I HATE MICE!!!

AaaaahhhhhHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We have a mouse in the house . . . or many for that matter. Or we did and I hope we really did kill them all! In July we caught 3 mice and I thought that was the end of them. Then this past week I started noticing new evidence of them and after doing battle with them we killed 5! Yesterday I discovered they had got into my pantry which has cupboard doors and the shelf the evidence was on is 4 feet off the ground! Then today I decided to make cookies. They turned out great but then when I decided to get peanut butter chips out of a container I realized that there was poop on top of it and the bag of chocolate chips that was on top and which I frequently snack on a handful of had been eaten out of by my little mice friends!! Yuck. I had to throw away an almost completely full costco size bag of chocolate chips! On top of having to pull everything out of my pantry and put them in mouse proof containers and sterilize the whole thing!! So to sum it up: I HATE MICE!! I really hope the ones we caught inside and the 10 pounds of ramic brown (probably not spelled right but it is mouse poison) Cameron sprinkled around the house will finally kill them off so we can be rid of this grossness!

Update

Amazingly, Chelsea has hardly had any issues because of the accident. Her back did not get worse like I thought. You can hardly tell there was tire tracks across her back less than a week later! Her head is still sensitive when I brush it and ponytails and up dos are out for a while. It pretty much has to be down with a little piece pulled back so that you can't see that balled spot. Her knees are healing along with the spot on her jawline. I'm sure most people would never guess what really happened to her! She has no plans to ride on a motorized vehicle with anyone at the moment. I'm so thankful she is still the beautiful angel we've always loved.

Chelsea

Yesterday evening Chelsea was run over by a 4wheel drive golf cart while playing with her siblings and cousins at Cameron's office employee dinner that was held at their shop. I believe it is a miracle that she walked away from this accident! From the information we can gather she was backed over and the tire went from her hips across her back and over the side of her head (and from the obvious bruises and scraps). I'm surprised she wasn't crushed! Amazingly after cleaning her up and giving her lots of hugs she just wanted to go to bed after we got home. Then this morning she wanted to go to kindergarten!! I cried on the way to school thinking about it and worrying what is going to happen to her at school and if she's really okay. Maybe we've missed something. I walked her into class and told her teacher what happened so she said she'd call me if Chelsea needed to come home. Here are a few pictures of how things looked last night. I'm guessing the bruises will get worse but I hope not! I'm still shocked she didn't break something. I don't think I'll be letting her ride on these vehicles again with the kids playing recklessly and with little supervision! I don't think she has plans to get back on either.


This isn't the vehicle that she was run over but the closest thing I could find on the internet. She was sitting in the back and jumped out because she was scared and then backed over!

Potty Trained!!

My baby is wearing panties!!! We are officially out of diapers!! I took two of the cutest pictures of her yesterday morning and somehow when I downloaded them one of the deleted- my favorite of the 2! But here she is sitting on her potty. She tells me "I'm a big girl" and she loves the 3 "skeetles" she got every time she goes. Thankfully she is forgetting that sometimes now and will go just because she has to and not because she wants more candy.

Farm Fun

I gave the kids the job of getting the rest of the toys out of the trailer on Saturday and a few minutes later I look out the window to see this! They pulled the wagon out of the trailer and put it to good use. In my opinion it looks like an ER visit waiting to happen but it was all in good fun!

I didn't take and pictures and I should have but yesterday we had Sam and Meredith Harker and Neal and Tammy Bybee and their families out to visit for the first time since we moved to Mattawa. The kids spent most of the time outside riding four wheelers, picking apples in the orchard, riding bikes and just having a great time out here together. We love doing things with the Harkers and Bybees and have some fun trips planned together in the coming months! Kip and Gigi and their family and our home teachers also visited during the afternoon/evening and I think we all had fun visiting! Kip and Gigi gave us a leather sectional to fill our empty living room which they brought over. I'm starting to feel more settled in and am ready to get busy on building our house. Hopefully by the end of this month it will get started.

School is in Session!!

Today was my kids first day of school and on top of that a new school and a different school for each of them!! The small town of Mattawa has outgrown their schools and keep having to build new ones. Now they have an elementary school for Kindergarten (Can you believe Chelsea gets to go!) and 1st graders (there will be 10 all day kindergarten classes this year with about 20 kids each!). Then there is the Intermediate school (which Morgan is in along with her cousin Ben) for 2nd through 4th grades. Then the middle school (Collin is in 5th grade along with his cousin Regan) that consists of 5-6th graders. Then the junior high (7-8th) and High School!! I can't believe my kids are in different schools. They also wear uniforms here but it is pretty easy for the younger kids. They can wear jeans, skirts, shorts etc (in jean fabric, khaki or black) but they have to wear a polo shirt that is white, black, burgandy or gray (there sweatshirts have to be those colors too). Morgan was bummed but it will make things easier in the morning when they are so limited in the shirt choices. I took the kids to school this morning and the girls both got the teachers I was hoping for but Collin (because the new school didn't get his transcripts yet with his test scores) wasn't able to get him a schedule. He finally ended up with a home room but had to retake the mapps test so they could get him into the correct math and reading classes. Should be interesting to hear what he has to say when they get home in an hour. Chelsea will be in all day kindergarten starting next week. Today she got to go to her classroom to take and assesment test. She said it was fun but it made me realize I've failed as a mother this summer since she could no longer recognize some of the letters she knew while in preschool!! Guess we've got to jump back into reading and writing at home more ASAP!!

I managed to take a few quick picture in the driveway before we rushed off to school. Can't you tell in all the pictures that Collin was so excited to be going back to school instead of staying home on the farm?




I took a picture at breakfast in case we didn't have time for one afterwards! I did manage to make a good one - homemade buttermilk pancakes and buttermilk syrup and sausage. This is a favorite at our house. Sadly I didn't have time to do the girls hair cute! Hopefully I'll get myself up earlier tomorrow so we can get everything done. It was just so hard to make my wake up time so early after a lazy summer of late nights and sleeping in!

Family

This weekend we spent a lot of time with the Calaway family. Cameron's brother Bret came up from St. George, Utah where they moved last summer to have his son, Kellen's mission farewell in Tri cities. Kellen is going to San Juan, Puerto Rico (the same mission that our other nephew, Dallin went). I took Collin to meet up with Corbin and Conner (Brets boys that he really misses seeing- they used to live like 2 miles from us). That night the Calaways had a family dinner at Anthony's for a combined thing for Kellen plus Cameron's oldest brother, Jeffs 50th Birthday( sadly the only picture I took of him didn't turn out!! Bret and Jeffs family came along with all the high school age cousins and all the adult Calaways. (Plus a few of Jeffs family on his wifes side). We had a great dinner and then all the adults went to the Columbia River temple afterwards. I wish I had taken more pictures (or I had a picture of me- I'm always the photographer it seems).

Bret & Val

Jordan, Kellen, Corbin, Janae, Derek, Conner, and Devin

going around the table starting at the left -Joel (cut off), Jill, Kelli, Barbara, Jacob, Karalee, Bradly and Nicole (both cut off) and Jalyn

Karalee, Bradly, Nicole, Jalyn, Austin, Eric, Joel, Jill and Kelli

The table I sat at - starting with Courtney in black, Bev, waiter (in my place), Cameron, Calvin, Val, (Jane and Kerry not showing), Gigi and Kip


Sunday we went to Lakes ward for the farewell and then dinner at Erics house (yet another of Cameron's brothers - there are 6 of them). We had a great time visiting with everyone. Just the week before our neice, Kendra, got married (Courtney's daughter) and we got to visit then also. I hear there are more exciting events coming up this winter and I'm happy that we'll get to have more happy reasons to get together then. After we left we stopped at the church again when our old ward was getting out and got to talk to our friends there and hear about the new bishopric that was just put in that day.

If anyone has more pictures from this weekend (like one of Jeff or Brets family) please email them to me. I was just looking at these pictures on my blog and realized they were all fuzzy in the same spot. So I looked at my camera and sure enough there was a Mia sized finger smuge on the lense. Got that cleaned off now so hopefully future pictures will be clearer.

*new addition* I just borrowed these pictures from Barbara and Jill's blogs: Frist is Jeff and Kellen at the combined 50th birthday/mission farewell dinner. Below is Corbin and Conner - the cousins that Collin wishes would move back to Washington!