he's so good!

look! i have more backyard patio!

with only the payment of beers and guacamole, dave and curtis worked so hard this weekend to extend our patio.


now no one will ever again fall over and/or out of their chair into the grass when making 'smores because their chair was unstably sat in the lawn...


come have dogs and 'smores with us!!

snow and soccer

the sun was shining!

when i got home from great falls, dave and jacks told me they were going fishing on sunday. why they weren't taking ryan is such a point of contention between dave and i... i should be discreet and stop here... whatever! this is the thing our friend has a drift boat big enough for 4 grown men. yet, it only fits two men and two scrawny 10 year olds at certain times. i'm perplexed why it can't hold another skinny 8 year old. dave tells me it's not his boat, and that the kid in question is jackson's friend, and he should be able to have that time with his friend... yada, yada, yada.

when i reread these, it seems like i never listen to dave. that's not true, really. i do listen, but sometimes he drives me crazy when he just can't see that i'm right, he's wrong and he needs to STOP trying to convince me the contrary. pretty simple.

anyway, ryan and i were able walk to the five-and-diner for brunch, ride our bikes to the museum and listen to ziggy and bob with the windows and moon roof open because spring had finally sprung in idaho.



or so we thought {insert ominous music}...

we woke up to snow on wednesday, and i hear that other places in the rocky mountain region did too!

what the hell happened to spring?

the guys were freaking out because wednesday was the first soccer game of the season...

but of course, the snow was blown or melted away by afternoon, and the sun was making a weak appearance.

the game was great! we have some quality players on the team again, and the team is coached by our favorite coach... dad! the first game was a what the coach calls a learning game. the team played well and tied the game.

it also seems that in the 10 year old bracket, we're learning to talk smack. so i heard about all of the insults... oh, the things i do not want to hear!

jackson is in the middle there. with ryan and seth in the background.

seth one of the smith-ibagian kids, who are now like family to us. we hang out so much as families, it's like cory, drew, gabz and seth are the cousins to jackson and ryan... and jacquie and curtis are the cool aunt and uncle who let them eat the sugar their mean mom with-holds from them.




this is ryan, number 2... the kid on the team who confuses the hell out of the the other team!

is that a dude?

no, that's a chick...look at her hair...

how come that team has a girl?

we're totally beating a team with a girl!

dude! that is a dude!

so, again send fast thoughts as we go to boise/nampa for our last swim meet for the season. we're hoping for good times and good times!

the 9:30 princess

yep, those are my shoes on my bed...

and they are coming off for the day!

tonight the librarians schedule included a trip to the (almost) world famous Sip-N-Dip... and here i sit. how perfectly lovely to not have to go anywhere, take care of anyone, or do anything.

tomorrow, i go home.

tomorrow, i'll look forward to seeing all of my sweet boys.

tomorrow, i will smooch my great husband who loves me enough to let me escape every now and then, just to relax.

tomorrow, i will be knocked over by little boys--who are just slightly bigger than when i left them on tuesday morning--when they give me my muched missed squeezes.

and tomorrow i'll be awash with all of the blessings i often take for granted...

but tonight, i'm relishing.

When you are a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts. A mother always has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child. ~Sophia Loren

great falls, montana

it's not very far from idaho, but it's a world away from idaho...

cowboy poets spin rhymes abundant in mountain swears and wash them down with 80 proof. oh, yeah, we're not in idaho...

we're librarians. we don't censor and we don't judge. we like to be taken aback with poem and prose. we're not afraid of the f-word... thank God we're not in idaho.

i'm in great falls until saturday for the montana library association conference. this is one of my favorite conferences because it's in montana and not very many people like to come to this from idaho. so my pal, rena, and i come up once a year and have a ball! we shop, we eat and we do library things.

so, of course, i'm having fun, but i miss my boys...

jackson... that's birthday cake on his face

ryan... also with cake and the oft seen get-the-camera-out-of-my-face sneer!

one last thing... i saw this over and over today:

Montana. It's everything Colorado thinks it is. - Anonymous

crazy hair day...

of course, jacks wanted green hair...


but since halloween is is another 6 months away-- and target was out of the interesting hair color-- we were left to resort to leftover orange hair spray from ryan's halloween hair. jacks has got david's thick hair that sticks straight out when we don't want it to, and when we do, it won't! it fought us, so we gobbed on a lot of gel and root lifter! he seemed pleased with this sticky-uppy, orange hair.

however, i just learned that green, turquoise and fuschia hair color products are available at zumiez. i might conveniently forget this nugget for the future crazy hair days... i'm thinking that might be more permanent than i want. i once read that a person should be allow his/her child to have long hair, just not stupid hair. speaking of long hair...

a pony-tail in the back of this head--no even sticking up--is as crazy as ryan gets. he fought me on it, even after i showed him pictures of Becks with his hair pulled back (dontcha just love Becks?!) but once we did pull it back, jacks said something about ryan looking like some star wars guy... the liam neeson jedi guy. so then he agreed to go to school like this. as long as he looked like a jedi, no one would think he was trying to look like a girl.


he is always being mistaken for a girl. but it doesn't seem to phase him at all. one night he and i were on a date and several times in our favorite restaurant, we were addressed as ladies and girls. he just blew it off. i seemed to be more bothered by it, and asked him if maybe he wanted to get a haircut. he just looked up at me , and he said, "no, why? i know i'm a boy!" then he gave me one of these "like, duh, mom..." looks.









you might be wondering why jacks keeps his hair short... he hates his hair in his eyes. he did try to grow it--this is after we came back from california and they both wanted to be surfer-boys like their uncle. but after playing soccer with his hair flipping in his eyes, he was sure that he wanted to get a cut. it was this time that he once, and only once, suggested that maybe he'd keep growing out the back of his hair, and keep the top short.


OH DEAR GOD! does he have any idea what he's saying? no, of course, he doesn't. he doesn't know it took be the better part of six months to convince dave that he wanted to get rid of his god-awful mullet in 1991, and now this child is contemplating repeating that fashion sin! well, i set him straight. i told him that it would be better to keep his hair short, so people didn't think he was ryan, his little brother. he bought it : )