All Party-ed Out

Two parties in a day and a half is a lot!

Party #1 was a sleepover. Zack invited 8 of his friends over to play and camp out overnight in the backyard. God answered our prayers with nice weather and no rain!

The boys had fun running around and doing what boys do, like playing ball, exploring in the woods, watching a movie, playing PS2 games, eating, and not getting much sleep. We roasted hot dogs and marshmallows over a fire and did experiments on how quickly do various items burn when thrown into the fire, such as plates, plastic spoons, chips, and leftover hot dogs.

They also did the traditional birthday traditions of gifts and blowing out candles. Zack however did not have a traditional cake. He chose, instead, to have Special K bars. They were his favorite potluck treat in MN and has missed not having them since moving to the NW. We'll be having those again soon!

The boys finally headed for the tents around 10 pm and some were determined to stay up all night, much to the dismay of those who wanted to sleep. Some nodded off, while others headed for the "sleeping tents" to try to get some shut-eye. At 1 am, Chris had to go out and put a stop to a late night football game in the backyard. After discussions about bagels and promises of "hit me if I fall asleep, ok" they all managed to drift off.

Unfortunately, at 5am one of the boys thought it was 6:30 and that he needed to get up. What was really unfortunate was that 2 other boys and Chris and I woke up too. After coming in and realizing their mistake, they went back to sleep in the family room until 6am when the rest of the crew woke up.

Despite the severe lack of sleep, everyone had a great time and somehow found the energy to get ready for...

Party #2

We always have a party to celebrate Zack’s birthday, my birthday, and Mother’s Day on Mother’s Day weekend. This year we couldn’t do that, so we had it yesterday. It made for a crazy day, but it went well.

Our immediate family from Portland all came up to help us celebrate! We had so much fun! The weather was gorgeous! We got to be outside to play and eat. Again, we did all the traditional birthday stuff like cake and gifts. But we did non-traditional stuff, too. My sisters and I went to Michael’s to oogle over the new line of Martha Stewart craft stuff. It is so cute!!! I don’t really like her, but I love her stuff!!!! I will probably be using my 40% coupon every week I can now.

Maggie kept everyone cool during gift opening

Charlie liked chewing on my new freezer mugs

but couldn't understand why he was still thirsty

It was so nice to see everybody again and we had a great time! Even the dogs had fun together. That is a picture of my brother and sister-in-law’s dog, Ernie. He had lots of fun going out the creek behind the house and laying in the nice cool mud!

At the end of the day we were all exhausted! We enjoyed a soak in the hot tub, there were hot showers for all the boys, and an early bed time!

Zack Is 14 Today!

I can't believe he is 14! I feel like we just brought him home from the hospital...

But he has grown into quite a young man. He is hard working, takes pride in a job well done, and has a sense of doing right.

To show what a great kid he is (for being 14) :o) I will have to tell you the trick we played on him this morning...

He has wanted a new bike for a very long time now and we always told him he would need to wait for his birthday. But a couple of months ago his "dream bike" went on sale! It was too good of a deal to pass up, so we bought his birthday gift early. We even went ahead and let him use it and everything.

So last night after everyone was asleep we brought in his bike, put a bow on it, and laid it out with the two gifts his brothers bought him. We had bought him a couple of other gifts, but we hid them in our room just to see his reaction.

I have to admit we were terribly proud of him, and yet at the same time, I was kind of disappointed. He didn't react at all. He quipped about us "getting him a used bike for his birthday", was very thankful to his brothers for their gifts, and set about playing with the Lego set from Will. He wasn't disappointed at all.

It made it all the more fun to bring out the other gifts we had gotten him. His favorite gift (that is until he opened the r/c Ferrari) was his metal NLT Bible that he has been admiring at the bookstore for quite some time. Again, we were pretty proud.

This afternoon, we are having 8 boys over for a sleepover and tomorrow the whole family is coming up to celebrate. Zack is so excited! Happy Birthday Zack! Let the parties begin!!!

Presentation Nite

Last night was our co-op's Presentation Nite for the spring term. Some classes did table displays of what they did (like me) and others did something on the stage. It's fun to see and hear what all the other classes did and learned. There were a lot of really great classes this term and we all are going to miss it until fall. :o(

Neither Andy or Will had to do anything on stage this time, but Zack had two classes do a presentation. He and a friend did a mini mock debate on creation vs evolution for his "The Evidence Will Amaze You" class. They learned all about the evidences for events in the Bible that there are. Zack's second presentation was for his "Challenge" class. This was a class on team building. The point of their demonstration was to get a blindfolded teammate from one side of the "web" to the other without touching any of the strings. The kids had a lot of fun in this class!

Andy was kind of disappointed that his volleyball class didn't do a presentation, but there were a lot of people there to show how to serve or spike a volleyball. :o)

Still Painting...

Since Chris is on vacation we decided to attend church at one of the other churches in town. The problem was that we don't know the service times for any other church in town. The other problem was that we slept in and didn't get up until 10am. So after hurried showers and no breakfast, looking in the phone book and on-line, we finally found a church with an 11:00 service time. It was very strange to be in a church that is not yours, especially when you are the pastor. But it was a nice service and Chris took us out to breakfast afterwards.

When we returned home, we finally got back to painting. We got all of the painting done, now we just have to get everything back together tomorrow when the paint is dry. It's a lot of work but it's worth it in the end. I just keep thinking about how nice Jim and Marilyn's house looked after she painted all of their trim. Thanks for the inspiration to keep going, Marilyn! :o)

Mini Craft Retreat

This weekend our church hosted a Women's Mini Craft Retreat. It went from 6pm on Friday to 9pm on Sunday. We all brought our favorite craft projects to work on and had fun visiting and seeing each others' work.

The plan was to spend the night but everyone went home and by 2:30 only Sonja and I were left alone in the church. We got our beds all set up, turned out the lights, layed in the dark listening to all the creepy sounds and decided to drive back to our house to sleep. We slept much better at home and were back by 8:00.

I had so much fun watching everyone else doing their thing and learning some new things as well. Some women worked on their scrapbooks, some crocheted or knitted, some quilted, and one made t-shirts on her mom's embroidery machine. If they didn't cost more than Chris' car, I would put one on my birthday list. :o) I had hoped to finish 2 quilts while we were there and I almost did it. Hopefully I will be able to finish the second one soon. I am not so sure about that since our basement is still undone and a mess!

I bought this fabric in Cannon Beach at STEP Retreat

Almost done, but not quite.

Multnomah Falls

God blessed us with a beautiful sunny day! So we took my friend Anne Marie's advice and went somewhere fun for the day! We loaded up a picnic lunch, our walking sticks (that Zack made for us while he was in Alaska) and headed south to the Columbia Gorge. First we hiked to the top of Multnomah Falls. It is 620 feet long and the hike is a little over a mile one way. We took LOTS of pictures, but I thought I would share just some of my favorites. After the hike, we ate lunch at a park and played for a while. Then we went to my parents' for BBQ supper. Yummy! We had a really fun day and everyone slept on the way home, which doesn't happen very often.

Multnomah Falls
Setting Out

Watch Out For The Spray!

The Gorgeous View

The Upper Pool

We Made It To The Top!

Having Fun At The Park

Home Improvement

What do you do on a rainy, cold Spring Break? W0rk on projects around the house.

We primed all the trim in the downstairs hall so we can paint it, and put in new wood trim on the floor. We bought new lights and fans. Zack and Chris put up the new fans in the family room and also put up shelves in the schoolroom closet. Zack and Will got a new light and primered trim in their room as well.

Old Family Room Light New Family Room fan Hallway- Before After

Old Messy Closet

New Clean, Organized Closet!

Because you can't make things better without making them worse first, we'll see if we can get the house somewhat back in order and all the projects done before Spring Break is over. :o)

William All-Pants

This is what boys do when they stay up really late and had a little too much sugar at Family Nite....

William's pajamas are a bit too large so his brothers decided to see how far up they could get them. Apparently, they go all the way up to his shoulders.

I just tell myself that I have to treasure moments like this because someday they will be all grown up and I will miss these times....

Scheduling Nightmare

Our Friday became a challange when everybody started going off in their own directions. After co-op, Andy had a volleyball game. Chris got to come out and watch Andy play, and even got to play himself on the "grown-up" team. The boys' team never won, but they had a good time. Remember, "everyone's a winner if you have fun!"

Andy was invited to a friend's house to play, Zack had to go mow, and so we were trying to coordinate everyone's schedule. The game went late, Zack needed to be picked up, Andy wanted to stay at his friend's house more than 20 minutes.... But it all worked out in the end. Zack worked until dark, Andy ended up spending the night, and the rest of us got to go out for supper and to the sporting goods store. It's not Fleet Farm, but we always have fun at Bob's.


All in all it was a very nice day, but I don't know how moms do that kind of thing all the time. My hat's off to you. I like life to be a little less complicated than that. :o)