I Blinked

I'm not sure how it happened, but it did and I can hardly believe it.

I blinked,

and just like that,

my baby is 6.

Dear Sweet Cooper,

You are six!! Wow. What a year it has been. You have been such a trooper in our big moves. You have adapted so well to both of our new towns and I am really proud of you.

I love how you play hard and love deeply.

You are such a brave boy! You'll try anything. I still laugh about the time this year that you told me you wanted to be a "devil dare" when you grow up! But you are already a "devil dare" if you ask me.

You love to sit at your craft table and create, you love playing outside in the snow, and most of all you love to dress-up and pretend you are someone or something else; Indiana Jones, monkey boy, a super hero, and the latest is Nacho Libre, where you run around in just your red under wear and a cape!

This year you have discovered a great love for learning. You started kindergarten and you look forward to going so much that on Saturdays you often tell me you wish it was a school day.

Cooper, you have such a zest for life and while sometimes I wish I could stop you from growing up, I love watching you embrace all of life's adventures!

My prayer for you is that you will continue to love Jesus with all your heart and love other people more than yourself.

You are such a treasure and bring great joy to all of us. So Cooper, grow deep, grow strong, but please don't grow to fast.

I am so glad God made me your mommy!

Carnival: If you came to my house today

I'm joining in on a bloggy carnival that I found through my friend Meredith (one of my favorite bloggers that I hope to meet someday "in real life"!). If you care to join along just head over to La Vida Dolce to link up.

If you came to my house today you'd find us still in our pajamas and beds unmade. There is no school today so the boys and I are home. Actually, the boys aren't technically in their pajamas, they are incognito......long johns (white for Ben, black for Cooper), ski goggles and glove, with capes over their backs. They will likely spend the whole day pretending that they are superheros.

If you came to my house today you would find those superheros cleaning alongside their mom. They clean bathrooms very well, the biggest does the sinks, counters and mirror, the youngest scrubs the toilets. Cleaning bathrooms is a task I believe every boy should know how to do. Their wives will thank me some day.

If you came to my house today we would serve you Monkey Bread (we are going to use only one stick of butter, but I'm sure it will still be yummy ) and hot cocoa after you played outside in the fresh snow. Bring your coat, snowpants, hat, gloves and boots, because even though there isn't a cloud in the sky, it is only 14 degrees out. Brrr!

If you came to my house today you would need to bring your game face, because after all the cleaning and playing in the snow is done, there will be games. The favorite of the house lately is Yahtzee.

If you came to my house today you could help me decide what to make for potluck Bible Study tonight. I need to go to the grocery store, but really don't want to, so instead I'll be seeing what I can dig up in the pantry to make.

The superhero wearing black, with a pair of striped pajama pants tied around his neck as a cape, has selected the High School musical as our cleaning soundtrack. It's playing now, guess I better get started.

Thanks for coming by our house today!

This took forever to download, so you better leave a comment

This post had a different title originally, but I decided to change it. It was either that or quit blogging altogether. Our internet here is so slow and it is nearly impossible to get a connection between the hours of 5pm and 11pm, but, here you go, the post formerly known as :

Home

One of the benefits with the company that my husband works for is paid housing for managers. In Kotzebue, this translated into a three bedroom, one bath apartment, complete with sloping floor, stinky walls, and black mold growing in the bathroom. It was less than spectacular, but it kept us warm.

Our move to Dillingham brought a very nice surprise!
We have a house here:

And it's huge, but you would not know that from looking at the front!

It's actually the biggest house we have ever lived in.

We are guessing that it is about 2200 sq. ft.

It does have some quirky features,

like FIRE ENGINE RED counter tops:

Even though red is my favorite color, I am pretty sure that I would NOT pick it for my counter tops in my own house, but I can live with red because of all those cabinets. And that picture does not even show the other corner and the cabinets there. Oh and that island.....it's about 10 feet long.

I can also appreciate the red because the rest of the house is WHITE.

Not just white, but white on white. Like this handy wall of shelves:

And see those cabinets? They would be perfect for a television. If only someone would have thought of putting that electrical outlet down there on the inside of the cabinets and run the cable tv hookup into there instead of on the opposite wall.

Now we move into the entryway and it is rather large too, which is great because when come home and take off our coats, snow pants, boots, hats and gloves we end up with quite a pile. One genius thing about this area is that there are TWO baseboard heaters, making for a great glove drying area. That door to the left is a large coat closet. Straight ahead is the door to the heated garage and to the right (out of the picture) is the front door.

Oh, looky, more RED counter top. But once again, it's livable, because it is in my GINORMOUS laundry room. With more cabinets and what you can't see is that it goes around to the right with more storage. I've never had a laundry room, always laundry closets or hallways. I love having somewhere to fold the laundry and being able to shut the door if I want to ignore it all.

There is alot more to this house, like three very large bedrooms; one of which we are not using because the boys share a room, so if anyone wants to visit, we have space!

Here however, is the greatest thing about this house:

The WALL O' WINDOWS with vaulted ceilings.

The entire backside of the house is windows. The big WHITE dining room has huge, high windows. These are the living room windows and on a sunny afternoon the light just streams through, which will be a welcome sight during our long, cold winter!!

So, there you go. Our home in Dillingham.

and there likely will not be anymore pictures until one of ya'all can come up here and speed up my internet connection. I have a room for you!