Christmas is coming...

Little Miss looking beautiful in her new Christmas dress from Grandma Teese!

This is my favorite one!

She knows she's cute!

We bought our tree at the Fred Meyer down the street. We were waiting for Daddy to go get the FM worker so we could pay for our perfect tree. The Santa hats were purchased at Walgreens. Travis has to wear one every day at work, so the boys wanted one too.

The tree all decorated up.

Most of my nativity scenes.

My snowmen and our stockings. The fireplace is full. (o:

Connor made a tree out of one of our traffic cones and a spare strand of lights. Very creative. (o:

Happy Thanksgiving!

We did well this year. (o: Hope you all did too.

A Brief History...

Or at least a little bit about what's been going on here. Elizabeth has been crawling for over a month now. She's almost 10 months old! She really wants to walk, and has been standing next to things then letting go and standing alone for a few seconds. She thinks she is reallly cool! She also has been eating more and more solid foods. I have hardly used any baby food jars...rather I feed her off of my plate. Here is a picture of her enjoying some good old mac and cheese.
She also looooves cushions and big fluffy blankets. She throws herself face first onto the cushion or blanket and then squeals with delite. It's super cute! I love how kind and gentle all three of her brothers are with her. If she starts getting into things that they are trying to play with, either Joseph moves her or Connor calls Joseph to move her for him. They really love her!

Also, I made the local newspaper...The Kent Reporter. A few of us helped load the food that was donated during our Lose for Good campaign onto the Food Bank truck. A reporter was there asking us questions...Debbie told him to talk to me, so there I am...the first two words of the article are my name. (o:

Lastly, I wish everyone a very Happy Thanksgiving!!! Travis got this picture from a friend on Facebook. It made us laugh. (o: Hope your turkey day is a good one!

It's all Facebooks Fault!

I don't update my blog as often because I'm always on Facebook! But, I realize that there are people who don't have fb accounts, so I better put some pictures up for all to see. (o: Tuesday, we took Jake, a little boy I watch one day a week, and the kids up to Snoqualmie Pass and played in the snow. It was so much fun! Here are some pictures of our little adventure.

Halloween

Halloween day we took a drive to Seattle, went to the church for Trunk-or-Treat, and then to G&G Nelson's for pigs in a blanket for dinner. (o: It was a super fun day and the kids got just enough candy. Yay for Halloween!

CRASH!!!!!

Our computer crashed a few days ago! It was awful. We think we got some sort of virus, I don't know, but the only way we could save the computer and not cost us a billion dollars, we had to reload it all...which means...we lost it all. Pictures, journal entries...it was a sad day, but at least we have the computer back. We had saved a few things on an external hard drive we own, but not near enough.

Anyway...that's where I've been. Here are a couple of pictures. We went to the pumpkin patch as a family and took Travis's mom and then yesterday I took the little boy I babysit (Jake) and my kids to the patch again to get some little pumpkins to decorate.

9.6!!!

Here is my final picture of my food pyramid. I lost 9.6 pounds during the 7 week challenge. Yay me! (o:

Ummmm...yah.

I'm not sure what to write about. My head is kinda foggy these days. I have been not feeling 'normal' since I had Elizabeth. She nearly killed me, after all. So, I went in to see my doctor 2 weeks ago. My blood pressure was incredibly high. They immediately put me on medication. I asked the doctor why I would be seeing this now...I'm losing weight...moving more...what the heck??? He said he didn't know, but to continue with the weight loss and the moving...except hold off on the moving for a week or two til the medicine kicks in. They took lots of my blood and will let me know if they found anything bad. I haven't heard from them...I'm hoping that means no news is good news, but I'm afraid to call and press the issue. I'll be going back in a couple of weeks, so we will discuss it all then for sure. But, needless to say..I have felt very, very tired. Physically and emotionally. When I went in, my nurse had a cow when she saw my blood pressure, told me I could have a stroke at any minute, and then ran out to get the doctor. Doctor Durch was calmer, but still did a lovely job at scaring me and causing some serious hypochondria on my part. (o:

Anyway, I am not the type of person who likes to discuss myself or my ailments. Just not my thing. So, here is a cute picture of my little Connor, who turned 5 last week! Can you believe that? Five years old! He can be such a little turd, but he is such a joy. We love him so much!

Oh, and just a quick note about Weight Watchers...I got a call yesterday and the local Weight Watchers vlogger wants to come to our home and interview me and then also interview me at one of my meetings. Nice, eh? I'll let you know if it gets onto the WW site.

Better go. I can hear Spencer in our bedroom teaching Connor the basics on letter sounds. They really want Connor to learn how to read, so they are helping me teach him. So cute! I've gotta go watch.

A Few Things

The past week we have done a few things so I thought I would report in. The first thing we did was went on our annual trip over to Issaquah to see the salmon come home. We picked up Travis's mom and took her with us. The count was lower than normal this year, so we didn't get to see quite as many jumping, but it was still lots of fun.

Next, we decided to go on an impromptu road trip over the mountains to Ellensburg. It's 109 miles from Seattle. Again, we picked up Travis's mom and took her with us. We were going to go to a Children's Activity Museum, but since it was Saturday, they closed early, so we just drove around town for a while. We found the Elementary school that had a nice, new playground to play on, so that's what we did for about an hour and a half. Then we stopped at the local Dairy Queen and got a hotdog, then headed on out back to home. It's such a gorgeous drive through the mountains. Spencer said his favorite part of the trip were the rest stops. (o: Look at Little Miss...she has enough hair to wear little clips now!

The last thing was, last night we decided to go for a little night drive. The city is so beautiful at night. Travis made us get out of the car and do a group photo.

That's about it. Blogger is being totally retarded and I have no idea where the words are going to end up on this page, so I'm going to quit, but at least I have pictures and words for you all to see and that I can say that I have documented a few things for posterity.

We "Did the Puyallup"

Such a great fair. Thank you to the Kent School District for sending us free tickets. All I had to do was Declare my Children and put myself slightly under the thumb of the Education Dept. in the state of Washington. It was worth it...I think.

Just Because

Apparently the only way to get comments on my blog is to post cute pictures of little kids. So, here is a picture of us from yesterday. We took the kids for a walk around West Seattle because it was a beautiful day and they needed to get out. (o:

Here's Another One..A Better One

Here we are at the Providence Regina House. Really the video speaks for itself. Can you find the token fat chick? (o: I pulled this video off of Weight Watchers.com. (o:

I'm Getting Famous...sorta...not really.

My involvement with Weight Watchers just keeps on getting more...involved. (o: Today my leader asked me if I would be willing to talk to the Corporate people about my experiences the past few years with the Lose for Good program...before it was the LFG program. She asked a couple of other people, and took all of our numbers. I said sure, thinking, she's taking tons of names. So, I gave Debbie my number and came home. An hour later I get a call from Debbie. She talked to the Corporate person and they were interested in ME. They wanted me to send in a short written statement about why I like the program etc. and she said they would contact me if they decided to use me. So, I typed it up and sent it to Debbie, who just emailed me that she sent it off. We shall see where that leads. But, hey...Corporate was interested. (o:

Plus, I am in 3 seconds of a video on WeightWatchers.com. Wahoo! Go here... http://community.weightwatchers.com/Challenges/ChallengePage.aspx?sid=1156867

I am towards the end of the video titled "The kickoff for the LFG"...after the 3 guys (they are all in my class). Don't blink or you'll miss me. 3 seconds is all there is. Elizabeth is with me. Kathy, our official blog person that is at the first of the video, said that she didn't put it together, and had wanted more of me, but I think they didn't put me on as much because Lizbet...BELCHED...half way through the interview. Yah, nice.

Anyway, in the 3 weeks since I started, I've lost 5.4 pounds, so I am pretty happy with that. Here is a picture of my food shrine as of today.

Lose-A-Palooza!

Today is Weight Watchers Losa-A-Palooza! Every blog entry that says "Lose For Good" today "donates" a dollar toward ending childrens hunger. So, I'm doing my part...even though I have a blog entry that talks about Lose for Good already. (o: It really is a great program. In 2 weeks I've lost 2.4. I have 2.4 pounds of food sitting on my tv stand. That food will be donated to a hungry child. What a good feeling! So, like I said before, if you need to lose weight and want to join WW, now would be an awesome time to do it! Or, if you don't need to lose weight, but want to help, get in contact with someone you know that is a member (like me) and they can bring your food in for you.

This is my leader, Debbie, and Jenny McCarthy. Lose for Good was all Debbie's idea. We'd been doing it for years before the CEO heard about it and decided to incorporate it Nationally. I explained more about it on September 10th....so scroll on down. (o:

Joseph's Birthday

Here's a couple of scene's from Joseph's birthday. Thank you to all that sent him cards and gifts! He had a great day!

This is Little Miss checking out the guinea pigs. She first played in the food pellets, and then tried to take their water. It was pretty cute.