blog mush

Ali practicing from a new position.

 Sunday afternoon at Aunt Jenny's.

 Nope.  That last box wasn't the last box of diapers and I doubt this one will be either.

Primary talent show: Emmy set up an original display and Ali played "I Hope They Call Me on a Mission" on the Recorder.  Such talented girls!

An evening bike ride 

A baseball FHE

A beautiful night for baseball...

sibling math

11/15/00 & 4/3/2012

Jake and Drew are 12 years apart.  Their birth dates are 12 days apart.  They will both have their GOLDEN birthdays this year, 2015: Drew turned 3 on the 3rd and Jake will turn 15 on the 15th.

9/20/04 & 9/17/07

Ali and Emmy are 3 years apart.  Their birth dates are 3 days apart. They will both have their GOLDEN birthdays in the year 2024: Ali will turn 20 on the 20th and Emmy will turn 17 on the 17th.

What does that all equal?  2 grateful parents with a remainder of 4 cute chillins.

spring break

Playing with friends, playing outside, watching dad's soccer game, swimming, and heading to Sunnyside pretty much sums up our Spring break.  Oh yeah.  And one day we...

 headed to Mt. Vernon to see the tulip fields,

 ate lunch and hiked at Little Mountain Park,

 walked over the historic Rainbow bridge in La Conner,

and played underneath the bridge as well!

Not bad for a sunny Thursday!

split for 3

For Drew's GOLDEN, MAGICAL, LUCKY (etc.) birthday, the theme inadvertently ended up being SPLIT.  After all, you can't always turn 3 on the 3rd!!

We split the birthday celebrations between Grandma's and here, and split our invitees between family and friends.

celebrating in Sunnyside

The morning of Drew's birthday, he split his head and we had to go see the doctor.  The doctor was split between stitches and surgical glue.  She chose the glue.  Happy birthday to Drew.

Drew's supposed Monster Truck cake split as I was trying to make a ramp.  I was split--do I make another cake or make due with the split pieces?  After freezing them, I decided to stick with the split.

Even though we knew he'd love it, we were split on really hanging the race track on the wall.  But on the wall it went and he loves it.  (As well as everyone else--no splits there!)

Drew was split on whether to play with the presents he opened, or continue on with the rest.  We coaxed him into not giving up and I'm pretty sure he was glad he stuck with opening all of the gifts.

We split into parts on "happy birthday" (cha cha cha, hi-ya, pepperoni pizza) and Drew loved it.

In the end, and thanks to some surgical glue, extra chocolate frosting, and doting siblings and friends, everything came together and it was a fun-filled and memorable birthday!

Happy 3rd birthday Drew.  We love you!

playin' hoopes

Issaquah Select Basketball

Team Purple

September 2014-March 2015

Coach Brian Danelo, Revo, Kaleb, Jake, Connor, Michael, Coach Matt Wimmer
Brian, James, Liam, Dillon, Brady, Sam (not pictured)

Jake won the unofficial "most improved" award from his Coach, despite not playing on Sundays.

He also gets the unofficial award of being the first HOOPES to play basketball.  No uncles, aunts or cousins on the Hoopes side played OR play basketball.  It gave us great JOY to see Jake out there with HOOPES on his jersey!

PCMS Lynx

8th grade team

February 2015-April 2015

 hustler, shooter, rebounder

swish

Way to go, Hoopes!

best Christmas prank ever!

April Fool's day is the perfect day to write about the

BEST CHRISTMAS PRANK EVER!!!

All thanks to these guys.

*********

A couple weeks before Christmas, we got this Christmas card from the Chapmans.  Hmmm...okay.  I must admit, I thought it was a little interesting, and it came in an envelope that was too big, too.  The whole package just didn't seem Chapman-like.  But last year we didn't get a card at all, so I just thought "I'm glad we got one this year!"

About a week later, we happen to be at the Chapmans with some friends and somebody noticed that the Christmas card the Chapmans got from the Winders wasn't the same one they had received from the Winders.  We had gone home by this time, but we got a phone call asking us if we received a sort-of strange Christmas card from anyone.  Then we started putting it together... 

We found out the Teheros got this Christmas card from us:

The Cooks got this one from the Teheros:

The Winders got this one from the Cooks:

Once we figured it out we could not stop laughing.  We sent each other the fake Christmas cards with our phones,  we talked about it, laughed some more, and admitted that it was the best prank ever.  I mean, seriously.  Who would do this??  Who could pull this off??  Only one person came to mind: Matt Molen.

The next question was, now what?  After several emails back and forth, we decided that it'd be nice if Matt and Alisha's friends (including their Bishop and Matt's boss) got a "Happy New Year" card, even though they had just sent out Christmas cards--but not like this one that Elisa designed.

Cool beans for sure.

Chapmans

Winders

Cooks

Hoopes

Teheros