A spot of Snow

This has not been a winter for snowmen and sledding.... not without visiting a mountain. Yes, the rest of the entire United States including Florida has gotten more snow than Portland, OR. It's nearly pathetic if the storms weren't so bad in much of the country it's just Wrong to Complain. I can't withhold the smallest of slightly sarcastic blog posts, tho, celebrating a Spot of Snow on February 16th before school. Shad and Trinity made this Snow Mouse with be-be eyes. It melted immediately.

McTeacher Night

It is our pleasure to support Deep Creek school for McTeacher night. We have purchased McD's for dinner when the teachers are working every year, visiting with friends and saying "hi" to every teacher at least twice.

Valentine's

Valentine's is so fun... starting with cards in the mail! Grandpa and Grandma in Billing's Montana always remember to send a card to each of the kids and they love receiving mail! G'ma cuts out lots of stickers for each of them, too. We used some of them to decorate all the Valentine's for school class parties - and decorating LIFE, etc. :-) Nana sent a big package full of candy, which arrived just in time to slow down the snackers enough to finish their class Valentine's. Aidan, Camten and Trinity each had 20 - 30 Valentine's to sign their names to and attach some sweet extra. Trinity chose lollipops, her favorite. Aidan was the fastest, being the most experienced, and he flew thru the Butterfinger heart chocolates, his favorite. Camten is an interesting combination.... he drags his feet 'til the last minute on projects that require such tediousness as writing, but then he can focus better than any Armstrong and finishes first. It happens all the time. I announce "Bedtime!" and the little guy's in his jammies with teeth brushed before anyone else has put down their light saber. "Time to come in!" has his head bobbing down the hillside leaving us with the echo of his challenge to be the fastest. So it was that I was left at the table with his Valentine's counting to make sure he hadn't forgotten anyone while he zipped off to play - and he was right on the number, 22. Aidan and Trinity lingered half an hour longer. I should have gotten a picture of the mess.... it was monumental. Valentine's and candy everywhere and Sugared Kids bouncing off the walls. The class parties were fun - Dad and Mom dropped in all three parties before taking the partiers home. And where was Shad in all this? He's in 6th grade, now. They're too big for handing out Valentine's like that. There was some grown-up distributions of bags of candy, but no "Be Mine"s. It's too close to gettin' serious at 11 years of age!! (Yikes!!) The siblings were generous with their big brother. He got all the sour sweets.

Go Aidan!!

Aidan's music concert at Deep Creek. He dressed up in black - he's on the highest riser, farthest left on stage. He did some dancing, too. Camten and Trinity insisted on coming along to see, although concert behavior is tricky to maintain a whole hour. :-) Trinity found a friend from class. Camten did, too. There was a "gang" of boys from his class, but they looked like kindred spirits and due to the Good Behavior rule, he sat with Mom. :-)

Papa & Monique

Happy Birthday to Papa & Monique!! Both born on January 31st!! :-)

Dad & Mom returned from Mexico on the 31st - they visited Dwight & Kristi near Mexico City, helping them set up their new home and shop. We had fun talking and hanging out together at Jon and Angie's house. Family is a blessing.

Trinity & Hannah

Trinity was invited to Hannah's birthday party at JJ Jump. Hannah's been Trinity's friend since way back and she had fun playing with her friend in such a fun place.

French Drain

Winter in Damascus brings an abundance of underground water. We have underground springs all the way up the hill. Our neighbors all have ponds and the water is directed into one pond after another with long-standing, very old "water rights" to the flow. There's enough "old" neighbors to remember such things. So, one neighbor complained to another how the water flow was being restricted somewhere. To be "nice" our neighbor across the bush fence dug up his drain and put in a new one to release the water flow for the complaining neighbors. This re-directed some water into his new drain and some other water to randomly find it's own way down. It made it's own new drain down our front yard and tried to run into the street. The street automatically drains into yet another neighbor's driveway, which is a funnel into his basement. I'm not sure how many neighbors are involved at this point, but the hullaballoo finally resulted in a very deep rocky fancy HUGE French Drain being installed down the side of our yard. A "small" track ho was brought in for the job and our side yard has been re-arranged for the.... 3rd? time since we've moved in 6 years ago. The pipe overhanging the runoff ditch flows steadily. Every time I see it I feel good about telling water where to go... and I wonder about all the neighbors. What are the chances everyone's happy now? I don't think contentment is based on where the water runs.

Salmon release

Aidan was part of the team that raised salmon from eggs in Mr. Chamber's class this year. We have released salmon a few times with Mr. Chambers already.... Shad was in his class and they have both attended Wildlife Stewards with a second batch every year. I suppose we should figure out how to keep it up as a family thing after Camten and Trinity get through Deep Creek!! :-)

The whole class bussed down to the Clackamas River. Trinity and I met them down there in the rain and cold. We had to wait a while for the white buckets to adjust to the cold river temperatures before letting the tiny fish swim out into the wild. The kids all filled out their science sheets with temperature readings and water acidity. It was tricky keeping the paper dry enough to write on... and tricky finding a team member who remembered to bring a pencil!!

Happy 2011!!

I think we were more eager to welcome 2011 than we've ever been for any year ever. It was a relief to leave 2010 behind... the Maaco closed on 12/10/10 and that'll always wrap up the year in our memories. The kids stayed up to celebrate with us - well, almost all of them stayed up!! :-)

They made so much noise and ran around in circles, it was a year Well - Comed.

Christmas Dinner

Thanks Papa & Maama for hosting everyone at your house!! :-) We opted to go "easy" on the dinner and fix Tacos (good idea, Jeremy, honey!) Mom went all-out, making home-made tortillas - great job, Suki! Angie brought home-made beans. I brought the fresh salsa. When we pulled up to the house, we could smell the BBQ'd beef, a testimony to the Best Dinner Ever inside. :-) It was memorably delicious.

The kids played Club Penguin, somehow finding enough computers available to all play together, what a treat! And we got a Light-Saber show in full dress. Oh... and laughed over Despicable Me.

Christmas Morning

Shad was up at 6:00am. (ugh) He woke up everyone else. They all loved their "big" gifts. We clarified that it was Shad who wrote "from Santa" on his gifts to everyone and no one was sneaking in our house unawares, a concern Trinity had 'cause she met Santa down at the mall last year, and although he was a nice guy, no one in our house wants anyone sneaking in (after the break-in last May) for any reason.

In our house, we celebrate Jesus with a little manger with a baby doll. We don't leave room under the tree for the gifts, we arrange them around baby Jesus because... in our house, Jesus is the reason we give each other gifts to celebrate His birthday. He was the One Who received the first three gifts... and He is the One Who gives us every good and perfect thing. The gifts are what draw the emotions and the kids' crazy love for Wonderful Christmas, so it makes sense. And instead of stockings, we have Treasure Boxes. Hey... if the enemy can tweak something as Awesome as the birth of the Savior into a commercialized, tree-centered, greedy event, why not tweak it right back?

Gingerbread.... tradition

Just because December of 2010 was completely NUTS doesn't mean we ditch Tradition. Just because the kids don't actually like Gingerbread doesn't mean we ditch Tradition. Just because we're all on a diet and shouldn't eat candy at all, let alone cookies, etc, doesn't mean... anything at all! But our creations reflect some of those things... like the houses weren't made out of Gingerbread at all, Aidan having the bright idea to use sugar cookies instead. The houses didn't fit smoothly together because I didn't spare the time to measure and eye-balling is faulty... not to mention, I burnt at least a third of the walls. The candy was eaten almost as fast as it went on the houses, since we have deprived ourselves for months and intense sugar is so appealing, leaving us to work with chocolate chips, which were ingredients for something else, but worked well, of course. The kids built with plans of eating 'em, and after Aidan's birthday, it was an all-out village chow-down. After that, I didn't feel the need to make any more Traditional Cookies... or maybe 'cause Angie whipped up such a beautiful plate with 12 varieties! Despite our half-hearted efforts, we gained 10 lbs in the week of Christmas. Tradition!

10 Yrs for Aidan!

Completely in his element... with a crowd of on-lookers, completely the center of attention, directing the fun and acting loud & silly, the center of the world for a day. I think Aidan could live with being the birthday boy every day if he had the choice. And he's thoughtful enough to share the glory after he got his fill. Aidan has a huge heart and he lives big, full throttle. On this birthday, the family came out earlier and we made tomales all evening. Anna came out with Monique and Aria and everyone had a great time.

Favorite Restaurant

We enjoy the food at the local hole-in-the-wall Mexican place on Sunnyside Rd - can't ever remember the name of it. We have a favorite table near the window. We order fajitas and extra tortillas and extra rice. Aidan does weird things with tortillas - some recipe with ice water dribblings, which I just have no idea how he ever came up with it or why I never declared it Taboo. Or why he thinks it tastes better to eat a dampened tortilla (which explains why I never figured out the other 'why's'.) I'm sure kids all over have figured out how to eat smilies out of tortillas, although I doubt parents let their kids get away with it. Not us!! He caught me off guard with this serious lounge and I had my camera handy. This is Aidan, sure enough.