What we have been up to.

We Went up to Mt. Hood to play in the snow the week before Thanksgiving.

We had a snow ball fight.

Here is our Thanksgiving disaster. Every year something goes wrong. This year I assigned Jacob and Shelby a salad to be in charge of making. Shelby got the green jello salad which turned out great. Jacob got to make the dixie salad. Everything was going well until he put in the whipped topping. The bowl was too close to the edge and it fell on the floor spilling everywhere. Good thing I just mopped. Also to everyone who ate the dixie salad don't worry we just salvaged the stuff on top so no one ate directly off the stuff on the bottom that hit the floor (except for Rory, she ate it directly off the floor while we all tried to clean it up before she got full)

Here is all of us celebrating Grandpa's birthday with him.

Here we are at Thorntons tree farm where we get our tree every year. This is there petting zoo. Rory was trying to grab the pony by the nostrils. That how she shows her love.

We always take the hay ride and scope out what kind of tree we want. This year we picked a Frazer Fir.

Here is the tree we decided on. It was so funny to walk through all the trees with Rory. Every time she found a tree she liked (which was usually one that was the same height as her) She shouted out Ulaah Ulaah. So we all joined in and scattered among the trees shouting Ulaah Ulaah at the ones we considered. It almost sounded like a Hawaiian word or name.

Here is Jacob rockin' the house at his winter band concert. They only gave us one opportunity to take photos then they told us no pictures so the kids can play without all the flashes blinding them.

Then we set up our tree and stocking. which have to do about every day because the girls love to take off the ornaments and play with them. That is also why the tree is decorated the way it is but even with keeping only the top half decorated they manage to get the horse ornaments off and play with them. Plus we end up having a ornament hospital and glue them back together every few days.

This is Mackenzie's school Christmas party. Here she is with her teacher Shaun.

We also decorated cookies

and visited with Santa

This is our first opportunity to really decorate outside. We were so excited we drove the neighborhood to get ideas. We chose these LED lights. They are bright blue and white icicle type. We really like how it turned out. But we want to get blue bulbs for the outside to go with the theme.

Now I think we are up to date. Sorry for the lack of posting but as you can see with have been really busy.

Here we are at Joe's farm pumpkin patch. Usually we go to the pumpkin patch at sauvie island with the corn maze but we didn't have time and the weather was not that great for walking in the corn maze. We got our pumpkins and had a good time.

We just got home and could not wait to carve our pumpkins. Everyone was getting started and when I began poking the holes in my pumpkin I wondered how everyone else was having such an easy time and I was struggling so much. After everyone tried to poke some holes in my pumpkin I discovered I had picked out one that had super tough skin. I poked and I jabbed and I hurt my hand and my pumpkin was almost indestructible. We nicknamed it the super pumpkin. Until we got out the power tools. John attempted to cut the top off with a saw but soon realized it wasn't working out so well but eventually we got the top off and I ended up carving it with a high powered drill with different size bits. So if you want to carve your pumpkin don't get one with lots of warts because then you have to use power tools.

So here they are all carved up. I think they all turned out great, even super pumpkin.

Here is john being funny and trying to freak out the kids. Rory really thought that was funny.

Here they are, ready to go. You cant see it in the picture but Rory's elephant costume had butt and belly padding to plump her up. It was the hot topic at all the houses. We went all around our neighborhood and we stayed out for 2 hours. It was fun to see our neighborhood and all the decorations. When we got back we went through all the loot and we managed to have a few trick or treaters and the kids really liked handing out the candy also, but I think they liked getting the candy better. John and I was really surprised at how much candy we ended up with for just going around the block and a few circles. We were talking and it seemed like there was a lot of older couples and they handed out grips of candy at every stop. So for not going to a ton of houses we scored. Our neighbor Dave gave out giant Tootsie rolls and they were so excited about that. They also scored on a lot of full size candy bars and I was really pleased with the amount of chocolate treats they got. We had a great Halloween.

How boring

I keep thinking something is going to happen that will make me seem exciting and interesting and people will want to read about it. Unfortunately nothing has happened and so I just feel compelled to write something because the poor blog is feeling lonely and neglected.

John's mom came for a visit finally. Even though she just lives in Portland it has been really hard to get her over to the house. She seems to be doing well. She is diabetic so every meal and snack had to be really thought out but we were able to go out to Mexican for lunch and that was good.

Jacob has been adjusting to middle school well and is turning in projects and making good grades. He did say however that every time he has gym class he chose soccer and he ends up playing in the rain. He also has been enjoying the better food and choices in middle school.

Shelby has been having a hard time getting back into the homework routine. She gets a packet every week that requires her to read everyday for 20 min. and do multiplication facts everyday also in addition to whatever spelling and other things are in the packet. She also enjoys the lunches in the Vancouver school district over evergreen. I thought it was going to be the same but I guess not.

Mackenzie seems to be doing well at her school although I have no idea what she has been doing until I quiz her teacher. Whenever I ask her she says "I don't know" Even simple questions like what did you eat or did you go outside. Her teacher informed me that she has been social with the other children and her favorite stations are painting and building large building that are taller than she is out of blocks.

Rory went to the eye doctor because it looked like her eyes were not tracking together but the doc says she will most likely grow out of it because she is self correcting the problem. We are keeping an eye on it though.

John has been working a ton of hours and being a housewife is never ending. We planted a tree in our yard. That's about it.

School started

Jacob started middle school at Jason Lee. Shelby started the forth grade at Minnehaha. Mackenzie started pre-school 2 days a week. Rory is getting schooled by me. It has been a crazy mash of orientations and preparing for 3 different schools. Now there in and the homework is starting to flow, which is another things to get back used to. Jacob has a huge assignment to build 35 different land forms and if they work there's extra credit. So now I get to make clay and take him to collect sand and other "real" things to make "real working" landforms. When he first told me about the project I couldn't even think of 35 landforms off the top of my head. School is great for everyone. We are all learning. We are also all practicing our times tables for Shelby.



On to other news...We took a quick weekend trip to Goldendale. We went to help build the garage, see the lawn mower races and visit. It was a good trip. We met the wild turkeys, some young deer and a chipmunk.

Mackenzie's Birthday Party

Here is Mackenzie waiting for all of her guests to arrive. She was so excited to see the backyard with some of her party stuff. We were all worried that it would end up inside because of the rain earlier in the day but the weather finally cooperated and we were able to set up and have the party outside at the last minute. She said she is happy to be turning 4.

this is our first game, everyone got to pin the bracelet on Dora. the kids really enjoyed it i think the adults had fun pining the bracelet on Dora also the kids loved the prizes also especially the load whistles.

We always wanted to do a pinata for Mackenzie because she is such a big candy lover. We got this Dora pinata without thinking about the hard truth that we would be encouraging small children to beat Dora with a stick. If we do a pinata again maybe we will stick with basic shapes that don't resemble people or animals.

I think Rory wasn't sure what to do with the stick, Allen was in a hurry to take off his mask .

Yummy cake!

She really loved all the gifts she received. Her favorite was the cash register that grandma gave her.

heres some silly photos of my family try some costumes on not sure who's going to be who they are bing silly rory looks like a little troll.

cant wait till halloween

The House

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Beach trip

We went on a family beach trip. We began our journey on Sunday, August 23. We packed all our stuff and john loaded it into the truck. Then we were off to Krispie Kreme for a vacation jolt of sugar and caffeine. a quick stop for gas and we were off. It was a nice drive to seaside. when we finally arrived at seaside we found a great parking spot in the public parking area. We began by walking around a little bit until we saw it. It was amazing the waves against the sand. We were going to shop around a little but when we saw the beach something called us out to the water and sand. John went ahead with Jacob, Shelby and Mackenzie while I stayed and let Rory swing on a swing set on the beach. Then I decided to walk out to the water with Rory and meet up with the rest of the family. However I had a non-sand-friendly stroller. I folded up the stroller and carried it in one hand and Rory in the other. I began to walk out there and it was kind of along way. They saw me struggling to make it to them and they turned and met me (what a nice family). I sat Rory down and she stared at the water. Then all of the sudden there was a wave that came up and kissed her feet. Immediately she began to cry, the water was cold, she just stood there and pointed at the water at her feet and cried. We played for a little bit and the second time the ocean came up to meet Rory she turned to run away and lost her balance in the wet sand and got sand and water all over her cute little bum. The kids ran up to the waved then turned and ran from them, It was a fun game. Then it was time to move on. I took the girls to the bathroom and when I came out John was talking to some guy. It was his co worker from the other shop. We walked around and looked at some neat shops. Then it was time for lunch. We were looking forward to some yummy hand dipped corn dogs like we remembered but the shop was gone. We ended up eating burgers at a place called big kahuna. It was good I got a burger with pineapple on it. We were full, or at least some of us were, Jacob and Shelby can really pack it away sometimes. It was time to go to the aquarium and feed the seals. That was fun and fishy, we looked around. When we got to the gift shop we got the kids each a whole sand dollar. They kept finding broken ones and I was telling them about the birds inside the whole sand dollars. That was fun. We went and played in the sand some more. Then we went and rode a paddle boat. The rental was for an hour but by the time we went to the end and back, where we were allowed to take it, we were all pooped out and returned the boat 30 min. early. Then we needed some refreshment and headed with wobbly legs to the shave ice stand. We all got shaved ice except for Shelby who chose a bottle of water, which I thought was weird. We went into a few more shops then it was time to go to the candy store. We got taffy and a little bit of fudge. We all got to spin a wheel they had and Shelby won a candy stick. All the flavors of taffy all seemed so good we accidentally bought over 2 lbs. of taffy. Then it was off to Lincoln City. We thought it was a quick ride there and then we were going to eat at Moe's for dinner. However we misjudged the distance between seaside and Lincoln city. We drove and drove and then we stopped and plugged in tom tom and realized we had almost 50 miles still to go. So off we went and when we were all super hungry we came around the corner and saw the beginning of Lincoln city and I began to feel so happy that we finally made it when Jacob said from the back seat of the truck something that I couldn't quite make out. When I said what he said in a clearer tone "I'm barfing". John pulled us over into someones driveway and Jacob got out and we had a big mess. After we got cleaned up and he changed his clothes on the side of the road we decided to check into a motel for the night. We got a room and made Jacob drink some water. He said he was feeling better so off to Moe's we went. We bought a bunch of clam chowder and it was soooo good. We went back to the room. Our plan was to get the little girls to bed and let Jacob watch TV while we snuck down to the hot tub for a little bit. That did not work out, by the time we got Mackenzie and Rory to sleep we were too tired to move and just went to bed. We got up the next day and went to the outlet mall and bought a few shirts and pants for school. We went to our favorite pizza place for lunch. Then we decided we could fit in a little more beach time. We found this great parking place and saw the beach access. We got ready to go and then saw that there was a ton of stares to get to the beach. So down we went and it didn't seem to far. We played and played, Mackenzie and I made a sand castle, Jacob and Shelby dug holes and tried to find water. It was a lot of fun. Then we decided to leave So we started to climb the stairs. I think they got taller because I thought my legs were going to fall off about half way up, we powered through and finally made it to the top. (my legs were sore for 2 days after, so was johns) We got cleaned off and headed off to the Tillamok cheese factory. We had a great time tasting cheese and watching them make it. Did you know it takes a lot of milk to make just a pound of cheese. We got yummy milk shakes and then we headed for home. It is nice to be back home.