Update.....

Well, life is going ok. We are doing a lot of home improvements for little to no $, which is always great. It is all coming along. I have been really busy between getting a resume together, church, and family. We have a ward camping trip in a couple of weeks and we have to go to get a new tent because my dad's dog chewed our last one up. I am really looking forward to it. I am really bummed that I haven't got a job yet, because we don't have a lot of money and I was hoping to make it to Utah to see some of my favorite people, this month. I am going to miss a wedding too. Sucks, but that is life. Could be worse. I am relly looking forward to a lot this year. I wasn't able to get in for summer term, but hopefully, I will be able to start the fall term. Between school and work, I should have a really busy couple of years. :) I am ok with that. But don't be surprised if I fall off the face of the earth for a while. I have some pics from our Vegas vacation, but I will post them soon.

Sorry

I am sorry for not blogging. Lots more impotant stuff occupying my time. Love you all

The latest.....

I haven't been posting because I have had sooooo much going on, but I have had a lot of complaints about not blogging, so here it is.
Last week, I started trying to pull my house back together from all the remodeling. However, I didn't get very far since one of the rooms still wasn't done beause my husband can procratinate a bit. So, all the stuff that was suppose to go in that room was in my kitchen making it VERY difficult to walk around. Well, we had to take a break on that because I watched my friends kids for the weekend while she and her husband went camping. That was a 4 day weekend. I ended up finding out the my grandpa passed away and getting sick this weekend. I was a mess and did NOT go to church. After we got home on Monday, my friends daughter came to stay with us. She is 15 and her parents are going through some tough times. The kids are taking it rough, but the 15 year old doesn't have any friends close by to enjoy spring break and her siblings do. So, "Thumper" and I offered to take her for the week so she could get out of the house and enjoy her spring break. We spoil her. We treat her like she is our kid. It is weird, because I never would have imagined that at my current age I would be able to look at a teenager and treat her like a doughter. It is kind of cool. We let her have a friend stay the night last night and took them to the mall. Then, we had dessert. It was fun.
Anyway, I also have another teenager staying with us for the week. My cousin's girlfriend lives 5 hours away and her parents let her come to visit for the week under the condition that she stay's with my aunt and my cousin stays somewhere else. So, I agreed to let him stay here. It is not bad though. All he does is sleep here. He gets here, goes to bed, wakes up, and goes home to see his girlfrind and groom himself. It is cute.
I have to catch up on my house work. Now that my room is finished, I got eveything out of the kitchen and put away in there. I have been starting to spring clean a little. I want my house to be in tip top shape by the end of April. Wish me luck.
Well, that is all. Hope this was good enough to hold you off for a while. During the month I don't know how much I will be able to check the computer. lots to do. TTYL

Angelica 5!?!?!?! WOW!

We are having a Birthday WEEK! Not just a birthday day. She got some Barbie stuff on her birthday. She got to sit in the front seat, too. We went to see Walking With the Dinosaurs the day after her birthday! That was Grandma and grandpa's present to her. It was sooooo fun! I got some pics and video. We went and had a play day with our friends, and we are going to go to Chucky Cheese on Sat. So fun! What a great week.

House remodeling almost complete......

Well, we are getting closer anyway. We still have TONS of painting to do, Finish my door, put baseboard on, hang more pictures, etc. It is starting to look BEAUTIFUL though. I am really happy with the outcome. It is amazing! Tell me what you think!

This is the kitchen looking towards my new scrapbook room!

Living room angle 1

Living room angle 2

House remodel

So, right now I am killing time until my hubby and his friend get back with the material that they are getting to finish my wall. "Thumper" and I decided that we didn't quite like the layout of our place and talked about MULTIPLE ways to fix it. In the end, we came to the conclusion that we wanted to add a wall in the front room for a different living room layout. It would also give me a craft room. YAY! Now I can move my desk in there and make a big mess with my scrapbooking stuff, and not have to pick it up because of little hands. I am super excited. We also want to sheet rock where the small windows are in the house (the ones that you could look from one room of the house to the next through) and then texture and paint. It will look awesome.
I have the most amazing husband in the whole world. His friend is pretty awesome too. He is the one actually doing the work. We are just helping him. :) Here is a before shot. I will take an after shot and post it, when it is all done.

Link to view pictures

We got our pictures taken on Jan 20th and they turned out AMAZING. If you want to scope them out, just go to this link. http://www.myonlineportraits.com/ViewSharedAlbum.aspx?ShareID=c631302e-8a60-425d-ac04-6c5998848cf0 ">

The New Year!

We are really hoping that this new year will be a fresh start. We have been struggling financially, but we are hoping this year will turn around. Also, I am hoping to start school this year. I am going to go into the medical field and see how much I like it. If I don't, I am going to become a vet tech and see if that is a road I would like to travel down.I am hoping I don't have to go back to work just yet so that I can go to school full time. I would like to get into a career, not just a job. Either way, I am looking forward to continuing with my education. We are praying for "Thumper" to get this job with a company called Steris.
It has been a busy month. "Thumper" and I have both put in job apps. I have been going to the unemployment office trying to better my office skills, too. "Monkey" went to the emergency room the night before last because he swallowed a battery. It was a small one, like a watch battery, but they wanted to make sure it had passed the dangerous parts. They kept calling him the energizer bunny. LOL He had an x ray done and it was in his stomach, so they said just wait for it to come out in his poop. EWWWWW! Any who, There have been a lot of birthdays this month. "Angelica" erased my dry-erase calendar though, so for part of the month I had no idea when peoples birthdays were. I missed quite a few. We had our pictures taken on Jan. 20th. Keep looking out for them, I will post them soon. They turned out great.
Well, there is probably more, but I have people coming over for dinner tonight and my house and kids are a mess. :)

Same old........

Stuff different day. I am just getting over the flu. It was no fun. Basically, I slept for 2 days while "Thumper" took care of the kids. Awesome hubby. Today, we went and had our family pics taken. They all looked SO great. I will post some when I get them back.
"Angelica" is doing well in Pre-K and having lots of fun. Unfortunately, she can no longer hang out with River. Apparently, it is adults that have the hard time playing nice. Now, because of that, River can't hang out with "Angelica". Long story, really stupid. But "Angelica" misses her friend. Sucks. "Monkey" probably misses London, too. I know I do. :( Anyway, "angelica" is making friends in school.
I am getting ready to apply for FAFSA and see what I can get so that I can go to school and build up something for a career. Have a couple areas I want to experiment with. I will let you know more when I know more.
"Thumper" and I are still looking for jobs. I am hoping to get this one job in particular, but we will see. "Thumper" is hoping to get the job he is getting ready to put a resume in for. He has already talked to the guy. Pray for us. I feel like we are just out of reach. I can't wait until this job hunting is over and we can breathe easier.
This does mean that we are not moving to Utah. I said a prayer about it and I was told that we have to stay here. Well, that is all the news I have for now.

BROTHERS....

are so awesome to have. We drove to Mt. Hood to stay with my wonderful and handsome Brother and his awesome girl! We didn't get a lot of sleep, so I am super tired now, but it was so worth it. Now that I am back home, I am going to go to bed and sleep for a day. LOL, yeah right! Like the kids would let that happen. Besides, I have to get up early and finish my resume so that I can start putting them in. I have one application to fill out that asks for a resume. Well, better go to bed now, so I can get 10 hours of sleep. :)

The day..........

started out good. Baby Jaxon was blessed by "Thumper" and I got up to give my testimony. I started getting a headache after third hour and now my migraine is so bad that I am wearing ear plugs. So, I am going to put in my application online for the hospital and say goodnight to our guests. they are watching a movie with "Thumper".

To my Grandmas and Grandpas!

SNOW!!!!!

NOOOOOOOOOOO. My nightmare come true! Snow! Now I have to try and put on a happy face for the kids. ewwwww. Well, at least they are happy.

Blazers V.S. Philadelphia

We got some FREE tickets to another Blazers game. So, we got a sitter and had a great time. The Blazers lost, but it was still fun. I have decided that from now on though, I am going to have to take ear plugs. I end up having migraines by the end of every game I have been to. Fortunately, I only got a small headache this time. It was so worth it! We have been lucky enough to land FREE Blazer tickets several times this year and Winterhawk Hockey tickets twice. I love the word FREE!

Air Museum

These pictures were taken Monday December 21, 2009. It cost $14.00 / person. Lauren paid for us to go. It was so cool. "Thumper" stood in front of a heat-sensitive camera and we got some funny pics of all of us in front of it. We also took pics of all of us on the tiny airplanes. It was fun. We saw a lot of amazing stuff. It was a great place for an outing.

POWER WHEELS! LOVE 'EM!

Christmas!

It was a pretty great day. The kids had fun and so did we. Watching them have so much fun was the best part. Then, I took a nap and Thumper gave me the BEST Christmas present EVER. He watched the kids, washed the dog, and cleaned the house! What a great guy! I woke up and made dinner and he even put that away. I had a great Christmas and the kids are still having fun. "Monkey" actually took a short nap because he fell asleep at dinner. :) We wore them out.
They have had fun playing on the Power wheels that their grandparents got them and "Angelica" loves the Princes jewelry she got from Pam. It came with fake earings and she has been telling us that she wants her ears pierced. They made her day because she got to wear earings, finally. They also got stuff from their "Old grandparents" That is what "Angelica" calls her Great grandparents. :) They loved it all! Thank everyone that contributed to the kids WONDERFUL Christmas. We love and miss you. We hope everyone had a Merry Christmas.

Christmas Eve

We made sugar cookies & "Angelica" made Gingerbread cookies for Santa! "Monkey" ate his Gingerbread cookies though. We all had a lot of fun.

Baby is Here.....

Aunt Billie, Finally, popped. LOL. On December 22, 2009 she had baby Jaxon Avery Kaine Kartchner at 7:10p.m. 21 inches long and 8 lbs. 1 oz. He is so sweet! I just loved being one of the first ones to see him be brought into the world. It was an amazing experience that I will NEVER forget. I already love that little baby boy so much. I took TONS of picture. "Monkey" and "Angelica" got a kick out of him, too.

Friends!

I am so thankful to have great friends! My friend, Lauren, came to visit. We had a lot of fun just relaxing mostly. She was only here from Sunday morning to last night, but we had a good time. Sunday, we just went back to our house and got her settled in. She is always busy and doesn't have time to watch movies, so she watched 2 of them with us. She treated us to the Air Museum on Monday. It was so cool. I took some funny pics of us there. I will post them in another blog. We got a baby sitter and went bowling that night with Austin and Kayla. Doug came too for about 30 mins or so. He thought Lauren was hot. :) She is taken though.
Anyway, I felt bad because my Aunt went into the hospital yesterday morning and I spent the whole day in the hospital with her. I left Joe to tend to Lauren. LOL It is a good thing I trust them. I had him take her to dinner because she wanted to eat out and I wasn't there to take her. But, after Auntie had her baby, we went to Portland, drove around and then took her to meet up with her dad. That is where we said good-bye. Oh, and I sat on her lap to drive her from the door to her dad's truck. Of course, "Thumper" had to get a picture. Can't wait to see her again in May!