Dorrel and Stephanie

1st week of February

2012-02-08T09:12:00.000-08:00

Enrichment Activities
At the end of every school quarter, the school the homeschoolers attend part time (an Alternative Learning Environment in official speak), has something called Enrichment Week. It's a time for fun one day classes, field trips, and guest speakers. This enrichment week we took part in activities on two of the days.

Wednesday was a presentation for parents. Bruce Campbell, a classroom teacher with 38 years experience, came to teach us about the latest understanding of how the brain works and how we can enhance learning. He travels the world doing workshops for teachers and we are lucky enough to have him living in the area. Back when I was going to college at Western, there was a program where they brought an outstanding educator in for a year and had them teach skills to prospective teachers. I was lucky enough to attend his class one quarter. When I saw that he was coming to our school, there was no way I was going to miss out.

His two hour presentation was very informative. He taught us about dendrites (part of our brain cells) and how we can continue to grow more through learning. He shared research that shows that in order to learn and grow, our brains need continual challenge. He also said that previous thinking about fixed intelligence (the idea that once you have an IQ score, that's what you'll always be like) has been changed to reflect current ideas that we can continue to improve throughout our lives. I have several kids who seem to be developing on a different timeline than the "norm" so that gives me a lot of encouragement.

Thursday was a fun day for students. We started with a presentation by the Reptile Man. He brought about 10 reptiles which he showed the children and taught them about. Elizabeth loved seeing the big turtles and having a chance to help hold a 12 foot long snake.

Elizabeth is holding a rubber boa, one of two kinds of snakes native to Western Washington. The other is the garter snake.

After the reptile man was done, the cooking class at the school had arranged for a Luau. Before the feasting, they had games set up in different classrooms. It was a student led activity where the kids in charge of the games were the only ones supervising what was happening. One of the games they offered was "deep sea fishing". Once we waited in line, I saw a small sign that said, "$0.25 a fish". I wasn't excited to have to pay but it was a quarter so I gave Elizabeth the money. She threw her line in and ended up with a tiny cheap notepad, not even worth a nickel! The mom behind us also was a bit hesitant to hand over her money. She only had a dollar bill and the boys said, "Sorry, we don't make change." Not wanting to disappoint her child, she paid her $1 and let her child fish four times.

Once the games were finished, it was time for the luau. The students had made pulled pork, rice, coconut cream pie and punch. They also had fruit and veggie trays. I'd paid in advance not knowing if I'd find anything to eat. I filled my plate with fruit and an orange and decided my real lunch would have to come later. I noticed a mom sitting down in front of me with a similar plate and asked her if she was a vegan. She was and said she'd noticed me drinking my green smoothie and wondered if I was a vegan too. We had a fun conversation about our eating choices. Elizabeth came up and sat down beside me, totally disgusted. She'd found out that the boys in the fishing room were "free agents", they hadn't been told to collect money, they hadn't been authorized to collect money, they'd just found a way to collect money! She felt like we'd been totally robbed, of our quarter! I had to smile at the audacity of those boys. Future entrepreneurs apparently!

After eating, we got to watch a professional hula dancer perform a few dances before teaching those interested in learning a hula dance. I used my bum foot as an excuse for not getting in there and joining Elizabeth in the fun! Elizabeth and I went home and Isaac stayed behind where his robotics class demonstrated the robot they've built to anyone interested in seeing it.

A quick trip to Portland
I was asked to teach at National Camp School for BSA again this year. Although it's called National Camp School (NCS), it's held in Olympia at a scout camp. The name reflects the fact that we are teaching a nationally approved curriculum. All day camp directors and program directors (volunteers) are required to attend the three day training in order to run a camp. It will be my third time teaching at NCS. I love day camp and think it's one of the highlights of summer. I love having the opportunity to share my enthusiasm with new volunteers. I've also learned quite a bit over 10 years of running day camps, little things that help a lot, that aren't part of the syllabus. It's nice to pass on my knowledge to help other camps.

All this introduction to explain why on Saturday I went down to Portland and came back the same day, eight hours of driving for a 5 hour meeting! The NCS volunteer staff come from BSA councils (geographic regions) in Washington and Oregon. There are 10 people on staff from 5 different councils. Each camp school has a volunteer director who works with a professional advisor (a paid BSA employee) to run the camp. This year the advisor is based in Portland. The volunteer director lives near Renton, about an hour from me. I drove down to Seattle and hopped in with her to carpool to Portland. On Saturday, we all got together to meet each other, decide who's teaching which classes, and try to create a shared vision for camp school.

I was a bit nervous going down. I knew I'd be in a car with a person I'd never met before for six hours. I worried my foot would hurt. I worried I'd be the youngest person in the group. How did it turn out? I'm really good at making small talk. I've been told I have the gift of listening. It's not really the gift of listening, although that's a part I guess. It's the ability to ask questions that get people talking. I kept the driver talking for 75% of the time. Success! My foot treated me pretty well. Driving my van is really tough and by the time I'd gone 30 minutes, I was trying to find a comfortable place to rest it. The thought of all the miles ahead of me was quite worrying. Once I climbed into the other car, I was able to stretch out my leg and my foot felt much better. Was I the youngest person in the room? Almost! The professional advisor looked like he was probably in his young 30's. There was one other staff member who looked to be close to my age. Everyone else has many many years more experience in life and BSA. I'm looking forward to the time in my life when I don't feel like the most inexperienced person in the room.

Back in Arlington, Dode was left with a pretty empty house for the day. The three girls had gone to stay with my dad for a few days. Isaac had a school activity in Bellingham. Jacob was doing his own thing. That left Dode and William with a free day. It was a beautiful sunny day so they went to explore. They went to a park, checked out an old campground and after much begging from William, they went on a bike ride. Willian got about 100 feet and decided that he didn't want to be bike riding any more. In fact, he was convinced that he'd never wanted to go bike riding in the first place. When Dode reminded him that he'd been asking all morning to go, he countered with, "No I didn't." After a while he admitted that it had been his idea but said, "Well, I don't want to go bike riding any more!" So, they came home. They also did the fun boy activities of going to McDonald's, the hardware store, and two auto parts stores.

Getting Pampered
I have a friend who is learning to be a massage therapist. Last week was the end of the quarter so they have clinical experiences where people come in and they practice on them. They were finishing off their "Spa" quarter so you could choose from lots of fun treatments: hot rock massage, aromatherapy, body wraps, deep tissue massage, and Indian head massage. I looked up Indian head massage and decided it sounded very relaxing. You get a scalp massage and they focus a lot on the neck and shoulders, the areas where I store all my tension. I didn't know that part of what Paula needed to practice with the Indian head massage was also a foot soak with foot and leg massage. I can't soak my foot for another two weeks so she offered a hot rock massage as an alternative. It was very relaxing. The hour went by much too quickly! The podiatrist told me that massage is the best thing I can do for my foot and she wasn't afraid to dig in and really work around my scar and bruised toes. It felt painful/great and I noticed a greater range of motion in my toes when she was done. Does that mean I can justify the $30 I spent on the massage as have being done for purely medicinal purposes?!

The fun of heating with wood

One of the fun things of heating with wood is cold mornings. Here is Anastaya dressed up for church, hiding under three blankets to stay warm!

Big improvement in my foot

2012-02-05T09:14:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, two weeks post-op, I got the stitches out. The process went pretty painlessly until the last stitch came out. It ran the length of the incision under the skin with one knot part way up my toe. The nurse had to slide it out from under my skin, not the most pleasant activity! The doctor told me that my foot would be extremely sensitive for a while because of being wrapped up in the bandage for so long. The best thing I can do to help the recovery along is to massage it. He said if I baby my foot, I will just prolong the problems so all the way home from the doctor (Sharon was driving!) I kept rubbing and rubbing my toes and foot. It definitely helped.

You can still see the faint mark where the doctor signed my foot to make sure he got the right (or left!) one.

I still have a lot of bruising and some swelling but now that the stitches are out, my foot feels exponentially better! I get a weird tingling in my foot and toes but if I rub them, it goes away. When it starts tingling and I first touch my toe, it tingles and hurts more but as I continue to rub them, the weird feeling goes away and I get some relief. I think my nerves are trying to figure out who is in charge now that one of them is removed and get a bit over eager to take the job. By rubbing them, they can calm down and realize what their proper purpose is. At least, to my non-medical mind, it seems that way!

A mouse, a mouse in the house!

Tuesday morning, Anastaya and I heard a strange gnawing sound in the morning. I tracked it down to a mouse in the bathroom. We have a pocket door with a window in it between the bathroom and the laundry room. The door was partially closed with about 2 inches of window showing. Somehow, the mouse had gotten up to the ledge on the window and I saw the little head peaking out. The gnawing we heard was the mouse chewing on the window frame, trying to get out. I opened the door all the way (pushing it into the wall) and when I pulled it back out, the mouse was gone.

A few hours later I was sitting at the computer and saw movement out of the corner of my eye. It was the mouse, casually strolling across the floor towards me. I gave an "Eeke!", stood up and he disappeared.

Wednesday, I was once again sitting at the computer and once again the mouse made an appearance. I followed him to the living room and Dode and Isaac gave chase. We thought he'd gone under one couch but when we looked, he wasn't there. We gave up but I looked under the other couch (a sectional) and saw what looked like a tail. When I watched the tail disappear, I knew where the mouse was. They dismantled the couch to tip it up piece by piece. Dode had a bucket and was hoping to trap the mouse under it. The girls stood nearby screaming "I'm so scared!". I thought it was pretty funny because if they were truly that scared, they wouldn't have been crowding around Dode as he tried to find it! Well, after chasing it around the room a bit, we lost it when it climbed inside a hole under the bathroom cabinet. A little while later, I heard screams again. It had ventured into the room where the kids were watching a movie and was hiding out under the couch they were standing on while screaming. We put out a trap for him but could never catch him. I think he's more scared of us that we are of him and hopefully he's left to find a more peaceful home.

1/22-1/29

2012-01-29T20:12:00.000-08:00

Anastaya's 14th birthday
On Thursday, Anastaya celebrated her 14th birthday. Dode took her out for dinner at her favorite restaurant, Cafe Neo, for gyros because I wasn't up to cooking yet. They stopped at Haggen on the way home for her to pick out a birthday cake, white chocolate raspberry. For her gifts, it was an avalanche of zebra print. She received a bed in a bag set, a duffel bag, a lunch bag, and a coin purse. For a bit of variety, we also got her some Eeyore socks!

Sunday she got her official birthday meal of chicken gyros and white chocolate raspberry cheesecake. I told her she's learning how to be the mom in the family because she had to do the lion's share of the food preparation for her meal.

We worked together to make the cheesecake. Anasastaya at the mixer, me at the stove and stirring something in my lap. Ignore the messy kitchen counter! (I love our matching shirts!)

While Anastaya rolled out the bread for the pitas, Miriam had fun in some extra flour with her Disney figures. (Notice the dusting of flour across her face?)

Anastaya found this cute hair style (a braid on each side ending in a messy side bun) on Pinterest. She made the flower hair clip at a birthday party. Happy birthday beautiful girl.

Ready to enjoy her self made cheesecake

Some of Anastaya's birthday gifts. Grandma Sharon gave her the off white zebra body pillow. She got a movie gift card from my dad. My mom came on Sunday and gave her more zebra stuff (not pictured): zebra sleep shirt, bank, and beanie baby. She also got some knit ankle boots she's been hankering after.

Produce Snafu
Each day my foot is incrementally better which means each day I seem to push how much I'm up to doing a little more. By the time we went to bed on Friday, I was hurting pretty badly and all I could think of was getting my foot up in the air and taking a pain pill. I'd made sure everything was ready for produce in the morning and had found a substitute to be in charge outside. I'd forgotten one important thing, checking to make sure the cordless phone was on the base next to the bed.

Instead of waking up to the produce truck driver phoning that he was at the bottom of the driveway, I woke to the sound of volunteers showing up! Oops! I was able to get ahold of the driver and he came by at the end of the route but that put pick up time 1 1/2 hours late. The driver showed up at 8:15, half way through our normal pick up time. Cars were everywhere with absolute chaos as people tried to help transfer produce boxes from the produce truck to our trailer at the end of our driveway. We found out later that Isaac, who had gotten up early to help Dode get the produce off the produce truck, had heard the phone ringing at least three separate times but he thought we were upstairs picking it up. If he'd picked up the phone, the whole crisis would have been adverted. Classic experience when you're dealing with kids!

The distribution of produce went smoothly and everyone managed to adjust their schedule to pick up at the new time. I was inside with my foot up so I don't know how much grumbling there was. The one bad thing that happened was that some of the bulk items people (me included) had ordered had been set aside up against the house. When I limped out to get my things, people had thought the items were out there for swapping and accidentally taken everything. I tried a Facebook plea to ask people to return the items but they've disappeared. Big bummer!

Elizabeth's tooth
Friday night Elizabeth came to me complaining that she wouldn't be able to eat dinner because her tooth was so loose. When I had her wiggle it for me, I saw that all that was holding it on was a tiny piece of pulp in the middle. Dode managed to convince her to let him cut it out with a pair of scissors. After talking a very nervous girl through each step, she never even felt it when he made the final cut!

The tooth while it was still attached.

Can you see the little peace of skin still holding it?

Elizabeth's sewing project
Elizabeth went to a friend's birthday party at a swimming pool and wanted to give her a swimsuit cover up like I've made for all my girls. It's so easy to do, I helped her make it herself. She was very proud of the finished product and her friend was thrilled. She's now on the lookout for a towel to make a new cover up for herself. Unfortunately, January is not the best time of year for finding beach towels!

Dangers of Surveying: Dogs

One of the dangers of walking around in people's yards that Dode has never enjoyed is meeting up with their dogs. There have been times when he's run with all that's in him to get away from dogs. There have been times when he's resorted to throwing stale pastries to distract dogs so his coworker could escape. While the experiences sounded funny as he told me about them, at the time he was pretty worried about his safety. Friday was not Dode's day when it came to dealing with dogs. It started while he was walking down a road looking for water meters. A friendly dog came out to play and started running around Dode. Soon, a dog that looked like his twin showed up. They had a grand old time, chasing each other up and down the road and pretending to bite each other's faces. Around and around they went. The next thing Dode knew, two dogs barreled into the back of his knees, buckling both of them and about collapsed him to the ground. They were having so much fun playing, they hadn't paid any attention to where they were going.

Later he was looking for a water meter in some one's back yard. An old black lab came up to be his friend. When the owner came out, Dode remarked, "You sure have a friendly dog." The owner replied, "Well, the last time someone tried to cross our yard in the middle of the night, he ended up with 37 stitches." Good thing the dog was having a good day!

Lastly, Dode met up with a dog while looking for yet another water meter. This one was behind a fence. The fence was too tall to look over but there was a lower area at the gate. As he peered over the gate, an old greyed dog started barking at him. Dode figured the dog was giving a friendly "hello" and kept looking around for the meter. He had his hand resting on a fence post as he leaned over to look. The next thing he knew, POW! The dog had jumped up and nailed his hand with his fangs. Luckily, Dode was wearing a thick leather glove because the dog bit down hard enough to break the skin through the glove. He felt pretty silly that the dog had been barking away at him, warning him to get lost, and he hadn't even thought to move his hand to safety. Dode was doubly glad that it wasn't worse. First, he didn't want to deal with a dog bite. Secondly, Dode's boss is always very conscious of his safety. He isn't allowed to go out and do field work by himself. He isn't allowed to go out in bad weather. He knew if he went back to work with a hand torn open by a dog, she'd be even more hesitant to let him out in the field again in the future.

My foot is better each day
Thankfully, every day is better with my foot. I was even up to going grocery shopping on Saturday. Dode drove me over to Haggen (our next door neighbor!) and once we got there, he told me I needed to ride in one of those battery operated carts. We went in separate doors, with me telling him I was just fine and I'd meet him at the bottled water. Pretty soon here he came, driving a lovely cart. He told me he was either going to see me in it or he'd follow me around the store with me limping and him driving. I got in, put my foot up in the basket, and felt like a big dork. I also realized that those things go so slow!

Dode and I had a man/woman communication problem this week. We were sitting on the couch together. I started wiggling my foot a lot. It's something I do when I'm hurting to distract me. Dode knows it's one of my pain clues and asked, "Time for a pain pill?" My response, "Yes". He was reading a book and I watched as he finished the page and went on the the next section. I figured he was getting to a good stopping point before getting me the medication. He figured I was waiting until enough time had elapsed before taking a pill. After waiting even longer, I got frustrated and thought, "Fine, I'll get it myself!" When I got off the couch to get it, he wanted to know where I was going. I told him, if he wasn't going to get it for me, I'd get it myself. He said, "If you told me you wanted it, I would have gotten it for you." In my mind, I had told him. He followed me all the way upstairs to our room where my pills were insisting that he'd get it for me but he'd got my stubborn up and I was determined to get it myself. We've been married quite a while but those male/female communication problems still come up from time to time.

Still on the Mend

2012-01-25T13:30:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm a week post-op and I'm still working on walking like a normal person. For some reason, I thought once the magical week was up, I'd be back to my usual routine with just some slight discomfort. Not!

I have made progress.  One week post op, I no longer have to crawl up the stairs and slide down them, I can limp! That feels like a big deal to me!   I stayed home from church on Sunday because I didn't think it would work to have my foot propped up high enough to not hurt while modestly wearing a dress. When Miriam heard I wasn't going to church, she generously said, "Do you think you'll need someone to stay home and take care of you?" Nice try Miriam! (She went to church.)
I've discovered that while my foot hurts something crazy if it's down by the floor for any length of time, putting my leg on the counter like a ballerina stretching at the ballet bar allows me to do things in the kitchen without too much pain.   Important things like making smoothies, doing dishes, cooking. It absolutely drives me nuts to walk into the kitchen and see every surface covered with things and dishes. I tried to hang out in the living room where I can't see the kitchen as much as possible. But, each time I went into the kitchen, Yikes! Putting my leg up on the counter let me get the dishes washed and the counter cleaned.

Why am I cooking?  Let me start by saying I'm so thankful that Dode is willing to make food for me. I eat very differently from him and most of the things I eat he doesn't even consider edible. The first time he made me my hot cereal for breakfast, he had a hard time locating all the ingredients (hot cereal and walnuts in jars in the freezer, cinnamon in the cupboard, bananas on the counter, pears on the microwave in a bowl, dates (which he didn't even know what they looked like) in the fruit drawer, rice milk in the fridge. He carefully sliced and diced everything just right and finally presented me with my breakfast, which had gone cold a while ago. I can whip the same meal up in less than five minutes because I've done it so many times. It's so much easier for me to do it myself that I feel bad to have him do it. With a foot up on the counter and a somewhat willing helper, I can get it done a lot quicker.

The first time the kids saw me with my leg stretched out along the counter, they were pretty impressed with my flexibility.   Miriam told me I looked like a ballerina. The big problem with the leg on the counter solution is that I'm pretty much stuck in one place. I've tried using a child to fetch things for me but it's an exercise in patience on both ends. They can't find things right in front of them and I know I could quickly grab it in half a second.

I decided I was healed enough to make dinner Monday night. We usually have dinner on the table within 10 minutes of Dode getting home from work. I decided it was time to get back to the routine while Dode was at work (his first day back since my surgery).  I felt bad to think he'd be getting home from work and have to get right to making us a dinner. I knew I could help out and make an easy meal. My foot up trick worked but soon I realized that although I can stand and cook with my foot propped up, assembling the various ingredients requires a lot of walking around. By the time I'd made dinner and we'd eaten, my foot was aching and I was sitting on the couch, foot in the air, hugging myself tightly while waiting for the pain killer to start working. Do you think Dode was pleased that his loving wife made him a great dinner? Nope! He said, "My first day back at work and already you can't behave yourself." I've already assigned the rest of the week's dinners out to the kids.

I was going to ask one of the boys to take my photo Monday night while I was cooking but I haven't had a shower/bath in five days and I'd just looked at myself in the bathroom mirror and noticed that I'd been wearing my v-neck t-shirt backwards all day. No wonder it wasn't fitting right! Must be the pain pills that are making me a bit loopy.

I sure walk like a drunken sailor. My left foot is in a fancy foam shoe with a 2" heel. I walk with just the heel touching. My right foot is bare. In order to have a somewhat even gait, I have to walk on my left heel and right front toes. It doesn't take much for me to loose my balance and teeter a bit before regaining it. The worst part about being up and having my foot start to hurt is that walking becomes more and more painful. There have been quite a few times when I've resorted to getting around by jumping on my right foot just to keep my left foot from touching! By the time I'm healed I'm going to have buns of steel on the right side and be able to kick high like a Rockette on the left!

I'll be happy when getting clean is as simple as stepping into a shower. Currently I have to take a bath and it takes Dode's help to pivot myself in and out of the tub while keeping my foot high and dry. Quite a production and puts us both out of commission in the bathroom, leaving William to ransack the house and fight with the kids.

Doing the dishes

dressed up (a blouse for the 1st time in a week!)

and ready to head to the doctor's office

I had my one week post-op visit on Tuesday. Sharon was nice enough to drive me there since I'm still on pain killers and I'm not sure that I could drive very well with my foot sticking out the window to keep it elevated! I felt like such a big baby. The point of the visit was to change the bandage and let the doctor get a look at how it's healing. Before unwrapping my foot, the nurse told me to tell her if I started feeling funny and she'd tip me back in the chair. She unwrapped the many layers of bandage, me nervous the entire time that it would hurt and we'd get to a layer where the scab was stuck to the gauze. She made it down to my skin just fine and left to get the doctor. I looked at my foot, bruised all over, swollen, with a nice scar with lovely black stitches along it and my tummy started going sideways and I started sweating like crazy. I was ready to have that chair tipped back! I grabbed a magazine from the magazine rack and began frantically fanning myself while willing myself to calm down and relax. Intellectually I felt like an idiot because nothing was really hurting but my body way freaking out and I had no way to stop it. The doctor came in to examine my foot. By then my face had gone all tingly and I was sure my lips had lost all their color. He told me everything looked great and let the nurse bandage me back up. I stopped in the bathroom on my way back to the waiting room, took a bunch of deep breaths and splashed my face with water. I sure hope I can handle myself better next week, when the stitches come out.

Sheri came over this morning to pick up a reluctant Miriam and take her for school. She'd been claiming she didn't feel good when it was time to get ready for school but after a while I could tell that there was nothing wrong with her. Sheri said it sure brought back memories of when I was on bedrest with Isaac when she walked in to the living room and saw me on the couch with eveything arranged around me (books, computer, food ,blanket). At least I know I won't be using my cozy nest as long this time. (I was on bedrest with Isaac for months!)
One week out and still a ways to go. I hate all the hassle of healing but I had gotten to the point where I had to do something. I'm sure looking forward to getting back to exercising and running pain free (at least foot pain free!).

Snow Days

2012-01-20T19:57:00.000-08:00

Finally some snow!

They've been telling us since September that a very strong La Nina weather pattern was building in the Pacific. Typically, La Nina years bring lots of snow. Our December was warmer and dryer than normal and it looked like La Nina wasn't panning out. Being a weather man around here has got to be a tough job. We have to have just the right conditions of cold arctic air getting trapped under wet tropical air in order to get snow. And, snow that blankets the Pacific Northwest is even harder to come by. We usually end up with convergence zones where an area will get snow while the surrounding areas get rain or even are dry.

All last week, the forecasters started saying snow for the weekend. As we got closer to the date it was looking more and more like some lucky people would get snow and the rest of us would miss out. That's how it played out. On Sunday, Marysville (10 miles to our south) got 4", LaConner (15 miles to the north) got 4", farther south and north they got up to 7". Arlington got nothing. The kids were so disappointed! So was Dode, who wouldn't have minded if they canceled church on his day to teach the lesson in our primary class!

Dode and Isaac had planned to replace part of the garage roof on Saturday. When the weather report called for snow, and our 4:40 am wake up call courtesy of the produce truck revealed a dusting of snow with more coming down, they decided to take the newly rebuilt Trail 90's to an ORV park. They left to play early in the morning and it stopped snowing. They could have easily done the roof! Still in the truck on Monday morning, they got a good dusting of snow.

While riding at Walker Valley, Isaac and Dode were admiring someone's jacked up and fancied up 4 wheel drive truck. That owner in turn was admiring the 90's. I don't think there are many people who can see them and not wax nostalgic about a grandfather or uncle who had a trail 90 in the garage. Isaac was quite proud to show off the results of their hard work.

We went to bed Sunday night to green grass and woke up Monday to 1 1/2" of snow. Not enough to sled down a hill on but plenty to get towed on sleds behind the lawn mower on. It was already a day off from school (Martin Luther King Jr. day) and the kids were soon enjoying the snow. It didn't take long before there were piles of melting snow making puddles all over inside our house. Dode took a retired old wagon and screwed an old pair of skis onto the wheels. The boys enjoyed dragging that behind the mower.

Isaac had some excitement in the kitchen Monday morning. As I was reading my email on the computer (my back to Isaac) and Dode was reading the newspaper (facing Isaac) we heard a calm, "I think I need a fire extinguisher over here." I thought he was joking around and kept reading. A second time I heard, "I think I need a fire extinguisher over here." I turn around to ask, "Are you serious?" "Yes!" Dode's article must have been pretty interesting because he never noticed a thing. Isaac had accidentally turned on a burner that a plate was resting on. The heat cracked the plate and the paper towel on the plate caught fire. I grabbed the fire extinguisher but it was a small enough fire that a good dump of baking soda put out the fire quickly.

Dode took the kids to Absolute Air park Monday morning. It's an indoor trampoline place where the kids can jump like crazy. I stayed behind because trampolines aren't compatible with my sore foot. He thought maybe once they'd gone, the kids would "get it out of their system" and not enjoy it so much. Not a chance! As soon as they got in the car to come home, they were already begging to attend again. I took advantage of my time alone to get in as much exercise as I could, two hours on the elliptical. I knew once I had surgery, it would be a long time until I'd get back to it. I figured I was already going to be exhausted from the medicines on Tuesday, I might as well have tired muscles too!

There are a serious of trampolines on the floors and walls.

The kids loved launching themselves into the large foam pit.

I've had my fingers crossed for snow because if the public schools close, Dode gets a snow day too (and unlike the kids, he doesn't have to make his up at the end of the year!) Now that it was finally becoming a reality, I was watching the forecast closely and worrying. With my surgery scheduled for Tuesday morning, my goal was to be able to get there and get home. Then the snow could come down as much as it wanted. That ended up being what happened. We drove in snow down to Everett and it snowed the entire time we were there but we didn't have any problems getting there and back. I'd made arrangements ahead of time for people to pick up Elizabeth, stay with her at school, and bring her home. Isaac can get himself to school and back on his skateboard. With snow cancelling school, Sharon came over and stayed with the kids while Dode and I were gone to the surgery center. She offered to make dinner for us. Since Dode was in charge of the meal that night (everyone is pitching in with dinners while I recover from my surgery), he thought that sounded like a perfect plan. She made every one's favorite, her fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, fruit salad, and pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. The kids much preferred that over what Dode would have made (either breakfast or "every man for himself".)

Isaac Colson called after we'd been home for a while on Tuesday to see if he could come over. Since I was pretty much out of commission, Dode got the final say. What's one more child? When Isaac's parents dropped him off, Kim wanted to know if there was anything she could do for us. She has been a hair dresser for years. I said, "Yes" and she straitened up my messy self cut bangs and gave William an impromptu hair cut. We didn't have a cape so she improvised with an empty toilet paper bag.

Elizabeth's snow hair style

Miriam got her feelings hurt and decided to play in the snow inside where she could be warmer. At her back is the wood stove with the fan blowing warm air her way. In front of her, a pan of snow. A perfect solution. She and William spent hours playing inside and replenishing their snow as it melted.

The kids enjoyed their traditional snow fun activities...

Isaac was determined to use the motorbikes in the snow. After a while, so much snow built up that the back tire wouldn't rotate anymore. He switched over to the lawnmower, with the deck removed and custom chains on the wheels.

sleds pulled by the lawn mower are a classic activity

Anastaya getting pulled on the sled

Anastaya driving, Nicole Anderson in the trailer, Elizabeth on the sled

With the lawn mower "train" up and running and the snow coming down heavily, Dode decided to treat the kids to a trip to Haggen on the lawnmower train to get doughnuts. Everyone loaded up and they were soon off on their grand adventure. (White trash you say? Yep, and proud of it!) The trip was so popular they repeated it the next day. He knew the gas on the mower was running low but thought he could make it there and back. Not so. They had to push the mower home, with Miriam as the driver. She thought it was great fun, Dode not so much. We have seven 5 gallon gas cans in the garage but I'll let you guess how much gas was there when Dode got the mower home. Nothing! All empty.

the girls spent days working on their fort

finished fort with plywood roof

Our metal roof always gets tons of icicles as the snow slips off during the warmer days.

The kids love pointing out just the right icicle for Dode to break off. They suck on them like a Popsicle.

Wednesday night even Jacob got into the fun and did some snowboarding down the ramp.

practicing his "grinds"

the littles were happy to serve as audience

his snowboarding run. He marked the edges with pink paint so he wouldn't go flying off.

He tried to build a banked turn at the bottom. Isaac went sailing down on a sled, caught some air and fell on his arm with a lot of force. He thought he'd broken his arm again and the area where it was hurting was so localized that I figured he was right. A "quick" trip to the ER revealed that he'd just sprained it. The ace wrap gives him a good excuse for getting out of working.

Isn't an ER visit what everyone wants to do on a snow day?!

I don't think I could have picked a better time to have surgery. Dode had scheduled to take Tuesday as an emergency day (paid leave that doesn't count towards sick leave) and Wednesday as a sick day to take care of me. Tuesday the tribe closed early so he only used four hours of emergency leave. The tribe was closed on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday so he got to stay home (paid) and help with the kids and fetch things for me. He says it would have been better to actually get some vacation fun in but I think we did pretty well considering what's been going on this week. I am so thankful that he was here to help. Snow days are NOT lazy relaxing days. They are days where children continually leave the doors open, track snow into the house, take off wet clothes and leave them in a clump, and loose their mittens/boots/hats/coats. If I'd been trying to manage all that chaos from the couch, well, let's just say, I wouldn't have been. I'd have been hobbling around trying to help and only delaying my healing. Dode will tell you that I didn't stay on the couch enough but honestly, I really tried!

Thankful for the wood stove.

(It is buried in there !)

We're able to get the snow things dry before the kids go back out to play.

It makes for quite a mess when the kids go digging through for that one item they're missing.

The same view without the clothes when everyone went out to play at the same time. It doesn't look like this very often!

Snow tracks! Throughout the house,everywhere. I've been crawling up the stairs and sliding down them. Every time I end up with either a wet knee or bottom from snow melting on the carpet. The cane hasn't slipped in a puddle yet but I fear it's only a question of "when" not "if".

On the Mend

This is what I feel like I've been doing for days.....

Sit on couch, take a pain pill, try to read a book, fall asleep, wake up, hop to the bathroom, repeat.

The kids are being very helpful. Each time they see me struggling around, they are quick to offer their help. Miriam has seen Dode giving me his arm to balance on so she decided she should be a help too. It was more hindrance than help to have her put her arm around me but she sure felt good to be helping. Lynn was nice enough to bring over a cane on Thursday which really helped me get around. If I just lay on the couch, I can hardly tell somethings wrong with me.

looking good with my cane and big black "shoe".

As I walk, I hold on with both hands, lock my arms and put as much weight from my left side as possible into my hands, which are now sporting bruises.

As soon as I get up and try to get around though, the pain is right there. With a cane, I can put less weight on my hurt foot. Dode says he's never seen anyone use a cane the way I'm using it. I'm not using it for balance, I'm using it to take as much weight off my foot as possible. You'd think that first thing in the morning my foot would feel its best and it would get more sore as the day went on. Not so. My digestive system is still recovering from two weeks of amoxicillin for my sinus infection which means a lot of trips to the bathroom in the middle of the night. At first I'd been leaving my fancy shoe off at night but after five bathroom trips, my foot was screaming so the last two nights, I've slept with the shoe on. It's an improvement but my foot is definitely at it's most sore first thing in the morning and gets progressively better as the day goes on.

Foot Surgery

2012-01-17T20:53:00.000-08:00

see that yellow ball?

not comfortable!

I've been dealing with pain in my left foot for several years. It's something called Morton's Neuroma. It is an injury where the nerve gets damaged. The body's response to the injury is to lay down another layer of tissue. This leads to the nerve being more prone to injury because it's bigger and it becomes a vicious cycle of injury and the body trying to protect itself. Because the nerve becomes too big, it rubs between the bones of the foot. When it does that, it burns and stings. Sometimes, I even get what feel like electric shocks in my toes and on the ball of my foot. Not fun! It'd gotten so bad sometimes that I could hardly walk for days. I went to a podiatrist to try to solve the problem.

The first treatment option we tried were special inserts in my shoes. I had to get rid of all my "cute" shoes and could only wear shoes with a wide toe box. It didn't help. Next we did corticosteroid injections. Over the past four years, I've had four injections. For a long while, I could feel the nerve "popping" back and forth while I was walking but didn't have any pain. In December, I started getting a lot of pain again. I was working on my running and had made it up to 14 miles a week with one six mile run and two shorter runs. Once I'd reached that milestone, my foot pain flared up and I couldn't do more than two miles without limping. There is a limit to how many cortisone injections you can have in a joint because the cortisone can soften the tendons and cartilage in the joint. I went back to the doctor and we decided it was time to surgically remove the pesky nerve.

I had my surgery at the same place Isaac had his broken arm fixed, an outpatient surgery center. Dode must have been worried about me because he had vivid dreams with lots of moving around all night. Then to add to my difficulties, Miriam came in to sleep with us because she had a tummy ache. Three people in a double bed did not make for a restful night. One of the times when Dode was awake because I'd (gently) kicked him to get him to stop moving, he reassured me that I'd get to sleep the next day. Thanks!

Ready to go. I always have a hard time getting my IV's started and that was the part I was dreading more than anything. I told the nurse about my history and she said, "Why even mess around with the hand, let's go for the arm." Sounds good to me! She put the IV in a big vein on the inside of my arm and got it in on the first try. She said she'd write in my chart, "Patient refused IV in hand." I didn't know I had the choice but I'll know if I ever need another one. Dode is always sure that I have a red allergy band and that everyone is aware of what's on it. I have a severe allergy to a drug called "inapsine".

It's an anti-nausea drug that I was given as on "off label" use when I was having pre-term labor with Isaac. The doctor had tried the traditional ways of stopping contractions and I was on so much magnesium sulfate that I couldn't focus my eyes and had lost all the reflexes in my legs, but still the contractions continued. In desperation, we tried inapsine and it worked. Four hours later I was given another dose. I felt funny right away and told the nurse. She told me not to worry and left. It was the middle of the night and Dode was sleeping. Before long, feeling funny turned in to "can't breathe". I managed to wake Dode up and my hospital room was soon filled with various medical authorities trying to stop my reaction. I was told, "No more inapsine, the next one could be your last." Since it could be given when I'm asleep, Dode is vigilant that all doctors and anesthesiologists know not to give it to me.

The surgery took about 30 minutes. Once I was awake, the first thing I wanted to know was , "Did you find a neuroma?" Whenever something is going wrong for me health wise, I always have a huge worry in the back of my mind that I'm just a big baby and everything is fine. Having the doctor tell me that there was truly something wrong with my foot was reassuring. We spent some time in the recovery area before we were cleared to go home. When Isaac was there, he got a little package of Nutter Butter cookies to munch on and I was really looking forward to that little treat. Unfortunately, I was sick to my stomach so I didn't get offer any cookies. I was surprisingly disappointed! But, if I balance out the getting the IV in on the first time with not getting any post-op cookies, I know I came in way ahead! We were in the middle of first snow event of the year but our little mini van does great in the snow and I was soon installed on the couch with every kid gathered around making sure I was OK, even Jacob!

I have to stay off my foot as much as possible for five days. I have an ace bandage over the incision that stays in place for two weeks. I've got a cute black medical sandal to wear. The doctor told me I would need to rest my foot and not do any exercise for a month and then only elliptical for another 2-3 weeks. My poor elliptical is going to feel very neglected. I use it 5-6 times a week normally. It wonder how buried it will be in clothes by the time I can use it again!

hanging out on the couch. Using my new computer to watch movies. Miriam thought it would be fun to use mom as a cushion! I just have to say that I made the best purchase when I got that couch when we moved here seven years ago. It is so comfortable to sit on, has lots of room for kids to join me, and is in a perfect location for watching the kids play outside.

I have to keep my foot above my heart as much as possible for two days. Blogging at the computer with my foot on up on the printer and Isaac's algebra book.

Now that my foot is fixed, it's tempting to get some cute shoes that have a rounded front instead of the boxy shoes I've been wearing for four years. For some reason, I don't think the doctor would be thrilled with that goal. I've had a little pain in my right foot and I'm sure tight footwear would send me on the fast track to another surgery! He said that the nerve they removed is only responsible for 20% of the sensation in two toes. Some numbness to start with is normal but over time, the other nerves will take over the job of the missing nerve. Even if it doesn't, numb toes are much better than stinging ones!

Resolutions 2012: Words to Live By

2012-01-09T19:18:00.000-08:00

This year, instead of resolving to DO more, I'm resolving to BE more. I have a few catch phrases that I'm attempting to use to guide my actions.

1. If not me, then who?

It's so easy to get in the mindset when seeing needs around that "it's not my job..." to fill the need. I want to be the kind of person who doesn't need to be asked to do something. I want to be the kind of person who jumps up to help someone else, who picks up the piece of litter in the parking lot, who lets someone else jump in front of me in line. It's too easy (at least for me) to let "It's not my job" to turn into "but I'm the exception." That's not the kind of person I want to be!

This one is hard for me. Example, I see someone new at church. "Surely someone else will introduce themselves, why would they want to meet me anyway," I tell myself. I resolve to get outside my comfort zone and just do it!

2. Let yes be your no.

As a busy mom, the easiest answer is always "No!" "No you can't go in the hot tube (I don't want to clean up after you)." "No you can't go to a friend's house (I don't want to drive you there)." "No, you can't have ice cream (I want you to eat dinner)." (Who am I kidding?! In my house the question "Can I have ice cream?" is always YES!)

I'm trying to make "Yes" my default answer.

I am reserving to give a "Yes, when.." answer. "Yes you can go in the hot tub, if you'll help me clean up the water afterwards." "Yes you can go to a friend's house if their parent will drive one way and you do a 10 minute chore for me." "Yes you can have ice cream, tomorrow as a treat after dinner."

3. Praise in public, criticize in private.

This is a two part goal. The first part, praise. It's so easy to speak up when things don't meet my expectations, to complain, grumble, rant. I want to focus on positive, good things and speak up when I see them. Whether it's something that happens in the retail industry, with other adults, or especially with my own children.

2nd part, criticism. There's a time and a place for criticism. Identifying a problem can help people and businesses grow. It's the cowards' way to criticize in public, hoping others will back you up. How much better, more gentle, is it to bring our concerns privately to someone.

I resolve to give lots of thank you to my kids in front of everyone else. I also resolve that when correction needs to happen, I will call them to my side, put my arm around them, and quietly share my thoughts.

4. You've got a lot of choices, choose wisely

We all have the same amount of time each day. As a stay at home mom who home schools, I have an incredible amount of choices I can make about how to spend my days. I want to remember that and not squander the time. Some days it feels like we have hours to do what we want with, others days there are only minutes of unscheduled time. I need to remember that both those days are the result of choices.

5. Smile

Why is it that the default facial expression seems to be a frown? I want mine to be a smile! I want to smile often and everywhere. Instead of looking away when I'm walking past someone, why not look them in the eye and smile? I love catching the eye of one of my children and giving them a smile and thumbs up. Can I smile more everywhere I go? I've got a great life, married to a great guy, immersed with my children, living the gospel of Jesus Christ. I've got a lot to smile about.

New Years 2012

2012-01-02T16:40:00.000-08:00

Polar Bear Dip
Since New Year's Day was on a Sunday and we try to keep our Sundays low key to honor the Sabbath, we planned our polar bear dip for Saturday at noon. I looked it up, we celebrated the New Year at the same time at Moscow, Russia!

Moscow, Russia at the turn of the year,

thousands gathered to welcome the new year

I'd invited the whole produce co-op as well as everyone local in my email address book. We ended up with our kids and Dode's sister Janice jumping in. I have a vision that some day, our polar bear plunge will have hundreds of people joining us but it doesn't seem to be happening. Where are the other brave souls? How do I get the word out to them? I refuse to give up!

same time, different place in the world

Lake Goodwin, WA

a few hardy souls

I wasn't able to get a photo of all of the polar bears because one was too fast for us.

Janice approached her plunge at a run

She's in, 1st one to take the plunge

Janice was in such a hurry to get in that she didn't pay attention to what side of the dock had a ladder for getting back out. Dode kindly pulled her out when she realized her mistake.

Janice says next year she'd like to run around Lake Goodwin (5 miles) before jumping in. I'm sure we'd get more participation if we advertised a 5 mile run followed by polar bear, right?!

Isaac Colson went next, followed by Anastaya

Isaac goes next

doesn't he look warm?!

Elizabeth's 1st year to go all the way under

William went in to his belly button, also a 1st for him

He made sure he was ready to swim, notice the goggles?

They gave him bravery.

What about Miriam? She made it half way down the dock. When she saw Janice running back from her plunge, she decided to join her. She kept warm cuddled up with her pillow pet and blanket. Can you find the girl hidden in the fluff?

What about me? I wasn't up to it this year (see below), but I'll be back at it next time.

After the plunge, the kids warmed up with hot chocolate and cookies

Ellie in the background was NOT impressed with being outside on a cold day.

She didn't like that her hands got cold and stiff.

Treats for everyone.

We had more people watching than jumping.

Look like a warm day?

Huddled around the propane stove that is heating up the water for hot chocolate

New Year's Day, sort of
Since New Year's Day fell on a Sunday, Dode got Monday off as the holiday. But did the kids? No, the school district elected to hold school on a federal holiday. Which means that the our public schoolers were absent, "parent excused". We did our traditional winter break activity, ice skating followed by a meal at the Grand China Buffet. Dode and I think it might be time for a new tradition, the kids didn't enjoy ice skating as much as they used to. Isaac suggested skiing but it's not in the budget and we don't like to ski the with the holiday crowds. At least we have a year to come up with something! We already can't get Jacob to get out of bed and participate with the family. Isaac isn't far behind. He told us over and over again in the morning that he didn't want to go ice skating and he didn't want to go out to eat. We still paid for him to skate but he just couldn't find a comfortable pair of skates. He'd made up his mind that he was not going to enjoy our activity and he was right. He spent his time doing this.

so much fun!

Ice skating or chariot racing?

They had these blue plastic chariots for the small children to balance on.

Elizabeth circled the ice listening to her audio book.

the 3rd Percy Jackson book

The blue chariot gave William the confidence to get out on the ice.

William is our least coordinated child and often isn't able to enjoy physical activities with us.

After 20 minutes with the chariot, Miriam was ready to go it alone.

Anastaya had no problems going around and around. She only fell once, at the end when she was racing Isaac Colson.

The littlest Dicksons didn't have much stamina and were soon tired out.

Isaac Colson was our skater with the most endurance. His attitude was, "I don't know what all you peoples problem is, we're here to have fun so let's do it!"

After skating, we filled our bellies with Chinese food

(or pizza and hamburgers if you're Miriam or Isaac). Do you know how hard it is

to get everyone sitting at the table at the same time? Nearly impossible!

Vegan Yum!

Finally on the mend
After watching me suffer with my cold all Christmas weekend, Dode insisted that I go to the doctor. They diagnosed me with a sinus infection and with the help of antibiotics, I should now be on the road to recovery. If it ever happens to me again, I'll know the symptoms and won't suffer for over two months. Curious? A runny nose that doesn't get better, facial pain especially the middle of the forehead and over the cheek bones, dizziness/light headedness. Now the question is, why did I allow myself to suffer for so long?! With such a sore face, I missed out on the polar bear dip this year. The thought of that cold water getting into my sinuses was not pleasant. Driving away, I felt really left out from the revelry. I'll be back next year, sinus infection or not!

2011 in review

2012-01-01T08:23:00.000-08:00

A brief re-cap of some of the highlights of 2011

We started off the year with a splash, on a cold day!

details of the dip

Greg makes Miriam her very own ukulele

an appearance on King 5 TV

the kids see their first professional musical

Elizabeth gets to go fishing with her grandpa

Anastaya runs track,

and cross country!

another year of Cub Scout Day Camp

Isaac breaks his arm

and has surgery to repair it and a tumor that popped up

Elizabeth donates her hair, and mornings are much more peaceful around here!

We have a few big parties...

family reunion

ward party

Dode and Lynn take the Isaacs to Salt Lake City to see General Conference

We take some fun vacations....

Yellowstone National Park

We get to know Wyoming relatives better

we learn about some family history

We finally overnight at Sucia Island

We make it back to Pearrygin Lake

We win some contests..

1st place, most patriotic

1st place, best costumes

1st place best presentation, my mom won 1st place best cookie

my presentation

2nd place, King 5 Supermom Contest

We're front page news in the newspaper...

once....

twice...

three times!

after delivering tens of thousands of newspapers, we regretfully leave the Arlington Times behind

lots of fun with cousins

Isaac's crazy adventures of 2011

grass surfing behind the lawn mower

homemade waders

wanna be Evil Kenevil

who needs a snowmobile when you have a motorbike?

why haul this huge tire out of the swamp?

Why not?!

refurbished hovercraft

motorcycle vs. mountain bike

Finally.....
(with too many links to list)

We eat A LOT of ice cream

Yum!

We had a great year and are looking forward to some fun things in 2012.

Christmas 2012

2011-12-29T10:54:00.000-08:00

Usually the Christmas season is my favorite time of the year. Why? I get to celebrate my birthday! The kids (and I) get two weeks off of school to sleep in, read lots of books, and play. Dode gets time off from work. We have a big breakfast with family. And, there's the giving and receiving of gifts. What's not to like?

This year, the approach of Christmas felt more like the approach of a run away train with me tied to the tracks than a time of rejoicing. I think the biggest part of the problem is that I've had a head cold for almost two months. I'll have headaches, stuffy nose, sore throat, clogged ears for days, get one to two days feeling good, and then right back to sick again. It's left me run down and weary. I knew Christmas was coming irregardless if I was ready and excited so I did my best to make it happen. And it did!

I always buy gifts ahead of time, especially when the kids seem interested in something. It's so much easier to stuff a stocking with little joys when I pick up things during the year. Although I've got gifts stocked away a long time in advance, I've learned not to wrap things until after Thanksgiving for two reasons. One: once they're wrapped, I can't remember what I bought and end up buying too much. Two: Wrapping paper tears so easily and I don't like wrapping the same gift more than once! As I was wrapping the stocking gifts, I realized that I really need to think more about the boys as I'm visiting places during the year.

I spent a big part of Saturday in the kitchen getting ready for Christmas breakfast and dinner. By the time Dode and I headed for bed at 9:00, the stockings were stuffed, the presents were all wrapped and under the tree, and everything that could be made ahead of time was chilling in the fridge.

a lady of leisure on Christmas Eve

I was trying everything to get rid of my headache!

Since Christmas fell on a Sunday, we began our day with church. I always let the kids open their stockings when they wake up and they wait to open the rest of their gifts when I'm ready. I make sure every stocking has some fun things to play with, including a brain teaser puzzle and every one's favorite candy. I'd also continued Dear Abby's tradition of giving each child a new book. Since they all suspected that one was coming, I couldn't surprise them this year. The girls made it more fun for each other by hiding each other's books in their room and then looking for them. I think we'll do that in the future for all of them.

this year's books

We managed to get our stockings opened, get ready for church, and arrive by 8:50AM. I think there were only five other cars in the parking lot when we arrived for the 9:00 am meeting! Almost everyone came in just a few minutes before or after 9:00. Church usually runs for three hours but the First Presidency (the leaders of our church) sent out a letter that on Christmas day, church would be Sacrament meeting only, which runs for 70 minutes. There were lots of musical numbers and a talk on the true meaning of Christmas. 55 minutes after the meeting began, everything planned for the day was complete and they announced the closing hymn. There was much rejoicing in the Dickson row!

tasty goodness

We hurried home and I got the cinnamon rolls in the oven. We'd invited Dode's extended family to join us for brunch at 11:00, our Christmas tradition and our gift to the family. We had to have it so soon after we got home from church because their church meeting began at 1:00. After breakfast was cooking, I let the kids open three of their gifts. Then, it was time for a breakfast feast. I heard the same thing this year that I think I hear every year, "I think the cinnamon rolls are the best ever." I used the cinnamon my dad had shipped to me from half way around the world and they were pretty good! I think the cinnamon rolls are just so good that there's no way for a memory to give them justice!

Once everyone left, the kids finally got to finish opening their presents. Here's some of the highlights...

Anastaya is crazy about zebras this year and loved her zebra scarf and pillow pet.

Elizabeth is all about owls. She got the following owl items: pajamas, watch, clock, calendar, lip gloss, lunch box.

Her favorite gift of all was the owl watch. Unfortunately, when it was assembled, they didn't align the hour hand correctly. Luckily I bought it from amazon so getting a replacement will only take a few days!

Jacob needed a new skateboard to replace the one that was stolen last month.

Isaac is in that awkward in between teenage time when he's too old for toys but too young to feel satisfied with more grown up gifts. He was excited because the biggest box under the tree had his name on it, a rocking gaming chair.

William added to his car collection. He especially likes one that can tow other cars around.

Miriam wanted to add more foods to her kitchen. We'll have quite a selection by the time she outgrows it! The white dog next to her is a Fur-Real friend. It was in "demo" mode in the box. I bought it in September. I put it in the bedroom closet, with the front towards the back of the closet and wrapped it with thick black satin. 50% of the time we'd walk by the closet, it would start it's routine: barking, whimpering, panting. I'm surprised it had any battery left by the time Christmas arrived. We wrapped it up and set it under the tree and it did the same thing. Whenever someone would walk by the tree, it would make itself known. It sure made me smile to hear it.

We had some quiet down time with everyone playing with their new things until my mom and Greg joined us for dinner. Santa's elf had been busy! Greg built doll armouries for each of the girls' American Girl dolls. They are built with solid wood. There are little drawers for keeping their clothes and shoes in. Miriam sat and quietly played with hers for over an hour.

a peek inside the drawers, the bottom one is a trundle bed

plenty of room for hanging up clothes

My mom and Greg had been encouraging us to have a family piano recital for quite some time. I finally relented that we'd do a Christmas recital. I'd been working on a piano piece to play for our performance. With a pounding head for much of the last two months, focusing on piano music didn't happen as much as I'd wanted. Even as I sat there to perform, I could feel a bit of dizziness as I tried to get my fingers to do what the notes said. I made a lot more errors than I'd like but it just gave me resolve that next year's piece will be so much better!

By the time Christmas night wound to a close, my head was feeling pretty good. I survived Christmas. I think the kids were happy with their gifts from us. I know Greg was! He loves his treat of the month and lists it on his Christmas list several times. The kids love that gift too since they get part of his monthly treat. No one had a meltdown about not getting what they expected (believe me, it's happened in the past). As Dode and I lay in bed reviewing the day, he told me we'd done it, we'd accomplished another great Christmas. I remarked that it was pretty sad, by the time the day was over, four of us were complaining of sickness: Jacob, Anastaya, Elizabeth, and me (all colds).

I spent most of the day after Christmas day restoring our formal living room (otherwise known as mom's living room) back to its neat and clutter free existence. Unfortunately, I had to chase the clutter around the house before I could finally get it put away where it belonged. I have great helpers for getting Christmas decorations up but the clean up falls to me. The next day was restoring Santa's wrapping station (our bedroom) to cleanliness. By the time we had Christmas, we'd gotten to navigating along small pathways through the clutter.

One of the drawbacks of buying presents early is, if their interests change, you're left with a gift they'd no longer enjoy. I'd bought Isaac a Kinnect roller coaster kit in the summer but he's moved on to rebuilding motorcycles and playing around with robots. Dode suggested that Elizabeth might enjoy it and he was right! She loved the hours she spent building it with her dad and can't wait to build another one.

The week before Christmas

2011-12-26T16:39:00.000-08:00

Isaac goes skiing
On Monday, Janice and Matt took Isaac up skiing to Stevens Pass. It was Isaac's first time up this year. We've hardly had any rain in December which means no new snow in the mountains. Even though they expected it to be icy, Isaac was still willing to go. (When someone else is paying for your ticket, why not?!)

It didn't take Isaac long to get his "ski legs" under him again. It ended up being a very icy day. Janice and Matt are learning to snowboard. Janice fell on her 1st time down and smacked her tailbone really hard. So hard that a few days later she went to the doctor to see if she'd broken it. Just a bad bruise! Isaac picked up a bruise too.

My 40th birthday
I'm sure glad Dode and my mom had the brilliant idea to celebrate my birthday on Saturday! In the middle of the night before my birthday, I woke up with the stomach flu. It lasted the entire day. Instead of filling my day with fun activities, I curled up in a ball and read on the couch.

My dad took me out to breakfast and all that sounded good was a waffle. It ended up being the only real food I ate that day. I told Dode he was off the hook for coming up with a dinner for me, there was no way I wanted to go out to eat. My dad gave me some cinnamon he'd ordered online from Sri Lanka. He included the shipping information showing it had come over 9,000 miles in three days, all for $10. I wish I could travel 9,000 miles for $10! The cinnamon smells and tastes a lot different than the cinnamon I'm used to buying, in a good way. I can't wait so see how the Christmas cinnamon rolls turn out.

I did make up for my lack of eating the next day. For dinner we had creamy vegan mac and cheese with a big salad Jacob made and chocolate lava cakes for dessert. Yum!

Nativity Party
On Thursday, we had our annual family Nativity party. It's the time when Dode's siblings get together to celebrate Christmas. Randy and Lisa dropped their kids off in the morning to play while they went to the temple. Since I already had a house full of kids, I thought, "What are two more?" Seth and Ellie also came over to play. Bringing my total to 14. When I called Dode to tell him what was going on he wanted to know who else was helping to keep order. Just me! Every where I went in the house, I found children playing. I wish I always had a house full of kids.

After dinner, the kids got dressed up for the nativity. My collection of old costumes from day camp comes in handy when we're outfitting everyone. We always start with the prophecy of Samuel the Lamanite concerning the coming of the Savior. From there, it was time for the Christmas story found in Luke, followed by an appearance of the wise men. Once we were finished with the nativity, the older girl cousins each played a piano piece for us. I realized too late that we should have done it like a formal piano recital with each girl standing in front of Grandpa Dickson, telling him what they would play, and then playing. His back was to the piano so every time someone got done playing, he had to ask who it was. I'll be better prepared next year!

I don't know if anyone else has sheep in their nativity, one white and one black, but it works for us!

white sheep (Savannah), black sheep (Miriam)

Mary (Jenna), donkey (Elizabeth), Joseph (William)

Shepherds arrive

(Anastaya and Allison)

three wise men

Isaac, Lainey, Jared

I've been keeping a secret

2011-12-24T16:50:00.000-08:00

I guess it's time to let out a secret I've been keeping for a while. (Calm down mom and dad, I'm not pregnant.) In August, I made the move to veganism as a way to lower my cholesterol. The last time I had it checked, I was at 237. I have a family history of heart disease that I'm trying my best to avoid. I'm hoping that through eating a plant based diet, I can lower my cholesterol. My goal? A crazy 130. I'm giving myself a year and I'll see how I do.

How have I done with the diet so far? Surprisingly well. In case you don't know, vegans eat no animal meats or by products (no cheese, milk, eggs, butter, etc.). Most people have a hard time giving up cheese but that's never been my weakness. If you've read my blog for any length of time you know that my weakness is ice cream. I haven't found a vegan substitute yet that is even close to as good as the real thing but I'm still looking. There have been a few times when I've consciously decided to eat meat or animal products. A scoop of vanilla pepper ice cream in Bellingham that was so worth it, when Dode brought home crab from work, and when we ate at the Space Needle. I'd researched the menu ahead of time and there wasn't one vegan choice so I decided to go for it.

I've tried a lot of different recipes at home and most of the time they work out. One fail? I made a pot of chili that was supposed to feed 6-8 (from a vegan fireman's cookbook). I ate it lunch and dinner for a week, that's 14 servings. I was so sick of it by the time I had my last bowl that I was gagging it down but I didn't want to throw the food away. I also haven't perfected the tofu scramble. Dode actually prefers the vegan cheesecake I make with silken tofu to the real deal.

The produce co-op has really helped me eat lots of produce without blowing the budget. I think 90% of my diet comes from those baskets with the rest make up of grains and beans. I'm trying to be conscious to be a veg-an, not a carb-an (east tons of breads, cookies, etc with a smattering of fruits and vegetables).

Will it work? My mom says "No", but I'm stubborn so I'm giving it a try. All those fruits and vegetables can't hurt!

There are some kitchen items that make being a vegan much easier. Some I already had and some I needed to invest in. In no order of preference.

1. High Power Blender- Gets used at least twice each day. Smoothies, sauces, grinding flax and oats. It cleans up much easier than the food processor.

2. Food Processor- Some things don't work well in a blender. Thick sauces are make silky smooth in the food processor.

3. Metal Steamer Basket- (Miriam calls it a UFO) Tempeh out of the package is bitter. Steamed 20 minutes before going in a recipe makes it mild.

4. Tofu Press- Gives the tofu a firmer texture for when I want to saute it.

5. Electric Pressure Cooker- I eat A LOT of beans and rice. The pressure cooker can cook kidney beans in less than 30 minutes and it's so much cheaper than buying can after can. Brown rice also cooks in just 30 minutes.

6. Mango cutter, pineapple cutter- When you're getting lots of fresh fruit, you need a way to quickly get it into a form that can be eaten. These products work perfectly for getting mangoes and pineapples out of their skins and onto my plate!

7. Juicer- Sometimes I end up with too much of something from the co-op when people don't take everything when they pick up. Last weekend I had over 10 pounds of carrots and 12 cucumbers. Carrots + cucumber + a small piece of ginger= tasty juice.

8. extra fridge and freezer- When you get all the produce you're going to eat for the next two weeks on one day, you need a place to put it while you use it up. We're at the half way point in the cycle right now so the extra fridge is starting to empty out. Next Saturday, I'll be jamming things in to every available square inch of it!

We're getting ready for Christmas

2011-12-21T11:09:00.000-08:00

Nativity Festival

Dode, me, Jacob, Isaac and another boy from church

Sunday night, we participated in the Living Nativity at the Festival of the Nativities. The festival was a huge event with hundreds of hours of planning behind the scenes. All I had to do was donate some artificial Christmas trees and our nativities. Sheri was in charge of decorating the gym and it looked great when she was done. She'd picked up our five artificial trees (too much after Christmas bargain shopping) and later Dode told her, "Whatever happens, make sure Miriam's tree doesn't get lost." She was convinced she'd never received it. Dode even made a special trip down to the festival when it was closed and looked at every tree in the place (at least 100) trying to find Miriam's tree. It was not to be found. When everything was taken down and returned to us, the tree was found on the shelf in the trailer, it had never made it out to be displayed! They tried really hard to make sure everyone made it home with everything they donated for the festival. Sheri brought two of my nativities home with our trees and trailer but one was still missing. When I went to pick it up, all I could find was the empty Styrofoam container it came in. Sheri had already told me that a few nativities had been lost and I figured mine was another of the casualties. Dode started digging through the boxes that were left and found it in someone elses' box. So, whoever Amanda is, she's missing a nativity. I know I got my own back since my shepherd was broken in half and re-glued.

We signed up to be part of the living nativity. I asked if Jacob could be Joseph. The person in charge smiled and said, "He'll make a great shepherd!" The boys found it quite embarrassing to stand their dressed up while people stared at them and took photos. They passed the 30 minute time slot we had by playing an "I Spy" game. They'd name something they could see, then the other would have to name something they could see that started with the last letter of the word their brother used. Dode whispered to me, "You know that's not a real baby don't you?" I was just doing as I was told, looking at the doll with adoration. Dode was supposed to show adoration towards the baby and me. I tried to get Dode to scoot in close to me so he'd look like he liked me. The photo above shows him after he moved in a few feet. I told him to put his arm around me, it's lightly resting on my shoulder. And, I'm not even a doll, I should be easier to appear to adore! The girls didn't have a part to play but my mom had come to see the festival so they walked around with them.

Leading up to the nativity festival, the kids marched in the Christmas parade in town.

Elizabeth passed out suckers

William and Miriam are behind her

Anastaya passed out invitations to the event

Miriam and her friend Paige dressed as angels. Under their angelic garb, they wore warm puffy coats. They realized they could painlessly bounce off each other and soon were sumo wrestling. Dode thought it looked pretty funny to have angles sumo wrestling.

Gingerbread houses

Thursday night I attended a women's Christmas party at church and while I was gone, Dode decided to build gingerbread houses with the kids. He used our left over Halloween candy, supplemented with some fresh candy from Haggen. Miriam wanted chocolate frosting so her house isn't made with traditional white snow. It must be in an area with lots of pollution! Miriam really wanted gingerbread men on her house but all Dode could find were green gummy army men. She stuck them in the mud in her front yard. She was almost OK with the substitution.

once the houses were finished, it was time to eat them

Miriam's house had an earthquake!

Time for a new hair style

After years of no bangs, Wednesday morning I got the desire to get some bangs. I didn't have time to get to a hair stylist so in between getting Miriam and William off to school, I kept going back to the bathroom to cut my bangs. A little here, a little there, soon I had bangs. I kept fine tuning them throughout the day and by the time Dode got home from work, I was 90% presentable. Dode said, "I thought you'd never go back to bangs." (I'm not sure if that was a compliment or criticism but I didn't delve deeper.) I told him, "I know, it's the danger of reading people's blogs!" I'm so suggestible. Isaac saw me and said, "Mom, you look like an old lady!" When Jacob saw me, he knew something was different but couldn't figure out what. He had a moment where he thought I'd been replaced by an impostor like invasion of the body snatchers. When he figured out it was my hair, he was greatly relieved.

before

after

My Saturday Surprise

2011-12-18T20:12:00.000-08:00

seated at the restaurant, watching the view go by

Saturday, Dode and I went to the Space Needle Restaurant for my birthday celebration. My birthday isn't until Tuesday but if we wanted to see anything out the windows besides lights, we had to go on a weekend. Dode had received a gift card at his 2010 employee Christmas party and we finally got around to using it. My mom came up to watch the kids while we went.

On the weekend, the Space Needle has a price fix brunch where you choose an appetizer, entree, and dessert. I thought that eating in a fancy restaurant meant we'd get little portions and leave hungry but I was wrong. We started off with a selection of quick breads: pumpkin, banana, and lemon. Dode says mine are much tastier and don't feel like sawdust; I don't like dry quick breads so I always make mine moist. I chose the smoked salmon appetizer and Dode chose a Caesar salad. I think my choice was the best, the croutons in Dode's salad were hard enough to break a tooth on.

For my entree, I got my traditional birthday splurge, Eggs Benedict. I was so excited to eat it, I forgot to take a photo! Instead of ham, it had crab piled high and it was really tasty. Dode got the salmon special which was cooked to his liking (think over cooked). He was absolutely not impressed with the slice of polenta the salmon rested on. He doesn't like mushy things! For dessert, I got the white chocolate macadamia bread pudding and Dode got apple cobbler. The bread pudding was OK, but not worth the calories. The macadamia nuts weren't chopped up so it was a strange clash of soft bread pudding with occasional marble sized crunchy nuts.

The space needle restaurant slowly revolves around, making a complete circle in about 50 minutes. We went around almost twice while we were there. The traffic getting to the restaurant was terrible, it took us about 20 minutes to go two miles, but looking down from the restaurant, Seattle looked so peaceful below us. After a quick stop on the observation deck one floor about the restaurant, we went over to the International Fountain. Dode wanted to check out how it works because he's thinking of building one on a smaller scale.

Since we were already down in Seattle, we stopped at what has to be the best name ever for a grocery store, Sidecar for Pigs Peace. It's Washington's only 100% vegan grocery. As we were driving there, I asked Dode if he thought anyone would notice I was wearing leather shoes. (True vegans not only abstain from all animal products in their food, they don't wear animal products either.) He just rolled his eyes at me. It's a tiny store and they were extra busy since they were having a bake sale. Poor Dode, every time he tried to stand out of the way, someone was wanting to get at the shelf he was standing in front of. I picked up some things I'm not able to find around home or online and we headed for home.

We pulled into the driveway and I saw it was full of cars. I turned to Dode and said, "Why are all these cars here?" His response, "It's your birthday!" He and my mom had been planning a surprise party for months! I had absolutely no idea it was happening. Poor Dode, he'd been trying to get us home by 2:45 but I was in no hurry. I figured my mom would be fine with the kids and if she needed to leave, she would. I was enjoying my day of freedom. We made it home around 3:15 and everyone was waiting for us.

My mom had made a slide show movie of photos of me growing up. In some of my old photos, Miriam looks just like me! As we squished together on the couch watching the movie, Jacob said to me, "Pretty typical, here you are surrounded by kids."

Yes sir, that's when I'm happiest!

After the movie, I got to open some presents. Fun! Some of those children crowded around me just couldn't resist helping. Aunt Viv made me some earrings, Sharon got me a laminator, Matthew got me some fancy chocolates, my grandpa gave me $40 (one for each year) and my mom and Greg bought me a new computer, an iMac with a 22" screen. (4 GB Ram, 500 GB Hard Drive I'm sure when the kids read this again in 10 years it will sound like such a dinosaur!)

opening gifts with plenty of helpers

Anastaya made me this bouquet of paper flowers, 40 of them! She's been working on them secretly for weeks.

My mom and Millie had spent hours making huge tissue paper flowers to decorate the dining room. While Dode and I were having fun in Seattle, my mom and Millie put the kids to work straitening up the house and decorating.

The table filled with beautiful flowers.

The girls have already claimed them for their room. I'm thinking they'd go well with our jungle theme at day camp this year, if it doesn't rain!

Dode and I were still completely stuffed from our lunch but everyone had been waiting hungrily for a tasty potluck. My mom was nice enough to buy two cakes, one regular, one vegan.

look how we light our candles, a torch!

Grandma Dickson got a little crazy at the party and went down the fire pole

(Just kidding!)

1st use of the new computer, the kids watching Looney Tunes

I felt very blessed to have such a loving family.

Time for a new camera

2011-12-16T16:25:00.000-08:00

We've had our camera for quite a while. It's our first digital camera and has served us well. It started malfunctioning in the spring, taking only pink tinged photos. We sent it in for warranty work and it worked good as new. Then, a few months ago, it started giving me an error message and turning off when I tried to turn it on. For a while, it was an intermittent problem but over time, the camera became more and more unreliable. We took advantage of the Black Friday sales to replace it. There used to be quite a delay between the time I pushed down the button to take a photo and when it would actually take on. No longer!

original camera receipt

1st photo with old camera

Spencer Island, Everett

Elizabeth, Jacob, Isaac (wearing a helmet because we'd biked there)

Elizabeth at Spencer Island

1st photo on the new camera

They can only get better!

Santa Train 2011

2011-12-11T12:32:00.000-08:00

18 years of Santa photos

Monday was the day for our annual trip to Seattle to see Santa. Each year, my mom (the Boma) sponsors a trip to get the kids' photo taken with Santa. We started our day in the 23 degree heat, catching the train in Stanwood. There is no station to wait at, just a platform next to the tracks, so we waited inside the van as long as possible. The train was pretty full so they had to shift people around to get the kids and I sitting together.

Jacob tried to entertain a grumpy hungry Miriam

It didn't work!

Anastaya brought a book along for the ride down,

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

It's so neat to see the area we live in zipping by from another vantage point. My mom, Millie and Gabe, Casey and Carmen joined the train in Edmonds. By then, the train was even more full so they were several cars away from us. Once in Seattle, we hopped on the underground buses to be whisked to Westlake Center. Our group of 8 kids and four adults makes quite a spectacle traveling around Seattle. In past years, we've had a small child in a stroller which works well for holding the assorted coats and bags that accumulate over the day. This year, I brought my old lady cart (usually used to haul groceries home from Haggen, between Jacob and my mom in the photo below) to stash things in. It worked out great and was extremely full by the time we loaded up for home. I think I rocked the old lady cart!

There's a stranger smiling in the photo too, thanks to Millie.

Can you find him? (between Anastaya and Isaac)

We're in one of those articulated buses, my mom Anastaya and Elizabeth are sitting in the part that bends.

The exit from the bus tunnel is right next to Nordstroms' Santa photo area. We learned they have a new procedure this year. Instead of making you wait outside in the cold, they take your cell number and call you when the line inside is short enough to fit your party. Since the weather was still in the 20's, that sounded good to us. We've had some cold outside waits in past years. We went over to the holiday carousel at Westlake Park. By the time the kids were finished riding (a 90 second ride!) and had enjoyed some hot mini donuts, it was time to head back to Nordy's.

Mini donuts are a weakness of mine. I've gone out of my way to get some before. In fact, Dode and I have researched buying our own donut robot for home use (too expensive, even used!) This year, they didn't sound that appealing to me so there was more for everyone else!

They try to make the wait inside pleasant by giving everyone cookies and hot cider. This year, they added touch screen interactive books on the wall for children to play with. We waited about a half an hour for our turn with Santa.

Miriam enjoying a cookie. See that messy hair?

Boma went to work on it.

Millie gave Jacob a nice big kiss

waiting in line, Santa was visible through the window with red curtains you can see behind William

Anastaya tightly braided her hair the night before to give herself big curls

Some of the fun decorations we could see while standing in line

I love fat birds.

When we were the next people in line to see Santa, his helper came to tell us that he needed to go feed his reindeer and would be back in a while. He must have spied the size of our group and decided he needed a break before tackling us!

We're next!

You get to sit on the couch of honor when you're up next.

Our crew

Elizabeth, Isaac, Jacob, Carmen, Anastaya

Miriam, Santa, William, Gabriel

Gabriel said his smiler was broken.

Elizabeth cut and sewed the scarves as a school project.

After getting our photos, each of the kids could tell Santa what they wanted. Miriam asked for a slinky for Christmas. Score! I can pick one of those up at Dollar Tree! It will go in her stocking. I wonder if she'll remember asking for it.

Leaving Santa behind, we headed to the Cheesecake Factory for lunch. Everyone stuffed themselves silly.

Elizabeth had this peanut butter milkshake...

two plates of these shrimp....

and she shared a piece of cheesecake with Millie

Jacob and I shared this peach smoothie. It was great.

Thai lettuce wraps, no chicken

A week later, Elizabeth is still talking about how pretty my lunch looked

Next, it was time for viewing the gingerbread village at the Sheraton Hotel.

We do things in the same order every year. I think Miriam and Gabe have gotten pretty comfortable (too comfortable in my opinion) navigating around Seattle. They kept running ahead, completely without a care. Once they get very far, it's hard to get their attention. As we were heading down the street to the Sheraton, they rounded the corner and disappeared. They were hiding near the door we go in to see the gingerbread houses, waiting to surprise us. Part of the tradition at the Christmas village seems to be visiting the bathroom at the hotel. This year they added locks to the bathroom doors. We didn't know that until Miriam had a bathroom emergency. My mom hustled over to the front desk clerk to get the code before it was too late.

After the gingerbread houses, it was time to descend on Barnes & Noble bookstore. We took over the small table in the children's section as our base of operations and everyone went off to the section they were interested in.

all done, waiting for Casey

It's always so hard to pick just one book. The kids easily got it down to two books, but picking that one "perfect" book is quite a challenge. Our day was winding down. We had time for one more whirl around the carousel before browsing at one of my favorite shops in Seattle, Fireworks Gallery. There are so many unique things there that I could enjoy. I've bought the kids some of their favorite gifts over the years there. Then, it was time to take the bus back towards the train station. After the bus, we diverted to Uwajimaya, a large Asian store in Seattle that's only a block from the train station, to pick up a few hard to find ingredients before heading back to the train station. The kids were kept occupied on the trip home by their new books and grandma's ipad. The ride home took about 30 minutes longer than normal because we had to wait for a freight train in Everett and then there was thick fog to get through. The kids just wanted to be done.

Everyone was wiped out by our big day in Seattle. No one wanted to get up for school the next day. The girls told me it's one of their favorite days of the year. Hopefully, Boma feels that way as well!

12/5-12/10

2011-12-10T10:16:00.000-08:00

GIS Day
Once a year, the department Dode works for has a special day to show off what they do in the GIS department. We drove down to visit and check it out (and get our free t-shirts and pizza!).

Dode's globe made a repeat appearance

His boss' globe sure makes his look puny.

Elizabeth using the laser site binoculars

I think Dode's "toys" were more popular than the maps. Things like his new ground penetrating radar (GPR). It's the most expensive jogging stroller you'll ever find. $20,000 worth of equipment on the frame of an actual jogging stroller (it still has the foot rest for the passenger!). They even had to buy a cargo trailer so they would have a way to store and transport it. I've seen GPR used in movies and on television shows. The people using it are able to easily find objects like bodies hidden beneath the ground. The reality? The squiggles and lines it generates give a very subtle indication of hidden objects. We weren't the only ones interested in the GPR. The Tulalip Police came by and asked for a demo. Their question, "Can it find dead bodies?" The answer, "No, it can only indicate where the dirt has been disturbed."

Here's the image the GPR provides. I forgot to take one while I was there so we found this on the manufacturer's website. Dode says he's never seen one this clear. And, he's not looking for bodies, he's looking for pipes!

That's as close as Isaac got to putting on his free shirt!

The pizza? It wasn't arriving for more than an hour after we left.

End of an era
We've been delivering the Arlington Times for five years. That's a lot of newspapers folded, a lot of miles driven! Last month, they notified the carriers that the time the papers were being made available was changing from Tuesday at 3:30 in the afternoon to Wednesday at 3:00 am. Our routine was for Dode to pick up the papers on his way home from work. Everyone would work together to get the papers folded and into individual bags. While the kids were at youth night at church, Dode and I would deliver half the papers. The next morning, one of the children and I would finish off the route before picking up our seminary students. With the change in pick up time, I'd need to get up at 4:00 am to drive down and bring the papers home. Dode, Anastaya, and Isaac would have to get up extra early to stuff papers so we could deliver some in the morning. Then, later in the day, I'd have to finish stuffing and delivering. That delivering would cut into our homeschool day. So, with a heavy heart, I gave my 30 day notice to the paper. The first things the kids said to me were, "Hooray! No more papers!", followed by, "Does that mean we won't be able to go on vacation any more?" That's an answer I don't have yet.

Caroling for a good cause
Our nearest neighbor, Haggen grocery store, has a program during the holiday season where if a group comes in and sings for 30 minutes, they donate $50 to the Arlington Food Bank. The school my homeschoolers attend part time signed up for an hour Friday night. Elizabeth, Anastaya and I went over to sing. Anastaya wore the Santa suit I bought on a 90% off sale last year. She had to do some quick ad libbing when a young boy came up and earnestly started asking her questions like, "Where is your sled?" "On the roof" Where are your reindeer?" "On the roof with the sled" "Why does your hair have holes in it?" "Santa is going bald" (cheap wig!) She really enjoyed filling the role of Santa and wants to grant him his Christmas wish, a green matchbox car.

Anastaya doing her best at giving good answers

Elizabeth with her friend Katie

Already planning for next year
Dode had taken the challenge from the Crafty Maiden organizer to come up with something fabulous to heart. He's brainstorming something "Fun" for the theme, "Girls Just Want to Have Fun". He's been designing a Ferris wheel with Autocad. He recently took a class on doing 3D images with Autocad and has been putting his new found skills to work. When I watch him rotate an image around, it makes me dizzy.

Lunar Eclipse
There was a complete lunar eclipse Saturday morning between 5-7 am. Dode is a good dad and agreed to wake up early to take the girls outside and view it with the telescope. Unfortunately, a few minutes after they were all dressed for the 23 degree morning and made it outside, the clouds moved in and hid the moon. They liked the little that they saw. The excitement the girls had for the eclipse reminds me of a solar eclipse that happened when I was in elementary school. I remember it happening during the day. We got ready for it by making special glasses and mirrors so we could see it. I remember the talk on the playground about how you'd go blind if you looked at it with your bare eyes so of course what did I do but glance at it and then worry all day that I'd be going blind! With a lunar eclipse there's no such worry, especially when it'd hidden by the clouds.

Our garage sale telescope looks pretty awesome on Dode's survey legs.

Crafty Maiden 2011

2011-12-03T20:36:00.000-08:00

Dode gives me the world
Who doesn't want a man to give them the world? I'm participating in the Crafty Maiden cookie exchange/gift swap for the 2nd time this year (thanks mom for the ticket!) (link to 1st year here) and wanted to do something with the event theme of "Christmas around the world". I think they were planning for people to choose a country and do a craft and treat from that country. I chose to think more globally (I love how that word works in two ways in this case!) Thankfully I have an in house draftsman who can do amazing things with maps. Dode thought he could build me a big globe. He drafted up a map of the world which he printed on huge paper at work. He had to use math to figure out the angle of each piece. He knew his angles weren't 100% accurate so he designed to globe to be "artistically" gapped.

He bought acrylic which my step-dad Greg cut in the 12 pieces using the map Dode created. Once the pieces were cut out, they needed to be bent into a spherical shape. Dode built a form to bend them over.

He also built an "oven" out of a sheet of drywall. He used our heat gun to heat the oven up to 280 degrees. After spending 15 minutes in the oven, the plastic was pliable enough to bend. It was a two man project, with Isaac and Dode working as a team. They spent several days practicing on scraps of plastic before they were ready to try the actual pieces. There was no room for error since they only had twelve pieces for the final globe and needed each piece for the finished project. We're able to count Isaac's time on the globe towards his "Handyman" high school class.

peeling off the protective plastic after bending a practice piece

The oven ended up being useful for more than bending plastic. I was in charge of rolls for Thanksgiving. I usually use my breadmakers (yes, that's plural on purpose! It takes two breadmakers to keep our family going.) to make dough in because it provides a perfect environment for the bread to raise in. I needed to make three batches of dough to make sure there were enough rolls for everyone and worried that the batch made in the kitchen-aid mixer would be difficult to handle. Dode had just finished bending plastic and the oven was still warm. The mixing bowl fit perfectly inside the oven. Drywall is a pretty good insulator. That "oven" stayed warm for over an hour!

You might be wondering what I'm going to do with a big globe. We tried to figure out a way to hang the necklaces on the globe but wouldn't come up with anything. With a week to spare, I found an idea online for displaying jewelry in a shelf. I had Dode build me the shelf. I lined the shelves with old maps and displayed the globe on top.

my shelf

Dode's Autocad skills came in handy when we were deciding how big to make the shelf. I'd roughed up a sketch of the different cubbies but when Dode put them into Autocad, I could see that the proportions were off. We used the "Rule of thirds" to decide how tall and wide the boxes would be. We were also able to determine how deep the shelf needed to be in order to make it in scale with the globe. It's a lot deeper than I need for my necklace display but if it was any narrower, the globe looked like it was going to topple off. I put false backs in the shelves so they didn't seem like black holes.

the globe becomes a sphere.

At this point, it still needs the protective plastic removed, a pipe put in the center to make it stand up a little rounder, and the continents put on. Dode was so happy to get it to this point.

Dode planned to etch and sand the continents on the globe but when he tested it on a scrap piece, he realized it wouldn't work. Up until this point, the project had been entirely Dode's. At this point, I became heavily involved in the project (against my wishes). We bought adhesive back vinyl (like people use in a Cricut, cut the continents out of them and applied them to the globe. (More correctly, I traced, I cut, we applied).

We put the acrylic panels on the map and traced where the pieces went.

Our last minute change from etching to stickers led to a headache!

This is Saudi Arabia and Egypt, notice anything wrong?

This is how it's supposed to look. We'd traced everything backwards, and had already cut out half of the continents when we caught the mistake. After starting over, we successfully attached the continents, mostly where they belonged!. Then, we realized that we really needed lighting. We used strip LED lighting from Amazon.com to light the shelves and the globe. I'm hoping we can re-use the lighting in our cargo trailer.

polishing the many fingerprints that showed up when we turned on the lights.

We really broke the rules with this globe! Usually when Dode does a project, 90% of the items he uses are scraps and pieces from things around the house. With the globe, 95% of it is new. The only things he re-purposed was the power cord and power supply. He used an cord that at one time went to something but no one knows. Our power supply was the battery from Miriam's power wheel.

My items for the Crafty Maiden

At the Crafty Maiden, you need to make an edible item and a gift. My gifts this year were necklaces. I've never made jewelry before so my mom had to teach me how to use crimp beads and how to get the beads on the wire. She even let me use her bead box. I put them inside decorated boxes that I decoupaged maps to the lid of, with a cute pun on the inside. I used maps from our trips and it was fun to revisit in my mind those places from the past: Lovell, Rapid City, Los Angeles.

For my treat, I renamed "MMM" Sauce to "World Class Sauce". To tie it to the theme, I cut out maps to put on the lids.

These ingredients combine together to make a very tasty sauce.

Ready to go with maps on the lids.

Finally, the big day!

Last year Crafty Maiden fell on a produce Saturday and it was just my luck that it once again happened the same day. Last year, I had difficulties with a malfunctioning septic tank and lights that fell off my display everywhere. Dode wasn't able to help because he'd had to take Isaac to a school event early that day. This year, Isaac had a school event at 10:00 so Dode was able to go to the hotel to help me get my things set up. And, the septic worked great and although some lights came off my display, they were easily fixed.

The event has been held at the Tulalip Resort Hotel the last two years. (It's nice to know that some of the money received from registrations is helping to make up Dode's pay check!) I was really nervous to go to the event because I learned of a rule a few days prior that big displays were a no-no. I was pretty sure that my 36" shelf and my 24" globe would be considered big. I made Dode come down to the event with me so he could take some heat. As he walked in the door holding the globe, one of the ladies in charge said, "36 inches" (the length limit of the area we get). Dode smiled, nodded and continued on. It turns out I didn't need to worry about being too big. The ladies who are in charge of the event each came up to me and thanked me for going above and beyond on my presentation.

I'd done a dry run at home so I knew just how to set up everything once I got there. The tables were more narrow than I'd planned on but it worked out fine. It was hard to set things up because people kept coming up to me to exclaim over Dode's globe. They didn't realize that it was hand made so I put a small sign under it that said, "Globe hand made by world's best husband."

at the event

My mom and Millie were there too.

(In fact, my mom paid for Millie's and my ticket to get in. Thanks again mom.)

Millie won this lovely door prize. It will probably last five minutes before one of her dogs uses it as a chew toy!

The meal everyone but me had. Very fancy but also very small. A tiny chicken leg with one carrot stick, one asparagus spear, one slender okra, one slice of squash, three blueberries, one blackberry, onions.

The vegetarian meal I requested. Butternut squash filled ravioli. The filling was amazing! I've already requested the recipe, we'll see if they'll share!

Once everyone has their displays up, the participants go around and vote for: best cookie, best craft, best other (non cookie food item) and best presentation. The organizer of the event is an artist and in the past, she's awarded a custom mural worth $1000 to the winner of best presentation. Since that was the only category with a prize, that's the one I went for. Years ago, the pediatric unit my mom worked at had a mural artist come in and paint animal images randomly on the walls. A bird building a nest atop a door frame, a squirrel walking along the floor molding, a butterfly fluttering along a wall. I've been wanting to re-create the look ever since. I've even researched hiring someone but it's never been in the budget. I figured, here was my chance to finally get it. And.......

Both my mom and I were winners.

My mom won best cookie.

the recipe here

Me? I got it! Best presentation!

We're wearing our winner's aprons, both say 1st place.

The organizer of the event sews aprons for the winners each year.

Winners wear their apron with pride during the event.

I look a bit orange in the photos but it's not makeup or fake tanner. I think I've been eating too many carrots! I made carrot salad for Thanksgiving and there was A LOT left over. I've been eating at least two cups every day and finally finished it off yesterday.

I got home and got out of the car to show off my apron to Dode. He read the 1st place designation and said, "Way to go girl!" I think it was his globe that helped me win. I've broken the 2nd place curse!

What I won.

It turns out that last year (when I won 2nd place for best presentation) the person who won 1st place cheated (she stuffed the ballet box!). It left a bad feeling with the organizer and she decided that if she was offering something so valuable that people who be tempted to cheat at a cookie exchange over it, she needed to re-think things. She has a fancy machine embroidery sewing machine so she made the squares and her sister-in-law who is a quilter quilted them up. The 1st place winners in each category got a quilt. Since I got the grand prize, I got to pick first. I want so badly to travel the world. I can look at the landmarks on the quilt and dream! My mom picked a Disney theme one that will be coming to Miriam for her birthday.

Tera, I am beyond jealous at what you get to see!

I won these as a door prize. Just what every Mormon girl needs!

I'm going to try my hand at hand painting them and turning them into special goblets to go with our "You are special today" plates. (We'll need four because things have a way of getting broken around here!)

I'd been kind of nervous about my edible contribution. Everyone at the exchange gets to go home with 12 different items. Each person who contributes cookies brings 12 dozen. I figure people get a bit overloaded on cookies and would appreciate something different. I made my dip because I believe it's really amazing. I felt like kind of a dork setting it out since it's not very pretty. But, it was appreciated. I was sitting at the table waiting for the event to begin when a participant came up to me and said, "Are you Stephanie?" When I told her I was, she started gushing about how she's allergic to everything now and has to eat a vegan diet and had thought about not coming to the exchange but decided to anyway and having my dip there absolutely made her day. Later, when Millie and I were browsing, she had to bring another participant up and say, "This is Stephanie, the one who made that great dip!" I didn't feel like a dork any more.

When I left, I made sure to thank both the woman who made the quilts and the lady who is in charge of the whole event, and who came up with the idea 20 years ago. The lady who made the quilt said that I chose her favorite one. She's debated about donating it but in the end, decided to buy $100 worth of raffle tickets in hopes of winning it back. (Before I got to pick, they had a raffle where one person could pick a quilt.) She didn't win the raffle and I got the quilt. The event organizer told me she can't wait to see what Dode comes up with for my display next year. The theme is "Girls Just Want to Have Fun." The pressure is on!

Re-purposing

Nothing Dode builds around here ever gets a one time use. I end up finding a way to get more use out of his hard work. I'm not sure what I'll end up doing with the big shelf, but the globe is already headed to it's 2nd use. Wednesday, December 7 is GIS day at Dode's work. It's a day for his department to showcase what they do (design maps). He's bringing the globe there to display it.

11/13-11/19, a Quiet Week

2011-11-20T16:19:00.000-08:00

Looking back over last week, it doesn't seem like anything hugely exciting happened. Dode and I finished up 15 years of marriage and are a few days in to our 16th year together. We'd celebrated by going away overnight a few weeks ago so the actual anniversary was pretty low key. (In fact, we babysat for Sheri!) Dode hung the big heart in the tree so that everyone driving up the Hwy could see that for some reason, a giant heart was floating in the sky. We'd like to celebrate by having dinner at the space needle and use the gift card Dode won at his work Christmas party almost two years ago but the month seems to be slipping away from us.

Elizabeth had her yearly IEP (Individualized Education Plan for special ed services) meeting for speech therapy where I learned that she qualifies for another year. And, the speech pathologist told me she'd assessed "Mini Elizabeth" (Miriam) and that we'll soon be meeting to create an IEP for Miriam as well. She'd done an assessment on Elizabeth at Miram's age and said it was like traveling back in time. At the time, Elizabeth didn't qualify for services and she told me to bring her back in a few years. Well, those few years turned into four and when we went back, Elizabeth easily qualified. As a funny side note, I had speech therapy when I was going to college to finally be able to use the "s" sound (kind of important when your name is Stephanie!) The college had a program where people going to school to become speech therapists could practice their skills on patients. The person giving the girls speech therapy is the very same person who practiced on me 16 years ago. Wow! With Miriam beginning to receive services, that will bring us up to three IEPs in our family (William has the other).

The most exciting thing to happen this week is for Elizabeth to choose a book from the library and finish it in two days. We're a family of late readers. But, once they get the hang of it, they don't want to put books down. Elizabeth is pleased that she's fallen in love with a series that contains over 30 books. She can't wait to get the next book from the library. I feel like a light has finally been turned on for Elizabeth. She's had a struggle to become a proficient reader, and she's still got a ways to go. She's been able to feed her imagination by listening to audio books. To see her finally get wrapped up in a book was wonderful!

Notice anything different about Elizabeth in the photo above?

11/10/11

11/19/11

Elizabeth's hair was finally long enough to donate to Locks of Love. We got it cut on Wednesday. Morning hair care has gotten MUCH easier!

We had a co-op distribution on Saturday. It was a lot more work for me than normal. I use google checkout for the orders. At the end of October, something went wrong with the merchant part of google checkout. I was no longer able to download from google what people had ordered. Google doesn't give you any way to contact them. The only recourse you have is filling out an automated email with pre-selected issues. Then, you get an automated reply that doesn't address your problem.

I'd experienced google checkout problems last month when they wanted me to change some tax information on my account but didn't give me a way to do it. If I didn't somehow make the changes, they were going to suspend my account. The merchant help forum was full of people with the same problem. I spent hours trying to find contact information. I finally used every automated "contact us" email I could and was able to get a real and living person to write me back and help me through the process. I was ready to tell google to take a hike by the time we were done.

Now, a month later they messed up again. I ended up having to go to google check out and browse though every order placed in the last three weeks, opening each of the more than 60 orders up individually and manually typing into a spread sheet what each person had ordered. Then I had to go through the spread sheet line by line compiling all the orders to see how many of each of the items had been ordered (we offered 15 items for purchase) so I could make the bulk order. Then to make the check out sheets, I had to go through the spread sheet again looking at each of the 15 items to compile a list of who had ordered from that item and how many they had wanted. It took a lot of time and I had a huge concern that I'd mess up some one's order. The night before the co-op, I couldn't sleep for worrying about the train wreck that could be happening the next morning. When the truck showed up at 5:00 am, it was 25 degrees outside. I spent three hours in the cold and it was only at the end of the pick up time that I could breathe a sigh of relief that I'd only messed up once and forgotten to order a box of apples for someone. There was a side benefit of the stress. My worry about mistakes kept me warm out there in the freezing cold! Am I frustrated with google? You bet! They charge a fee for each transaction they process. Would it be so difficult to offer some customer service for when things go wrong? I'm tempted to try another company but two things hold me back. 1. The program Dode built me was created to use information I can (normally) download from google. 2. If I went with paypal, I'd be getting the same customer service. If I go with someone else, I'd have to purchase expensive software to provide transaction security.

11/7-11/12

2011-11-13T21:18:00.000-08:00

Elizabeth's 1st quilt
It was enrichment week at the school the home schoolers attend part time. Enrichment week is the week that falls between school quarters. It is a time for field trips, guest speakers, and special activities. One of the activities Elizabeth and I participated in was "Quilt in a Day". It actually took place over two days in three hour blocks. We started by hitting the fabric store so that Elizabeth could select her fabrics. She began with the celestial print and added a few complementary colors. It took her over 30 minutes to pick the other materials. I could tell that she was putting a lot of thought into selecting just the right colors and patterns.

I'd purchased the amount of fabric from memory and once I got home, I realized that I didn't have enough. So, I had to go back to the fabric store later that evening, not my first choice. Then, when I got there, I couldn't find the fabric she'd picked. It had been a busy day at the fabric store and together the employee and I searched through all the bolts of fabric that were waiting to go back on the floor. We found two out of three. With a bit more searching, we came up with the last bolt of material. Happiness! My mistake ended up working out because she was able to make a larger quilt than the teacher had planned for.

Once at the class at school, we started cutting out strips of materials and assembling 9 patch squares. Elizabeth sewed every seam herself. She was able to get every 9 patch completed and to sew each of the 5 rows of squares together. We were sent home at the end of the three hours with the homework assignment to sew the strips together into a solid top and to select a backing fabric.

The next time we went to class, Elizabeth sewed the strips framing the quilt as well as the binding.

sewing on the strips

assembling the backing, batting and top. Her teacher Mrs. Peterson is on the right. They're outside because they used a special spray to hold the pieces together.

My proud young lady and her quilt

The class with their moms and the teacher.

We pinned everything together and her teacher was kind enough to offer to take it home and machine quilt it for us. Elizabeth was so proud of herself and can't wait to cuddle under it while watching a movie.

Seattle field trip
Another enrichment activity we took advantage of was the chance to go to the Seattle Science Center and to take a tour of Channel 9, our local public broadcast network. Wednesday Elizabeth, Isaac, and I made the trip as soon as we got done with the newspapers. We started our tour of the Science Center with an Imax movie, Born to be Wild. Elizabeth loved the documentary of two women who have made it their life's work to raise orphaned orangutans and elephants respectively. After the movie, we visited the butterfly house where Elizabeth and I both picked up some temporary hair ornaments (butterflies). The science center also had a traveling exhibit called "Design Zone". They taught us about the science behind things like video games, roller coasters, and music. I had to pry the kids away so that we could get to the TV station on time. The TV station walked us through every step of making a TV program and patiently answered all the children's questions.

getting ready for Born to be Wild in 3D

a marble maze game

playing around with her photo

This bicycle has been there since I was Elizabeth's age!

In the room where the "magic" is made. Producers, directors, sound men all sit in here.

As long as we were in Seattle, I decided to take advantage of a chance to go to Theo Chocolates, the maker of my favorite chocolate bar. We were able to sign up for their hour long tour. We pulled up to the factory and got out of the car. Immediately, the rich smell of chocolate was evident. Elizabeth and I walked up to an exhaust fan, stuck our noses close, and inhaled deeply. Heavenly! Isaac sat their smirking at his crazy family. We learned that Theo is one of less than 20 chocolate factories in the US that actually receive raw cocoa beans and takes them through the entire process of roasting, grinding, and creating tasty chocolate treats from them. They are the only organic and fair trade certified chocolate factory in the US. We got to taste 90% of the products they make. Yum! I told Dode that I'm never going back. I can't trust myself around so much deliciousness! I spent way too much money on treats. Chipolte Drinking Chocolate Powder, Cocoa Nibs, 1# of Spicy Chili bar pieces (my favorite candy bar) , a Cherry Chili Dark Chocolate Bar, a Milk Chocolate bar for Isaac, a Milk Chocolate Candy Cane bar for Elizabeth, and "Big Daddy Marshmallows" (graham cracker, marshmallow, caramel covered in dark chocolate.)

on the tour, looking stylish in our caps

This machine takes the roasted beans and grinds them up.

This enrober and cooling tunnel looks just like the one they use at Aunt Bessy's honey factory! What's in those red garbage bags? Cocoa beans!

This is what chocolate looks like during the fermentation stage. Look tasty?

Theo's retail store

After leaving Theo, the plan was to go out to dinner with my mom. It was dark out and I had a terrible time finding Hwy 99 to head to her house. I spent 30 minutes driving around in circles trying to find the correct road. The kids kept asking me, "When are we going to get there?" I didn't have a good answer for them and was so wishing I had a GPS to help me out. I finally made it to the correct road and we eventually made it to my mom's.

A Tree Falls
There is an alder tree that grows right next to the sidewalk outside the living room window. It has three trunks and makes a nice scenic view. I'm the kind of person who spends quite a bit of time looking out of windows and I've enjoyed this tree for the six years we've lived here.

One trunk already gone, the view from the window

Dode on the other hand has been getting more and more worried about the tree. The roots have buckled the sidewalk already and he was concerned they'd soon crack the foundation on the house. He finally convinced me that the tree needed to go. Randy came over and cut the tree down for us.

The kids were in the hot tub watching and they were all very put out to see the tree go. Elizabeth would not even look at Dode after they cut down the tree.

Our zip line ends on one of the trunks and they thought that with the tree gone, there would be no more zip line. Randy left the stump tall enough for the zip line. Dode thinks the stump will be stable enough for the next year after which he'll have to come up with another spot to anchor the zip line to. Hopefully, some day my girls can forgive their Uncle Randy for destroying their tree. Dode says he's sure they aren't the first kids who Randy has made mad while taking out trees. My only consolation is that we can use the trees to heat the house, the wood should give us about a month of warmth.

Fixing a pipe
About six months ago, Dode got called over to his grandparents to repair a leaky pipe. His Uncle Dave and Aunt Viv had been remodeling the bathroom and had accidentally screwed into one of the pressurized pipes. Dode put a new piece of pipe in and soldered it into place. They proceeded to fix up the bathroom and all was well. At least, everything was well until Saturday when water started flooding into the downstairs of the house. After removing ceiling tiles, and eventually bathroom walls, they chased the leak down to the pipe behind the shower. Had Dode's fix failed?

Nope! They'd managed to hit that pipe a second time when they finished up the bathroom. This time, they weren't aware they'd done it and the screw stayed in the pipe all this time. Eventually, it rusted away, leaving a hole that quickly created a major flood. Dode fixed it up again a second time. Thankfully he's thorough. As he was preparing to apply heat while putting the pieces of pipe together, he tried to feed a piece of aluminum foil behind the pipe. It kept getting stuck on something. When he put his finger back there, he found that the screw had gone all the way through the pipe and was sticking out the other side. If he'd missed that, it would not have been long before that piece of screw rusted away and he'd have been going back over to the house to fix another leak. Our fingers are crossed that this time when the bathroom gets re-assembled everything goes where it should.

Work Bonus
At work, Dode sometimes goes out in the field with the employees of the fisheries department. He heard that they do monitoring crab pots where they put down pots, pull up crabs, take them back to their lab to study them, and then get to keep them, since they're dead when they're done with them. It's just a couple of single guys pulling up 40-80 crabs at a time and they sometimes have extra. Dode told them he'd sure be willing to take some off their hands and Thursday, he came home with 5 crabs. We had a real feast. It's a lot of work to get full off of crab! They told him that when it's time to do monitoring for shrimping season not to expect any extras. Good thing I prefer crab!

not my most glamorous photo ever!

Hot Sauce Go Fish
Jacob and his friend Shamois came up with a fun and exciting game to pass the time. Hot Sauce Go Fish. They assembled several of Jacob's bottles of hot sauce and anytime someone had to go fish, they had to take a spoonful of hot sauce as penalty. Shamois has hot sauce almost every day and has built up a tolerance for it. Jacob hasn't been using so much of it and he was definitely struggling. He learned it burns going down, burns coming out the other side, and burns coming up when he decided to make himself throw up to get rid of it. He shouldn't have any stomach or intestinal parasites for a while!

10/31- 11/6

2011-11-07T19:49:00.000-08:00

Happy Halloween!

We had a fun night of trick or treating. We started off the night with Seth and Ellie and their parents accompanying us. Seth didn't make it far before he was complaining about being done. Sheri was able to get him to make a complete loop back to the car but it was touch and go. As usual, my kids were tired long before the mom was. Don't they know there's more candy out there to be had?

Miriam is a cowgirl, wearing a vest I got at Yellowstone when I was 8 years old.

The Cheeto face was not part of the costume.

Sir William is a king

Elizabeth is an animal lover.

She made her own costume, sewing the vest smaller and gluing on the animals.

She had a hitchhiker on her back

Anastaya sewed her own costume as well. Those stripes took her at least two hours to sew on.

She's piglet.

Me? I was going for warm!

We learned through Internet research that this is a PhD robe.

Toy Store 3 on ice

Dode is able to get discount tickets through work to Disney on Ice. He took the girls down Friday night. The girls had a great time. The dad? He went because he loves his girls! There were three prizes awarded during the evening and we won one, $10 off a future ticket!

The dress Miriam is wearing came from the Halloween clearance section. She felt very glamorous.

Celebrating 16 years

Dode and I were able to get away for the weekend thanks to the babysitting services of Sheri and Sharon. We left Saturday morning, after taking our turn cleaning the church building. Our plan was to take a scenic drive over three mountain passes.

On our way to our loop in Enumclaw, we drove by this sign on the side of the road and had to get a photo.

Do you know how many people mistake Dorrel's name for Darrel? Here he is running for office! (It's really one of his relatives.)

We began by heading up Chinook Pass. At the top, we did a 3.6 mile loop hike, enjoying the scenery of the high mountains.

Mount Rainer played shy with us, peeking out for just a minute.

Winter has definitely arrived in the high country.

We were on the edge of two worlds. We walked in the snow the whole way while just to the east of us, winter had not yet arrived.

I've waited 10 years to walk across this bridge. I saw the trails up here the last time we came over Chinook Pass and I made a vow to myself that someday I would come walk in the glorious alpine landscape. I just didn't know it would be under snow when I finally got to do it!

For most of the hike, I was overheated and only wore my sweater. As we approached the car, we went into the shadow of a knob. I didn't want to stop to put on my warm jacket and by the time we got back to the car, I was pretty cold. Even driving 30 minutes with the heater and my coat on, I was still covered in goosebumps. I guess I got that core body temperature down a bit.

We stopped at Whistling Jacks' for pie. Dode got apple and I got bumbleberry (rhubarb, cherry, apple, raspberry). The pie hit the spot and gave me a boost at warming back up. With the cost of pie, ice cream and tip bringing our treat to $20, I'm not sure it was that kind of good!

We stayed the night at Camp Zarahemla near White Pass. You know you're not staying in a regular hotel when you get four phone calls before you ever make it to your destination, finalizing details and calling to find out when you're coming.

Camp Zarahemla is a camp owned by our church.

Our cozy cabin.

In the morning, we headed up over White Pass. We had the whole day ahead of us with no obligations so we hit every scenic pullout.

Half waterfall, half ice fall

The view down the valley back towards the lake we camped on.

Mount Rainer was out in her glory as we headed down White Pass.

We walked to the Grove of the Patriarchs. We met another couple on the trail who said, "Aren't those trees something?!" We politely said, "Yes" although we'd already discussed that they were big trees but weren't anything different for what we're used to encountering as we go hiking. Then we learned that the couple was from Connecticut and trees as big as that were not the norm for them!

We'd had such a good time on the Naches Peak loop trail our first day that we decided to do it again. Once again, Mount Raineer was cloaked in clouds. Even though we couldn't see the mountain, we enjoyed oogling the snowy ridges all around us and the company couldn't be beat! It was so great to have two full days of being together just the two of us, with just one phone call from the kids!

finishing off October

2011-10-31T09:17:00.000-07:00

Trunk or Treat
Tuesday night we had a trunk or treat at church. Dode has spent most of the last month dreaming up things for a "house of mystery". He ended up building a bottomless tunnel, creating a laser/fog machine effect, and hooking up black lights to feature Black Light Bubbles
. We contained all this under three pop up canopies in the parking lot. The bottomless tunnel turned out the best. He'd wanted something people could walk across but since he was unable to find anything online that would tell him how thick of glass he'd need for that, he built a tunnel people could look down inside of. He used plywood left over from day camp, an old pallet, a light fixture, a mirror, and some mirrored privacy vinyl to create the effect. One of the cutest things to happen was to see a little girl look into it and back away before cautiously peeking over the edge again. I think she really got that feel of endless space!

Where does it end?

For the fog light/lasers, Dode used the old kitchen fan he removed last year to spin lasers in fog. It ended up being a dud. The lasers weren't bright enough, leaving the area around them dark and perfect for older kids to hang around to scare the smaller children. Not what we wanted.

The black light bubbles were the hit of the night. Dode was kind of bummed that it took so little work (and it was my idea) to create something that enchanted the kids and parents.

Having the trunk or treat on a Tuesday night was a challenge for us. Especially when they decided to start the night early! Tuesday night is our night to fold 800 newspapers and deliver 600 of them. We usually have just enough time to get the papers folded after Dode gets home from work before heading to the church for youth night. With the trunk or treat starting early, and with Dode's big plans for his creations, we had to meet him at the church right after he picked up the papers and worry about the papers once the activity was over. We spent 30 minutes taking everything down, leaving us the last car in the parking lot. In fact, I went into the bubble room to tell Dode, "time to go" and he was quite surprise to step out into the parking lot and find it empty! Once we got home, we had to go into full out production mode getting papers stuffed as quickly as possible. Then, Dode and I went out and did part of the route we normally finish. I needed to get as much done as possible because the next day was just as busy. Sound like enough chaos? There was more!

The week before, Isaac had his surgery. I'd been sick, in bed, all weekend and missed teaching my Relief Society lesson in church. We'd barely got home from the surgery when I received a phone call from the Relief Society President (head of the women's organization at church). I immediately thought she'd called to see if there was anything they could do for our family with me being sick and Isaac having surgery. "What a nice gesture" I thought. I was a bit surprised she'd even known about all that was going on in our lives. I was wrong. She was calling to see if I would make a meal for someone else. It was a reminder to me to forget myself and serve others. I had the feeling I'd be sick for a while so I asked for a day the following week. Wouldn't you know it, I got assigned Tuesday, my busiest day of the week. There was a chili cook off at the trunk or treat so I wouldn't have had to make dinner. But, there was no way I felt good about bringing chili to an elderly family. So, I made a special dinner just for them. While scrambling around trying to get ready for the trunk or treat, dealing with last minute costume changes and finding pieces that had gotten lost, getting the newspaper things out for when we got home, and trying to make the meal, I managed to burn carrots into the bottom of the pan so badly, there was 1/2 inch of carbon in the bottom. As you can imagine, the house smelled terrible. The smoke detectors went off (We have ones that are linked together. Once one goes, they all go.) blasting our ears out. I wasn't sure where they lived for the meal but had a feel for the general area. Google maps steered me in a completely different area. A phone call to Dode for directions sent me on my way. I raced out of the house with the meal, instructing the kids to be ready when I got back. Since I was in a hurry and going somewhere I'd never been before, I missed the house. Then, when I dropped the meal off, they wanted to visit. Finally, I was on my home to pick up the kids, where I found them mostly ready but fighting over who got to sit where in the van, and we raced to the church.

Pumpkin Patch Field Trip

Wednesday morning, I went with Miriam and William to a pumpkin patch field trip. (What does visiting a pumpkin patch have to do with education? Why do they waste their one field trip of the year on a pumpkin patch? These are questions I will never have answers to.) I drove straight to the pumpkin patch instead of taking the bus from the school with Miriam and William so that Elizabeth could come too. It was a cold morning and we found it a challenge to keep warm. The kids enjoyed the various activities offered by the pumpkin patch and we finished up our visit by selecting pumpkins.

Miriam had been really worried starting school that she'd be the smallest child in her class. Once school began, she happily reported that Chad was smaller than her. She pointed Chad out to me at the pumpkin patch. He's height impaired (is that the politically correct term for midget?). We are pretty good at having runt children!

train ride

tractor fun

we are definitely building one of these for day camp next year!

hay ride with Caitlyn, Miriam and William

Book Club
Wednesday evening, I hosted the book club at my house. We read Wonderstruck
by Brian Selznick. I've been eating really healthy lately so I made a vegan meal for the ladies. I was pretty nervous about how they'd react but they loved it. I made a creation I call Buddha Bowls. (Brown rice with assorted toppings: BBQ tofu, roasted butternut squash, sweet and sour cabbage, sauteed bok choy and mushrooms, fresh chopped veggies, avocado, curry cheese sauce). I made two tasty desserts from a blog I read. Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Deep Dish Cookie and Chocolate Peanut Butter Cheesecake, adapted from Chocolate Fudge Pie. I added a peanut butter layer on the bottom and a chocolate ganache to the top. I'd tested both recipes out on the kids ahead of time. Isaac went back for seconds so I knew they'd stand up to book club.

When Dode got home from work, I reminded him that I had book club and he was in charge of dinner. He decided to make pancakes. Once he got going, I realized that it just wasn't going to work with two of us fighting over the same kitchen space. Add to that, by the time he was done cooking, there was no way the family would be able to eat and clean up before the book club ladies got there. I was thinking, "Come on, it's just one night a year. Can't you please take the kids somewhere?" while at the same time feeling badly that I was feeling like pushing him out of his home. So, I never said anything like, "Just go to McDonald's already!" although I'm sure my body language was communicating that loud and clear. Meanwhile, Dode was thinking, "She's not happy with me but if I take the kids out to eat, she'll say "Can't you manage to feed them without going out?" We were finally able to reach an understanding that eating at home that night was not going to work. Dode finished making pancakes, set them in the fridge for future breakfasts and the children happily loaded up in the car for a trip to McDonald's. Crisis solved!

Isaac's last ortho visit
On Friday, Isaac had his post operative visit and the doctor said everything is healing nicely. Better than that, the tumor came back as a benign growth! It was a teacher in service day and I'd told the kids that after the appointment, we'd go to the Children's Museum, followed by Value Village and then the China Buffet. Unfortunately, I've been having to hide my wallet lately in order to keep a sticky fingered child away from my money and I'd neglected to bring it along. (I'd been in the habit of keeping my wallet under the driver seat in the car.) So, instead of having a day of fun, we went straight home after the doctor. The kids were not pleased.

Pumpkin Carving
Carving pumpkins is one of my least favorite activities. I dislike the mess and I especially hate that they never turn out as well as you imagine in your head. My mom and Greg came up for dinner on Sunday and graciously helped with the pumpkin carving. My mom is in the middle of a 7 day, 12 hour work day stretch so it was an even bigger sacrifice for her to spend some of her down time dealing with pumpkins.

Dode can do anything in a white shirt and tie!

My chair of girlies

She brought a bag of giveaways she'd picked up at a conference she attended for work. Once she left, it was a battle for the kids to decide who got what. William got to go first and he selected the baggie of almonds. No one was too mad about that. Going youngest to oldest wasn't working so the kids put names in a hat and let William draw names. They were then able to distribute the goodies with a minimum of hurt feelings. What they didn't want will go in the day camp prize box. For some reason, the children weren't interested in the alcohol impregnated port protectors or the accompanying information about the "impact of alcohol impregnated port protectors and needleless neutral pressure connectors on central line-associated blood stream infections and contamination of blood cultures in an inpatient oncology unit." Probably not appropriate for day camp either!

More security
I know there are children out there who listen to their parents. I truly believe there are children who when told, "No", listen. I am convinced there are parents who can say "No" and put up a few barriers to keep children from making certain choices, and those children will listen. I don't have those kinds of kids. I have the kind of kids who will say to our face, "No matter what you do, I'm going to try to find a way to still do what I want." We were having troubles with the boys staying up all night in the room over the garage watching movies and playing video games. Dode started taking the gaming machines to work and only bringing them back on the weekend. They were still watching movies all night which meant getting anything constructive the next day difficult. We'd go to bed at night, thinking everyone was tucked safely in. Then, children would sneak out, walk over to Blockbuster, and rent movies to watch. Dode modified the circuit breaker box in the garage so he could turn off the power to the room over the garage where they were hanging out and then lock the box closed. That slowed them down for one day. Then, they ran an extension cord to the downstairs of the garage and were back in business. We had freezer in the garage and they figured they had us stuck since we couldn't cut the power to that too. We ended up moving the freezer to the covered deck off the kitchen, thus earning us the label of hillbilly and allowing us to turn off all the power to the garage.

No screws anywhere they can access

Padlock

Problem solved? There was still the issue of them watching movies all night inside the house once everyone went to bed. We purchased a Power Plug Lock-out
that goes over the plug in for the TV. With the turn of the key, it disables the power to the TV and locks the power cord in place. They haven't found a work around, yet (that we know of). Parenting is not for wimps!

The plug to the TV is locked inside the blue box.

It takes the turn of a key to turn the power on.

This week's adventures

2011-10-22T21:27:00.000-07:00

Last Cross Country Meet for Anastaya
Anastaya had her last cross country meet this week, at River Meadows Park in Arlington. My plan was that as soon as the littlests got off the bus from school and made a quick bathroom break, we'd be on the road. I knew time would be tight because it's about a 20 minute drive to the park and her race was supposed to start about 30 minutes after the bus is supposed to arrive. I was gathering umbrellas for the rainy day when the bus arrived. Within 10 seconds, Miriam had her shoes off and was on the couch ready to watch a movie. She was not pleased to be leaving for the meet. She spent most of the drive throwing a fit about her lost opportunity to watch a movie. I told Elizabeth to get a photo for the blog. Miriam wasn't having any of that! She hid her face and would not allow a photo. Elizabeth kept trying and eventually Miriam started giggling. It got her out of her funk.

It felt like it took forever to get out there. I missed every light and ended up behind a school bus that was letting kids out every 100 yards. As we drove, I wondered if we'd end up missing the race and I'd have put up with the crying and crazy hustle for nothing. I've been sick so I don't have much energy. Add a grumpy Miriam and the rainy day and heading to a cross country meet was not what I'd have chosen to be doing.

We made it in time! I'd brought two umbrellas, thinking with four people we could easily share. In retrospect, we needed four umbrellas to cut down on the fighting. That way, we could have poked our umbrellas into even more innocent bystanders. Anastaya did well for her last race. Her goal for the 1.75 mile run was 14:40 and she finished in 14:18. (No state records here but instead a young lady who continues to improve and feel good about her efforts.)

Elizabeth spent the better part of an hour making this sign to hold up for Anastaya as she ran by. She thought we should count it as an hour of art education for home school, which would go towards her required 5 hours of schooling each day. I said, "Nice try!"

Natural Foods Trade Show Seattle

at the show after our make overs

Friday, Sheri, Janice, and I attended the Natural Foods trade show in Seattle. Poor Sheri had a hard time on the way there. She'd drank a quart of green smoothie on the way to my house and by the time we approached Seattle, she really needed to use a restroom. I mean she REALLY needed to go! Getting off the freeway wasn't a very good option since we were in the metropolitan Seattle area. Finding a gas station is next to impossible in the city and we didn't know where we'd find a bathroom available for public use. Janice suggested my mostly empty green container with the encouraging words that it was a wide mouth jar. I teased her with a mom famous phrase, "Why didn't you go before we left home?" She replied with the kid classic response, "I didn't have to go then!" She got to the point that I think she would have been happy to pull over and just pretend she was in the middle of the woods! Once we pulled off, we stopped at a stop light where she jumped out and ran into the convention center (where the natural foods trade show was being held). There was a doorman at the door and as she ran up she desperately cried, "Where is the bathroom?!" He told her where and as she hurried to it as fast as physically possible at that point, he hollered after her, "The code to get in is 1836!"   Meanwhile, Janice and I waiting in the car realized that we hadn't let her off at the convention center! While circling the block, trying to decide where to park, we discovered we'd left her at the Union building. Once we met up with Sheri again, we headed down the road a block to the convention center! I'm not sure what the Union building is. Thankfully she didn't look like a homeless person so I don't think the door man minded letting her in.

Why were we at the trade show? There are a number of natural foods I use on a regular basis and my thinking is, if other people in the co-op would also be interested in them, we can buy them at wholesale and all save money.  I was nervous about going since I don't have a "real" store. But, once I got the hang of it and realized that the company salesmen I was speaking with weren't looking for huge orders but would be happy to deliver products to us with a $100 minimum order and provide free shipping, I realized that I did have something to offer that they were interested in.

Sheri and I tried everything we were offered and I can tell you that there are some scary healthy items out there! The only "scary" thing Janice tried was the Ormus Greens I talked her into. I don't know if she'll trust me again.  Sheri and my first sample was a Kava drink. It tasted terrible and you can tell it's "working" when your mouth goes numb in a few minutes. Thankfully things improved from there! Green drinks are really popular right now and we tasted a lot of them. Most of the vendors tried to disguise the terrible taste of their green drinks by mixing it in apple juice. I'm happy to say that Sunwarrior Ormus Greens continues to be my favorite. (Janice thinks there's something wrong with my taste buds!)

I saw a lot of products I've never seen on the shelves on my local stores. Some of my favorites are:

Stingers, a spicy honey spread made in Bellingham, WA

Muter Chocolates, tasty chocolate spreads made in Richland, WA

Tillen Farms, pickled veggies from Sunnyside, WA

Partners, a Kent, WA company that makes tasty crackers and cookies

Chez Gourment, the best commercial veggie burger I've ever tasted, especially the Spicy Anasazi Bean, made in Oregon.

Although I really liked the products above, I don't know that they will work for the co-op. I need things that don't take a lot of storage space on my end. Do absolutely delicious chocolates go with a produce co-op? I hope that we'll be able to provide Sunwarrior and Navitas products through the co-op. I already use a lot of their products. I have order sheets for both of them. In fact, I took advantage of a 20% of show special to order some Sunwarrior Warrior Blend Protein Powder. If it doesn't sell at the co-op, Jacob and I have our year's supply!

Janice, Sheri and I should be the healthiest people on the planet once we spend the next month ingesting the various miracle supplements we received as samples at the show! Once I figure out my favorite, I'd like to add them to the co-op too. I'm leaning towards Mega Food. They are a woman owned company that uses plant based products to create their vitamins. I'm especially excited by their Blood Builder vitamin which has great reviews on amazon.com for conquering anemia, a problem I've dealt with my entire life.

I had a blast at the health food show. We even got some pampering, including hand massages and make overs. We ran out of time for the free back massages or the buffet offered at the end of the trade show. I'm already looking forward to next year and hope that the items I try with the co-op will be a hit so we can add more. We were there the entire five hours it was open and didn't get a chance to really investigate every aisle. I had worried that I'd slow Janice and Sheri down but it ended up that they spent a lot more time at each booth than I did. I hear the trade show in Aneheim is amazing, the best in the nation. Maybe I should go for my 40th birthday present! Admission is free but the getting and staying there unfortunately aren't. Since I don't make any money on the co-op, I can't really take it as a business expense. Hmmm..... I know I wouldn't take Dode with me. He'd think nothing was edible and would complain about all the "snake oil" that people were trying to sell him on. But, unlike Sheri and Janice, I'd get to keep his samples!

seeing which homeopathic remedies our bodies "need" by pressing down our arm.

I'm not sure I'm totally sold on the idea but he sure pegged our "problem" areas.

getting our skin analyzed

I'm happy to report that out of 100 women my age, 87 of them have more wrinkles than me. And the wrinkles the computer picked up were actually old acne scars. Thanks mom for the ageless skin!

makeover and hand massage, courtesy of

Gabriel cosmetics

It felt great to get pampered

our favorite exhibitors

Queen Bee Gardens

Sharon, Aunt Bessie, Lynn

my loot

not shown are all the samples I consumed during the show

Janice's take

We don't have all the same samples because we split up part way through the show.

We never had lunch and I wasn't hungry. (Dode says if he'd been there he would have lost his appetite too!) Of course, walking by the buffet on the way out at dinner time did make my stomach growl a bit. Unfortunately, Janice and Sheri needed to get home to other obligations.

Isaac's 2nd arm surgery

2011-10-17T19:24:00.000-07:00

When Isaac got his cast off three weeks ago, I noticed a bump on his arm, about an inch below his wrist. I thought maybe his arm muscles were so atrophied that the end of his bone was sticking out. But, it didn't seem like it was in the correct spot. He was scheduled for surgery on the 17th and I wanted to get the bump checked out ahead of time just to make sure everything was healing correctly. I was concerned that if I brought it up in the pre-op room, there wouldn't be time to do anything about it.

We went down to the orthopedic doctor and the doctor's assistant told me it was the pin. I said, "Are you sure?" I knew where the scar was from putting the pin in and is was on the other side of his arm from the mystery bump. She checked the old x-ray and sure enough, the pin was in the other bone! She said we'd x-ray it and see what was going on. When she left the room, she must have found the doctor because he came in and immediately recognized it as a osteochondroma. He had them do the x-ray and it definitely showed the tumor. He said it is a benign bone tumor, found mostly in children. He said they run in families and asked if anyone else in the family had a history of them. Not that I know of. Apparently they're rare enough that he had all three of his assistants come in one by one and try to guess what it was. When they all failed, he educated them about what it was and the treatment.

When Isaac had the pin removed from his arm, the doctor also removed the tumor and sent it for testing. There is a 98% chance that it will be benign. That's pretty good odds! I asked why it happened while Isaac was in a cast and he told me it was just a coincidence. I know that Isaac is glad that he didn't have the cast on for much longer because as the tumor grew, it was pressing up more and more against the cast. Isaac had complained of a lot of discomfort in that area. When he got the cast off, we could see that the skin over the bump on his arm was very red and irritated.

We arrived at the surgery center bright and early, their first case of the day. (The doctor had 10 more surgeries in his schedule for the day. No fun for him!) I'd been sick all weekend with a cold and when the receptionist heard me sniffling, she was concerned that I might be passing on my virus to others. When I went back with Isaac to the pre-op area, I was careful not to sniffle or cough. I did pretty good until I got a tickle in my throat, started coughing, and couldn't stop. The nurse brought me a glass of water and it helped, for about 1 minute. My eyes were watering with the effort to not cough while I was trying to talk with the anesthesiologist. He must have wondered what I was crying about. I finally couldn't hold it in anymore and started coughing. The nurse brought me a cough drop. Relief! Once Isaac went back to the OR, I hurried down the hall to the restroom where I could cough, cough, cough and blow my nose like crazy. With just one more trip to the bathroom to repeat coughing and nose blowing, I was able to remain in the waiting room during his surgery without drawing the attention of the receptionist.

Isaac felt like quite a celebrity in the OR because the doctor's assistants were there to observe. The doctor told us the tumor looked benign and we'll know for sure when the pathology report comes back. Within three hours, we were on our way home again. He felt the pain of the surgery a lot sooner this time because they didn't use a nerve block. When we brought Isaac home from the hospital when he was born, we stopped at a hardware store to buy a new light fixture. ( I knew once we got home and the adrenalin I was running on wore off, I wouldn't be up to going out again.) We stopped on the way home this time too, to pick up some groceries at Cash and Carry. Luckily, Isaac was a good sport both times about our stops. Once home, he asked me, "Did they take the tumor off with a hammer?!" I told him, "just about". The doctor told me they use something similar to a chisel. Isaac had stayed up most of the night before reading a book so he was a lot sleepier after the surgery this time. As soon as his pain meds kicked in, he was snoozing on the couch. Isaac isn't very patient or fun to be around when he's in pain. But, once those meds kick in, he's a happy wild guy.

Isaac got a souvenir from his broken arm, the Steinmann pin that was used to hold his bone in place while it healed. He says he wants to turn it into a bracelet or necklace!

A few fun adventures

2011-10-16T17:41:00.000-07:00

Whatcom Historical Railway
Elizabeth and I went on a field trip sponsored by Stillaguamish Valley School to the Lake Whatcom Railway. We arrived at the railway's location and were first able to get a bit of a tour. They have a 100 year old steam engine on the premises but they don't use it because it costs too much to operate. The owner said it costs $1000 to take it out of the train barn and the last time they did it was for his birthday. He said it was a pretty expensive birthday present. We rode the railway pulled by a diesel engine. The Whatcom railway definitely feels like a mom and pop kind of operation. The engines and cars are not in pristine condition. There was visible rust on both inside and outside the cars. They had a bathroom on the train. Inside they offered a portable chemical toilet and a bottle of hand sanitizer. We were told that upgrading the bathrooms is their next goal. I think that's a good idea! We were told the cars were heated, and technically they were. They used portable propane heaters while the cars were parked but once underway, there was no more heat. But, listening to the owner talk about his engine, I could tell it's a true labor of love for him to keep the railway going.

Elizabeth's first stop was the dining car. I gave her a quarter and she happily returned with five pieces of licorice. The train left Wickersham (north of Sedro Wolley) and headed up the tracks. I kept waiting for it to pick up speed but it continued to creep along. Apparently, they don't have much track to use so they stretch out the trip by taking it slow. I know I could ride my bike as fast as we were going! We passed through a short tunnel, went along a lake shore and were soon at the stopping point. They had a picnic area there as well as an old hand pump cart which the kids could operate.

A short walk from the picnic area brought us to this waterfall. It was quite attractive as it cascaded down the rock shelf. It seemed like it belongs in the tropics, not in rainy Western Washington!

The school put every one's name in hat and drew the names of three children who would get to ride in the engine on the way back. Elizabeth was one of the lucky ones! She had a great time up there. Her one regret was that she'd left the camera back with me. The school is providing a lot of field trip opportunities this year that Elizabeth and I will be able to take advantage of. I'm counting those field trips as our mom and me day. This was our first one and it was definitely a success.

Dad and Miriam Day

Dode took Miriam to a pumpkin patch/corn maze for her special day with dad. One of her favorite things to do at the farm was run around in a giant Hamster Wheel.

Here she is suited up and ready to go.

As they walked, the wheel rolled across the ground.

They also had a fishing pond and Miriam caught and released lots of fish.

This rubber duck regatta looks like a lot of fun. Maybe I can do something similar for day camp?

playing in the corn filled sandbox

Getting pulled around on the train

in the maze

bridges like these gave them a bird's eye view of the maze

They went on a hay ride. Miriam thought it was way too boring. Here she is taking a nap because it's not "exciting enough".

The hay ride took them out to a field where they watched pumpkins being launched in this compressed air canyon. It would launch the pumpkins over 200 yards.

They finished off with getting a pumpkin. Our rule? You have to be able to carry it. She wanted one that was almost up to her waist but couldn't budge it. She had a great day and couldn't wait to tell me about all the fun things they did when she got home.

The Funny Things Kids Say

a few fun things we've heard lately....

Anastaya was going babysitting. The mom asked if Miriam would come too to play with her son. When I asked Miriam if she'd go if I paid her a dollar to "help", she cocked her head to the side and said, "How about $2?" Silly girl!

William (who has a milk allergy) watching Elizabeth stir up some extra chocolately chocolate milk, "Is there milk in chocolate milk Elizabeth?"

Miriam loves to cuddle at night instead of going to bed. We sent her on her way, telling her it was a school night and she needed her rest. "I liked it better when I could still cuddle" I told her, "But now you're a big girl who goes to school." Her response, "I'm still little!"

Miriam and William looking at photos of our trip to Disneyland & Universal Studios.

William, "Is he real?"

Miriam, "Well, I don't see a zipper so he must be real!"

More about me

2011-10-13T13:03:00.000-07:00

I started my blog as a way to keep a far away grandma up to date on the family. It's become a way to keep lots of people informed about the details of our lives. Blogging is a form of social media that I've embraced whole heartily. Recently, I've begun using another form of social media. I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. They have begun a media campaign where we live to educate people about the church. The "I am a Mormon" ad campaign is an invitation for those unfamiliar with our faith to learn more about the church by learning more about its members.

As part of the media campaign, church members have the opportunity to create a "profile" about who they are and why they belong to the church. I found it quite challenging to dispense the essence of who I am down into three paragraphs. As you read the blog, I'm guessing you can infer what my values are. The profile I created sets them out in plain English.

My profile is here

My church has been in the news a lot lately due to some remarks made by Robert Jeffers. Romney not a Christian. When did the definition of a Christian get narrowed to exclude certain groups of believers? I don't believe the definition of Christian is tied to one religion but is instead something that is related to an individual's conversion to Jesus Christ and a desire to follow his teachings. I believe there are Christians throughout the world who belong to many different faiths. The word "Christian" can be used as both a noun and an adjective. I'm trying to live both uses of the word. In my life, I want to be a Christian (a follower of Jesus Christ) by being Christian (having a heart filled with charity and a desire to act). Does that make sense? Maybe someone reading my profile will decide that, yes, Mormons are Christian. At least, I'm trying to be!

Blenders, Conference, and an injury

2011-10-09T18:00:00.000-07:00

A New Blender
I’ve been on the green smoothie habit for almost a year now. That means I use my blender on a daily basis, and sometimes more than once. My mom and Greg had bought me a powerful blender a few years ago for Christmas that made a smooth tasty drink. It had just one small problem. In order to allow for easy cleaning, the bottom of the blender was removable. How convenient! What’s not convenient is when the bottom comes off when you’ve got a quart of green goo in the blender. For unknown reasons, sometimes even though the bottom was screwed on as tight as could be, when I set it on the blender and turned it on, it would come unscrewed. It usually waited until I walked away from it, insuring that maximum green goo could leak out all over the counter and spray everything in the vicinity.

this is a minor mess that I caught quickly

It happened the day before I received my new Vitamix and I told my old blender, "Your days are numbered!"

The blender was very well made. It had a little plastic gutter inside so that if you ever dripped anything down around the top part of it, it would still stay dry where the motor was. Each time the blender unscrewed (sometimes up to 50% of uses), green goo would get inside the blender on this gutter and I had no way to clean it out. (Dode took it apart for me one time when I shorted it out by tipping it upside down while cleaning it after an accidental green goo release, revealing the very stinky fermenting green goo gutter.) When I’d move the motor base on the counter, a cloud of fruit flies would erupt from within. Sound like fun? All this story about the blender to lead you to my new purchase, a Vitamix. We had some money in our vacation fund left over after Wyoming and I selfishly used it to upgrade my blender. I was so excited to not have to worry about my smoothies making a mess on the counter! It came on a Friday.

I made a smoothie. Boy that thing is loud! After I was done, it sat on counter. Jacob decided to make a smoothie. On my old blender, first you pushed the “on” button, then you told it how fast to go. On the Vitamix, “on” means “Go now!” Things were not set up correctly and the plunger that was resting in the blender jar came flying out of the blender and nailed him in the head. Both Jacob and the plunger were injured in the event. Now my plunger has a gash on it, letting green goo inside. The fruit flies have happily relocated to the plunger. Not even one day of use and it’s damaged! One of the joys of parenting.

General Conference
Over the weekend, Dode took Isaac down to Salt Lake City to attend General Conference. (What is General Conference?) Dode's dad, Lynn, was willing to make the trip with them. The tickets to conference are free but it can be difficult to get them. Lynn was able to get four tickets so they were able to add Isaac Colson to the trip. Due to a conference, Dode had gone in early at work and stayed late a few times in the week leading up to the trip and was able to get off early. They pulled out of the driveway at 3:30 pm Friday, stopped to pick up Isaac Colson, and headed off. They made it to Utah at 7:00 am the next day. After leaving their things at Dode’s cousin Lee Wright’s house, they set off to do some sight seeing in Utah. Isn't that what every one would feel like doing after driving all night?

on the shores of the Great Salt Lake

They visited a Kennecott Copper Mine. That little thing behind the Dump Truck? A semi truck!

Isaac Colson could not stop talking about the size of the trucks.

"This is the Place" monument

The boys had no interest in passing the McDonalds you see in the background, but after eating at In-n-Out, they decided we made the right choice

General Conference happens every six moths and is broadcast over the Internet, but we wanted Isaac to be able to experience attending one of them in person. We believe there is a strength to be gained by sitting in a building with the Prophet of God, 12 Apostles, and many other church leaders, as well as a large gathering of saints. Living in Washington, I don’t know that he can appreciate the size of the church (over 14 million members). Can anyone appreciate belonging to an organization with 14 million members? He must have had a bit of feeling for how many people were at the Priesthood (Men's) Session when it took them almost an hour just to get out of the parking garage!

They were also able to attend the Sunday morning session and have lunch before heading towards home.

I'll be happy when the boys can start smiling again in photos!

reflecting pool on Temple Square (where General Conference is held)

They had great seats. Look how close to the front they are!

(This is a building that holds 25,000 people)

Lynn, our Isaac, Isaac Colson, Dode

They ate in the cafeteria in the Church Office Building with Dode's cousins and Uncle Jack.

Isaac Colson, Isaac, Dode, Jack Dickson, Lynn Dickson

(They were able to get the tickets from Jack who is a General Authority in the church.)

There is a lunch counter behind them. The employees at the cafeteria line up the day's newspapers on the wall behind the counter. People getting a quick lunch stand there and read the paper while eating. I wonder if they all shift down as they go?!

They stopped for the night at Dode’s cousin Andrea’s home in Boise. They made it home around 4:00 pm on Monday. It was a lot of driving for them! The trip would have worked out better if we had functioning air conditioning in the car. It’s hard to hold a conversation when you’re driving down the freeway almost 80 mph with the windows open!

very enthused boys (30 minutes from home)

Typical traveling van, the floor is a mess!

Visiting with Grandma D

One of the reasons Dode had to hurry home from General Conference was because his Grandma Dearinger was in town for the weekend. We were able to have a nice visit with her and Uncle Jerry here at the house.

Who is that extra kid who keeps showing up in the family photos?

None other than Big Isaac (Colson)

Jacob's cut
(All the photos for this story are at the bottom. If your squeamish, don't scroll down past the text!)

Thursday evening Jacob made himself a tasty chocolate peanut butter milk shake (vegan). When he finished drinking it, he set it beside the computer. Later, he got up from the computer and knocked the glass down. On the way down it hit the fireplace ledge and shattered. One of those pieces dug into the top of his foot. Blood was instantly everywhere. Isaac worked on the blood, I worked on the glass, and Jacob worked on the direct pressure. He’d managed to get a pretty significant gash, we could see the vein exposed. We bandaged it up but within an hour, the bandage fell off due to too much blood. Dode and I went over to Haggen and bought some butterfly strips. I used them to pull the skin together and close it up. It looked pretty good and I went to bed. Jacob decided to put his shoe on and he re-opened it. I woke up in the morning to find him on the couch, his foot in the air and sock bloody. Then I learned he’s gone into his room to get something with that bloody sock, leaving behind a trail of bloody footprints on the light tan carpet.

He spent the day laying on the couch with his foot elevated and it looked like he was on the road to recovery. I got after him for laying around all day so he relocated to his room. Just walking up the stairs opened up the cut and he left another trail of blood across his carpet. I decided we'd have to go to the doctor. Zaycon was delivering a bulk buy of bacon that I had to help with but once we were done, we headed to the doctor. It looked much better than it had the night before when I'd pulled the skin back together and the doctor said he didn't think it was a full thickness cut. Doesn't seeing yellow fat and the walls of the vein count as full thickness? He put some steri strips on it, wrapped it in sticky gauze and told him to not bend his foot for a while. Jacob has two toes that have gone numb. He told us the nerves will grow back at the rate of 1 cm/month so in three months, his toes should feel normal again.

So, in three days Jacob has managed to damage the blender, break two glasses, and stain the carpet in blood. We reacted to each of these events in a reasonable manner, realizing that things happen. Yet, he told us last week that we haven't taught him properly to take care of things. So, we tried asking him to please not bang the vacuum around and it turned into a big fight. Sometimes you just can't win!

Photos: (contain blood)

applying direct pressure immediately after

checking out the cut

1st time it re-opened

that goodness for the Bissell Spotbot

The Great Cat Catch and Release

2011-10-07T07:38:00.000-07:00

It all started last spring. We get stray cats at our house from time to time. We’ll see them for a while and then they’ll disappear. Last spring, one of the cats had kittens in the garage. The kids thought they were so cute and really wanted us to take one in. (I resisted their pleas.) I noticed the momma cat around the house and she was down to skin and bones. My heart was moved towards her and I went and bought a bag of cat food. It took her a while to trust it enough to eat it, but once she started eating regularly, she soon looked much more healthy. She was still wild as could be. There would be mornings when she’d come looking for food and find the bowl empty. I’d go out and fill it up and she wouldn’t be back for hours. As time went on, if I’d forget, she'd sit at the door and meow. When I would go out to feed her, she’d run away and again wouldn’t come back to eat for hours. As the months went by, she became more relaxed around us and would only wait a few minutes after I filled the bowl before she ate. She eventually started hanging out by the food bowl relaxing. If people had come over, they’d have been sure we had a cat because she was always laying around somewhere. But, she was and is a wild cat.

Time went on and she had another crop of kittens. She continued eating from the food at the house and I waited for her to bring her kittens over. Never happened. So, I brought food out to the garage/barn and started feeding the kittens too. I realized that we had a lot of cats and needed to do something about it before we were overrun. There is an animal hospital near us that will spay/neuter feral cats for free. I made an appointment to bring the cats in. I used “live animal” traps which allow the cat to go inside to get the bait and closes behind them. I put one out and caught a kitten the first night I tried. I released the kitten into the bathroom and re-set the trap. I figured the bathroom was the best place for it to wait since there was nowhere for it to hide and I could easily re-capture it. I caught another kitten and soon kittens were tearing around the bathroom going berserk. .

a note on the bathroom door hoping to prevent an accidental release

I thought there were four kittens and a mom and realized if I was going to get them all caught, I needed a different plan. I borrowed a cat carrier from a friend, shoved the kittens I’d already caught inside and tried again. Then, I caught a grown up cat, but not the one I was looking for! I think she was one of the first set of kittens, now grown up and a momma herself. She was totally wild and she was occupying my trap. I needed to get her out so I could get back to trapping.

2 kittens caught

I looked around for the thick leather gloves we use for the wood stoves but couldn’t find them. I improvised with a pair of rubber garden gloves covered by oven mitts. The cat traps are so long, I had to lay on the ground and put my arm in up to the elbow in order to reach the cat. So, there I was laying on the bathroom floor trying to wrench the cat out of the trap who was spitting and hissing and biting at my gloved hands. Dode called and saved the day. He said Jared Dickson also had a live trap. Hooray! I could leave the momma cat in the trap and still keep trapping kittens, always hoping for the original momma. Elizabeth and I picked up Jared’s trap. On our way there, I told her I hated to be wasting time that we could be catching cats since we didn’t have a trap out. She told me she feels the same way when she’s fishing and she catches a fish or gets her line tangled. She hates to be missing out on the fish she could be catching. I got to worrying that if I caught the momma next, I’d be stuck again. On our way back home, we bought another trap at the co-op in town. We were soon back in cat catching business.

Elizabeth and I had a hard time getting homeschooling done. Every 30 minutes were were sneaking out to the garage to see if we’d caught anything. Once we caught 2 kittens at once and that was sure exciting for the kids. While Anastaya was carrying the trap back to the house, she was monkeying around with it and managed to open it. One of the kittens was soon racing across the driveway to safety. We went to bed that night with a total of 5 cats caught, the momma (the wrong one) and 4 kittens. Dode and I were laying in bed talking when we heard a lot of yowling. I thought it was the kittens in their carrier but it turns out we’d caught another one. Jacob was carrying it over from the garage and the momma cat was following right behind at his heels. She was yowling, her kitten was yowling, Jacob was freaking out that he was going to get attacked. He set the trap down outside and came in to get me. The momma sat right down next to her kitten that was in the trap. I came down and brought the trap inside and she started pacing in front of the house. Jacob felt like a monster for taking the kitten away from the momma. He said he didn’t have the heart for any more cat catching. I looked at the momma and thought, “That does not look like the momma I’m looking for. We either have three momma cats or the other cat has sprung the trap.” When I checked I saw that she’d somehow gotten out.

I went back to bed and I was so mad I couldn't sleep. We should have had 7 cats captured but two had gotten away. And one of those was a momma cat who would soon have another set of kittens and we’d start all over. It wasn’t 10 minutes before Isaac came running in to say that they’d caught two kittens in one trap again. When we looked, we saw that we’d recaptured the momma and a kitten. The romantic whimsical part of me says that she knew all but one of her kittens was captured and she got out of the cage to go to it. Then, she sacrificed herself and her last kitten by entering the trap to be with the rest of her family. (She’s probably just a dumb cat though!) We left the traps out overnight still hoping for the momma that got us into this mess in the first place. In the morning, she was nowhere to be seen but we had caught an opossum!

I borrowed Dode’s truck because I didn’t want scared cats to pee on the van carpet. Elizabeth and I loaded up the cats and headed to the vet. All the way there, there was such a yowling of frightened kittens you wouldn’t believe! I felt like a big meanie and knew that the last 24 hours and the next 24 hours were going to be some of the worst of these cats lives. We got there and I pulled out my trap with two cats inside and my carrier with 5 cats inside. At the vet I was told, you need an individual carrier for eat animal. What?! After thinking about it, during which I worried, "what will I do, I can’t keep catching them each day", they decided to accept the cats and gave me until noon to return with the required carriers. I got home from the vet and got out my phone book to start calling everyone I knew who might have a carrier. Together with the traps at home, I had a total of 6 carriers.

Elizabeth and I headed back up with our carriers. Elizabeth enjoyed drooling at all the cats who were available for adoption. I don't think she considers the fact that we'd brought 7 cats in that morning to mean we have a cat as a pet. Adult cats were free and she was pretty disappointed we didn't bring one home with us.

I think I spent about four hours between driving back and forth to the vet and doing what needed to be done at the vet. We had to make our third and last trip when the cats were ready to come home. When we got there, I saw a line of carriers stretching from one side of the waiting room to the other. I counted, 1,2,3....7 and realized they were all mine! The back of Dode's pick up was completely filled with carriers.

We were under instruction to keep them in the carriers until morning. Elizabeth's speech therapist knew someone looking for a barn cat so she said she'd come take one (I talked her into two!). The kittens were not happy to be separated into different carriers. Elizabeth was worried about them being outside in the cold so she put each carrier in the laundry room. Once they woke up from the anesthesia, they started yowling and meowing. It went on all night!

I woke Elizabeth up early because she wanted to be there for the great cat release. (I couldn't take the sad sounds coming out of the laundry room any longer.) We brought the carriers outside and lined them up. I counted to three and opened the trap of the momma cat. She was crouched in the back and didn't want anything to do with leaving. Then, I opened up the kitten carriers one by one. They were also too scared to run out. I tried tipping the kittens out of their carriers but their little claws were clenched tightly inside. I had to reach inside and grab each kitten out. When the first one ran away, the momma cat was quick to leave the safety of her cage and run after it. The next released kitten high tailed it to the garage so the momma and her 1st kitten took off there. The momma cat spent the next little while running back and forth in front of the garage to gather up her babies. The little family huddled together and stared at us. I had the feeling that momma cat knew she was missing a few babies (who were still tucked away in the laundry room). She finally gave up and led her family into the safety of the garage. We saw her leading her little family around later so apparently, all is well in the cat world.

Talk about two full days of cats! And the best part? I never caught the original momma cat who is probably pregnant so I'll have to catch her and her babies while trying to keep the cats already fixed out of the traps. Each cat that went to the vet had the tip of their left ear cut off. Apparently that is the universal sign that a feral cat has been fixed. At least I won't keep bringing the same cats back to the vet!

2 years with Tulalip

2011-10-03T06:41:00.000-07:00

Dode has worked for the Tulalip Tribes for 2 years as of August. He works in the GIS (mapping department.) Dode's job is a pretty good fit for him. Instead of doing the same thing every day, (something he grew to hate working in a sawmill) each day brings a new adventure.

One of the things he enjoys doing is research. He'll travel all over the Pacific Northwest to dig through some one's file cabinets (or boxes in a store room) for documents. He's quite proud to carry a "Researcher ID" for the National Archives (there's one based in Seattle). He will happily spend hours digging through records looking for one piece of information about the land. Click here for a previous post about his research on a section corner

Another of the things Dode enjoys is "going out in the field". Miriam really wants to visit him at work someday so she can see this allusive field. I think she'd be disappointed to know that all that means is "working outside". All that research he does is followed by him getting into his trusty survey rig (a drug seizure vehicle) and trying to find the things he researched hidden away on the reservation. Each trip to the field is like a treasure hunt. Just like geocaching, but instead of finding the cache at the end, he finds survey monuments.

These are the kinds of things he's looking for

Nothing is more exciting for him than finding an original monument, set when the land was divided for the very first time.

Original witness tree set in 1859.

It helps surveyors find the corner.

There is a lot of undeveloped land left on the reservation. Getting to the area where the survey markers are supposed to be is sometimes an adventure. He's been to areas where he's sure that he has got to be the first person to step foot there in 150 years, and then he'll look down and see a fresh beer can. He's always finding golf balls in the craziest places.

Here he is headed down an old logging road in his survey rig.

Obviously it doesn't see much traffic!

One of the things a surveyor does is leave tracks for those who will come behind him. Dode puts out these orange plastic posts to give the next surveyor a hand. Here he is marking the location with his GPS.

Success! He's got a machete in hand to clear the area around the monument.

Dode's boss is a tiny Japanese lady. She doesn't like him to go out in the field by himself for safety reasons. Dode's two other coworkers are pretty burned out on trekking through the woods. Sometimes he can find someone from the Forestry or Natural Resource Departments to go with him. Eiko (his boss) came along on this adventure because there wouldn't be any bush whacking. She was pretty impressed with all the back roads and gates they went through to get there. Dode heads out in the same clothes he wears to work. Eiko changed into the outfit above to protect her professional clothes. She's got a metal detector in her hand.

Sometimes Dode finds other interesting things in the field.

This moth was sitting on the monument he went out to find.

He'd been trying to get to Ross Lake on the reservation for a long time. This lake is tiny compared to the Ross Lake in the North Cascades.

Something else he enjoys is the emphasis on continuing education. I don't think many weeks go by that Dode doesn't have a webinar, class, or training to attend. He's constantly learning new things. Exciting classes like, "Taming the Wild Loxodrome" which taught "pitfalls to avoid when applying plane surveying computations to the solution of astro-geodetic based PLSS corner restoration computations." Dode says that's always helpful when he's doing cadastral work. What? Another training this year, Update on Gravity for the Redefinition of the American Vertical Datum. I've learned that when I ask him about his trainings, I don't ask what training he attended. I ask what he learned and how it will help him be a better surveyor.

His job isn't perfect (what job is?). He doesn't like the inflexibility of working for a government. There's no way to work through lunch and get off early. He has to log in and log out each day within a five minute window. If he gets to work 10 minutes early, he has to wait until it's 5 minutes before starting time or he won't be able to log in. If he's involved in something, he has a hard time remembering to stop and log in. Then, his boss has to go in and fix his time card. He doesn't like the paperwork that is involved in a bureaucracy. Say he wants to buy a shovel. First he has to go over to Home Depot and pick out the one he wants. Then, he needs to go complete the paperwork to buy it. Then back for the purchase. Then, more paperwork after the purchase. It's the same when he takes a training. Paperwork before to say why he should get to go. Paperwork after to say how the tribe will benefit from what he learned. The pay also isn't the best. Dode's boss has tried to get him a raise several times. The raise requests have been approved by her boss but her boss' boss has vetoed them. Oh how fun to work for a government! But we're happy to have a job in this economy, especially one where Dode can continue to use his surveying skills and add to his knowledge base.

Back to school

2011-09-26T07:39:00.000-07:00

The vacations are over and it’s time for everyone to buckle down and get to work with school. The public schoolers started their schooling the week before we went to Winthrop. Those involved in “ALE” (Alternative Learning Environments aka my homeschoolers who attend Stillaguamish Valley School) began when we got back. School had been in session for over a week when I told Miriam I was really nervous about something. She said, “As nervous as you feel the night before the 1st day of school?” It was a perfect example of how she felt leading in to the school year. But, now that she’s got the routine down, she loves school and only hates the early wake ups. William had no anxiety about school started again. In fact, all summer he kept asking me each morning if today was finally the day he got to go to school. Anastaya got to pick the family dinner for her 1st day of school and she picked Chicken Gyros, Greek Fries, and White Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecake. When it was Elizabeth’s turn to select the meal for her 1st day, she chose Red Robin.

Miriam and William ready for their 1st day

Elizabeth and I were talking about choices people make and I said to her, “Elizabeth, you’re never going to smoke are you?” She said, “No!” Then she thought about it for a minute and said, “Actually, I say now that I won’t ever smoke but pretty soon I’m going to be a teenager and it seems like teenagers sometimes do strange things. I hope I won’t ever smoke but I’m not a teenager yet.” How’s that for honesty!

Wednesday Isaac was able to get his cast off. After two months in it, he was more than ready to get the full use of his arm back. He was disappointed in how stiff his elbow and wrist are. When the nurse got his cast off, she remarked, "You've really used this waterproof cast!" Little pieces of algae and pine needles from Pearygyn Lake had made their way inside it.

His left arm is quite a bit smaller than the right!

William was with us because we started the morning with a doctor appointment for him. He's been wetting the bed every night for about a month and I wanted to make sure he didn't have an infection. (nope) William found the cast removal procedure very scary and spent most of the time peeking between his fingers as the cast was sawn and cut off.

Adding to his distress was the area where Isaac’s skin had grown into the casting material and bled when the gauze was ripped off. I wish I could say we are done dealing with the broken arm, but we aren't quite. In three weeks, Isaac will have another surgery to remove the rod. 10 days after that, he'll have the stitches out. So, by the end of October, we should be finished!

Wednesday night I gave myself a black eye. I was trying to take a hook off the wall and move it. I had the hammer above my head, trying to get a good grip on the nail to pry it out. Well, the hammer slipped and slammed into my cheek bone. The bruising was immediate. Elizabeth was right beside me when I did it and she was immediately hugging me and asking if I was OK. I just wanted a few minutes to be sad for myself and not be the brave mommy but I turned and told her I would be fine. Jacob saw me and said, "You need to lie down with an ice pack, I'll make dinner!" I find it kind of strange that a lot of people are afraid to ask me what happened. They must think it's either a domestic problem or I got in a fight with someone.

Purple goes great with my green eyes!

Saturday Anastaya and William were able to go down to Tacoma to attend a family party with their grandpa.

We started our annual collection of firewood this week. Dode took the four oldest kids to a friend's house who had a bunch of trees on the ground. The kids and Dode spent three hours cutting, splitting, and stacking firewood into the trailer. It went as well as it usually did, everyone yelling at everyone, Elizabeth in tears, Dode running the chainsaw and unable to intervene. The kids got tired of working and got the great idea to leave the middle of the trailer empty and start stacking at the back as if the trailer was full of wood. They weren't very happy when Dode wandered over and said, "Time to re-stack it the right way". They got home and Jacob said to me, "If you want to guarantee that we hate each other, have us do firewood." With just 3-4 more loving family trips to get wood, we should have enough for a winter.