Fall Fun

How can it be that October is over half over!?! In a blink of an eye, it will be Thanksgiving and then Christmas and then 2010! But before we get there, we have Halloween and a whole slew of birthdays in the family. Hannah and Justin have picked out their Halloween costumes. For the 2nd year, Owen insists he won't wear one even though last week, while walking Hannah and Justin to their classes at school, he wore a Power Ranger mask. Next on the list was getting pumpkins. Every year we do a trip to the Pumpkin Patch, but so far this year, we haven't gone to one unless you count the small patch at McDonald's farm (Grandpa Mike's). Going to Grandpa and Grandma's Farm is one of the kids' new favorite things to do. They have chickens and cows (three mommas and three babies), and they get tractor rides. Grandpa did grow a few pumpkins for the grandkids, and we found some good ones.

Justin driving the tractor while Hannah rides with cousins in the bucket

Future Jack o' Lanterns

Owen loves sitting on the tractor

Fall also brings the first program of the school year at Joyful Learning Christian Preschool, where Owen has been enjoying school. Here is a photo of Owen not looking too excited. He didn't really sing or participate much, but he did stay in his seat up front, so I was happy about that. The next program will be at Christmastime. We'll see how it goes then.

There hasn't really been much else going on. We've all stayed healthy for the most part for this month. Now if we can just stave off the flu (swine or otherwise).

QUARANTINED!!!!

That is what is going to be posted on our front door if we come down with anything else in this house. It's only been 4 weeks into the school year and only a few days into the official fall season, but we have already been hit with 2 major illnesses. Actually Justin has been hit the hardest--poor guy. Two weeks ago, he came down with the stomach flu and missed 2 days of school. He was better in a couple days, but then the rest of us came down with it. It was a pretty quick bug, but still took its toll, especially since Dale was out of town at the time. He said it was actually better that he was gone because with both of us not feeling well, we both would've been battling for the most pity and downtime. So we finally got over that and everyone got back to school, and I thought things would finally get into a routine and then this week Justin came down with Hand, Foot, Mouth disease. Basically he had a fever and his entire tongue was like one big canker sore. I could not even imagine the pain. He has been miserable. He missed another 3 days of school, which I think is about all he missed total last year. He finally went back today because the fever has been gone, but the sores can last for up to 10 days. I really hope they go away soon, and I hope that Hannah and Owen don't get it. So far, they haven't shown any signs. So I hope this is the end of all this and finally next week we can have a normal week, although with 3 kids, I guess no week is ever really normal.

In other news, a week ago, I took Hannah to the mall for one of those milestones that every girl does. We got her ears pierced. She has off and on wanted to do it for over a year, but really started getting serious about it in the past few weeks. I just wanted to make sure that when we did it, she wasn't going to freak out and/or back out. She was very nervous, especially since we had to wait in line for a little while, but she did great. There were 2 girls piercing her ears so that they could do both at once, but one of them actually didn't work, so they had to do that one over again anyway. They gave her the option to come back another day to get that one repierced or do it again now, and she just said "Now!" She was very brave and didn't shed a single tear. She is very proud of her earrings but can't wait for 6 weeks to be up so she can change earrings, especially since she has been a beading fool and making all kinds of earrings

Finally, it has been a long time since I have posted any scrappy stuff on my blog. There have been many months of awesome Scrapdango kits, but I haven't posted my kits or my creations. So here is the current Scrapdango kit that I got to work with. I actually helped design this kit as well, so I chose lots of things that I loved, but I know you will love it too if you're a scrapper. So here is the September kit featuring Dream Street SAM papers.

and here are the creations I've made with the kit so far.

(Click on the layout and you can see it much better)

And finally finally, I have also had a very exciting thing happen in my scrappy life. I found out a few months ago that a layout of mine that I submitted to Creating Keepsakes magazine was chosen to be published, and it finally came out in the current October 2009 issue. To those of you who don't scrapbook, this is big. Creating Keepsakes is the premier magazine in the scrapbook industry and I have been trying for years to no avail to get published by them. It was so exciting to see my layout, and even a photo of me in those pages. Here is a photo of the article that I was in. The article was called 10 Amazing Reader Pages, and my layout is the Little Man one in the upper right. That is a photo of Owen 2 years ago. Hannah was upset that the layout I had published wasn't of her, but such is life.

Alright, I guess that's all I have for now. It's Friday, and I'm very thankful for that. I hope you all have a great weekend.

TTFN--Ta Ta For Now

Summer Wrap-up and School Begins

About 2 weeks ago, I was getting ready to do a summer wrap-up post on all the happenings in our extremely busy month of August, and then my technical nightmare occurred!!!

My computer crashed and took the harddrive with it!!!!

If you know me very well, you know that I am very fond of my computer. I would say that next to my family and friends, this thing is just about my most precious possession (not that my family and friends are my possessions or can really be compared to it at all, but you know what I mean--I hope). More accurately, I guess I would say that the photos and files this thing houses are my most precious possessions. Thank the good Lord that my wonderful husband had the wherewithall to buy an external harddrive AND set it to automatically back up most of my harddrive each and every Monday. If he hadn't have done that, all my precious photos for the past 8 years of our lives would have been GONE!!! I would still be crying and probably shelling out hundreds of dollars to attempt to recover anything from my harddrive. The only casualties I can think of are one batch of photos from the McDonald family reunion that I had downloaded to the computer but they had not made it into the last backup (my sister has some of the same photos so I can get those from her), dozens if not hundreds of fonts I had downloaded for scrapbooking (yes, it was an obsession for awhile to download new fonts), and my entire Outlook email address book. If that's all I lost, I can handle it. We did give my computer to our tech savvy friend, Mr. Gove, and he did all he could to attempt to recover the harddrive to no avail. He proclaimed it DOA. So Dale and I went out and bought me a new laptop--a faster, bigger, and I suppose better one. I'm not real thrilled with the Windows Vista operating system, so I look forward to when I can upgrade to Windows 7 when it comes out. Anyway, enough about the computer. I'm up and running again, and that's all that matters.

So in an attempt to summarize the end of our summer quickly, I will list and provide highlights for the activities we had for the month of August.

• August 7th-9th was my 20 year high school reunion. How can I be that old? There was a get together at a local tavern on Friday night that just I went to. I almost didn't go to that, but was glad I did. There was a great turnout, and I got to see a lot of friends that I haven't seen since graduation or the 10-yr. reunion and some that I have kept in touch with but still hadn't seen for 3-5 years. Saturday was the main event. I mostly talked with my friend Gretchen while Dale spent just about the entire evening with her husband, Dana. I'm glad they had each other or Dale would've been lost I think.
• August 14th-16th was the McDonald family reunion. It was at a campground in Lincoln City, OR. The kids had a great time just riding bikes and running around in the big grassy area. We also took them to the beach where Owen and Collin played in the sand while the bigger kids tried to run in the surf, but the waves were so huge that they could've been knocked down and wash out to sea in an instant. I would show you pics but those are the ones I lost.
• August 25th Grandpa and Grandma Lough arrived and then the whole bunch of us piled in one car to Sunriver, OR on the 26th for 4 days. We stayed in a house there, which we have done for 3 summers now. It worked out perfectly for us. Dale and I had a room upstairs with the kids' room next door with 2 twin beds (Owen got thrown to the floor), and G'ma and G'pa had their own room and bath downstairs. Even though they lived in Corvalis, OR back when Dale's dad was doing his doctorate work at OSU and had been through Bend, G'ma and G'pa had never been to Sunriver and they just loved it. The kids loved having them there too. It was perfect weather and a very peaceful and relaxing little vacation.
• Grandpa left on the 31st to return to Indiana while Grandma stayed on for another week.

Here are some photos from our Sunriver trip:

Enjoying a day at the pool

Bike riding on the miles of trails is a favorite activity

The kids at the High Desert Musuem

Without much transition, the kids went back to school on Wed., Sept. 3rd, which was the first time I remember going back before Labor Day. Hannah started 3rd grade and Justin started 1st, so this is the first year that both of them go all day. Justin has the same teacher Hannah had for 1st grade, whom we just love, and he has done great from the start, although we're less than 2 weeks into the school year, and he has already stayed home the past 2 days because he's been sick and throwing up. Hannah once again is having a tough transition into school. We didn't know anything about her teacher, although from what I can tell so far, she's very nice. Hannah has shown the same signs of anxiety that she has the past two years and done a lot of crying before going to school. She even gets herself all worked up the night before, although it has gotten better the past couple days. She had a little bit of a setback today, but I hope that it all dies down soon. Thankfully, her teacher and the counselor (who she has a pretty good relationship with from the past couple years) are very supportive and helpful.

Hannah and Justin seemingly happy to go to school

Owen also started preschool this year. I can't believe my little baby is even old enough. He just turned 3 and seems so young to be going off to school. He also isn't potty trained yet (we're working on it), so luckily the school was lenient on that. I wasn't really sure how it would go because he kept insisting (complete with fist pump and foot stomp) that he did NOT want to go to school. Not even the chance to pick out a backpack or new shoes or anything helped to convince him. We did go for a visit, and he did decide it wasn't too awful. The teacher promised to have animals there for him to take care of. Well, on his first day, he ran right in and sat down at theanimal table to take his charge. I left and he seemed fine. I picked him up, and he was even wearing his huge backpack on his little shoulders. The second day didn't go so smoothly. The teacher had to pry him off my leg, and I left him crying, but they assure me he did okay and that they think he will do fine. We'll see how it goes next week. Now if we could just get him potty trained.

This is what I get when I ask Owen to smile

Owen happy with his animals at school

Whew, I promise you I'm almost done. With Grandma here over the Labor Day weekend (we asked her if she could stay until then) Dale and I took a belated 13th anniversary road trip. Last Friday, we drove to the Gorge Ampitheater in George, WA to see Dave Matthews Band. We were a little worried because they had cancelled a concert just 3 days earlier due to Dave's vocal chords, but the show went on, and it was great. We've been to the Gorge once before for Creationfest Christian concert, and while the crowd was definitely different (let's just say that many DMB fans enjoy smoking anything and everything), the view and the entertainment was just as spectacular. It was a perfect evening for the concert, but it was a late night. The concert ended, and we still had to drive an hour to glorious Ritzville, WA (in the middle of nowhere) to our hotel. I'm glad though that we did not decide to camp at the campground there at the ampitheater because I could not imagine what it would be like to camp with that let's just say "diverse" crowd. After our stay at the LaQuinta Inn in Ritzville we headed further East to Pullman, WA to visit WSU and see the Cougs play their home opening football game against Stanford. They lost 39-13, but they had some bright moments, and it was an improvement over the 58-0 loss last year. It was fun to walk around campus. So much has changed since we left over 13 years ago. Again, how can I be that old? One big change was that the bookstore (Bookie) that we knew was empty and moved into the newly remodeled CUB (Compton Union Building), which was awesome. We wish the CUB would've been like that when we were there. After the game, we drove up to Spokane to visit friends from college, Tim and Michele Greenwood. We used to go see them every year and go to a game prior to having kids, but that all ended once the kids came along. It was good to see them and hopefully we won't go that long before seeing them again. Then it was the long drive back home to the kids and Grandma. It was a lot of driving (riding for me) between all our locations over the weekend, but it was a fun trip.

Dale and I with our new Coug gear

A new statue outside the stadium

a tribute to the last living Butch

I posed with Butch

This photo is for G'pa Harold showing one of the windfarms

that are all up and down the Columbia Gorge

Happy Anniversary to my Hubby!

Well today is our 13th wedding anniversary. Despite the traditional unluckiness of the number, I have to say that I am still the luckiest girl in the world to have been married to Dale for all these years. I know, mush mush. ;) I cannot believe that we have been married for this long and have 3 kids and have gone through 3 houses (and an apartment), but I also hardly ever remember not being with him. It has been an amazing 13 years (actually almost 15 that we have been together).

Unfortunately, today we will hardly see each other. He has a work thing going on after work and then has soccer after that. I am subbing an aerobics class, so we won't even see each other until almost 10:00. I think that we are going to celebrate on Thursday when we get rid of the kids.

Happy Anniversary Dale. I love you!!!

Wow, look how young we looked.

Owen's 3!!!!

How can it be that Owen is already 3?! I have no more babies, which is sad to me in many ways. We even threw away his poppies (pacifiers), that were completely shredded by the way, but he still loved them. I was very reluctant to do it because I think that was my last little piece of babyness left. Well I guess we do still have diapers, but we're working on that. Those, I will not be sad to give up, and if we don't get him potty trained by September, he may not be going to preschool. Mommy is ready for him to go to school for a few hours a couple days a week.

To celebrate Owen's birthday, we just had a bbq with family and a few friends. Grandpa Robert and Grandma Pom also came down and spent the weekend here and spoiled Owen, as well as Hannah and Justin rotten like they always do. The kids love it.

The Friday before Owen's party, I had no clue what kind of cake I was going to make, and I always make my kids' cakes in some theme except for Owen's first birthday where we just had store bought cupcakes and a store bought cake (Gasp!). Of course Owen doesn't know any better or care, but I didn't want to do that to him again. He loves animals, and I had animal plates and party bags that I bought many months ago at the Target $1 spot (a risky thing to do for a kids' b-day party because more than likely, the kid will not be into that theme at all by the time the party rolls around). Thankfully, Owen does still like animals and after searching on the internet for animal cakes and seeing many that I just did not have the time or talent to tackle, I found an elephant and slightly altered it and came up with Owen's elephant cake. He loved it and thought his elephant cake was so cool.

Unlike last year, Owen was very interested in the presents this year. If there is any kid that loves his toys and plays with them all the time, it is Owen, and he was very excited about what he would get for his birthday. Our family and friends did not dissapoint. With just about everything he opened, he gave a gasp of excitement, and his phrase for the day was "That's amazing!" He got lots of cars, a remote control truck, Star Wars figures, a tranformer, walking gorilla, some horses, bubble blower, a Batman helicopter, and he loved them all, but the thing that yet again stole his heart, was a hippo that Grandma Judi gave him. The kid has so many of these hard plastic animals, and I always think something else will take over, and he won't like them anymore, but he always goes back to those animals.

Owen and Evie--they are always glued to one another and up to no good. :)

Of course there was lots of playing in the water again this year. The only difference from last year was that Owen actually did the cake and the presents first (last year he had no interest in either) and got out of his clothes and into his swimming trunks BEFORE diving into the pool. It was a fun birthday party. Owen really had a great day. We look forward to another year with our funny little guy.

Summer Fun

Sheesh, I can't believe that it is July 7th already. The summer is flying by. The kids will be back in school before we know it, which I often think throughout the day as Hannah and Justin are having one of their numerous arguments, wouldn't be such a bad thing. But I really am not ready for summer to be over. We don't have any big summer plans--no epic road trips or trips to far off destinations planned--but we have had lots of summer fun. The weather has been quite warm lately, although we have cooled off the past few days to a very pleasant upper 60's/lower 70's. We did buy a new slightly larger kiddie pool. On one 90 degree day last week, we filled it up and without even giving it a chance to warm up at all, the kids dove in. Owen, especially, was ready to go, but after being in there awhile, he would get so cold that his lips were blue, but he would not want to get out. As soon as he did get out and get dry and warmed up, he would jump right back in.

After hearing that my dear friend, Annaliese, does a Camp Fun for a week with her kids, Hannah and Justin were insistent that we had our own Camp Fun, which included family movie nights and a backyard campout. Dale set up the big tent and Hannah and Justin moved a great deal of their bedrooms out there and slept out there all on their own for 2 nights. Either Dale or I slept on the couch just in case there were any middle of the night emergencies like large bugs. I can't believe they stayed out there on their own. I don't even think I ever managed to stay the whole night out in a tent with my siblings. There was usually a spider or something that would force me inside. Camp Fun the way Annaliese did it would also include crafts and things, but this mom was not that organized. Hannah and Justin seemed satisfied with the movie nights and campouts. Maybe next year, I'll actually try to put together something a little more organized and maybe even invite the cousins over. Maybe I can arrange something with my sisters where we trade off days. Are you reading this, Marcie and Sara?

We also have made a trip to the zoo, which made Owen very happy. He asks almost every day if we are going to the zoo. At the end of summer, the new lion exhibit will be open, so that will be very exciting to see.

Of course, the highlight of summer so far has been the 4th of July. During the day, we all went to see the new Pixar movie, "Up." I highly recommend it. It even kept Owen sitting pretty still in his seat the whole time. Later on, we went to Grandma Judi's like we have for quite a few years now. There weren't as many of us. Only Aunt Sara, Uncle Gary and Katelyn and Ashley were there for a while. The kids all went in Grandma's hot tub, which she had turned down so the kids could use it as a pool. I don't know what they like better on the 4th--the fireworks or Grandma's hot tub. Even better is watching all the fireworks from the hot tub like Hannah and Justin did. They can hardly stand to wait until it is dark enough to light fireworks. We did quite a few of them before it was dark like smoke bombs. The kids loved those things this year. Owen, however, was not excited in the least about the fireworks. He could not stand anything with even a slightly loud pop. He just freaked out and insisted we go home. He also was not happy that the helicopter fireworks that he so proudly chose at the fireworks stand were going to be blown up. He was very angry when we brought them home from the stand, and he could not bring them inside to play with them like all his other toys. We did manage to get him calmed down inside, and he would watch the pretties from the window. Grandma Judi stayed with him most of the night watching from inside. We quickly blew up our $75 worth of fireworks and then moved to the back deck to watch everyone else blow up way more than we spent. We also saw the show that Washougal put on and Corbett across the river. It really is the ideal location.

This is what happens when you light 3 smoke bombs at once.

Frightened on the Fourth!

My standard sparkler photos

Next up for the summer is a 2 night trip to the Oregon Coast to Newport this weekend. We are going to stay in our favorite place there, the Hallmark Inn, which is right on the water and go to the aquarium.

Hannah's Hip Hop Showcase and other events

Well, last weekend was Hannah's hip hop dance showcase after her first year with Groove Nation Dance. She loved it, and I believe she will be continuing with it for quite awhile. Her only complaint was that she was only in one dance (some kids were in 4 or 5) and that she didn't get to dance at the evening show where some of the competetive teams and professional groups danced. It was an awesome show. The finale dance was a huge production with tons of competitive teams and instructors, and it was a huge hip hop praise to Christ. It was amazing. I have uploaded a video I took during Hannah's rehearsal. She is in the blue shirt on the end dancing next to her friend, Maya, who was in the white shirt. Keep watching until the end where you can see Hannah do her famous freestyle splits move.

Here's the whole crew

Here's Hannah busting out her moves during intermission of the evening show.

Meanwhile, Justin started doing karate last month. He has done well. A couple weeks ago they had a board breaking event where he broke four boards. He had previously broke one to get his white belt. Here is a photo of him breaking his board. Hannah also broke a board, as well as their friends Ian and Gabby that went with them.

Hannah and I will be leaving momentarily for Girl Scout camp in Yamhill, OR for the weekend. It will be the troop leader, myself and 6 girls. I'll let you know how it goes, when I return.