where's the beef?

The beef is in my backyard....grazing. Next summer it ill be sizzlin' away on the grill! We were planning on getting some cows in a couple of years but friends of our needed a place to keep theirs and offered half the meat to us so we jumped on it.
you have to understand that I'm not an animal person AT ALL!! So when the cow got out that first night and Joe and I had to go and fin it at 11 pm, I had enough! Costco meat was looking so much better to me. Then Joe went out of town on day 2 with "the cow" (i refuse to name something that I will later be eating). I feel like I have another child to look after. I am constantly looking out in the back and making sure she's not out and sleeping at night? i think not.

The kids are loving it. Amy and Cody treat it like a dog or a horse always wanting to pet it or ride it. Travis is completely comfortable with her too. I think that he'll be the one taking care of the thing. 

Other then the cow here are some things we've been up to...

apparently Tyler needs glasses and yes they are already broken.

we've used brown betty a lot since we've moved out here....I think we got our $700 worth out of her.

Travis has learned to use the mower and asks everyday if he can mow.

the twins turned 2! and we are all working through the terrible two's, some better then others. 

Cody loves it when the tractor comes out! Joe does too.

I guess when you ask your kids to unload costco from the car it means make a building, get the cars out and play.

sloan happenings

Much to my surprise it snowed on Christmas! It was just enough to make me cringe and didn't last stay all that long.   

 Joe was teaching Amy how to eat the snow. She loved it! Cody was just wondering what was going on and the two older boys were disappointed that it was only one day. 

There were A LOT of presents this year! One of my favorites was what we got the boys....

Grandma Meg has a dog and as we all know dogs do a lot of..."business". Since we've moved to washington the boys would go out to her house every week and mow her yard but before they could do that they would have to pick up all the "business". Joe likes to make up funny names for EVERYTHING, so Poop Scoop and Rump Dump were born. We thought it fitting to embroider some hats, get a poop patrol picker upper and make it official before we move out there. As you can see Tyler was thrilled with the present! 

 I didn't quite know what to do with myself this year, the girl selection in toys is a lot better then boys! I should've known that anything with wheels appeals to boys too. Don't worry the doll was thrown out of the cart and he did run into multiple people, things and walls. 

Amy took command of Cody's truck and has never looked back. If you hear her screaming it's because someone is in "her" truck. Tyler decided to take it for a joy ride in the kitchen with Travis' help. One hole in the wall later they aren't allowed to touch the truck while it's in the house! 

Speaking of houses....here she is! The roof is on, the siding is up (that's not the color...it's just the primer), electrical is in, plumbing is in, insulation is in and dry wall was just put up! We are waiting for electrical to be connected so we can heat the house while the dry wall is being taped. It seems like it is taking forever!! but it really isn't that bad. after they finish taping it all we get 10 days to paint it! After getting estimates for someone to paint for us we thought that we like to save a few thousand dollars (no joke, it really costs that much, I had noooooo idea) and do it ourselves. Which means Joe's doing it. I would actually like to help but kids and paint DO NOT mix! 

Well, with my blogging record the next picture I post the grass will be growing and there will be business to take care of.

the update....

 Tyler had his 5th birthday! And I didn't forget this year! his birthday is the 2nd and let me tell ya, it never fails to just sneak up on me and bam! it's here. It was a really low key birthday because Joe was off doing something ALL day and into the night (I think it was a wrestling thing). He did come home fore 15 minutes and Tyler opened his presents that I wrapped in paper bag from the grocery store. I just hope he isn't scared for life because of that, a mother can only do so much, right?

 I debated whether or not to put this up there but I just had to! I don't know what it is with these babies (yes we still call them the babies) but when one does something that other is sure to follow soon after. And then when one forgets the other reminds and it goes on and on. Amy learned to take off her diaper first and I was very quick to fix it. I alway remembered to put on some kind of covering over her diaper even when she was in a dress....I learned the dress thing the hard way when we were walking in to church. So one day I put them down for a nap and I changed her diaper before I put her down and then did the same thing for Cody but forgot to put his pants back on. They were in their beds just talking away to each other and I didn't think anything of it. Well, I went in to check a little later and I guess Amy had been talking to Cody and taught him the disappearing diaper trick. And yes I just left him in there like that until he woke up. Pee on the sheets and all. Call me a bad mom but I just won't wake a sleeping child unless there's a fire.

 Halloween was different this year. We have always had a truck or treat, church party, or something to do but not this year. Luckily we are in a neighborhood that is very family friendly so we went around door knocking. Travis was a camo man, Tyler was a bat and the babies were The Big Bad Wolf and Little Red Ridding Hood (thank you martha stewart). It took a few doors but Cody figured it out real quick and was running door to door knocking. Amy was perfectly fine sitting in the wagon while her brothers brought candy to her. Despite all the sugar everyone slept rather well that night.  

                                                                Cody discovered tape!

Travis turned seven! I really can't believe that he's that old! or should I say that I'm that old. His birthday was on a saturday so we had lots of time to do tons of fun things....like open presents! 

The progress on the house is coming along. This is when they dug out the hole for the foundation. The boys thought the piles of dirt were cool. They were always asking to go out the the new house so they could dig in the piles.

Cody would crawl up to the top and then slide down. Every time we went out there and then came home I think they brought a new dirt hill with them. 

Thanksgiving didn't go as planned, we were supposed to go to portland and see the Zoo lights and go to OMSI and lost of other things makes portland cool but we stayed home and tried to make the most of it. The day before Thanksgiving the boys asked me when we were going to get the turkey and the first thing that came out of my mouth was, "we'll go turkey huntin' tomorrow." So that night I got a nerf bow and arrow and figured something out for our turkey (thanks pinterest). On thanksgiving morning I was talking to the boys about how to catch a turkey and turkey calls came up. So we got on the internet and looked up turkey calls. After a couple of minutes I had a bunch of turkey running around the house. After that they were ready to go hunting! Before I knew it all the doors in the house were open and the turkey was running everywhere flapping its' wings and gobbles galore! The boys thought it was great and I couldn't stop laughing. On a side note if you ever need a turkey I know really good one!

 So this is the house as of today! the roof is on and plumbing is going in!

And yes we finally got family pictures! I debated whether or not to spend the $$$ but I found someone that is wonderful and at great prices! I was shocked that she was able to get everyone to look half decent too. And now we have a picture of it! It doesn't happen very often that we are all dressed semi decent and hair combed.

so long summer

the days go by so slow but the months go by too fast! here are just some of the happenings.....

Travis graduated from Kindergarten! I thought it was so funny that they had a graduation ceremony, but cute too. Travis was so proud and we were too!

The babies turned one! We survived the first year...barely. 

I was at a store or something and a lady looked at me, smiled and said, "honey, I had twins and don't worry it gets better....when they're about three." I went home and cried.

Cody is still working on sleeping through the night. 

He loves to get into everything!! 

And apparently loves dogs, as long as they aren't real and stay three feet away from him.

Amy loves to be the center of attention. 

She makes more noise then the three boys combined!

We are still working on her hair and have made some progress, thanks to pinterest!

I've learned that putting away groceries, cleaning anything, unloading the dishwasher, or cooking dinner is nearly impossible with the two of them awake. I'm constantly reminded of a quote that hung in my mom's laundry room...."Cleaning your house while your children are in it is like shoveling snow while it's still snowing."

Cody great achievement so far this year was learning how to put olives on his fingers. And yes, he figured it out all on his own.

At the beginning of the summer we made a teeter totter. Amy is the one that actually uses it the most but it does get used everyday!

I guess the biggest change this year was our house. We sold it! And in 17 days too! We found a rental house...just three days before we had to be out of our house too. Stressful does not even begin to explain how the last few month have been. We are building a house in the town Joe grew up in and is teaching at. It's only about 15 minutes away and that's where Travis has also been attending school.

This is the house that Joe grew up in. His mom still lives there.

We tore it down (don't worry we moved Joe's mom out first) and are going to build our new house with a mother-in-law's addition in back for Joe's mom. 

The property is just under an acre and a half and is going to be quite the change for me having grown up in L.A. I thought that we were going to grass everything, then Joe said he wanted to leave the "back pasture" so that we could get a pig, cow, goats or other animals. I was in shock for quite some time. The town has a population of about 3,200 and majority are farmers. There are NO stop lights and the nearest grocery store is a 15 minute drive away on the highway. I've never lived that far from a store in my life! We haven't started the building process just yet. We're hoping in the next few weeks we'll start.     

Joe and I LOVE old beater trucks and Joe said that if we're going to live in Burtucky (that's what I like to call it) we'll need a truck. The boys have named her Brown Betty, yes we name our cars...we already have large Marg and Gina.

Tyler started pre-school this year. I tried to get him into the same one as Travis but had no luck. So we are doing a co-op with 4 other kids in the ward. He so happy that he can talk "school stuff" with Travis now.

Travis started first grade but is bigger then most second graders. He loves school and is learning so fast.

I thought this picture was funny because of Tyler. He cracks me up! 

hopefully next time I post it will be construction pictures of our new place!

still here

where does time go, and where can I get some more? So much has happened in the last few months yet so little has happened also...like the cleaning of my house. Here is just a little update.
Travis is reading! He loves to read, gets that from Joe. It's a good thing too because when Joe isn't at home at night guess who reads while I put the babies down. I went to say good night to them earlier his week and Travis was trying to teach Tyler to read. Travis is loving school and I think that he will go through withdrawals once summer hits.

Tyler is surviving with me. For some reason he hasn't figured out how to play by himself. So all day long he is either right next to me talking away or walking around the house asking when Travis will be home. He has one more year and then he starts school. It's going to be one long year I'll tell you that much.

The babies really aren't babies anymore. How or when that happened I don't know. Cody has been crawling for a few months now and Amy is finally ok with crawling. It's not that she didn't know how it's just that she thought that she was above that. Yes Amy is bigger then Cody but just by a pound. Cody is longer and his head is bigger but Amy is....we like to call it plump. I didn't figure out until he was 6 months that he has reflux so that might have something to do with it. He still has issues though. He doesn't like people food and is really picking with what baby food he'll eat. And no he doesn't sleep through the night yet. The longest he'll go is 5 hours, I'll take what I can get.

This picture explains a lot. Cody can do, or does a lot more then Amy. He is very curious and will try anything. Amy doesn't do anything until she knows it's safe and she's good at it. Cody gives her that look a lot too, the, "why don't you just do it and stop crying" look.

Can you tell who had a bad (hair)day? I don't know what to do about her hair. Im guessing it's just going to look ugly until it grows longer? I try to keep it combed down but it just has a mind of it's own...just like amy I guess.

Yesterday I asked Travis to watch them while I went to change the laundry and I came out to this. They both crawl really fast and get into everything so he thought that this would be a good idea. It was until we all walked away and they both started crying because they were stuck.

until next time....