Bear the fish

This is just a short post to pass on the very tragic and belated news of Bear the fish's most untimely death. He passed on just one week and one day after we were blessed to welcome him into our home. The cause of death is at this time undetermined, although overfeeding and halloween make-up are probable contributants. He was discovered floating calmly among his plastic fern fronds, his favorite and solitary tank decoration. He was discovered by his grieving fishmother and laid to rest by his fishfather in a larger and more fitting tank of water for his situation. He is survived by his fishparents, 2 fishsisters and 2 fishbrothers, all of whom miss him dearly and are also probable contributants.

RIP Bear

2-14-11 to 2-22-11

The Haugen Family Summer Vacay Extravaganza 2011!!!

So I have been very busy planning this absolutely fabulous vacation for our family this summer. Jeremy is so good at indulging my adventurous insanity. And this will definitely be adventurous AND insane. We're doing this interesting little road trip starting and ending in Kennewick. As a little overview, we plan on hitting Multnomah falls, Astoria, Cannon Beach, Tillamook, Portland, Crescent City CA, Lava Beds National Monument CA, Medford, Crater Lake, Bend, Fossil Beds National Monument, Magone Lake, and finally home. Were going to see beaches, lakes, waterfalls, lighthouses, redwood forests, lava tubes and caves and other awesome geologic formations. Some hiking and camping and LOTS of driving with LOTS of pit stops. Maybe some seals and an air museum just to round things out. At Magone Lake, the tail end of our trip, we will be roughing it for a few days at the Flembriya family reunion. We have lodgings booked, directions and maps printed off, and a rough itinerary. Now comes the REAL planning. To make this work for us and 4 children who will be aged 6 and younger we'll have to have this very well planned. I'm SO excited! I can't wait for our fantastic trip to get here! Then I can start planning the next one...I'm thinking San Juan islands and the Olympic Peninsula, maybe a little Vancouver Canada eh? Okay, I might have to split that up into two trips.

Also currently in the works and coming up much sooner is a little vacay for just the hubby and I. I actually talked my mom into watching all 4 of the younguns! This will be our very FIRST weekend getaway, just the 2 of us. Jeremys work schedule, which has already been a little intense is about to get a LOT intense. Between being out of town and the overtime, it'll be like single mother intense. So I think we'll both really need and appreciate this. We're set in May for memorial day weekend. Since both of our birthdays are in May, I'd say this is a perfect birthday gift for ourselves. Jeremy will be 30 so we should do it big right? We're going to hit Spokane, walk riverfront park, a little window shopping, and The Melting Pot for dinner. I'm really excited, we got tickets all set to see the broadway musical 'Wicked' as well. I've heard it's amazing. This is of course only possible thanks to my very awesome Jeremy and my very awesome Mom. I've planned trips to so many places for you know "the future". This is so great to plan trips that we're actually going to take in the present :)
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Trying to be like daddy...

Back in January Ryan came out of the bathroom with a surprise for mommy. Yep, that is shaving cream. Someone had watched daddy shave the day before and had gotten a great idea :) Thank goodness there was no razor in sight! So glad I thought to get pictures before I washed him off! Sigh, he is just too stinkin cute!

I Heart Valentine's Day

I love love love Valentine's Day. I've encountered a few 'haters' and I'm so sick of it! While I have a wonderful husband, thats not what the day is about. Its all about love, yes love for and from your spouse or significant other but more importantly love for everyone. We all have someone we love and someone who loves us. What about children, parents, friends, other extended family members? Being single, or not getting the right gift or any gift at all, is the stupidest reason to hate Valentine's day. My great day wasn't dependent on having a spouse or receiving a gift. V-day is about showing and telling others we care about how we feel about them. Whats even worse is that the 'haters' can't just be silently miserable. They have to let the 'lovers' know just how unhappy they are in an attempt to drag them into their own misery. Sorry guys but this day is ours to enjoy, go get your own holiday!

We had a fantastic "I Love You day" (as my kids like to call it) There are so many boring normal days in the year that when you get the opportunity to have a really special day you gotta do it right. We all wore red and pink and we started out with a valentines breakfast and that just really set the tone for the whole rest of the day. Lunch and dinner were also valentiney. That really kept it going because every meal was exciting and different with new surprises planned. Snacks were heart shaped little debbie cakes and strawberry rice krispie treats. Daddy gave them valentine stuffed animals and heart lollipops when he came home for lunch (in addition to the other valentines they received from cousins and grandparents) Hayley had a new shirt and hair thingy to wear to school that was of course special for V-day. Now that Hayley is in kindergarten she gets to exchange valentines with her classmates so she picked some out a couple weeks ago and got going on them and then just kept on going. By the time we wrapped it up she had written out 50 valentines including some for siblings and grandparents and cousins and uncles and aunts. So she had fun passing those out all through the day. She had a v-day party at school that I was able to go to and she was so happy to see me :). She gave me about a hundred hugs and told me "happy valentines day" and "I love you mom" about the same. That was the best part about the day, the kids were all so happy! They were sharing and kind and you could just totally feel the love. I got hugs and I love yous all day long. The kids would say "mom, I want to tell you something, happy valentines day :)" and just smile. Actually Ryan started out with "happy birthday" but he eventually got the hang of it. Ryan recently had a haircut so next to the v-day pic of him and Josh I also added a "before" pic of Ryans hair for comparison. Hes cute with the curly hair and hes cute with the handsome haircut. Haha the fish was Jeremys v-day present. Its our very first pet EVER. Jeremy has been wanting to get a goldfish for a few years (he knows not to even try anything bigger on me, we don't have pets, we have kids) and I kept slamming the door on that idea. I have horrible memories of the things my little brothers did to our family goldfishies growing up. To be brief we're talking microwaves and decapitation. Well for v-day I decided to give it a go, I don't know what I was thinking, but I went to Petsmart and bought "Bear" for 14 cents. I gave Jeremy a card that said 'of all the fishies in the sea you are the only one for me' along with a package of swedish fish. Then SURPRISE! I pulled out the fishie. One of the first things Jeremy said was, "sorry buddy, youre not going to last long". I started laughing because the entire way home from the store I was talking to the fish saying "sorry buddy, you're not to be around long, maybe you got a week." So the fish is well warned and has already had a close call. Ryan put a jar of red glitter halloween makeup into the fish bowl turning the water a nice shade of a very valentine's day appropriate pink. :) BEST DAY EVER!

Excuse my ADD

So here I go again... In my defense it is a new year and how could I not make a resolution or two (twenty? rough estimate...) It would in fact be irresponsible of me not to take this opportunity to better my life and that of my husband and kids as well. I always thought that someday I would "grow up" and suddenly know all about being a mom and a housekeeper and being responsible. Like a switch would flip and instead of wanting to spend all morning in bed, suddenly I would be up at 6am cooking pancakes and eggs for the whole family while singing 'oh what a beautiful morning'. Its so sad that that isn't true. Its a huge stinking learning process. 7 years of marriage and 4 kids later, I still have a lot to learn. I'm embarrassed that these are basics, but heres a little look at some of the things we'll be working on in 2011.

One of our main goals this year is to get our house organized. Our current system isn't working and we need to get a better plan so that I'm not always buried. My kids have NO chores and no opportunity to learn responsibility, or work ethic, or independence. So I found this great websitewww.freeprintablebehaviorcharts.com that is going to help me with this. They not only have charts on EVERYTHING I could ever want they also have great articles to read on a wide range of parenting issues and concerns. I'm in love. I could make really cute charts but I would turn it into an unnecessarily gigantic project so this is much better. Pick it, print it, get to work. As Mater likes to say, get 'er done! We're going to have a few charts up on the fridge. There is Josh's potty chart and Hayley's reading chart, and even a mommy and daddy chore chart. A kids chore chart will soon follow. It'll be a fridge only a mother could love. For the kids chore chart I'm kinda doing something different that I think will work for us. It'll be more like a daily routine chart and I'll have a magnet for each kid. As they do their "stuff" they can move the magnet along on the chart. So not just chores (although that will be on there), but get dressed, pick up toys, nap, etc. We might lose the magnets the first day, who knows, but I'm excited to try something new. Its much better than the alternative, changing nothing but expecting the results to change. I'm a very visual person so I know this will help me. We have great scripture reading charts for Jeremy and I too. I gave them to my Mia Maids in December to help them keep track of their daily reading in 2011. That link will bring you to the original but I edited it to remove the pic of the kid and replace it with a picture of the scriptures I found on google. Jeremy and I will turn it into a contest between us. :) I LOVE charts.

So along with getting our house in order, another big resolution of ours is to get our financial house in order so to speak. We've tried the budget thing quite a few times but we're giving it another go. We went to a church meeting on budgeting and the teacher showed us a great budget he'd done on excel and he emailed us a blank budget form that he had set-up. Let me know if you're interested and I can send you that blank budget form that works with Excel. I don't know much about excel but the teacher taught us how to use the form. Jeremy, being an expert in this area, has it figured out and did a great job getting it all set up for us. We're also incorporating an envelope system to move away from using our debit card. (I decorated the envelopes :)) Right now we have no idea where our money goes, and this will help with that. Besides envelopes for food and dates, theres even a Christmas envelope so that we aren't so pinched when December rolls around. We just figured out what envelopes we wanted and how much to put into them and ta-da, we're all set. I'm so excited. I don't do well with stress at all, in fact my stress tolerance level is like a 1. I'm feeling a lot of hope that this will help to get my currently astronomically high stress level down to manageable, functionable levels. (Yes that is a word, don't look it up.)

Thinking of having kids?

Thinking of having kids? Here is a great link to a 15 step program to try and prepare you for it. CLICK HERE :) I love things like this that help you to have a little sense of humor about motherhood. If you can't laugh about it, then you'll cry. :)

Have yourself a merry little christmas!

So here are a few pics from our christmas eve cookie decorating adventure that I wanted on here. Please disregard the poorly(if at all) dressed children and the dirty house. Thank you.