Santa's Christmas

OK, it is so fun to play with your own kids. Gevin wanted to dress up as Santa today. We had great fun together. He makes me laugh.

This is Santa before Christmas
Santa after Christmas.

Santa after a good night sleep.

Oregon Trip

Our family has made a trip we really were not planing very far ahead, maybe a week prior to us leaving. It was one of those spontaneous decisions. We thought it was time to go and visit Greg's family up in Oregon where we used to live for 7 years. The last time we made a trip up there was in March of this year when we were so fortunate to sell our home to Tanya and Paul (Greg's sister and her husband). We took off early Saturday morning as soon as Greg returned home from work and drove without much stopping because Katlynn and Gevin slept most of the time and, I thing, so did I. Greg was a trooper for he drove the whole way.... he was the only one who didn't get any sleep :(. We got to Hermiston around 8:30 am and stopped at Cassandra's (Greg's older sister) and waited for Debbie, his youngest sister, to get a chance to leave work and have breakfast with us. We met up at Denny's. Jason, Cassandra's husband, and their daughter Kenzi were with us, as well as Amanda, Greg's cousin. We really had a nice visit with everyone that morning. Then we drove to Debbie's house were we crashed and took a nap while our kids went to see Grandma and Grandpa and played with their cousins next door. Every evening of our stay, we'd do a get-together at dinner time and have fun visiting. Monday night, our last night there, we took a few pictures but unfortunately, they didn't turn out because I failed to notice that the lens got really dirty from my little munchkin, so the photos are lacking quality. I'm thinking it is better than nothing though. It would be really nice to have NICE pictures taken next time we will be visiting family. We don't nearly take enough of those.

This is a complete Matthews family photo.

Tanya, Cassandra, Dad (Gary), Greg

Debbie and Mom (Cathy).

Here are all of the grand kids of Mom and Dad except for Mike, Cassandra's son, who's attending college and is away from home. And also Tanya's unborn baby girl who will be the latest addition to our family in mid January :)

There is Kenzi, Andruw, Kylar, Alisha,

Katlynn, Gevin, Emily and Marissa.

Katlynn and Gevin want to move back because the love to spend time with all of their cousins and they miss them very much.

On Monday, I was able to go see one of my best friends, Morgan, whom I have not seen for a whole year.

So, in all, we had a wonderful trip and we hope to do it again soon.

Thanksgiving

Wow, time just flies so fast anymore. Thanksgiving is over and in three weeks we'll be celebrating Christmas! Is this a sign of me getting old? I've heard many people say, that the older you get, the faster time goes..... Oh, darn. Looks like I am really getting old.

I do must share with you, how special this Thanksgiving was for us, this time only a company of FOUR.

Here you have the cook himself. That is right. Greg took on the responsibility of fixing Thanksgiving feast for his family. I had to work in the morning. I was able to get home at about 1:30 pm. I was pleasantly surprised when I walked in the door. Turkey was perfectly cooked waiting to be eaten.. not by choice I imagine, rolls were in the oven along with a pumpkin cake (by the way we got a brand new gas stove/double oven just in time for the holidays), and another pumpkin cake waiting its turn. Greg was also working on mashed potatoes and corn. It was all very awesome. I have a great husband, don't I.

The table was simply set, nothing fancy, but it was perfect.

The turkey turned out really tasty.

We stuffed ourselves full and than had a little bit of time to relax before Greg had to take off for work. We had a good time together, that's for sure.

Thank you, Katlynn for taking that photo, and many many thanks to Greg for a job well done :)

Package from Grandma "Babička"

Katlynn and Gevin get extremely excited when the get a package from my mom. We get packages from her on regular basis. She usually sends them goodies called TATRANKY, very good wafer kind of treat filled with hazel nut-chocolaty goodness. I admit I have to restrain myself from eating them because they are sooooo yummy. They also get Disney movies in czech to expand their vocabulary a little bit more, since their own mother has such a hard time teaching them!!! We have only 4 months before we go to Czech on our vacation. I better start now so they can communicate better. I am not worried so much about them not understanding. It is harder for them to talk.

Here are some pictures I took when we got one of those packages.

Halloween

How much fun we've had this Halloween! This has been one of the very few days, when my kids didn't need help getting up since they could wear their costumes to school today. I was impressed. It took a very little effort on my part to get them out the door. My little rainbow princess and very handsome Batman were so convinced that going Trick-or-Treating at 5:30 was totally OK. I thought it was still too early and we agreed to head out at 6:00. For them 30 minutes WAS eternity. The weather turned out nice except for the very end when it started raining and that's when we decided to wrap it up. We thought that an hour of walking around our neighborhood was good enough anyway. Gevin was getting a bit tired even though he had his scooter with him. As a matter of fact he was so tired that I didn't even have to put him to bed. He did it himself without me knowing. I found him, still with his Batman costume on, fast asleep. A miracle, after all that sugar he ate.

But the rain was not discouraging for some Trick-or-Treaters for we had plenty more kids show up at our doorstep. They fought the rain with persistence. They were after candy and they were gonna get it.

I was hoping I'd have better pictures. Lots of them turned out of focus. But we still caught a glimpse of the nicely over sized dress of Katlynn's and chocolaty face of Gevin's. And most importantly the memory of yet another fun activity spent together. Too bad Greg has to miss out on a lot of them because of his evening work schedule. We are glad that we have three-day weekends to catch up a bit.

Autumn fun

Leaves are falling all around....

Finally... Katlynn has waited for so long to make a good leaf pile. She was so excited when the leaves started to fall. She would be out in the front yard picking up the few that fell hoping to make a pile to jump into. I had to smile every time she would make an attempt. You should see the big sparks that jumped into her eyes when I suggested that we should make a leaf pile today .

So we grabbed our rakes and after few minutes of work out we had a pile that we approved of. The first time Katlynn jumped into it was probably the most fun because she didn't have any leaves under her clothes or in her hair. But she didn't seem to mind much. Gevin then joined her after he got home after being at his friend's house. It is great to watch your kids being happy. I didn't want to waist any minute and so I'm posting these pictures right after I took them. They are fresh out of the oven.

I'm pretty sure Halloween pictures are soon to follow.

Happy Halloween, everybody!!!

Fun activities

Katlynn and Gevin have been enjoying this school week. They have been having what they call Red Ribbon or drug awareness week and the PTA is really making it fun for the kids. Every day, they could put on something different.

Monday was Wear a Hat day "Keep your HEAD in the game and don't use drugs."

Tuesday - Mismatch day "Don't get mixed up with drugs." (Pictures are of the kids in their mismatched clothes)

Wednesday - Wear your P.J.s "Don't get caught sleeping be prepared to say NO to drugs!"

Thursday - Wear Hawaiian clothing and accessories. "Catch the Island spirit = stay away from drugs."

Friday - Wear sports clothes or dress like a cheerleader "Follow your dream - Don't let drugs get in your way!"

I had so much fun dressing the kids on Mismatch day, all of us shared a good laugh.

I had the opportunity to play a little myself when I decided to donate a couple of pumpkins for a local pumpkin walk - a fund raiser of some kind.

I call this one "Bad hair day"

Let it snow

Are you ready for winter yet? We sure are NOT. What a wintry weekend it has been. We could see that winter is closer than we realize. Temperature fell to low 30s. It started raining/snowing on Friday night. Saturday morning we had enough snow for Katlynn to build a complete snowman. On Sunday we headed out to go to our friends house and after we saw the freeway, we decided to take the back road instead. Just from that one overpass we could see up to three cars that slid off. Monday was still chilly but the sun was out more and melted most of the snow. Greg and I started working on winterizing the yard to get it ready for the next snowfall, we hope, won't come anytime soon. Katlynn and Gevin liked playing outside soooo much and they cannot wait for more snow to fall. Crazy kids:o)

I know we have more nice weather still ahead of us and we will try to make the best of it. This last weekend was not the most enjoyable but it created wonderful view of the "snowy" mountains. We sure enjoy that. :o)

Skoro u konce

Další týden uběhl a my jsme hotoví s lakovaním podlahy jak můžete vidět z fotek. Dalo nám to zabrat, ale opravdu to stálo za to. Jsme velice spokojení s tim jak to dopadlo. Včera jsem nastěhovala zpátky sedaci soupravu a piano do obývacího pokoje, ktere jsme po tři týdny měli v kuchyni. Je to parádička. Alespoň se teď bez problému dostanu ke dřezu :o)


Teď už jen zbývá olištování a malovaní. Přemalovala jsem jeden z pokojů viz fotka.

Je to ten bývale zelený pokoj, ve kterém jsem vyfotila Grega jak luxuje. Jeden z historických momentů :o)

Jelikož je dneska sobota, tak se jdu vrhnout do práce. Mějte se všichni moc a moc krásně.

Moving back in

So... it has been 3 weeks today since we started working on our hard wood floors. What an adventure it has been so far, let me tell you. I am happy to say that we are ALMOST at the end of it:o). We are done with the big job of refinishing the wood. That was major. Now we are in a process of performing the smaller jobs like trimming and painting. It is still very time consuming but at least we are not limited on where we can or cannot walk.

This is how day #1 of the first weekend looked like:

We were covered with saw dust that entire weekend. During the following week my job was to fill in all the cracks. That alone took me three days.

Second weekend of our project was more sanding after me caking on the wood filler. Not as easy as we thought. Then in a middle of the following week I applied a single layer of wood sealer. After that the floor looked like this:
Much better, wouldn't you say?

The third weekend was varnishing. We survived it (barely) and now we are so enjoying the looks of it especially when things are returning back to normal.

NOT NORMAL:

My kitchen??? And we managed to squeeze our TV and stand in there after I took the pictures.

Yesterday, I created more space by moving the couches and piano into the living room. Yea, I can get to the sink now.

Katlynn and Gevin always like to have their pictures taken. They are two little goofball:o)Check out more picture of them in the SLIDE SHOW.