. I love them so much that I might buy them gifts next Valentines Day. 

 The tiniest full guest bathroom in all the land. I stood in the shower to take this picture. I love that pedestal sink though!

The "dining room". "Dining room" is in quotations because there is white carpet in this room, and as such will never actually be a dining room while we have kids. We'll probably turn it into another bedroom down the line, but for now it's just an unpacked box catcher. 

 Jane and Elizabeth's room, with their newly un-sided cribs. This is the first time the twins have shared a room in about 7 months. They LOVE it. In the morning or after naps they'll climb into each other's beds and jump around and jabber at each other.

Atticus's room. We switched him over to a big boy bed, and I think he loves the space although he has a hard time getting up into it. 

No pictures of the master bed or bath since they're full of boxes and we haven't even put our bed together yet. 

There it is in all it's bare, newly moved into glory!

Atticus's Nightmares

Last night Atticus woke up crying so I went to check on him. When I got to his room, the following conversation happened

"I scared!! I scared!!"
"What's the matter honey? Did you have a nightmare?"
"I so scared! *cries*"
"Oh baby, it's alright. What's scaring you?"
"Pumpkins! Scary pumpkins. I scared pumpkins."
"I'm sorry. Pumpkins are just a delicious vegetable, you don't need to be scared of them."
"Pumpkins so scary!! I scared pumpkins, I scared."

Then he stopped crying and went back to sleep. I guess we'll see how this affects our Halloween this year.