Fun in Spokane

June has come and gone. Come to think of it - July has come and gone as well and August is just about half over. Abbie starts school in a little over a week and I haven't blogged any of our summer adventures. Here is our first. Abbie and I took a girl's trip to Spokane to see my sister and nieces. Since my brother-in-law was out-of-town, Blake opted to stay home instead of live with all of the estrogen for a week. It was probably a good choice on his part.

We arrived the day before Cindee's (my sister) birthday. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures, but we got a sitter and went to dinner with her friends and then ice cream afterward. It was a blast. We spend the greater part of the week at their cabin doing relaxing stuff, reading books, eating good food, watching chick flicks and going to bed late. Abbie and her cousins rehearsed and performed concerts on a nightly basis. One morning we drove to "town" and ate breakfast at a little diner. Great food. The biggest cinnamon rolls you have ever seen and the hot chocolate tasted like it came straight out of Willy Wonka's river.


Their cabin is right on the St. Joe river in St. Maries, ID. It feeds in to Couer D'Alene lake so naturally we had to take the kids to Couer D'Alene for a day (plus I needed to hit the bookstore for the 3rd installment to one of the series I was reading). There is an italian restaurant there that lets kids make their own pizzas. Abbie wasn't too hip on the idea of getting her picture taken. She wanted to get straight to the pizza making...

Cheese pizza is the absolute best!

A couple of days before we left, we had a hair bow making party at one of Cindee's friends. My first experience at hair bow making. I can't beleive the money I've spent on hair things when I could actually make them for quite a bit cheaper. My eyes have been opened...

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Blake was such a good sport and helped my counselor do sharing time on Father's Day (yes, I was not at home on Father's Day, but I did send him a big package with lots of fun goodies inside). The kids had to "pin the tie on the dad". See the bright orange one that is particularly low? Blake opted to kneel on the ground after that one was almost placed directly on a certain body part.

We had such a great time and thanks to my sis who showed us around!

The Cutest Puppet Show on Earth

Two posts in one week let alone in the same month!! Can you beleive it? Neither can I.

Abbie's first grade class put on a series of puppet shows yesterday for all of the parents. It was one of the cutest things I have every seen (I may be slightly biased because Abbie was one of the stars). Each kid in the class had to make a specific character puppet for the story in their show. Abbie was one of the three little pigs. Unfortunately she played the pig that had no common sense and made her house of straw. Oh well, at least the puppet was dressed well! And each kid also had a speaking part of a different character so Abbie played the voice of the puppet Christopher Robbin. So cute and so fun! Below are pictures of all of the puppets that were made with special emphasis on our star puppet...








After the puppet show, we went back to the classroom and watched a video of the kids of their first grade year. Talk about a boob!! I was getting all choked up and teary-eyed over a picture slide show. I didn't know Shirlee's genes leaked over by marriage! It was really fun to see all of the things Abbie has done this year and how much she has grown. I knew once we reached elementary school life would just fly by.

In other news, Happy Birthday to Blake yesterday!! I love you and I'm totally glad you were born!

Skool Days

I just had to add pictures of Abbie's first grade performance. They have been working the entire year and put on the program in front of the entire school. It was fun to have the kids teach us all about Australia. Abbie played the part of a kangaroo and did a dance with her class. There are pictures below. It's been so much fun to watch Abbie get into school full time. I'm sad that time goes by too fast but we're having a blast with her. This week her class is putting on a puppet show for all of the parents. I can't wait to post pictures of the pig puppet we made. She is one of the three little pigs as well as the voice of Christopher Robbin for the Whinnie the Poo puppet show. If I can get some video, I will post it!

Babies, Lortab and Puking Puppies...

All right, all right, all right. Barbie stop yelling at me!! Okay so not really, but I've been catching a little bit of crap for not updating my blog. Rightly, so. It's been a few months :) So, I don't have pics to post, but I can update you all on a few of the Erickson happenings in Utah. Let's see - what kind of excitement can I create? Ummmm, I got nothing. Except for that is was really fun to have all the Erickson family to Utah for Jed's birthday. We loved seeing everybody! Come and stay with us as often as you like. And I got to see my sis from Spokane for a few hours last week. Gotta love the Zupas!

Ummm, let's see...I went to the doctor last week to get on the baby making wagon (almost everyone I know is either prego, was just recently prego, or is thinking about becoming prego). I might as well be prego too! Okay, so no news on anything, but we're hopefully making progress. Don't anyone hold their breath in the event that I may call up with prego news because it's going to be a while. The doc did say to "relax, I've got plenty of years to get pregnant. I'm not pushing 40 so I've got some time." That's only bad news for Abbie who might be in college by the time she gets the little brother and sister she keeps asking me for :)

For all of you who are still deeply concerned about Blake's tooth, he is doing well. Had a root canal and everything is good. Good thing, cause he was utterly useless while taking that Lortab.

I'll make this post short because I can tell I'm blabbing on and on about nothing. But all is well on the Erickson front, except for I can now say that I've the great non-pleasure of stepping in puppy puke (YUCK!)...

On to another day...

Thanksgiving Festivities

Time to enter another post. I know it's been too long when I start getting hate email from the fam (Barbie). He He. So I thought I'd do a quick post on the Thanksgiving happenings at our house. Nothing happened at our house. Okay I'm sure Heidi threw a couple of wild parties while we were gone! Thanks Heidi for watching our house and taking care of Trink - love ya! So we went to Spokane for Thanksgiving. It was a lot of fun. My sister and her family live there so my side of the family trekked up there for the week. One of the most fun things we did while we were there, besides Black Friday shopping of course (oh and besides getting the flu) was to take a boat ride around Coeurd'alene on the lake and look at the lights. It starts with a parade on the main street of Coeurd'alene. Since the parade is at night, all of the floats are lighted. So fun. Then when the parade ends, the fireworks begin. After fireworks, they have a lighting ceremony and turn on the Christmas lights to the whole town. Then we ate dinner and took a boat ride. The boat ride starts out at the resort and then takes a trip to the North Pole where Santa is waiting with Mrs. Claus. He stands in his toy shop and calls out Merry Christmas to each of the children personally. Abbie thought it was way cool to have Santa call her by name and point her out. The pictures are of the boat ride. It was my dad's birthday that night so the whole town got to celebrate with him. Happy Birthday DAD!!

Life in Texas...

Okay so here's my version of the week spent in Texas (all my other family bloggers have already added their posts). I should have started out with pictures of the crazy blizzard we drove through at the beginning of our adventure, but I was gripping the O.S. handle too hard to fumble for the camera. Weird weather - we hit everything from fog, to a snow blizzard to pelting rain (hydroplaning is not as fun as it used to be when I was a teenager) to lightening. Bizarre!! Anyway, once we made it there we had an absolute blast! Here are a few of the activities we did...

We started out celebrating the newest member of the Erickson clan. Baby Elle! It was so fun to see the whole family (except Dane who is missed but serving the Lord).


Texas State Fair...Apparently those words speak for themselves! Driving to the fair was like driving to Disneyland and the parking was about the same. I've been in the family nine years and never been to Texas during October. All I can say is WOW. I've never seen so many different kinds of people or fried food. I tried a corney dog (really good corn dog) and a fried s'more. The fried s'more was like eating a scone filled with chocolate and marshmallow. Very good.


The next adventure was the American Girl Bistro store. Yes, I have a six-year-old. I'd like to say that we went to that store entirely for her, but I would be lying. I LOVE toys. It was fun to let Abbie pick out a doll and some clothes. Then we went to Five Guys for lunch.

Rock Band Night. It was really great to see everybody's musical ability. In my case it was inability, but since there were no talent scouts there I was okay. We continued later that night back at Grandma and Grandpa's with a little Guitar Hero III. I rocked Jeff in our battle (okay so I only beat him at one song, but I still beat him).


We went to the pumpkin patch and tried to pick up pumpkins. Then we went on a hay ride. Abbie had so much fun with grandma and Conner.

Okay so I can't say anything about my hair except the word HUMIDITY. That is an ugly word in my vocabulary. Texas is great all except for that one thing. The BYU game as fun to go to, but not so much fun to watch - ouch. I wanted to cry. I guess you win some and lose some (wish the losses didn't have to be so bad).


We ended the trip with Abbie taking a ride on Poco, Bree's horse. What fun! I think Abbie officially wants to own a horse now. What a great way to spend our last day in Texas. Thanks Bree!

So now we're back home and starting life again...Oh and I've started an excercise routine and healthy eating plan. No more fried s'mores and corn dogs for me...

Is this cute or what?

Okay, so thanks to my wonderful sister-in-law, Barbie, I can now add all of this cute stuff to my blog. Now all I have to do is post consistently....Hmmmm....Anyway, thanks Barbie - I'm up and blogging!