9 year old in the house

Our dog Chloe Joanne Hoden turned 9 years old yesterday! We didn't get to celebrate yesterday because we were driving home from the twin cities where we spent the long weekend visiting Chris's family and some friends! Chloe's birthday means it's time for the annual update! She is still up to the same old shenanigans....ripping up stuffed animals, eating crayons, stealing food from Ivy, etc. Other than that though, she is starting to slow down a bit and we see the "puppy" in her less and less. We are actually able to have her stay out with us when we have company now. She just gives them attention for a couple of minutes and then is pretty chill the rest of the time.

Her favorite spots to be in the house are under the kitchen table (it's a pain because it's hard to clean under there and she sheds a TON) and on the chair in the living room. If something is on the chair she will come and find me and bark or make some sort of noise so I know that I need to move the blanket, lego set, doll, etc.! She sleeps on the floor in the kids' room and wakes us up with her puppy dreams quite often. Thankfully, it has never woken up the kiddos!

Max and Mya love walking her these days. She does really well on the leash so I trust them to walk her as long as we're not by a busy street. Mya and her friends love to play "puppy" with Chloe, even though she is not always in the mood to cooperate with them. Ivy is hit or miss with whether or not she likes Chloe. It's very much determined by Ivy's mood. Thankfully she is super calm when Ivy is pulling on her hair/tail/nose/ears saying "go away Co-ee"

Her favorite thing to do is the same as last year....riding shot gun in the mini van. Now that the weather has cooled down, she's back to the front seat for our morning errands. One day last week we saw some friends and my friend's little boy was so disappointed that I didn't have her in the car because he was so used to seeing her! So many people comment that it looks like I have someone in my van riding with me! The downside is that my van needs a good vacuuming on a weekly basis:) Someday we're going to get that new Honda Odyssey with the built in vacuum!

As much of a pain as she is to me sometimes, it's also hard seeing her get old. A couple of weeks ago she was not being herself. I had to lift her in and out of the car (70 pounds is not easy!) and she seemed really depressed. So I brought her into the vet and he said she most likely has arthritis. Basically it's inevitable with goldens. So she was on some doggie ibuprofen for a week or so and then it will be some glucosamine for the rest of her life to help with joint pain. She seems way better this week. She's back to barking at me when she wants food! I don't really appreciate being barked at, but I kind of missed it last week!

Tonight we made our annual trip to PetCo to let Chloe pick out a new toy and get her some treats. After we made it out of there spending the least we ever have ($10) we ate birthday cake and let Chloe lick the plate:) So happy she's our dog!

phone catch up!

It's that time again! Here goes:

The only reason I'm happy that this weather has cooled down is that the fruit flies have finally died off! We were having a lot of trouble with them. Chris googled it eventually and came up with this magic potion that helped the problem a bit...apple cider vinegar and dish soap.


My mom is the queen of finding the perfect napkin for every occassion. She sent me these awhile back when I joined book club, and I just hosted for the first time a couple of weeks ago so I got to use them! Of course everyone loved them.


My friend Jaramee was getting rid of this playhouse so I told her I'd gladly get it off of her hands so she didn't have to store it for the winter! Ivy was thrilled and the big two kids have had their fair share of time playing in it as well.


My friend Kate just built a new house and hosted the play date of all play dates. 9 moms, 27 kids and each kid (minus one that was too small) had a riding toy! It was crazy, but the kids loved it and it was a beautiful 80 degree October day so that helped!


Max and Mya each have a "special drawer" in their rooms. It originally started out with the intention of putting their special stuff in it, but it has turned out to be a junk drawer and I throw everything that doesn't belong on the floor in that drawer. I decided to clean it out a bit the other day and ran across this little piece of paper in Max's drawer. I have no idea when he did it or why, but it was pretty cute and made me smile.


I couldn't resist snapping this pic of my almost 2 year old. Hard to believe she's asking me to bring her backpack and acting like she's one of the big kids already!


I drove up to Decorah Friday night to drop Max off at my parents house and to spend the evening with a couple of my Luther friends! The drive home Saturday morning was gorgeous so I snapped a quick picture with my phone. It's not the best picture ever, but you can kind of get the idea of how beautiful it was!

Tokyo 2020??

Okay, maybe it's a little soon to start proclaiming that Mya and Max will be competing in the 2020 Olympic Games, but we sure are proud of our little gymnasts. They had their first ever competition last weekend and both of them walked away with 1st place! Of course we had no idea what was going on the entire time. We walked in late (who knew you HAD to be at the warm up??) and our kids went 1st and 6th overall so they performed and we walked out 15 minutes later! Each of them had a routine that they memorized and practiced countless times so they were definitely ready. Here are a few pictures from their big day.

creativity at its finest

Tonight when I got home from work, Max was too busy to come and say hi to me because he was "working." As I was putting him to bed, he was talking on a fake cell phone to the general manager of the John Deere Dubuque Works factory, Byron. He was explaining to him that he couldn't find time in his schedule to meet with him. So...I decided to play along and find out what was going on in that little mind of his. I started asking questions and telling him what he had going on tomorrow and was offering suggestions for times he could meet with Byron. He then pulled out these 5 papers that he had been "working" on tonight and told me that he's showing these to John Deere and hopefully they will make these machines. This is a direct quote (I wrote it down in my phone so I wouldn't make any mistakes): "I have to get it done before 2014. I talked to Byron and I just have to get it done."

This stuff just warms my heart and gives me chills all at the same time. Seriously who's kid is this? And what did he do with my 6 year old?? And man...he sure looks up to the men in his life. One minute he wants to be a Marine and the next he wants to design machines for John Deere. Chris's brother watched the kids tonight when I was at work. Now I'm really wondering what they talked about the whole night:) So glad this parenting thing is not a one person job...pretty sure I've never talked machines with Max....not even once. But the kid also knows how to shop online. That I take all the credit for!

weekend update!

Hope everyone had a good weekend! Ours started out a little rough, but ended up being a nice weekend. I got a call from the school nurse on Friday saying that Mya had a bad belly ache. So I went to get her and she then told me she had a sore throat too. That combo isn't good for my kids so I took her in and I was right...strep throat:( She was pretty down and out for about 8 hours, but then got a 2nd wind and didn't look back.

She was supposed to go to my parents this weekend for a big girls weekend with Olivia nad Grace. We had to postpone her trip by 24 hours until she was no longer contagious so I met my dad halfway Saturday afternoon. She got to go to the pumpkin patch with her best buds and spend some quality grandparent time as well! My mom says next year Ivy will be invited because at times 3 can be a hard number:) Won't be long until Livi and Grace are big sisters! We're all so excited for a new little one to be born:) I'm guessing it will be before Halloween, but the expected date is November 8th.



Our little Ivy babes has been giving us a run for our money lately. She has a very strong personality and wants to make sure she is heard. When I really need her to stop doing something I say "Ivy Anne" with a stern voice. So yesterday in the car on the way home from Decorah, Mya was bugging her and she started saying "Mya Anne" with the same stern voice I use. It's pretty crazy how their brains work! Also one time lately I let her get out of going down for a nap because she said she wanted to play legos. So now every time she has to take a nap or go to bed she says she wants to play legos! Wonder how long that will last. She's pretty into books again these days and now has started to memorize them because we read the same ones so often. I took a video of her reading and it's on youtube. you can see it here.

As much as Ivy is into books, she's also into climbing. Here is a spot I found her the other day. I heard her asking for a "couple books" which is what she says when she wants to read and apparently she wanted some new choices so she was helping herself!


Here's another one...this time we heard her say "Mom, get down" so I went running.


Also in news from this weekend...Mya learned to tie shoes! Max can also tie his shoes, but he would MUCH rather I still tie them for him and when we told him Mya could tie really well and wondered if he would want her to tie his shoes for him, we got the opposite response we were looking for. We were hoping it would motivate him to work on it a little more and become more efficient, but he simply responded, "sure. that would be great."



Max got camo paint for his face and is pretty excited to be a Marine for Halloween. The other night when he was going to bed, Chris said, "It's time to go to bed Mr. Max" and he responded with, "Don't call me Max, call me Tony Brown." (my sister's hubby in case any of you were wondering who Tony Brown is:)



My big news is that I got a new iPhone! My other one fell in a bucket of water in July and I was able to make do until the new ones came out. I even traded the other one that was hanging on by a thread and needed to be charged fully 3 times per day for $100! They didn't ask if it was working so I figured they didn't care! My pictures from my phone will be much better now so expect more iPhone posts to come:)

Also, want to wish my in-laws a very happy Anniversary! And my dad turns 61 tomorrow:) Hard to believe it was a year ago we were celebrating his big birthday!