Natalia Nicole Puumela is here!

She was born on Friday night, December 18th, 2009
Carey went in on Thursday at 7:30 AM to be induced and Natalia was born via C-Section sometime between 6:30 and 7:30 PM Friday night. (LONG labor).
You did GREAT Carey! Good Job!!!

Happy Halloween 2009

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!
Well, with Jerome's back, we have been laying low for a couple of weeks, so we relaxed today and carved pumpkins during the day, but it was the evening that was extremely busy (but fun... we'll explain down below)
Here are pictures of the day...

Some pictures of carving the pumpkin. Dayton is ready with his spoon to help Daddy scoop out the pumpkin stuff. Dayton actually asked me if we could make pumpkin pie out of our pumpkins. Since I've never even baked a pie, I told him, let's try the pumpkin pie stuff in a can first and see if I can do that before we try on a real pumpkin!

Here's Amara getting ready to help Daddy. This will be the first time Amara put her hands in a pumpkin... :o)

She didn't have her hands in the pumpkins long, she wiped them off on her pants... very quickly!! LOL! Here she is watching Dayton and Daddy clean out her small pumpkin. I like this picture with her crouching down with her hands on her knees... she's really watching the festivities. :o)

Here's Dayton in the house in his Transformer's costume... he was Optimus Prime.

Here he is posing outside. Here we were on our way to St. Lukes. Grandma and Grandpa (Jerome's parents) were watching the house for trick-or-treaters, so they watched Amara for us as well while we took Dayton to St. Lukes. I'm really glad we did, it was busy!We were going to head out there before heading back home and going through our neighborhood.

I brought the camera in at St. Lukes, but I didn't get any pictures. I think I was so overwhelmed over all the activities there, I didn't even think to get pictures! (Darn). Anyway, we had so much fun there, I can't believe it... it was really an amazing time.

We got there and they were having hay rides and "trunk-or-treating" outside. There were volunteers that decorated the trunk of their car up and had candy where the kids could trick-or-treat out of the trunks... it was hysterical! I've never done that, so it was a fun experience.

Then... we went inside! OH WOW!! The place was PACKED!! I went in and talked to them, I didn't know what to do. They had tables set up to eat dinner. They gave us tickets for the dinner (this was free). It was a hot dog, baked beans, chips, and apple juice. I think that was it, we ate before hand, so we didn't eat, that's just what we saw. Then there was a bouncy for the kids to jump. They had numbers all over the floor so they a version of a cake walk (no music, you just stand on a number when they do the drawing). WE WON!!! Dayton actually was standing on the number two (on purpose) and I was talking to Kaitlyn's mom when they called out that they were going to draw again. SO... I went over to stand by Dayton and they called out number 2!! Dayton picked out a plate of cupcakes!! It was awesome!!! I also saw an old co-worker I've known for about 10 years. We used to van-pool together and I remember him when they were trying to have a baby... their baby was there too... she's 9!!!

I stayed to catch up with them a bit (I haven't seen them for almost 2 years) Jerome took Dayton upstairs to play the games. Brooke and Kaitlyn went too... Dayton came back and told me how much fun he had!! We were there longer than we had planned, but it was an amazing time!

Here's Amara and Daddy getting ready to go out and trick-or-treat in our neighborhood! (We didn't have a pail for Amara for 2 reasons. 1. She couldn't carry a bucket and walk and 2. She's too little for candy, it felt weird taking candy from people... it would just be more candy in the house we really don't need so it worked out great).

Seriously... she was so dang cute. Since she didn't have a bag, she would be in the back of the kids and when the kids would get the candy, she would go to the front and say "Hi" and then turn around and walk away. It was funny!! I was saying next year she'll be confused when she has a bag and people try to give her candy. She was so happy just walking around and saying Hi to everyone. It was awesome!!

Here's the back of her costume!

Here's a picture of Brooke, Dayton and Amara getting ready to go out and trick-or-treat. Ryan also came along, but he came after we had left, so I didn't get a picture of him (sorry).

Anyway, we had tons of fun, it was a great Halloween!!!

Clue Anyone?

As most of you know, I started a new job in August. I started working at Totem Ocean Trailer Express (TOTE) in the accounting department.
I miss my co-workers at Dynacraft, they are an amazing group of people and it is really like a family there and I miss them terribly, but TOTE is a wonderful company to work for as well. They have amazing benefits and it's great to be back in accounting! The group I work with is fun too! As you will see, we really got into Halloween in the Accounting department at TOTE. :o)
There are 7 of us and one person was off (her daughter was back in town from college so she took the day off)... so there were 6 of us there on the day before Halloween so we dressed up as a team. We all dressed up as the characters of the game CLUE!! it was fun! The accounting department was the BODDY Mansion and Eileen was Mr. Boddy (or in this case Mrs. Boddy).
My boss, Jeff was Colonel Mustard. We thought he should be the Colonel since he is our controller. He actually won the costume contest!
Nick was Prof. Plum (he graduated from the UW, we thought since UW's colors are purple and gold that it was fitting he was Prof. Plum).
Heather was Mr. Green (we had to have one gal be a Mr. but since her last name is Green, it was fitting that she be Mr. Green.
Dorothy has white hair, so it was cool that she was Mrs. White.
Aurora had a great red outfit, so she was Miss Scarlet.
And I got to be Mrs. Peacock.
We had all the weapons and the cubes were different rooms in the mansion and we actually played the game all day. We put 3 cards in an envelope a who, with what, and where. We passed out the rest of the cards and everyone at TOTE got to ask us a who, with what and where and if we had one or more of those, we would only show them 1 card. The person who was asking had 3 tries with each of us suspects and the winner got a 100 grand candy bar! Oh we had fun!
Here are some pics!

This doesn't need a caption.

The outline of Mr. Boddy (AKA Eileen)


The suspects: Miss Scarlet (AKA Aurora) Mrs. Green (AKA Heather) Prof. Plum (AKA Nick) Mrs. Peacock (AKA Shai) Col. Mustard (AKA Jeff) and in front Mrs. White (AKA Dorothy).

The weapons and the CLUE board with the box of guesses.

The opening of the envelope!!!

Looks like Miss Scarlet did it with the Lead Pipe in the Ballroom.

Which is actually funny, the body was taped right outside of the ballroom and the ballroom happened to be Miss Scarlet's cube (AKA Aurora).

Col. Mustard giving the reward to the winner Crocodile Dundee (AKA Ken)

The reward: 100 Grand! :-)

A fun time had by all.

Carey's Baby Shower

My friend Carey is Brooke's mom. Brooke and Dayton met at Miss Robin's daycare and preschool and they became fast friends. Brooke is now in kindergarten and Dayton is attending preschool at St. Lukes, but since Carey and I have become friends, they have been able to keep in touch. :o)
Well, Carey is pregnant and will have the baby before Christmas (they said they wouldn't let her go past Christmas, so if she hasn't gone into labor by then, they will induce. Last weekend Carey had her baby shower and I wanted to post pictures of the fun we had.

In case you don't know her... here is Carey.

The food was really presented well!

Here's a tomato crab! The entire presentation of the food was pretty.

So here is one of Carey's friends, Carey and the gal in Orange put on the shower for Carey. That gal is in the process of moving, so the actual shower was held at Shara's house (Carey's cousin's).

The gals closer are Carey's aunts and some other friends in the background.

And pictures of the guests on the other side of the room.

Here's Carey on one of the games... you know the one, take the string and see who is closest to the actual size of Carey's tummy. The string she is holding is the one that was closest to her true size (that was mine... I won that game, I guess I hug her a lot Ha Ha!!)

Now this was a game I've never played before. You divide the guests up in 2 teams. Everyone gets a balloon. They stand in a line. One person on each team starts to blow up a balloon. They have to blow the balloon up, tie it and put it under their shirt before the next person in line can blow up their balloon and tie it and put it under their shirt and so on. After the last person puts it under their shirt... The first person needs to take the balloon out and pop it, then the next person and so on... the team that finishes (the last person to pop their balloon first wins). It was a funny game. The entire team gets a small candy bar as the winners (my team didn't win).

Here's Shara trying to pop her balloon by stepping on it (I thought it was easier to sit on m

The other game played was another unique one. The person throwing the party went to Wal-Mart and listed out a bunch of baby stuff. As she rattled it off, we needed to put down the price we thought it was. At the end, we added it up (this is what they are doing here). I had $555.55 for my stuff, I believe the grand total was around $700.00. WOW it's crazy how much this baby stuff is (and you would think I would know since I JUST went through it, but I was still low on my estimates). LOL!!

I loved this outfit, I thought it was just so dang cute!!!

You already look so proud Carey!!

Carey just loved this book, I think it's a book of Anne Geddes pictures (I'm not 100% sure) but she sat there looking through it for a while...

Here's Carey opening the rest of her gifts.

I'll have to ask Carey who this friend was, I just thought she looked so cozy and comfy on the couch.

We can hardly wait to see the little one Carey! We are so excited!

Puyallup Fair!

So we were able to go to the Puyallup Fair on opening night and we had so much fun!! Our friends Carey, Jay & Brooke were able to come with us!

Here are pictures of the fun!

Baby bunnies!! Oh, they were so cute! I've never seen baby bunnies before!


Jerome loves the chickens and roosters... he loved the color on this one
(hope you can see the color).

I loved the funny hair on this one!! :oD

Dayton getting a train on his arm.

Brooke and Dayton showing off their paintings.

Brooke had a dolphin with sparkles on her cheek!

Brooke and Dayton at the petting farm.

Amara enjoying the day too!!!

Dayton and Brooke on a ride together!

Here they are getting ready for a roller coaster ride... looks like Dayton is jazzed!

Its so hard to take pictures when they are on rides, but I was able to get this one... Dayton has his arms up!! :o)

(sorry Brooke, I cut you off there)

Here's Dayton and Brooke on another roller coaster. Again, Brooke is hard to see because she's behind the boy in red... but do you see her arms are up in the air!!! :o)

Dayton was just tall enough to ride the big ferris wheel (he was actually about 1/2 an inch too short, but they let him ride. I got to ride with him!!! (Thank you Jerome for giving me that ride with Dayton). Anyway, Jerome asked Dayton to take a picture of what he saw up there and this was Dayton's picture. :o)

We had split up from Carey, Jay and Brooke and here's Dayton "milking" the cow!!! (it was a plastic cow, but there were utters that you could really milk although it was water that came out.

Oh Dayton had tons of fun!!!!

Here's a cool story here! We stopped by the dog area and here's Dayton petting a St. Bernard. Now here's the cool story... both Jerome and I had St. Bernard dogs growing up, weird huh!

Dayton really liked them.

This one really liked Amara too!!! Amara thought the St. Bernard was pretty interesting and didn't blink an eye when this one stole one of her fish crackers!! LOL! :o)

My favorite family picture right now!! We had this done on a fabric poster and I took a picture of it. We don't have many family pictures, so I just love it!!

Ah... the end of a long night... Amara sleeping on the way back to the car.

What a fun night!!!!

4th of July 2009!

Well, I'm not nearly as quick on these things... sorry!

We had BLAST at the Caceres's for the 4th!!!

We went up to the property for the long weekend and then headed to Katrina's on Saturday.

It seems that a few of us had camera issues. The batteries were gone of my Cannon camera, so I tried my best to take pictures from the Sony video camera (it takes still pictures too, so it works out great). The only issue is the video camera doesn't have as many cool features so it's harder to get those great shots and I don't have that many. BUT I have pictures to show how much fun we had!

As soon as we got there, the kids were ready to play in the water. They had 2 water slides and a pool and man, did they love it!

Dayton at the top of the slide, getting ready to go down... Samuel is there climbing up the side.

Dayton on the left, still climbing up, Micah on the right waiting for Dayton.

The cousin's going down the slide together!

Here's Micah getting out of the "warm" pool... & I can't tell if Dayton is going in or getting out. Anyway, it was funny, the kids would run and jump on one of the long ends and run through the water and jump out the other end. I have it on video, but Dayton really put on a show to get himself all syked out before the run... breathing hard, counting to 5, pumping his arms... it was a great show... he was serious about getting into that pool!!!

Here's Theresa and Billy Jordan holding Amara... they were so good with her, Thank you for all your help! (Actually there wasn't a shortage at all for help with Amara... thank you all!)

So next on the agenda:

We ate a great meal (I'm sorry, I don't have any pictures of that, but if you go to Katrina's blog, she has pictures of the food & chocolate fountain!!)
Next was the water balloon fight... that was over WAY too soon. As we were clearing the tables during the water fight, I'm not sure if anyone got pictures. I know I didn't and we all KNOW Katrina didn't since she tried to take Jerome on with the hose... I can't tell you who won since Jerome realized the only way to get Katrina was to sacrifice himself and yep... they BOTH went into the pool!!! Nope... Sorry Mom... I looked, no pictures.

Next is one of my favorite parts, I love how we line up the chairs in front of the house and the Dad's get to play with the fireworks! Most of my pictures are from this time... Hope you enjoy... I know I did!!! Ah, I love the 4th of July at the Caceres's!!!

Jenny, one of the mom's brought Popsicles for the kids.... WHAT A GREAT IDEA THANK YOU! So here's a picture of Theresa feeding Amara a nice cool Popsicle... Awe nice on those new teeth!

The three boys... cousins in their matching USA shirts.

Here's Jerome talking to Taryn and Syrah about the fireworks... serious stuff you know!

Here's Katrina getting ready to hold up the fireworks that Jerome got in honor of his sister... Totally Jacked! OK, there is a great story here... Last year, Jerome didn't know what he got, but he got this firework cake that said "Mr. Big Stuff"... we all laughed and joked with Jerome that he bought it for the name and Katrina blogged a picture of Jerome holding the cake in his arms doing a hulk man pose. Much to our delight and surprise!!! Mr. Big Stuff ROCKED!!! It was awesome!!! So this year, Jerome (and Dayton) did everything they could do to find this same cake. We went to the Indian reservation and asked around... Dayton would say "um, excuse me, we are looking for the big stuff". Well the people would laugh and say... of course we sell the "big stuff" and look at Jerome and say what do you want. We thought Dayton was SO CUTE! We would explain that he was looking for the actual cake Mr. Big Stuff... come to find out... they don't make it anymore, it was replaced by... TOTALLY JACKED! Now this is even more fitting!!!! Dayton named his dinosaur jack-up because we just got done from a day with Katrina and somewhere during the day she said she was excited and all jacked up over something. Dayton asked Katrina what that was and Katrina said she was just so excited, so Dayton named his dinosaur after Katrina and NOW... we find the cake Totally Jacked replaced Mr. Big Stuff... it was awesome, we bought 2 for the finale. So with buying 2 we got one free... so we went with ONE BAD MOTHER... and it was AWESOME!!! It filled the skyline from as far as we could see... it was cool!!! So I'm sure next year, we'll be looking for Totally Jacket and One Bad Mother!

Katrina posing for Totally Jacked... Thanks Katrina!!

GOOD TIMES!!!!!!

So, before the "big stuff" we have a routine...

1. parachutes
2. tank wars
3. sparklers before the big stuff
4. big stuff when it's dark
5. sparklers again to end the night

Here's Dayton at stage two catching his parachute.

Here's the kids getting in line for the next set of parachutes.

Here's Morgan saving Dayton's 2nd parachute from a tree... Thanks!

So I'm not 100% sure who brought the big parachute item, but it shot off like 6 rounds of 4 parachutes each... I don't know it was a ton... all in the air floating down at once, it was AWESOME!! I loved it!!

~~~~

OK... GET READY FOR...

TANK WARS!!!

I like tank wars... the kids strategically place tanks in place to destroy the bigger tanks!!

This one's a jet, but see how the kids are planning and plotting...

The stage is set for a great war!

Here's some small tanks and big tanks getting started...

LOVE IT!!!! Having fun with TANK WARS!!!

So what do you do with "spent" tanks... put them in a pile and watch them burn baby!!!

Smore's anyone? Just Kidding!

And the kids are having fun too!!! Here they are from left to right:
Taryn, Syrah, Samuel, Morgan, Abby, and Sadie holding Dayton and Micah

(not pictured: Levi and Amara)

I just want to say, all the kids were awesome with a long day of heat and running hard, everyone did awesome... it was so fun to be there and be a part of that!!

My favorite part... getting ready to watch!

Sparklers... getting ready for the big stuff!

I don't have pictures of all the big stuff, but between the sparklers and the big stuff, we found these things called night lanterns or something like that, we were only able to find 4 and we bought them out... they were beautiful and amazing. They were like hot air balloons and went up in the air and floated away, amazing to watch! They were fully biodegradable and when the little patch of fuel ran out, the flame runs out and they float to the ground.
It was a little weird to see these things floating in the sky with an open flame... makes a person nervous, but they did great, it was beautiful... I want to do them again next year!