My Kitchen girls

My girls got this awesome kitchen set last Christmas. It was a hand me down from their aunt whose own kids are much too big for it now.  Mirren is getting to that fun age where she wants to do everything her big sisters do. Hence, this photo.

This was the first time Mirren had ever stood up and held on to furniture. She was excited and nervous about falling. She was so funny and cute.

And determined to be just like Bronwyn

Then I noticed that the kitchen set had a little seat for babies to sit in and be fed. Mirren decided she wanted to try it out.

She loved it! What's better than your sister feeding you invisible food with a play fork?!?

Look at how happy she was!! Ha ha ha!!! Her smile tells you just how much she loved being included and even being fed nothing. LOL

  The best part is Mirren still loves to go in the girls room and play with the kitchen. She makes a beeline for the girls room anytime I put her on the floor upstairs and you can find her happily playing in there whether her sisters are in there or not. There's always something interesting to play with in there!

Bronwyn created a mural in our house

Here is what happens when your child finds JUST THE BROKEN OFF TIP of a big fat crayon. Her coloring was literally on almost every wall of our stairwell.

No complaining whatsoever. 4 hours later she had managed to scrub most of it and I think I worked the desire to make murals on our walls out of her. She was a good worker.

 So the majority of the morning, with no breakfast until her work was done, she scrubbed her way down the crayoned walls. Evidently she had lunch and then the pictures below happened.
Your guess about why is as good as mine because my memory fails me. But the pictures are amusing!

                                         Clearly the work brought out the sparkle in her eyes. :) 

Oregon Coast Days 4-7

I forgot to mention in my prior post that we went over to my parents/Suzette/Laura/Alyson and Trevor's beachhouse on our first night at the beach and had dinner. It was heavenly and so nice. Yum!! Nothing like homemade food when you're good and hungry. Thanks for feeding us even though the kids just played. Reed and I appreciated the yummy food!

So, we woke up on our first day at the beach and it was heavenly. It was so quiet. There was so much space! Beautiful views out the windows! We just lounged and relaxed until around 10:30 when we started to get ready to meet all of my family at the beach. We didn't get there until a little after 11 and arrived at the same time as my brother Jon and his family and my sister Jenn and her family. What timing! :)
     We all hauled all of our kids and towels and paraphernalia out to the beach and set up a good spot. The next few hours sped by as the girls played in the water, Reed jumped full body into the waves while everyone else watched enviously and not enviously. The water was COLD! But it certainly did look fun to have the guts to get out there in the waves like he did. I helped people dig in the sand to build sand castles, Reed kept building a sand castle right at the edge of the water and then the bigger waves would crash in and knock it down and he'd start over again. He was bound and determined to beat the waves. He finally gave up after about 45 minutes. It was also fun to just sit and chat with my sisters and nieces and nephews. It was such a fun afternoon. Around 2:30 or 3, I could tell it was time to go. I started feeling hot, which is odd at the Oregon Coast. So we packed ourselves up and said goodbye to everyone who was also packing up. We were pooped! About an hour or so after we got home, I looked in the mirror only to discover one side of my body was sunburned. LOL  I don't recall ever getting sunburned before on the Oregon Coast! Luckily I'd been pretty vigilant with all the kids about sunscreen so they were pretty okay except for a few body parts. Aftyn's poor poor upper leg. :(

Grandpa, can I fly your kite?

It looked like a lot more fun when Grandpa was flying it.

This picture is just cute. Laura and her hat. Bronwyn being Bronwyn.

Joy!

Digging in the sand

Alyson was trying to build an amazing sandcastle. It looks pretty good here!

Carter and Aunty Suzette and Grandma

The next few days were kind of a blur. Reed took Aftyn and Bronwyn to the Tillamook Cheese Factory and I stayed home so Mirren could get a MUCH needed nap. They had lots of fun and brought home a carton of ice cream to share! One morning we went to our beach in Cape Kiwanda and found sand dollars and lots of other whole shells. It was so much fun! One evening we met up with Alyson and her kids and my parents and Suzette and she and I went on a shell finding hunt. That was pretty fun! It was always the best way to end the evening, out on the beach watching the sun set with the kids playing in the sand. So so lovely. Reed would then be talking about how much fun it would be to own our own beach house so we could come anytime we wanted. Oh Reed. LOL

 Far too quickly our time at the beach was done. We drove one eternally long day all the way back to Nampa to spend two more nights with Grandma and Grandpa Bishop. I took the girls to the aquarium in Boise on Friday while Reed went into his office and worked. We had a ton of fun petting fish and looking at lots and lots of varieties of sea life, especially since we had just so recently been at the beach!

Petting stingrays

Mirren just watched

Later that night we got together with Reed's brothers Mark and Brian and their wives and kids and had a much needed and fun visit. 2 of the little girl cousins stayed over for a fun little girls sleepover at Grandma's house and all the girls stayed up SO late! Which was great because Reed and I decided to wake up early and try to get on the road by 5 am so we could get home early enough to get our normal Saturday things done at our house, especially after being gone a whole week! We made it back to Idaho Falls by 10:45 and enjoyed being home after such a long vacation.

     We so enjoyed our little vacation and can't wait to go back for a much LONGER time next time!!

The Oregon Coast -Days 1-3

Over a month ago, we took a fabulous much anticipated trip to the beach. It was rather last minute.
It was rather worth it. We took a whole fabulous week vacation away from home to do it. We had so much fun and made so many memories!

We left Saturday afternoon and drove to Grandma and Grandpa Bishop's house. We got there well past midnight. We were tired! But excited!!
  The next morning, Sunday, we got up and went to 9 am sacrament meeting at a different ward. We went back, ate and re-packed the car and slowly (and hotly!) made our way to our motel in Hermiston, Oregon. We got a free night at the Comfort Inn. They even upgraded our room for free!! We loved that place. Awesome staff. But gross eggs for breakfast. :( And no sausage. LOL

 Monday morning we got up and going by 10 am! It was finally beach day!
      (These are our excited faces, in case you couldn't tell. LOL)

 We drove all day by the Columbia River it seemed. We couldn't check into our rented beach house until 4 pm, so our route there, we stayed near Tierra del Mar, was via my childhood beach. Cannon Beach. We got there around 3:45 and boy were we ready to get out of that car. Reed had been convinced that we would never get there!  
       I was still familiar with the area, so I walked us from the public parking to the public restrooms, yuck, to the public access road that goes onto my beach. Right next to the homes we always stayed in when I was young. I was so so so excited to get to share my beach with my family. Reed's reaction was my absolute favorite. As we walked up over the berm of sand that takes you onto the beach, Reed said "This is AWESOME!". I couldn't wipe the grin off my face. I sat my kids down in the sand soon after and took these pictures.

What else would you expect but for her to be eating sand. It was a wet day and the whole time we were there, Mirren's hair was in tight little curls. LOTS of random peope commented on how cute her curls were.

This makes me heart so happy

So so so happy.

Of course we had to go get our feet wet in the ocean. Our older girls have now been in both the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans! The tide was out so we walked over to Haystack Rock and looked at the tide pools to see if we could find any sea life.

There were lots of crabs hiding in the water under some of the Needles of Haystack Rock

 

Family photos by Haystack rock!!

            

           

We went into town and had some ice cream. We wanted to go and look in some of the shops but most of them closed at 5 and we literally made it into town 5 minutes after 5. :/  Oh well. None of the town was the same from my childhood. Kind of sad. But still nice to see.

We drove to Cape Kiwanda where our house was located, had to stop in Tillamook at Fred Meyer to get food for the next 4 days. We didn't get to our house until 9 I think and by that time we were all exhausted and fell into bed.

Yellowstone: Pictures

I was as giddy as a little schoolgirl to see our bison as close to me as the cashier at the grocery store. It was SO cool and Reed was laughing at me because of my excitement. :)

Elk!

There are 2 elk behind me in this picture. Closer to the stream.

Can't remember what this one was called. Aftyn loved all the steam hitting us as we walked up and back.

Beautiful sunset

We decided for Labor Day to head to Yellowstone since the girls and I had never been there. We left about mid-morning and made it into the park very quickly. It was so exciting! Just on the way to our first stop, we saw the 2 elk by the stream and the bison. Then Bronwyn decided she really had to go potty so we had to go find a bathroom. After that we went sightseeing!
  We went to Grand Prismatic Spring which was a nice walk with lots of steam that Aftyn liked. Reed and I were worried Bronwyn would get hurt and make crazy choices but thankfully nothing like that happened. Yay! Next to Old Faithful for ice cream cones and some food and of course to see it go off! I parked myself in our camping chair with a good view farther away from the benches everyone else sits on and quietly nursed Mirren while Reed and the girls went in search of ice cream for us all. We had to wait nearly an hour to see Old Faithful blow her top but when she did it was worth it. So neat! We went inside and got some food and admired the beautiful lodge. It was so interesting to see the diversity of people that were there! We all went to the bathroom, got a magnet to remember the trip by and packed ourselves back into the car for the drive home. It was a fun and memorable day!

Pictures!!!!! My Dresser Transformation to a sidetable

Before, with no drawers

After: New nobs, spray painted the middle original handles, I even antiqued it

A closeup

I Guess It Must Be Time To Laugh

When my life changed almost 3 years ago with our move to Massachusetts, I said that someday I would look back on our challenges there and laugh and laugh. Today I think it is finally my time to laugh. The challenges we faced and overcame there helped us to grow SO much and in so many ways we don't always recognize. I look back at the Alysa who moved there and I almost don't recognize her innocence or her stick-to-it-iveness. I was that Alysa and I am that Alysa. When we moved back from Massachusetts, our hearts were broken. The place that we were so uncertain of became the place we loved with all our hearts. That change only came because of our Father in Heaven's help and because we tried so hard to be who He wanted us to be there.
    Our broken hearts have had a hard time mending from our move. We lived with my parents until I finished my pregnancy, feeling so grateful for their generosity while we got back on our feet financially. We were blessed with a job, definitely not the one we thought we would find, but the one He had planned that would help us continue on our path that was divinely designed. We moved here to Idaho Falls. Mirren has been such a blessing in our lives and has helped us continue to feel our Heavenly Father's blessings daily. I can see how each hardship I have been through has only strengthened me for where I find myself now. How is it that every trial we come to feels harder than one we've had before?
    I know that what I'm going through now isn't hard, it's all about the attitude I choose to conquer it with. And yet, sometimes I can't see my way through my problems.
     Aftyn still struggles with our move from Massachusetts. She struggles with the places and people lost to her. Tonight, while discussing our future plans to give her her own room and lamenting that we don't have a bed for her but that we could get one for her, she broke down crying. She said to me "I had a bed! I miss my pink bed! And it had 3 pillows!!". I could only look at her in disbelief. We took down her little pink bed when she was barely 3 and traded it for the girls bunk beds. I honestly couldn't believe she still remembered something from over 2 years ago!  As I listened to her and encouraged her to remember with me all the lovely memories from Massachusetts, I listened to her sadness. And her heartbreak.  I am so grateful that life there became so good for us and for her. I'm grateful for the many many pictures I took while we lived there. But how to help my Aftyn who bottles up her sadness until in a moment of freedom she allows herself to let it out. It breaks my heart.
      I went looking through my old blog posts in search of pictures of Aftyn's pink bed because I made a promise to her that we would recreate her bed so she could sleep in it again.  I think that's why I find myself here, feeling nostalgic. And grateful. And like I need to allow myself to laugh.

Aftyn's pink bed. Oh my little little Aftyn.