Monday, June 25, 2007

It was the best of times and it was the worst...


Watch Out! It's Bug-girl!


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Our Lil' Firecracker checkin' out the tent.


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The Menace Twins when it was still fun camping.

Okay, I have weird markings after my comments on the pictures that I can't get rid of. Oh well. I guess we will just have to deal with them:)

We went camping this weekend to celebrate our son's birthday. We live in the sticks so where did we go camping? That's right! Right outside of Olympia! The day we got there was really nice. We picked up groceries on the way there. We got to the park. We set up camp and the other family members that were camping with us showed up. The weather was just right. The kids played with rope and swung from the trees in our camp site. The guys took the kids on a walk and I sat and read my Bible and relaxed in an "easy-chair." It was quite lovely. We had hamburgers and enjoyed camp food. We had friends come visit us over from their camp site. We ate S'mores. We finally all went to bed. Then the trouble started. The baby didn't sleep well, we had some constant trips to the bathroom and about 2:00 a.m. it downpoured. It didn't just sprinkle, it actually puddled in our tent. It didn't let up the rest of the morning. We finally packed our sodden stuff up and took our rumpled selves (in body and in spirit) home. It was one of those trips that you learn a lot from. Either that or you allow it make you bitter and you never want to go camping again. We are going with the former. Our tent and camp chairs are sitting in our front yard, drying out. I put all of our pillows in the dryer yesterday when we got home so everyone would have dry ones to sleep on.
I learned that next time we will take some tarps, the port-a-crib and the port-a-potty!

Birthday Boy


Here he is! Our SamBoy is now eight years old! We had a good party at Oma's house. Friends and family came for cupcakes, some incredible homemade ice cream and to play in an extremely cold pool. The kids played in the pool while the adults watched from the sidelines. We remember wanting to swim badly enough as children to risk hypothermia, but these days it doesn't look as inviting. Our birthday boy received some nice things that day. He got a handmade quilt from Oma, a CD/MP3 player from the fam. and birthday money from the extended fam.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY SAMBOY, WE LOVE YOU!!!!!

Sunday, June 17, 2007

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY

Just wanted to put a quick post on here for Father's Day. Happy Father's Day to the Ole Daddy Rabbit. He got a new shirt. Unfortunately, I have been running a little behind and didn't get all the kids to hand print it like I have in years past. We will have to rectify that soon enough. It has started to be a tradition to get a new shirt with all the current children's names and handprints on it. Each year we seem to be running out of room. I am going to try my hand at ironing on a picture this time. At least he has a cool shirt to wear today. It says,"DAD, a boy's first hero and a girl's first love." It will be even cooler when I get the picture on there:)

Happy Father's Day to all the Dads in our life as well!

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Funny Kids



I took some pictures so I could send one to my dad for Father's Day. This is the one we thought was the best. It is definately a good view into their personalities. I think they look pretty cute.

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Keeping it up

I need to post something so I remember to keep our blog spot up. So here goes:

Fri. night the boys had a baseball game. They went out early for batting practice. The other team never showed up. They went to the wrong place (even though our coach gave them his cell phone number and directions). I feel badly for those parents. They drove an hour for their kids to not play. I am not sure if we are rescheduling or if they just forfeited. We will have to see. If they forfeited then we have a tournament this weekend and baseball is done.

Mon. the boys also had a piano recital. They both did very well. The oldest really surprised us. Their teacher is really amazing. She gets children to really learn to play. She is worth so much more than we pay her. I am glad to have her for such reasonable rates though. So they are done with piano for the summer.

I ordered school books and such for next year. I love getting new books. We ordered from the Timberdoodle company. They had it here in three days. I was so impressed. They also include a free book with every order. We received Boyhood and Beyond. It looks like a wonderful book. I think all of our boys will get a lot out of it.

I had a wonderful English teacher in high school. He had a sign posted in his classroom. The sign had the word "alot" on it with one of those red circles with a slash through it. I always remember that a lot is two words and not one because of that sign. That was half my life time ago. It is funny how some things stick with you. That could be another post; sayings that stick with us. If I had a bigger readership I might take a poll:)

The Ole Daddy Rabbit shot our problem raccoon early this morning. He took no pleasure in killing it. Unfortunately, the animal had gotten to be a problem. It had taken to appearing at all times of the day and night. It was getting bold enough to take on our cat, rabbit or maybe even one of the small fry. It got taken out with one shot (pretty impressive really) so it didn't suffer. Thus ends the chapter of raccoon watching at our house.

Next time I will think up funny sayings.

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

IN PRAISE OF BUCCA

I have a really good friend that my children affectionately call "BUCCA." When she comes over my children can sound like a bunch of chickens,"Bucca, bucca, bucca!" She did leave me high and dry for a week to camping with her family. During that time while she was enjoying the outdoors and valiantly protecting people from dastardly varmints, I had to soldier on with school and the loneliness that comes with husbands involved in household projects. How did I ever survive? Some how I managed and she is now back. I did get to talk to her on Monday as well as winning a contest. She is a good listener, smart and witty, has hair that I have paid way to much money to try to have, but never got and for at least 6 weeks I had more children than she:) She loves her husband and family, is a good example when it comes to hospitality in her home and against any sane reason seems to like me. She also has commented on our family blog, some of which has inspired this post. Happy Wed. Bucca!

Monday, June 04, 2007

Cookies and Other Excuses

I had started blogging again with every intention of keeping up with it. I was doing well until I hit a problem with our cookies on our webspace. Since I don't even know what a cookie really is I used the old stand by my mother taught me. She used it with appliances. When something was on the fritz she believes in praying over and leaving it alone. If you leave it alone the appliance will usually heal itself. (That is a joke for the humorily impaired) It seems to work with blog stuff as well. I didn't even attempt to follow the instructions from Blogger in order to fix the problems. Lo and behold! My husband tried to log-in today and it came up with no problems what so ever. Guess my mom was right.

Our weekend started out with a baseball game. The boys won! That is the first game they have won this season. It was a bittersweet victory since the opposing team has never won a game at all. We sure were glad for our boys. It is still hard to see those little guys on the opposing team trying with all their might to be good little sportsmen. They all did a good job.

Sat. The Ole Daddy Rabbit had to go help his buddy break in his new shotgun. They both killed a good number of clays! That'll learn 'em. We also tried to put up one of those Easy Set pools up at Oma's house. It claims to be ready for water in 15 min. Whatever! Maybe for the super gifted, but it took us a bit longer. Then we had technical difficulties that had to be smoothed out with brute strength. Ah well! It is up now. We BBQed on Sunday after church and the kids got blue lips trying out the pool. It is quite funny that they can be shaking all over, quivering lips and all, and claim to not be cold so they don't have to get out. We remember doing the same thing, though.

Mon. the oldest boy went off to do his testing, as required by homescool law here. I jumped on the computer to check e-mail and a couple of my favorite blogs. I got a lovely surprise: I won some books from one of my favorite bloggers of all time. Carmon at Buried Treasure usually has something thought-provoking to say. Her blog is often subject for conversation at our house. She usually stands on the same side of the fence we do on many important subjects. She has a great way of addressing controversial issues. She does that so well, I figure to leave that all in her domain. We mostly post our family news and such here. Carmon just celebrated 6 years of faithful blogging. In celebration of this event she was giving away books to some one that left a comment for that post. Mondays aren't always bad:)