We have another little girl staying with us for a few days…she’s 14 months old and she’s fitting in very well. She and Trey are hitting it off, just playing and laughing and dancing. It’s nice for him to have someone here to play with his age. Had to take her to Dr. Margaret’s this morning, she has a terrible deep cough and runny nose, but it doesn’t seem to bother her and a breathing treatment helped a little. So, hopefully she’s at the tail end of it. She should be going to a relative tomorrow sometime, we’ll just wait to hear about that one. Good thing we’re getting rich by doing this…ha! Just for the record, we get “paid” $20/day for receiving care and $12/day for regular foster care. I laugh that they say it covers a child’s expenses, get real!

Tonight we’re having Mary, Ryan and Alice over for dinner and to just hang out. Mary’s decided that Thursday nights are to spend with her “wives” and good thing her boyfriend, Ryan doesn’t mind! 🙂 It’s nice to get back into that routine of dinner with them. Still have to watch Big Brother, it’s double elimination night.

The whole crew is sleeping now, amazing…all 5 kids are sound asleep at the same time. I’m not complaining! It’s given me a chance to catch up on laundry a little and start to get ready for a big consignment sale that I’m organizing for Islandmoms. Hoping that will bring in some cash!

Oh, and on a side note….that casting call that I brought Trey and Carlos to….got a response back that they want to see Trey again! Interesting for sure, not sure if I’ll make it back with him but we’ll see. I think it would be seriously cool to see him in an advertisement or something.

We went to the Kitsap Fair with Linda, Scott and the girls and Caroline and her baby. We had a great time! Levi and Carlos went on a ride with Dee and I, it was wild and they really liked it. We saw tons of animals and ate lots of “fair food” and really enjoyed just hanging out with Linda and Scott. We don’t get to see them enough as it is, hoping to get down for Emma’s first birthday in mid-September.

Today we had a Burr family get together. It was realy cool since Debbie and Randy were in town. The boys playeed in the yard with my cousin Britt (she’s got lots of energy!). They’ve had such a busy weekend that Carlos fell asleep at the dinner table!

We had a great Thanksgiving dinner last night with friends…Patti and Jeanie, Carolyn and Mary and Alice all came over to eat. We also have an almost 3 year old girl overnight for respite care. Her foster family is out of town and I have to take her back to daycare this morning and then she’ll be returned home to her dad. She’s excited and was very easy to have overnight!

Planning on taking the kids to the beach today to hang out, then this weekend we’ve got Linda, Scott and the girls coming up for the fair and then a Burr family BBQ on Sunday at our place. It’ll be great to see both sides of our family!

Our friend, Caroline, has a new foster placement. She’s TINY, only 6 days old.

Of course, as with all babies, Carlos loves her. He wants to hold and kiss her all the time. We’ve been spending lots of time with Caroline and the new baby since she’s on vacation this week. It’s been fun getting the “baby time”.

I am so happy, I borrow Gay’s carpet steamer and did the living room carpet this morning. It is very nice and I’m not embarassed for anyone to come to our house and see how nasty and spotted the carpet was. I’m sure the kids will trash it in no time, but at least for today, it’s clean and looks good. Also on the home care/repair topic…our deck is done! So, now we have a nice, new front deck that we can actually use. It looks great, too. I’m excited to be able to go in and out the sliding door now, it’ll make life tons easier. Now if only our landlord would take away the old deck….the front yard is looking kinda trashy. I think I’ll use naptime today to clean it up a little.

May be going to the waterfront park concert tonight, I think it’s a Mamba band and it’s the last of the summer. Lots of summer programs are winding down, everyone getting ready for school.

Wow, the past couple of days have been busy! On Sunday, Dee was busy working on the deck with Rich so I took the little boys to an open casting call. I know it’s lame, and I honestly don’t want to be “that mom” but we had nothing else to do and it was an adventure. I don’t mean to be biased, but Carlos and Trey were BY FAR the cutest kids there, and they hammed it up for the camera and really did perfect. I hope they don’t call Carlos for something and think he’ll do what they want him to, that was a total fluke. I’m not thinking anything will come of this, but it would be fun to see them in an ad or something.

Sunday night we had some friends over for a BBQ and had a great time just kicking back and chatting. The kids played a ton and had fun with the “big boys”. They were sure tired at the end of the night. Since the kids, we don’t get to see our friends as often and I really miss that.

Yesterday I took them to the SuperMall in Auburn (there’s a Tommy Hilfiger outlet store there!) and we spent the day shopping. We didn’t get too much, but I finally found 3 mini Adidas backpacks in different colors that I have been looking for forever. Now when we go somewhere, Levi will have a black backpack, Carlos has a navy one and Trey has a grey one and anything that child needs we don’t have to dig through a giant pack trying to find. So I was happy about that.

Just got an update on Mateo’s recovery and things are looking good. Here’s the webpage for anyone who’s interested in following his recovery.

www.caringbridge.org/visit/mateoromero

Off to the Super Mall today…yippee! Tommy Hilfiger outlet store, who doesn’t love that?

We just found out today that a young man we know was shot last night at the Dick’s restaurant on Broadway. He’s at Harborview now in critical condition, and we don’t know too much more at this point. Please keep Mateo and his family in your prayers. He’s a great kid.

The weather is truly wonderful…not scorching hot, not muggy, not cold. We spent yesterday outside and the boys loved it. The excitment for the day was a big boat that came into our little cove. Turns out it’s a boat that is going through trials here and will be in going to a remote part of Alaska to be able to provide emergency services to places without roads. It can pull right up to the shore and a car can drive on. It’s pretty cool.

In the picture of all the boys they are yelling “big boat!”. Got some good close-ups of them, too. Hoping to get to playgroup today for some grown-up time while the kids play and then Nana wants us all to go see “Barnyard” in the afternoon. Should be fun!

Portland was great! The train was fun, a bit of a long time to be sitting but the boys really did a good job. Levi was waving to all the cars we saw and Carlos spent most the trip coloring.

When we got to Portland, we hopped a cab and headed to the Hilton. It was very fancy and we dropped off our bags and headed out to find coffee! I swear, that’s a Starbucks on every corner. Anyhow, we got the coffee and did some shopping at Pioneer Place. Came home, got our swimsuits on and went into the icy cold pool. It was fun, though, we splashed around and gave the boys rides on our backs. We went up to our room again and got ready for bed. We ordered room service (what a luxury!) for dinner and crawled into bed and watched “Over the Hedge” and fell asleep.

This morning we got up and got ready for the day. We packed up all the things and went down to the hotel’s Bistro for breakfast. We took the Max train to Lloyd Center (met a really interesting guy on the train who was from South America, and a former Marine and was in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and just a really interesting guy). The boys liked watching the ice skaters (and Dee and I got a chance to sit a have a coffee…yeah) and one lady even came over to talk to them about it for a minute. Then they saw the Zamboni cleaning the ice which was a hit. We did a little shopping, got them each an outfit at The Children’s Place and went back to the hotel to get our bags. We stopped off at the Discovery Channel store on the way down to the Amtrak Station to get the boys a cool 3-D dinosaur book that we had seen earlier and then hopped on the Max train again. Dropped us about 7 blocks from the train station and we hoofed it the rest of the way. The boys both fell asleep in the stroller (see last picture) and slept most of the train ride home.

Got back around 8 tonight and my mom was here with Trey…they had a great weekend and he got spoiled. He was happy to see us, but annoyed with Carlos who wouldn’t leave him alone. We put them to bed and they finally got to sleep. I’m beat!

Calgon take me away………….is it naptime yet? Holy cow, today the kids are super wound up, I have no idea why. It’s not the new baby’s fault…she is very mellow and no trouble at all, she even slept through the night! No complaints there. Once again, Carlos just loves her and always wants to hold her and kiss her hands. It’s too sweet. Baby’s going with Caroline tonight for the weekend and we’ll see her again on Monday.

Can’t wait to leave for Portland, we need a change of scenery for sure and Mama needs a vacation. We’ll take lots of pictures!