Raising Our 3 Sons

This is a blog about raising three boys in Northern Idaho, from the perspective of a Mom and a Dad, with occasional posts from the boys themselves.

Tuesday, February 28, 2006

10 More Days...And We're Off to The Happiest Place on Earth - DISNEYLAND!


The kids are so excited... its all they can talk about... To say nothing of how excited Brice is!

We made a countdown poster that is hanging on the wall where we cross off a calendar day each night, taking us closer and closer to the big event - Our Family trip to the magical world of Disney.

Ryder is potty-training right now, and we've feed him the tall tale that boys who wear diapers aren't allowed to ride the rides at Disneyland. So if he wants to ride, he has to "peep" and "poop" in the potty. He's totally bought into it, and we are seeing progress. Brice and I are hoping against hope that this is it. We don't want to be changing double diapers at Disneyland. One kid in diapers at a time!

We have also started a reward system for the kids to earn 'Disney Dollars" (Mickey Mouse Money that you can only spend in the park) for items and treats that they want to buy with their "own money" on our trip. Landin has been racking them up, doing dishes, extra chores, organizing random things and giving Brice and I foot and back rubs. Ryder has been a bit slower on the uptake, but has made some serious money in the last couple of days helping us with Mazlow and the dogs.

We have all kinds of fun things planned for the trip, including breakfast with Pooh and his pals, Lunch with the Little Mermaid Characters, Dinner with the Princesses, Brunch with Lilo and Stitch, and a trip to Medieval Times with the kids Grandpa Duke. But we plan to do more then just eat our way through Disneyland!

The kids are having a Disney movie marathon which started a few weeks ago and will continue until we leave for the trip. The idea behind the marathon is to acclimate them to as many of the Disney characters as we can before we "meet" them at Disneyland. We've been "cramming" to be sure the kids can recognize Peter Pan and his gang, Alice in Wonderland, Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs, and other classics. Brice also took Ryder to the library and checked-out a host of Disney books like Mr. Toad's Wild Ride to be sure the kids appreciated the characters in the rides.

The whole idea for going on the trip in the first place was to celebrate Mazlow's first birthday. That's right, Mazzy will be 1-year old on St. Patrick's Day!

I'll be sure to post the details here from what is sure to be a family adventure for the Filippini Family history books!


Mazlow - Our littlest Monkey! Posted by Picasa


The cutest darn group of Tiger Cub Scouts this side of the Mississippi!  Posted by Picasa


Landin carried the Cub Scout flag in the colorgaurd at his pack meeting last week. Posted by Picasa


My favorite little Cub Scout Landin, with his Pinewood Derby Car.  Posted by Picasa

A Rainy Weekend...






It rained a lot this weekend - - the perfect excuse to spend the entire weekend playing at home in our pajamas. As dinner-time rolled around on Saturday night, Brice and I laughed as we realized we were ALL still in our jammies.

We played Blocks, created Playdough masterpieces, baked, napped, cleaned the kids room, and just enjoyed our family time.

Simple pleasures! This is what moving to Idaho was all about for us.

Girls Night!



I had a BodyShop at home party last Friday. A bunch of my girlfriends came over in their jammies for girl talk complete with pedicures and facials. FUN!!

Brice took all three of our boys, plus 3 of their friends, to the skating rink so the girls could have the house to ourselves. WHAT A GUY!! Is Brice a SUPER DAD or what!?! I’m so lucky to have him.

Jessica Myers is our BodyShop At Home Consultant - - And she did a great job! We all got to try out a bunch of cool products and went home with yummy smelling soft skin. Thanks Jess!

Monday, February 27, 2006


It was cold... but we felt the need - - THE NEED FOR SPEED! Posted by Picasa


I finally got out on our new quad last weekend. I took Landin for a ride and then took Ryder out for a spin. WHOAAAAA! Posted by Picasa

TUBING!!!!! (Winter "sports" rock!)



A few weekends ago we went up to Schweitzer (the ski resort just a few minutes North of town) to go "tubing"... Tubing is AWESOME!

You get a tubing pass (for like $10) and then you get a giant inner tube, and you get to ride it (seriously like a hundred miles an hour - or at least it feels like it) down a groomed slope with banks and twists and turns. The best part is when you get to the bottom - - no more towing your own tube up the monster hill. You just sit down on the tube and a friendly mountain guide clips your tube onto a cable which pulls you back up the hill as you sit back and enjoy the ride. So you do this over and over again, getting more and more brave each time.

We took Landin with us (as Mazzy is too small of course, and Ryder just missed the height requirement), and went with a bunch of friends and their kids. We had such a blast. As I said, you get more and more brave each time, especially as you begin to trust that you and the tube are not going to fly over the edge. By our last few runs we were going down 4 or 5 at a time (four of us on tubes clutching on to one another to make one giant tube monster).

It was freezing cold, but we were having so much fun, we didn't notice until we were packing up to head home. What fun!

Wednesday, February 22, 2006


For Christmas Santa brought Brice a 4-person Nurf Dart Tag set. Brice and the boys broke it out this weekend and pelted each other with darts in a rousing match of tag. *Note the sets came complete with dart guns, sticky darts, target vests, and protective glasses. Here is Ryder decked out.. Play On! Posted by Picasa


Landin and Mazlow get in on the Nurf Dart tag Fun too! Posted by Picasa


Our pups sitting out in the sun this weekend, enjoying the sunshine in the backyard. Posted by Picasa

We must have missed that memo… you know, the one about how to avoid FROZEN PIPES!

SO…. We woke up on Friday morning to find our pipes had frozen. For all you Californians, this means we had no water coming out of our faucets because somewhere, in our maze of pipes, there was a chunk of ice blocking the water from moving.

The news of the frozen pipe (which I found while trying to make coffee at 6am on Friday morning) came as a surprise to all of us. While it was ~17 degrees outside (BURRRRR!) it had been much colder during December and we hadn’t had any problems with freezing pipes. We quickly hopped on the Internet and did a search on “what to do if your pipes freeze.” There were lots of helpful sites (like this one from State Farm) and each of them had some simple tips - - things you can do to avoid pipes freezing in the first place. One of the tips was to leave a faucet dripping on nights when the temperature might drop below freezing. Now they tell us!

So we can’t flush our toilets, we have to turn off the radiant floor heat system (as it uses water to push heat through the floors, and we have no water), I can’t take a shower, and I had to make my coffee from bottled water (very cosmopolitan). We called a close friend, Jason, who is brilliant in terms of fixing things, and he walked us through the steps to turn off all the systems, check for leaks, etc. Once that was done, we called the plumber, who eventually came out and confirmed that yes, our pipes were in fact frozen. Brice went to Home Depot and bought an electric space heater to warm the crawl space, which in turn is how we were to defrost the frozen pipe.

In the meantime, I am going about my daily work, talking to editors and colleagues in many other states over the phone and via IM, and as I explain my current situation of frozen pipes to each of them, I started to see a pattern in their responses:

“Oh man, that sucks. I’ve heard you are supposed to let water drip out of your faucet when it’s freezing outside. That’s supposed to keep your pipes from freezing.”

“I’m really sorry. We leave the water dripping all night long, so we’ve never had our pipes freeze.”

“Where we used to live our pipes would freeze if we didn't drip the faucet all the time.”

“I thought you knew! You’re supposed to leave the water running constantly. Running water won’t freeze as easily as standing water”

“You should have left the water dripping, just a slow drip, that would have prevented your pipes from freezing.”

“Oh no, I remember our neighbors pipes froze and then burst when I was a kid. My mom always left the water dripping in the kitchen sink, so ours never froze.”

Thanks for the tips guys… Where was “Mr. Helpful with Tips for the kids from California” the day BEFORE our pipes froze??

Anyway… so Brice gets down into the crawl space, and sets up the heater. The plumber (and most of the sites on the Internet that recommended this method) said it should just take a short time for the heater to heat up the pipe enough to defrost. 2 hours later – no water. 4 hours later – no water. 6 hours later – no water. So I’m back on the Internet, searching for tips. There seems to be a general consensus that taking a blow-dryer to the pipes and trying to slowly warm them up is a good idea.

By 4:30 Friday night, Brice was relegated to the crawl space with my blow-dryer. While he was down there, our friends Eric and Nicole from across the street called to see if they could borrow a movie. I told them “Come on over, you can borrow a movie if I can borrow your blow-dryer!” They came over, and Eric headed down to the crawl space (with his blow-dryer) to find Brice.

Friends like Eric (and Jason) are invaluable - - willing to jump in head-first, and help out. Eric gave Brice a few key tips (like to flip-up the insulated covers to the air vents that were letting all our warm air under the house escape). Once the vents were covered, the crawl space started warming accordingly, and by the time we woke up the next morning, we had running water again! Brice checked for cracks and leaks, and we were in the clear.

We learned a lot from the experience… like to leave our faucet dripping to prevent freezing pipes, that coffee tastes really great when it’s made with bottled water, and the value of having good friends like Jason, Jennifer, Eric and Nicole, who were there when we needed them. …Live and learn. It’s all part of our Northern Idaho adventure!

Thursday, February 16, 2006

Curious how much your house is worth?

I found an awesome new site called Zillow.com that provides free instant valuations and data for more than 60 million homes, and you don’t have to enter any personal information to get it. You just type in an address or zip code and it pops up a satellite picture (probably a mash-up with Google Earth) with all the houses listed in the area and tons of data (sales history, current value, house specs, etc.). It’s so neat… I wish the database included Idaho, but alas, it does not.

I played around with it a bit just for fun.

I checked-out the house we sold for $624,000 in Elk Grove, Ca. in August. It is now valued at only $579,680 just 7-months later. Guess we got out just in time!

The house I grew up in located in Escondido is now worth $507,175 (Whoa!) and there were several million-dollar homes on the street as well. That’s crazy. These houses were built in the 70’s!

Play around with it and tell me what you think (Post a comment here)!

It’s a Brrreeeport MOM, You just don’t get it, do you!?

Will brrreeeport become one of those words our kids use but that most adults don’t know the real meaning of? Someday, will my kids use the word brrreeeport in their homework? Brrreeeport Hummmm….

(see Technorati for an in-depth explanation of what all the Brrreeeport hullabaloo is really about)

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Happy Valentine's Day


This was our first Valentine's Day in our own Private Idaho... and it was wonderful. Landin had a fun party at his school, which I got to attend. The kids made out like bandits - cupcakes, candies, and treats galore!

After the kids in the class exchanged Valentines and opened-up all their goodies, they played a riveting game of HEAD'S UP 7-UP. (Isn't that a blast from the past!?) I totally remember playing Head's Up 7-Up back in elementary school, but I'd forgotten all the rules. The gist is the whole class puts their heads down on their desks and puts their thumb up, while a small group of kids go around and each gently tap one person's thumb, and then quietly return to the front of the class. The teacher says "head's up 7-up" and the kids whose thumbs were tapped stand up and proceed to guess which one of the kids doing the tapping touched their thumb. If they guess correctly, they get to be a "tapper" the next round. If not, the person who tapped them gets to be a "tapper" again. It was SO cute to watch these first graders playing. You would not believe the poker faces these kids could pull off during the guessing stage of the game. And surprisingly, they were also very sensitive to make sure each child in the class got "tapped" at least once, kind of self regulating to insure inclusion. (A far cry from the jungle rules they adhere to on the playground!)

After the class party, Brice and I took the kids to a Valentine's Day party at Landin's Girlfriend's house. Ryder and Landin decorated cookies, ate a mountain of candy, and ran around like banshees for 2-hours. Mazzy had a whole cookie to himself (big mistake, huge) and seriously looked like he was on speed for the rest of the night (his leg kept twitching and he couldn't sit still for even a second).

We came home and all snuggled up in bed to read some stories and then fell asleep (all 5 of us in our big bed).

Hope your Valentine's Day was wonderful too!


Daddy and Ryder hop on the quad for a ride! Posted by Picasa


Landin on the new Quad Daddy picked-up this weekend Posted by Picasa


Landin climbing in the stable playing GI Joe Posted by Picasa

Playing G.I. Joe In the Sunshine


This past weekend was so sunny and warm we decided to gather-up our GI Joes and head out to play. We have a horse stable in the front yard which the kids and I spent 2-hours transforming into "Cobra Command Center" and "Joe Headquarters". What a great way to spend the weekend! Brice left early that morning with our friend Jason to go look at a couple of Snow Mobiles that someone was selling North of town. Jason ended up buying two snow mobiles, but the big surprise was that Brice came home with a YAMAHA QUAD! The story I've been told is that while helping Jason load the snow mobiles into his truck, Brice noticed a quad sitting rather abandon-looking near the house. He asked the guy if it was for sale. The guy said it wasn't for sale, because it wasn't running, but then after thinking about it for a second, told Brice, "If you've got 50 bucks on you, it's yours." Brice proceeded to pay the guy the $50, drove down to Walmart and bought it a $30 battery, and had the quad up and running lickety-split. So he pulls up in the front yard, me and the boys are busy playing GI Joe, and announces "Daddy brought home a surprise for you!" The boys grabbed their helmets and Brice gave them each rides around the neighborhood before calling it a day. The GI Joes were left to lie in their elaborate command centers, forgotten for the time being, for much noisier and obnoxious toys.

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

How we became Seahawk fans…

Since moving to Idaho from California, we've decided to become Seattle Seahawks fans. Now, this was not a choice we made lightly.

I grew-up in San Diego where my family had Chargers season tickets from the time I was a toddler (and my Dad still has the same seats on the 50-yard line to this day). Brice was born and raised in 49er country - - enough said.

When we moved to Sacramento in 2003, we each kept our respective loyalties as Sacramento didn't offer us a team to call our own (besides the SACRAMENTOTO KINGS, which we did become fans of).

So when you asked our 7-year old what his favorite football team is, his answer (which changed depending on the day) didn't come with the usual fervor of a young sports fan. In fact, sometimes the answer wasn't even a real football team! You might get "the Kings" (Ugh!) or "England" (What!?) or even "Whose my favorite team again Daddy??" (sigh). It was clear something had to be done.

Moving to Idaho gave us to opportunity to put a football loyalty stake in the ground. The Seahawks are the closest team (with the Washington border just a short hop from the town we live in), so there our loyalties shall go! When we arrived in Idaho in August, we had no idea the Seahawks would be playing in the SuperBowl this year. What we did know was that our children needed a team to root for, and the Seattle Seahawks were it.

Now clear on where their loyalties lie, our kids were running around playing "Seahawks" (a game where two or more people pass a football around in the backyard, formally known as "catch"). And when the Seahawks made it to the SuperBowl our young fans were all fired-up. Suddenly they knew the name of their favorite football team, in fact they "knew" who was going to win the SuperBowl.

In the week leading up to the big game we routinely asked our 3-year old, "Who is going to win the SuperBowl?" His answer, every single time, a boisterous - - "GOOOOOO SEAHAWKS!!" (Super cute coming from a 3-year old)

On SuperBowl Sunday we went to a SuperBowl party at a friend's house, and the kids watched bits and pieces of the game. They missed the horrible calls (including the flag in the endzone calling back a legitimate Seahawk touchdown), but enjoyed some exciting moments. In the end, they were disappointed "the enemy" won the game, and "our guys" lost. But they were proud that they had a team to call their own - - even if they weren't SuperBowl champs, this year.

Saturday, February 04, 2006

Fishing at Round Lake

On Friday, Brice took the boys to Round Lake to go fishing. The lake was frozen over, but has recently "defrosted" so it was the first time they've been able to fish (without trying their hand at ice-fishing) since Christmas.

I was out of town on a business trip to San Jose, so Brice had the boys all to himself. To make use of the "boys time" Brice loaded Mazzy into the backpack, packed some fishing gear, and herded-up Landin, Ryder, Potter and Einstein for the walk down to the lake.

The crew spent a few hours playing at the lake and only Landin came close to catching a fish (which bit his line but managed to jump off right as Landin pulled him from the water). Brice actually nabbed "the big one" - - unfortunately, this "big one" wasn't a fish, but rather our big German Sheppard, Potter. In an attempt to cast his line way out into Round Lake, Brice snagged his hook on poor Potter's tail. (OUCH!) Brice managed to unhook the line from Potter, but that signaled the end of the trip, and the boys headed home.

When I called to check on the boys from the airport I heard the tale of Potter's fishing accident, which turned out to be the most exciting thing that happened during the fishing adventure... better luck next time!

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

WELCOME TO OUR FAMILY BLOG!

Brice and I decided to launch this blog to keep our family and friends apprised on what our family (especially the kids) are up to now that we've moved to Idaho. Our New Year's resolution is to post regularly to this site. We'll do our best to share fun memories, experiences, photos, and occasional musings from the kids.

EMBRACE TECHNOLOGY!!! The whole idea of a family blog is active participation... so PLEASE COMMENT. You can leave your thoughts, ideas, memories and comments on any of these posts by clicking on the little pencil icon at the end of the posting (next to the little envelope icon). We look forward to hearing from you!