Abandoned blog

This blog died because I was having problems uploading pics to my computer. And even when I was able to, it was taking forever to upload them to blogger. And what's a blog without pictures? Finally when I got the photo thing worked out, so much time had passed that I didn't know where to begin again. I have this weird problem where if I can't do something right, I just don't do it all. Like I can't send out thank you cards for Dane's birthday until I get the Christmas ones out first. And those can't go out until the Dedication thank you's...which can't go out until Genevieve's birthday thank you's..... And before you know it you have 4 years of thank you cards piled up on the to-do list. (so if you were wondering where your thank you card was, it got stuck behind the "DANE'S BABY GIFT THANK YOU'S" !!!!!! - no joke). Isn't that lame? It really is a problem for me.

Anyhow, here's to resurrecting this blog AGAIN!

And because I AM my anal self, only some backwards procrastinating way, I'm going to try to catch up with some missing photos over the last few months. Because what would happen in this blog world if I just skipped March, April & May? Who knows, and we don't want to go there.

I'm also going to try to link to some other cool blogs that I find along the way. That has become my new past-time, reading blogs. Luke thinks I have an internet addiction, as I CAN whittle away a couple hours on the computer in the evenings- no problem. I was starting to think I had a problem too, until I thought of it in a new light. It's more like I am reading...a book, that just hasn't been published. Seriously. It's not all just about families & pictures of their adorable kids. I like those too, but what really intrigues me are the people with "stories". I've been following the journeys of some different families as they go through the international adoption process - African adoptions actually. It's like I am reading their memoirs, only in real time. And when I stumble across a new one, sometimes I have a years worth of blogging to catch me up - or lot's of "chapters" if you will. So I guess you could say I'm getting a lot of reading done lately.

And heres some photos to bring us through May ;)

Snow Day

We went up to Twain Harte with Luke's family over New Years Eve. The kids had a blast sledding. It fell into Zeke's naptime, so we just put him to bed and pulled him around. I felt like some sort of native. I want to say Eskimo, but now I hear that's not the PC term.

Oh Happy Day

Tonight on the way home from rock climbing Genevieve told Luke she wanted to ask God to come be in her heart. He told her they would pray together when they got home (as we were in separate cars and he wanted me to be there too).

It was so exciting to hear her explain to us what she wanted to do without us leading her at all. She really seems to get it. She told us she wanted God to be in her heart so she could be with him in Heaven. She also said that she wanted our whole family to go to heaven to be with him right now. The excitement on her face was precious. We talked about how God could be with all the time, and she could ask him to help her make good decisions, to which she replied "I know".

Oh happy day.....

Our little monkeys

In an effort to help Dane avoid the "middle child syndrome", Luke decided to do a little one-on-one, special father-son bonding time by taking him rock climbing at the indoor rock gym in Livermore. He took him a couple weeks ago and Dane enjoyed himself. Well the next week Luke wanted to see how Genevieve would do, and Dane was really excited about her coming as well. Well apparently she did great. Tonight I finally got to go down and see them for myself. Dane was having fun, but was more into just monkeying around. He did a little climbing, but a lot more swinging from the belays, and jumping into the big puffy pillows they have below the bouldering area. But Genevieve! That girl was all over it! She was scaling the walls like a little spider-woman. She would stop halfway up the wall and turn to me and say "I love this" with a big grin on her face, then keep going. She definitely doesn't seem to have the fear heights that mommy does.

Blog Revival

I'm gonna try...

There's always lot's to blog about, but my prime time for letting the words just flow from my fingertips is somewhere between 12am and 2am. Fortunately I'm not usually up during those hours anymore! Halleluja!!! Zeke is FINALLY sleeping through the night after some grueling, but much needed sleep-training. He is consistently sleeping from about 7:30-8:00pm to 6:00-7:00am.

Why am I up blogging at 2:30am on a Saturday night then? Well, I fell asleep on the couch in the midst of making baby food, and I got up to finish before going to bed.

Now before you decide that I have gone off the deep-end by making homemade baby food, I just have to tell you that I'm a little embarrassed that I didn't do it for the other two kids because it is SOOOOOOOOO EASY. I thought it would be so time-consuming, and it's not. I just baked a sweet potato, steamed some broccoli and peas and put them in my little food grinder thingy with a little water, and presto! Then I put the pureed veggies in ice cube trays, silicone mini muffin tins and put in the freezer. Once frozen I plopped the cubes into freezer bags, and I have enough baby food to last me a loooong time. I also made up some veggies and fruit with the cereal already mixed together and put that in tiny canning jars, so I can just grab one when I need to feed Zeke on the run.

Pictures to come!

Christmas...

Christmas Festivities

This is long overdue, but we've been having fun preparing for Christmas...


We decided to cut down a tree this year. So on our way back from Thanksgiving at the Twain Harte cabin, we went through the little goldmining town of Columbia and up to a family-owned tree farm. The people were really nice, they had farm animals to feed and pet, the whole scene was just picture perfect. Until it was time to find a tree. You've never seen such sorry looking trees before. A whole farm of Charlie Brown neglected trees. They even had a a different breed of trees that were pokey like juniper bushes. But, the great thing about this tree farm is that all trees are the same price. So we figured let's get a Big Daddy of a tree. We ended up with an 11 ft skinny tree, with not so many branches. But I have to say after we dolled it all up it was beautiful. Now we've decided to make this our family tradition. We plan to keep going back to that tree farm for the challenge of finding a choppable tree out of all the duds.


We took the kids to see Santa at the Blackhawk Plaza. We would rather drive the extra 20 minutes and have no line, than do the mall thing. The kids did great. Zeke wasn't sure about the furry guy, but he didn't cry. I think it helped that he was there with big bro and big sis.

Don't you just wanna eat him up?

Taylor Trash in P-Town. The neighborhood is really goin down...

A good Blogger

A good blog is one that is updated frequently.
I'm a bad blogger.

Just an average day at Taylor Trash...

Our little girl is growing up

Genevieve lost her first tooth tonight!
She has been wiggling that thing around for a few weeks now. Finally tonight she has mommy pull it out. She was SOOOO excited. In fact, she decided she needed to go to bed right away so the tooth fairy could come....
Wonder what the Tooth Fairy will bring her???

My silly boys...

One of Dane's favorite past times is dressing up his little brother. I wish I had taken more pictures of his funny little get-ups. I'm sure there'll be more to come....

Zeke as Captain Hook....

Zeke as a princess....

Wow Genius!?!

You can get your blog rated here at this website.
It basically says what level of education is needed to understand your blog.
I don't know if it just counts the big words or what....

Get a Cash Advance

I think the program made a mistake. Genius? C'mon.......

Praise God

This is a follow-up to the "Things we need to sell" post.
Drumroll please..................
We sold the houseboat, and BOTH Rossmoor units!
Praise God!

Tinkerbell, Captain Hook, and a turtle?

The kiddos had lot's of fun at the pumkin patch. Rumor is that it's the last year for Joan's. How sad that we won't get to keep measuring the kisds by the 'How tall this fall' sign anymore.
We had a mellow Halloween. Luke took the kids trick-or-treating in the neighborhood. His mom & Danny met up with them along the way. I stayed back to wait on the plumber and to start cleaning the massive flood in our laundry room. At about 5:15 Halloween night our pipes backed up and flooded the whole 'laundry/storage of crap that doesn't have a home' room. Don't worry, not the sewage pipe. It was the garbage disposal/dish washer/washing machine drain....yuck!
As if I don't already have enough stuff going on right now, I really needed to add this to the list of things that has to get done NOW. The best part was that the plumber people said they would be here in about an hour. That would have been 6:15. He showed up at 8:30. But this seems to be a theme lately. Sunday night when Luke locked our keys in the car at the Bocce Ball place in Livermore, AAA said they would be there in less than 30 minutes. An hour and a half later as we waited out front with Zeke, the driver finally showed up. Mind you our house is only like a 5 minute drive from there.
But I digress. Halloween. The kids had fun and got WAAAAAAY too much candy. Another friend had the suggestion of having them pick out a candy and trading in the rest for a toy. I thought my kids would never go for it. But I asked them about it tonight and they seemed game. So we'll see.....