Has anyone heard from the Counihans?

We have been off the radar for a while in all aspects of life. We just bought a little farm house on a peach orchard in the Sacramento Valley. The land is dreamy, but the farm house needed some work, so for the past couple of months we have been up to our elbows in renovating and making our little house into our home. The kids are loving the land to explore. Right now we have the following pets.... orphaned tad poles, several crawdads, and many frogs and lizards. (I use the word 'pets' very loosely--meaning none of these creatures have set foot into my house.) They are loving it.

Here is our kitchen. We painted the old cabinets, applied new hardware, painted the walls a cheery yellow, and installed new flooring. This is probably my favorite room in the entire house. A good thing too, because the majority of my day is spent here feeding my ravenous family.

This is our family room. Ben and my brother Jay tore out the wall separating this room from the kitchen. I love that they did that because now I can keep an eye on the rug rats while I'm in the kitchen and tearing out the wall really enhanced the size of the room. We also painted the walls and put in new carpeting.

We have done a lot more with the back bedrooms and bathrooms, but that is going to have to wait until a later post. We still have crown molding to hang and a couple other small details to finish, but things are really coming together. I'm loving the country and our little house. I especially love that all of the work is behind us. Just in time for the craziness of the holidays. Hooray!

Elder Hancock

Last Mother's day we got to Skype my brother Jay who is on a mission in Montana. I love that kid. It reminded me how much I missed him and how excited I am to see him this coming October.

Iris...

Iris loves to color. Seriously, coloring keeps her busy for at least a half hour. She loves coloring all things... paper, chairs, tables, walls, herself, anything.

I love watching her concentrated face, her tiny fingers, and the cute little way she puts the crayons back when she's done. Every time she does it I could eat her up.

See what I mean?

She is actually pretty darn good. The tiny swirly squiggles are her favorite.

Does anyone have any bright ideas for getting crayon off of walls without scrubbing off the paint?

100th Day of School/ Random Thoughts on Being Loved

Back in January Haven's 1st grade class celebrated the 100th day of school by dressing up as if they were 100 years old. I can't get over how darn cute Haven is. Couldn't you just eat her up?

A couple of mornings ago I woke up crushed inbetween a couple of the many people I love, my hubby Ben, of course, and my sweet little Simeon. This is actually a common occurence around here and I must say that most mornings I wake up quite annoyed. A doudle bed is a small place to fit 3 people. However, this particular morning I snuggled in the warmth of their bodies and reminded myself how good it felt to be loved.

2010

It's no secret that I'm a blogging slacker, but I saw this done on my cousins blog and thought it would be a good way to make-up for lost time. 2010 was a crazy year for our family. The following is a very brief synopsis of the years happenings.

JANUARY

Ben was able to travel to New Jersey for Grandy's 90Th birthday festivities. He enjoyed the family and the sea food immensely.

FEBRUARY

Iris was blessed.

MARCH

Simeon turns 2 years old.

And... We can't forget 'Mustache March' at UOP.

APRIL

We visited Muir Woods.

MAY

Simeon had his tonsils and adenoids taken out.

JUNE (big month)

Haven turns 6.

I was one of Ben's boards patients (damn that rubber dam).

Hiked Mt. Tamalpais with Dan-Dann and Grammie.

Ben Graduated!!!

We moved to a house with a backyard. Simeon immediately began terrorizing the neighbors.

JULY

Swam our brains out at Grandparents houses (too many pictures to choose from). Picked blackberries and peaches galore (yummy). Ben started working as a dentist.

AUGUST

Went to a short and wet John Family Reunion. The kiddos caught salamanders literally the whole time.

Ben and I celebrated our 11 years of marriage while Dan-Dann watched the wee ones.

SEPTEMBER

Elias turned 8 years old.

OCTOBER

Iris turns 1.

Elias becomes a Cub Scout.

And...He gets baptized.

NOVEMBER

We went hiking up in Chico with Grammie.

DECEMBER

We enjoyed a quiet and relaxed Christmas at home with our awesome Christmas tree.

We started a new family tradition this year. Ben found out from a lady at work that you could get a permit for $10 and chop down a Christmas tree in Plumas National Forest which is about 1 1/2 hours away. The Counihan's were way past due for a family adventure so we gathered our snow duds and headed off. An adventure is exactly what he had.

The only reason we were able to pull this off was because Ben was a complete champ. He was going to see this adventure to the very end with the best of spirits.

I'm to tired to recount all the happenings of this outing. However, let me just say that it involved knee deep snow, Simeon losing one of his boots, soggy socks, getting yelled at by a sheriff, driving up and down the mountain 9-10 times trying to find the perfect spot, and several bathroom emergencies.

However, Ben still managed to find the most amazing tree ever, chop it down, and drag it all the way back to the car in knee deep snow.

Even though it doesn't look like it the kids had a blast in the snow. I asked them if knowing how cold they would get, they would want to get a tree like this again next year. They yelled a big YES!

Even after the craziness of the day we still managed to get the tree up and decorated. I'm obsessed with our $10 tree.

Meeting the neighbors

I love where we live.