Bye Bye Bennetts

Today, I took the kids up to the airport to say goodbye to a very special family. The Bennett's are moving to Fairbanks, AK and we are really going to miss them. Even though we've only know them for a short time, they have come to mean a lot to us.
Brittany has been a great baby-sitter for our two kids. Brianna has such a sweet spirit and I really appreciate how she loves both of our kids. Erika is a very fun and spunky girl. Donald keeps everyone laughing and on their toes. Shawn and I both appreciate the friendship of their parents. Jennifer has taught me a lot about Christian service, mostly by her strong example.
So it was a bitter sweet day for us. We're glad that this family can be reunited with their dad--who's already in Fairbanks and working in his new position--but we are REALLY going to miss them. And we're thankful to the good Lord for giving us Christain friends who can encourage and inspire us.

A New Baby Paden Boy

My dear friend, Lela, delivered a beautiful baby boy this morning. This picture really does not do him justice--he's adorable. The new baby Paden boy--as Carly was calling him--has been named Orion John. We went up to visit them in the hospital this afternoon and when we got back home, Lee was here. Carly told him that the baby's name was Barak Obama. She must have gotten something confused! Lee said he thinks Carly's been listening to too much talk radio. Hmm, I suppose it's possible.
Anyway, little Orion was 8 lbs, 2 oz and 20 1/4 inches long in case you're interested.
Carly was also asking me this morning if he was a big baby or a little baby. I told her he was a little baby. But she must have been thinking of one of her baby dolls as being a "little baby", because at the hospital she said Orion was a big baby. He does look a little big in her arms in this picture, but oh, so sweet.
Please keep this wonderful family in your prayers as they adjust and rest.

Snowshoes

Last winter, I thought I had found a diamond in the rough at our local St. Vincent de Paul store (like Goodwill). I found a brand new, unused pair of LL Bean kid snowshoes. Shawn wasn't all that impressed because they weren't a typical St. Vincent price of a few dollars. But they were a little less than half of the regular price and they were new with tags. So I figured it was still a good deal.
We had about 6 inches of snow come down Monday night, so there was some nice powder Tuesday morning. It kept snowing off an on throughout the day too. So after lunch we set out on a short snowshoe hike.
One reason I really like where we live is that our property backs up to forest service land. So we literally walked back between the fence and hiked into the forest beyond our backyard. We didn't get very far though. Carly got tired pretty quickly, but I was impressed that she didn't complain. She really seemed to enjoy the adventure of it all. She wanted me to carry her towards the middle of the hike, but I already had Isaac on my back. To keep the mood up, we turned our hike into a Dora the Explorer episode. If you've never seen a Dora show, then let me tell you, you're missing out. The basic concept for each episode is to go from point A to B to C and overcome an obstacle at each point. So just after we turned around to walk back and Carly was very tired, I told her we just had to go to the "hill, fence, and our backyard". Then we sang some of the songs from the show and replaced the words with ones that would fit our adventure. I was very glad that this kept her in a good mood. We've had some rough times lately with lot of drama especially between her and I. So going through a complete activity from start to finish with her and not having any issues was a huge blessing. All three of us, and Knox-Lee's dog, had a good time.

Trudging onward

Knox up ahead and running free

Isaac hanging out on my back. We just love this carrier.

self portraits

and a sneeze

Check This Out

My friend, Kari had a link to these cool crayon holders on her website. Click here to see them for yourself. They remind me of the neat little crayon bag my mom made for Carly.

I also realized that I left off something on my five list from my last post. So see below for the topic that's been most recently added.

My Five Things

My friend Dana, challenged me to create my own 5 things, so here goes.

5 Things I was doing 10 years ago
1. Dating my dream man--Shawn
2. studying like crazy
3. doing a teaching practicum at Will Rogers Elem in Edmond, OK
4. driving around a Ford Contour
5. enjoying Sonic in OK much more often than now

5 Things on my to-do list today
1. bake a cake for potluck tomorrow
2. take a winter walk--it looks great outside
3. clean the house
4. wash a load of laundry
5. give Carly some "school work" to do today

5 Snacks I like
1. chocolate milk (a lingering pregnancy craving)
2. m&m's
3. brownies
4. pita chips
5. popcorn--especially from Bullwinkle's

5 Things I'd do if I were a millionaire
1. alternate yearly winter trips to Hawaii and Mexico
2. hire a housekeeper
3. support church/mission work
4. buy a bigger house with an attached apartment so my parents or in-laws could stay for extended visits
5. take a world trip

5 Places I've lived
1. Juneau, AK
2. Scappoose, OR
3. Edmond, OK
4. Mito, Japan
5. Tigard, OR

5 Jobs I've had
1. Substitute teacher in Oregon and Alaska
2. Gifted and Talented Teacher in Edmond, OK
3. cashier at West Marine in Portland, OR
4. camp counselor at Camp Yamhill
5. telephone student recruiter for admissions at Oklahoma Christian

5 People I tag to make their own list of 5 (if you like, don't stress it)
1. Kelly T
2. Megan H
3. Marilyn L
4. Kari L
5. Laura C

Carly's Five Things

Hi, there! It's Carly here. My friend, Elijah, challenged me and my brother to make our own 5 things list. My mom helped with the typing and some of the answers, but I came up with a lot of them myself.

5 Things I was doing 10 years ago (let's make it 10 months ago)
1. Celebrated my 3rd birthday
2. Changed Isaac's diaper all by myself
3. Went to the Alaska zoo in Anchorage
4. Shopped till I dropped in Anchorage with Momma and Aunt Victoria
5. Met new friends in Bible class at the church of Christ in Anchorage

5 Things I on my to-do list today
1. craft
2. try on my dress up clothes
3. play with my toys
4. bake cupcakes in my kitchen
5. read books

5 Snacks I like
1. crackers
2. cheese
3. blueberries
4. chocolate milk
5. fruit snacks

5 Things I would do if I were a millionaire
1. buy a hunting cabin for me and my daddy to use
2. visit my grandparents every month
3. take my parents to Hawaii
4. pay for my college expenses
5. support mission work

5 Places I have lived
1. our house in Juneau
2. our apartment in Juneau
3. grandma and grandpa's house in Scappoose, OR
4. Tigard, Oregon
5. St Vincent's hospital in Beaverton, Oregon

5 Jobs I've had
1. fashion model
2. comedian
3. writer
4. artist
5. drama queen

5 People I tag to do their own 5 things list
1. Sophie
2. Stone
3. Freedom
4. ????
5. ???? I'm out of blog friends who haven't already been tagged.

Issac's Five Things

This is Isaac. Momma says my buddy, Elijah, challenged me to make some sort of a list. I'm not sure what it's all about, but she says it'll be fun. And if there's one thing I've already learned, it's that Momma's always right.

5 Things I was doing 10 years ago (let's make it 10 months for this guy)

1. had my diaper changed by Carly for the first time--much to the surprise of Momma
2. had my first cold
3. visited my daddy on a business trip in Anchorage (I took Momma and Carly with me too.)
4. sat up all by myself
5. cut my first tooth

5 Things on my to-do list today
1. EAT
2. poop at least once
3. find something to destroy
4. run away from Momma
5. pull Carly's hair at least once

5 Snacks I like
1. rice cakes
2. animal crackers
3. blueberries
4. green beans
6. cheerios

5 Things I would do if I were a millionaire
1. Buy a hunting cabin for me and my dad to use
2. go visit my grandparents every month
3. take my parents on a trip to Hawaii
4. pay for my college expenses
5. support mission work

5 Places I've lived
1. Inside Momma
2. Momma and Daddy's room
3. My room
4. the spare room while they painted my room
5. the church building for the teen lock in two weeks ago

5 Jobs I've had
1. Demolition engineer
2. Housekeeper (if vacuuming with my little popper toy counts)
3. Librarian (I have my own system for sorting the books in our bookshelf)
4. Comedian
5. diaper tester

5 People I tag to do their own list
1. Anyone
2. who
3. wants
4. to
5. try

Curly Sue

Several times last week, when I was fixing Carly's hair, she told me that she wanted me to curl it. Finally on Friday, I suggested that we put her hair in curlers after her bath Saturday night and then she could have curly hair for bible class. She thought that was a great idea. So after her bath that's just what we did. And I should mention, that the national championship women's figure skating was on TV. She thoroughly enjoyed watching that while I put the curlers in her hair. Actually is was a bit hard to keep her sitting down, because she wanted to ice skate around our floor. After much longer than I thought it would take, we had all the curlers in. The only problem came when it was time to lay her head down on the pillow. She almost freaked out when she realized she'd have to actually sleep with these things in her hair. I think the thought of sleeping sitting up actually crossed her mind. Fortunately, I diverted the crisis and was able to convince her to lay down on the side of her face. No curlers there.

Watching figure skating at the same time

This was how Isaac entertained himself while the girls played beauty shop.

Here's the finished product on Sunday morning just before we left for Bible class. Of course it relaxed a lot by the time we got home, so I'm really glad I took these pictures before. Notice Isaac in the background trying to figure out how to get the bag of cheerios off the table. He's been a big cheerios fan lately. Good thing they've been on sale at costco.

I'm sure this won't be the last time we do this to her hair. I sort of hope we don't necessarily do this every Saturday night though. But it brought back a lot of memories for me of my mom putting curlers in my hair. Later that afternoon, when I saw Carly throwing her hair over her shoulders I remembered being in her shoes and thinking I had the biggest curls anyone could dream of. The reality was probably that they were not much more than a wave by that point. But through my child eyes they were huge curls. Funny how our perspective changes and that I could see Carly acting the same why I imagine I acted in the same circumstance.

Soup's On

I've been on a soup kick lately. It must be the weather or the season. Anyway, I've been trying out a few new soup recipes, and I'm happy to say that almost all of them have been smashing successes.
I did a search on my favorite recipe website--allrecipes.com--and found this dandy recipe,
Tortellini Minestrone (click on the name to go to the recipe)
Everyone seemed to enjoy this one. Except that I accidentally got "hot" turkey sausage so the meat pieces were too spicy for the kids, but I could handle the heat and that's saying something. Carly piped up during dinner and said, "I like these taco-lini thingies, Momma." (taco-lini=tortellini)

A couple of "taco-lini's"

A couple of other recent soup successes were:
Flatlander Chili, which Shawn really liked and
Delicious Ham and Potato Soup

The next recipe up for a try is Creamy Chicken and Rice Soup. Haven't tried it yet, but it seems promising.

Here We Go Again

Don't be fooled, I haven't posted these pictures before. Just ones that are eerily similar. The reason for them is the same. If you've been keeping up with our blog for the past several months, you may remember my post about being avalanche victims. Last April, an avalanche happened south of town and took out some of the towers that bring our nice, cheap hydro electric power to us. So the entire city was on diesel generated power while the lines were repaired. We also paid something like $0.52 /kWh! Yikes! I remember how at the time we were all saying, "At least this didn't happen in January."

Well, actually now it has. Almost two weeks ago, another avalanche took down one tower. So were are back in conservation mode. The good news is that they may be done in about a week with the repairs. And the other good news is that since diesel is much cheaper than it was last spring, we'll probably only be paying around $0.25 /kWh. It could be worse. Here's the latest local newspaper article about it all if you're interested.

So just in case you thought your daily chores were tough to fit into your schedule, just be glad you aren't hang drying your laundry.

Surprising Lela

On Sunday afternoon, we attempted to give Lela a surprise baby shower. But being that her oldest daughter was in on the planning, she figured out the idea beforehand. Mother's intuition is strong in this one. And it doesn't help that Katie randomly asked her questions like, "Do you like white or yellow?" Hmm...Lela thought, "cake or roses?" You get the idea.
Lela was a little shy about the attention, but we all enjoyed spoiling her a bit. Since this is baby #6 and boy #5, the theme of the party was diapers, wipes, gift cards, or gifts for mom. We had a salad luncheon, followed by a few games (led by yours truly), and then presents and cake. All in all it was a great time for everyone.

Katie was quite proud of her cake decorating skills. She did a great job and Dana made a delicious cake.

Kathie S. accidentally dropped her keys inside her gift bag only to have Lela find them when she was opening presents. I'm guessing she had a momentary thrill, but then reality was too obvious of an explanation. I'm sure that after 6 babies and numerous baby showers this has to have been the most unique thing she's ever found in a present.

I was feeling the urge to be a bit creative for Lela, so I made her a set of 25 baby announcements. The white space on the card front is big enough to be a matte for a wallet size photo. The baby's birth info can be printed on cardstock and mounted on the back to make it a postcard. Or she can print it inside a card sized piece of cardstock and mount the blue announcement card onto the front of the card. I really enjoyed doing something creative and the only thing I had to buy was the brown polka dot adhesive riboon towards the bottom.

Bookworms

Over the past few weeks, Isaac has really gotten in to reading books. It's so nice that he is finding another way to "play". Of course, this brother and sister duo love to do anything together. (I'm sure that won't last forever, but it's really sweet while it lasts.) So they are often reading together. These are a few pictures of them that I've snapped over the past few weeks. One of their favorite spots to read is on Carly's bed, but any place will do. Wherever they can get their books to.