Happy, Happy Birthday

So today is my birthday and as I was out for my morning walk with the twins all the primary birthday songs were going through my head and I thought to myself, what have I learned over the last 38 years. Well here it is:

• Good men are hard to find especially if you are looking in the wrong place and for the wrong things
• When you find a good man appreciate him everyday
• Tweens are harder than infants and I don't even want to think about how hard teens will be
• There are certain characteristics that can be seen in men you shouldn't get involved with that can be confused for "oh isn't he sweet"
• Listen to your gut - it is always right
  
• The best career I can ever be lucky enough to have is to be a stay at home mom
• Being born into a good family is a cherished blessing
• Marrying into a good family is equally as great a blessing
• Don't let yourself suffer from 3 largely avoidable cancers in your life: sin - debt - obesity. Sin will weigh your soul down, debt will oppress you and obesity will trash your health and make it hard to feel the joys of life
• Love the people in your life today, you don't know how many tomorrows you will have them
• I watch way too much TV for both my own good and the good of my family
• My soul needs regular church attendance
• Even if I have regrets I appreciate what I have gained from my mistakes.
  
• I am a daughter of God and he LOVE ME!
• Overall - I am a lucky women even if I don't always get it right the first time
  

Thanks everyone for being in my life, you enrich it all the time. Oh and thanks Shandy and Stephanie for ever thinking of setting me up with Brent!

Time for a change

Well now that we have moved out of the dating stage and have been married for 12 weeks Brent and I thought we should start a family blog. This blog has been great and I have enjoyed putting stuff on here but our new one can be found at http://burnwatch.blogspot.com , if you are wondering about the name well hopefully you catch how clever I thought I was since Coburn has BURN it it:) Hope to see you all on our blog and I will try and do better at giving you something about us to follow.

Jam continues

Before we left for Jackson I realized the strawberries I just bought would be yucky before our return so I quickly made some strawberry jam as well:) I am loving the sugar high.

Unemploy-cation

Took the family on vacation, stopped in Idaho falls on our way to Jackson, WY. got a lot of things planned, like lounging and swimming and hanging out. gonna be great!

Domestic Diva

Brent picked a bunch of apricots off a tree at my sister-in-laws house the other day so we thought that jam might be a good idea. I have never made jam before in my life and only watched it being made once when i was a little girl. His great mom gave me some pointers and pectin and home I went to conquer the jam. I have now made two batches of apricot jam (the cooked method) and it taste so yummy! I want to make all kinds of jam now though the fact that it is 5 cups of apricots to 7 cups of sugar does weigh heavy on me.

Tough Enough for Pink

Wednesday the 15th Brent's brother Hal got us tickets to the Stampede Rodeo in Nampa. It was Tough Enough for Pink night and everyone was asked to wear pink with ticket sales going toward free mammograms. It was my first rodeo, I had a lot of fun. The mutton bustin' was my favorite to watch. Katie was cheering on the cattle getting upset when they got roped.

Shattered Window

Yesterday as I pulled out of my neighborhood I passed the grounds crew trimming the edges and heard a huge bang. Well they hit a rock right into my passenger side window shattering it. Scared me to death! Anyway, thankfully no one was in the car with me to be injured, we found the crew manager and he quickly agreed to replace the window and have the car detailed to remove all the glass.

Project Bathroom complete!

One of the first projects on our list was to make the bathroom usable for both of us. We bought a new medicine cabinet so Brent's toiletries would have a home then realized that the vanity wouldn't match. I also got a new shower curtain for a bridal shower gift which made me really want to paint the walls. A few weeks ago we were visiting friends in Utah and they gave us tile for a wedding gift. So all in all, we painted the walls, painted the vanity, removed the towel rods, replaced their position with the medicine cabinet and then relocated the towels to hooks behind the door and tiled the floor. Now remember when I say we I really mean Brent, I just told him what I wanted:) He sure did a great job. Here is a picture of the beginning of the project and the final results:

1st Family Camping Trip

Last week we went camping up past Stanley Idaho with Brent's sister and husband. Behind us is one of our wedding presents, a totally cool new tent.

On our way home from camping we stopped at the Kirkham Hot Springs. It was rather run. I never new about all these cool places that Brent knows about from growing up in the area and doing all sorts of Boy Scout camp outs.

Butterfly song by Katie

Katie with the help of my new nephew Dan sang to me at the wedding reception. Here is a link to the U-tube of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7XiLKCOQIw

Some Reception Pictures

Next group

The pictures are rolling in on Brent's family website a little at a time so I am trying to get them on here as I get to see them. It will be a few more weeks before I get the disk so I can make copies.

Some more showed up

Just got these today, thought I would share!

Headed to Pender

We drove from Seattle to Vancouver on Monday to catch a ferry to Pender Island. My greatest experience with ferries was from Grey's Anatomy:) I was excited to go on it, it was rather cold outside though.

Pender is absolutely beautiful. We have spent our days relaxing, checking out local beaches and today we climbed Mt Norman, the highest point on the island (244 meters) and let me tell you... I need to work out a lot more!

We had fun finding little crabs on some of the beaches -
And we took a walk in the Enchanted Forest -
There are also deer every where you look -

Honeymoon fun!

After we left Boise we headed to Seattle. After both losing our jobs right before the wedding we decided to cancel the big expensive hotel we had booked in Vancouver and downsize to a cheaper hotel in Seattle. We picked the Ramada, close to the airport (we were told that was a safe location), much cheaper price, and it looked great on their website. While i will give it to them that the room wasn't too bad, the area of town was a bit scary. I remember thinking that if I was in DC in an area that looked like that I would have my car doors locked and would be looking for the fastest route out. We did stumble across the Boeing Flight Museum while trying to find some place to eat. We are hoping to stop by on our way back through Seattle.

Next in our travels was to stop by the World famous Pike's Market. I have studied the Pike's Fish Market several times with work and my MBA and was dying to see it. So I got a picture with one of the workers and of course he had to get a picture with the PIG which every Coburn family member that visits the area must do. I thought I would spend hours pouring over the market but really after seeing the high prices on so many of the things, tasting as much free stuff as possible and buying some beautiful flowers at an incredible price we left to go visit the famous Seattle Space Needle.

We were excited about the possibility of visiting the needle until we heard the prices to go up so we settled on taking pictures outside and walked over to one of the most amazing fountains I have ever gotten to see.


We, as much as I want to keep telling you about what we have done. I want to go do more things more so hopefully I will make it back down to the Pender Public Library tomorrow to add some more, but if not, I am sure I will add more pictures when I get home. Thanks everyone for your love and support of us. We definitely are lucky!