We Wish You A Merry Christmas...

 and a Happy New Year!

Visit with Santa at our Christmas brunch at church...

Our visit to the Bellevue Botanical Gardens' light display.  It was amazing!

Happy Halloween!

Tonight was another fun Halloween.  The kids enjoyed going to see Nana and Gramps to show off their costumes and then we picked up one of Jessie's friends and one of Ben's friends to go trick-or-treating with us.  It rained a bit off and on, but nothing an umbrella couldn't handle.  I'm glad the heavy rain waited until we were finished.  We didn't have much traffic here at the house, so we have a TON of candy left over (note to self for next year - only buy 1 mega bag of candy at Costco!).  Anyone have any great ideas of what to do with the candy so we don't all gain 10 pounds before Christmas???

Here are the four kids before we headed to Nana and Gramp's house.

Ben - Zombie Skater

Abby - 'Puppy Mation' as she said all night.  She was a dalmation puppy.

Josh - Bobba Fet

Jessie- Spa Day

FALL

Not only have I been bad at blogging, I've been really bad at taking photos and video of my kids.  Mike and I realized today that we haven't taken any videos since we were on vacation at Owasco Lake this summer.  Shame on us!  The problem is, now, both our still and video cameras are having some problems, which is making it hard to do either. 

Apparently, the kids got ahold of the camera when I didn't know it...

Spirit Week

Spirit Week at school was a lot of fun.  Jessie dressed up just about every day.  She had school color day, sports team day, 80's workout day, and spirit day on Friday where they wear the colors of the High School which is Orange and Black.  She couldn't wait for Friday.  The Saturday before, we had a tu-tu making party at our house making tu-tu's with 2 of Jessie's friends.  They were silly and goofy, but finished their tu-tu's and had a lot of fun!  Here is Jessie all decked out on Friday morning before heading for school...go Bearcats!

TechDecks

In case you didn't know, Ben LOVES riding his skateboard and scooter, and LOVES TechDecks (finger skateboards).  This is one of the ramps he recently made out of cardboard for doing tricks on his TechDecks.  He did this completely on his own!  I was so impressed with the great job he did.

Here he is testing it out...

Pumpkins

Our pumpkin carving this year was sporadic.  Jessie carved hers last Tuesday night at her Young Women activity.  Abby and Josh carved theirs last Friday night and Ben carved his last Saturday morning (he was at a friend's house Friday night).  So...now I'm realizing that I never got a photo of Jessie and Ben with their pumpkins (see, I told you I've been a bad photographer lately!).

Here's Abby with her pumpkin, although Mommy did most of it.  She did help hold the carving saw a couple times.  She didn't want anything to do with cleaning out the pumpkin, but she thinks the roasted pumpkin seeds taste pretty good!

Back side (BOO)

Front side

Josh got a lot of help with his pumpkin from Jessie.

Back side (EEK)

Front side

CubScouts...stay tuned

Tuesday night, Ben was awarded his Wolf rank in CubScouts and one gold arrow and 3 silver arrows.  If you don't know anything about CubScouts, each year they have to complete a whole bunch of activities for that year's rank (like the Wolf when they are 8).  Ben worked on things like cooking, wood working, doing service, keeping track of chores, learning how to keep his home safe, etc.  Once he completes his rank, he can earn arrows for extra activities.  For every 10 activities, he earns 1 arrow, so he's completed 40 different activities.  Some of these include fishing, art, wood working, codes, acting, etc.  I'm really proud of his hard work and am happy that he wants to continue to learn new things and help in the community.  It's a great program that helps the boys to become good citizens and family members.  If you have a son, I would HIGHLY recommend signing him up for CubScouts or Boy Scouts.  You'll never be sorry you did!  Anyway, because our camera wasn't working right, I wasn't able to get photos, so I need to get them from my mother-in-law who did take photos.  I'll have to post them later...

House

We're settling into our house pretty well.  We've bought some furniture so some of the rooms are quite so bare now and we've replaced some of our furniture that we've had for a very looong time (like our computer desk that is 17 years old and is now in Ben's room).  There is still more furniture to buy to fill some of the rooms (like a formal dining room set) and lots of touch-up painting and decorating to do, but that will come a little more slowly.  We're still waiting to close...we were hoping by the end of October, but that's not going to happen.  We're not especially fond of the sellers or their agent, so when this is all over, we will be VERY HAPPY!  When we do close, the house will be ours and we won't have to worry about them any more and we can put all that behind us and move forward.  Overall, we are really happy to be here and really like the house.  SO....if you're ever in the area, come visit us; we have a little more room to be able to accommodate visitors now!

Back in School

It's been a couple months since I've blogged, but a quick synopsis of what we've been doing is: we kept ourselves busy during June by getting our house ready to sell and on the market July 3, went to Owasco Lake to visit my parents for three weeks (July 10 - Aug 3), packed up our sold home so we could be out by August 20th, stayed with Mike's parents in the interim, and partially moved into the home we're in the process of purchasing Sept. 2nd. We just got the remainder of our things out of storage yesterday, so now we have more unpacking to do. Maybe I'll have time one day to post some photos of our fun, RELAXING, vacation, but as of right now, I figure I better just post the most recent and important things first: back to school photos.

So, school for us started after Labor Day, so it was pretty late compared to a lot of other kids. Wednesday, September 9th, Ben headed off to 3rd grade at a new school, Chain Lake Elementary. He now rides the bus instead of walking to and from school. The same day, Josh and I attended a 1-hour Kindergarten orientation in his classroom so he would know what to expect the next day, when he officially started school. He gets on the bus in the morning with Ben (8:15 a.m) and comes home on the bus at noon. Jessie (7th grade) got lucky and didn't have to start school until the 10th, because the 6th graders get to have the middle school to themselves on the first day of school. She still attends the same middle school (which made her VERY happy) and still rides the bus. All three kids had a good first few days of school. They like their teachers and have adjusted very well. It's been a bit of an adjustment for Abby and I to have Josh gone everyday for so long, but I'm sure we'll get into the swing of things quickly and enjoy doing things by ourselves.

September 9th:

Abby was so excited while Ben was getting ready for school and Josh was doing a test run of getting ready that she insisted on wearing her backpack, too. Then, when the bus came, Abby walked off the curb and followed Ben to the bus, she was going, too, she thought. She wasn't too happy when she realized she didn't get to go...

September 10th:

Josh getting on the school bus for the first time.

Gramps followed the bus to school and took photos of the boys as they got off the bus. Thanks, Steve!

June

Sorry I haven't been blogging much. Mike and I have been working really hard on getting our house ready to sell so we can move into a bigger, more comfortable home for our family. SO, needless to say, I haven't had a lot of free time to blog. I decided to relax for a few minutes this morning and put up a new post.

School is out! The kids are happy to have a break, but they are already getting a little bored on some days...good thing we leave for our 3 week vacation on Owasco Lake at my parent's house in 2 weeks!

Josh and Abby
Abby snuggling with Ben while watching t.v.

Abby sharing her ice cream cone with Josh. For some reason Abby likes to go out to the back deck and lay down on the steps to eat her popsicles, ice cream, or other snacks.

Josh at his preschool graduation party. Our home preschool co-op was a lot of fun this year. The kids were great and I think they are all ready for kindergarden!

Receiving his diploma certificate.

Woohoo we're graduated!!

Matyas Family picnic last Saturday... All the Matyas grandkids with Nana and Gramps. Alaina, Jessie, Steve (Gramps), Ben, Abby, Beckie (Nana), Jayme, Josh, Emily, Audrey

My family.

Ben and Josh playing in the sand box pit with Jayme and Alaina's dog, Anacortes (Annie).

Ben and Jayme having fun together in the sand pit.

Finally Some Sun & Memorial Day Weekend

We've finally had some nice weather to enjoy around here. You know you live in WA when it hits 70 degrees and everyone is in their shorts or bathing suits and are having water fights or using the slip-n-slides... Two weekends ago, we had some sunny days so the boys got out our slip-n-slide. Later in the afternoon, Abby decided to try it out in her clothes and quickly moved to getting her 'swimming soup' on. Josh joined her and they had fun playing on the slide by themselves, without the bigger kids around.

Slip-n-Slide

I'm not sure the tube really did anything, but they thought it was fun...

Memorial Day Weekend

Again, the weather was suppose to be nice, so Mike and I decided we'd go on a day trip on Saturday. We originally thought we'd go to Mount St. Helens, but late Friday night we decided that it would probably be too boring for the kids. Saturday morning, we got up and packed a picnic lunch, the frisbee, and the kite and headed south. We drove to a really cool skate park in Kent, WA (near Mike's office) so that Ben would stop asking us to take him there. He had a lot of fun skateboarding while Jessie and Josh enjoyed a climbing wall rock. Abby took a nap in the van while Mike and I took turns sitting with her. After the park, we drove to Des Moines, WA to Salt Water State Park (it's only about an hour from our house). This is a park that Mike remembers going to when Mike was a kid. Mike and I visited one time whenJessie was 2 or 3, so we thought it was time to go back. We got there at lunch time so we ate our picnic lunch and then headed out to the tide pools. The enjoyed turning over rocks and seeing what sea creatures we could find. We found and held lots of little crab, hermit crab, and even found a really big red crab. After we finished tide pool combing, we flew our kite for a while and then played at their little park area. After we left the park, we ran a few errands and ate dinner at one of our favorite places to go with the kids, "Ruby's Diner", then returned home. It was a long day, but it was so nice to be able to be outside most of the time and enjoy each other's company. The kids behaved so well and I can't remember them fighting even once. What a great day!

Arbor Heights Skate Park (Kent, WA)

Salt Water State Park (Des Moines, WA)

Look at this huge snail I found!

The big red crab. That's Jessie holding it...

Abby's turn to fly the kite.

It seems that we can't celebrate the kids birthdays just once around here... We celebrated Jessie's 12th birthday for the 2nd time with our traditional kid-choice dinner out last Friday when we went to Ivar's Seafood Bar in Mukilteo. Beckie, Steve, and Jeff met us there and we enjoyed yummy seafood and soft served ice cream. Afterwards, we took the kids to the beach where they enjoyed the nice weather and throwing rocks into the water (what kid can resist?). Then, Jessie's actual birthday was Tuesday, so I made one of her favorite dinners (BBQ beef sandwiches) and had ice cream for dessert. Now, as I am writing this, Jessie is in the midst of her friend pajama party. Six of Jessie's friends came over at 6 tonight to have pizza, cake pops, ice cream, and watch a movie. They've had a good time and it's nice to see that Jessie has such good friends. I'll be taking them all home once 'Bedtimes Stories' is over. Happy Birthday, Jessie!

Mukilteo

April 28th - the actual birthday!

Tonight - May 1st - Pajama Party

I made cake pops (click the words and it'll take you to the website where I leaned to make them) and they are sooo yummy!

They made marshmellow skewers, too, to take home.

Getting ready to open gifts.

The friends (left to right): Stephanie, Katy, Mallory, Bridgette, Sarah, Jessie, Elizabeth.