The Only Thing Constant is Change

This morning I told Annalina of our pending move into the new house. I tried to explain to her the reasons why before breaking the news to her. When I said, "we are moving to a new house" her response was "no". I said, "yes, its true Annalina" she replied "no" again. I said "why are you saying no?" and she said "you are tricking me mom". I explained that I was not joking and proceeded to tell her about the house. I told her about her new school Tobias, and she giggled because she thinks its a silly name. She was happy to hear we would be just down the street from school so she could walk everyday. I was worried she would miss riding the bus. She was also very excited at the thought of making new friends both at school and in our new ward. She asked if we were changing churches and I explained how there are too many people in the world who belong to our church to all fit in one building, so the church has lots and lots of buildings and we are just changing to a different building, that's all. I told her more about the house and how it is three stories and she will be up on the way high third floor in her own room finally. She giggled and laughed and I was a bit surprised by her reaction. We even talked about the dogs and how only Gidget would be going with us to the new place. We would find a good home for Gadget, but that meant they no longer had to live in the laundry room, Gidget could be out in the house with us all the time. It was a good talk and I told her it was ok to feel sad or even angry, but she said she was ok. A little later she came into my room and asked if she could go bike riding around the neighborhood. She was considerably deflated since I had seen her last. I asked if she was alright, she said yes, just sad. My heart is already broken at my own personal loss in leaving this home, this ward, my friends and neighbors and this beautiful area we live in, but I can deal with it. I understand what is happening and I know there is no other choice. But my heart breaks again each time I see pain in my children's eyes. I don't want to disrupt their lives or cause them to be uncomfortable in a new situation. Richard and I would do anything and have done everything we could to stay, but the time has come.

The good news is that aside from the sadness, a huge burden is lifting from our lives. It feels good to know that we will have the funds to buy clothes for the kids when they need them. This last year we had nothing at back to school time and Adrienne bought all her own clothes and with a Kohl's cash gift card she earned from her purchases, she took Jake to get a few things he needed. We have been so blessed with friends who have stopped by with clothing their children have outgrown. It is amazing to me how people have answered my prayers and that they probably had no idea how dire our situation was at the time. The Lord really does work through others and I am grateful to those who stay in tune with the spirit and act on those promptings.

Yes, it is true, we are moving....

This last year has been very difficult for us financially. Our income has gone down while expenses have gone up. I have prayed for months now to be able to find a way to make it work here in our home. This past month those prayers changed. We prayed to know where to go. Last weekend Richard took me to some townhomes near his work. They were so tiny and I cried thinking of the sacrifice it would be trying to live there for the next few years. When we got home I started to look for places on Craig's List. There were a few houses in our price range, but they had to be near the max line, we will soon be a one car family again. One place looked good to me, so I mapped it out and saw a building just across the street that looked suspiciously like one of our church buildings. Sure enough, it was! For some reason that calmed me. And a block up the street is an elementary school. And max is little less than a mile the other way. We drove by the house in person, it is three stories and like a town home, but they are detached. We got out to walk around it and decided to check the front door. It was unlocked so we snuck in and toured the home on our own. It is much bigger than the apartment townhomes and has four bedrooms and a bonus room on the main floor with the garage. The middle floor is the living area with a fairly large kitchen, a dining area and a good sized family room. It is a lovely home. We called the manager and he took us through another larger home a few houses down. It was bigger and had more storage, but was also more expensive. This move is about cutting our costs so we can save and hopefully be able to buy again in a few years. So we went with the smaller home and it feels so right! I feel so blessed to have found a home I am looking forward to living in. I know the Lord is aware of our needs and that we were led to this area in answer to our prayers. We have a lot of work to do. We will be moving the majority of our things Thanksgiving weekend and will need to get the house on the market shortly after that. I am still in school, but I know the path has been laid for us, so we can do this!!! I am feeling so many emotions right now, but most of all I feel so very grateful.

Pumpkin Carving and Oh The Mind of a Four Year Old

Richard was gone all last week up near Seattle working at Fluke to add yet more responsibilites to his job. Yet another person has been let go and Richard is up there figuring out what that person used to do and how they did it!! He has been home for the weekend, but is heading back up on Monday, bright and early. We miss him so much when he is gone! But it looks like travel may become more common for him. Yesterday he spent the day helping a family move and late in the day we went to get pumpkins. Today we carved. I covered the table in newspaper, had pumpkins in front of each kid and they all had markers to draw their faces on with. Richard is the official face carver. I was sitting across from Joseph and I said, "Ok guys, time to draw on your faces". I sat there and watched Joseph as he(with a very serious face) drew a strip up one cheek and then one down the other. I was about to get mad? What was he thinking!! Then it hit me, I told him to draw on his face and for once he was not about to question me. I was trying to explain to him what I had really meant, but was laughing so hard! Richard was too. It was one of those moments I will not forget! Here are some more photos of my adorable kids and hubby getting the pumpkins ready for their big Halloween debut! Wait, where is Adrienne??? Apparently at the old age of 17 she is no longer into carving pumpkins with the family. Well, that is ok, we feel blessed she was alright with it for the first 16 years!!

Camping-Didn't think there could possibly be more did you??

We spent a gorgeous afternoon on the beach! The weather could not have been better, it was one of those rare perfect days on the Oregon Coast! The sky was blue, temperature was about 80, the air was fairly calm(much to Richard's dismay-he could not get his kite to stay in the air!). I have few photos of Joseph's face because he spent most of the time in the water facing away from me. He made lots of friends and even when Annalina got tired of taunting the ocean and wanted to dig in the sand, he kept at it. I enjoyed laying on a blanket and reading in between watching the crazy antics of my kids. Here you can see the wreck of the Peter Iredale which has been a apart of this beach for over a hundred years now. It seems there is less there than when I was a child!
Here is Richard, trying his hardest to get that kite to stay up. No luck though!! Maybe next time!
Annalina loves to be buried in the sand. She does this every beach trip. Don't you just love the bikini top fish shapes Richard added for fun!!!

Camping - Part 3, A Bad Day for a Migraine

One day while camping we drove back into Astoria to find adventure! We started by driving over the HUGE bridge between Oregon and Washington. The kids thought it was cool to be in another state and started asking about driving to Idaho, California and Arizona. We tried to explain that they were a bit too far for this small trip! Below is a photo of a small portion of the bridge.
Anyway, back in Astoria we stopped at the Maritime Museum and had a super fun time checking out the exhibits and even got to go aboard an old Coast Guard ship they keep docked there. A great time until.....the migraine hit! Luckily Richard had his pills along with him, so he took one right away and I drove us back to the camp site. He laid down for a while and then was doing better.

Back to the museum....
The Columbia was the ship we got to go on. We were even able to go beneath deck to see where the sleeping quarters were as well as the galley and captain's quarters. One of my favorite things about Astoria was watching the huge container ships come in. There is something really fascinating about watching them up so close. The photos do not do them justice! They are huge and I really want to go back and spend a day just watching them carefully maneuver the mouth of the Columbia, where it is so treacherous a special pilot is taken to the ships to bring them safely into the river.

Camping part 2-Its like Riding a Bike....

Last summer Annalina got a good start at learning to ride her bike, so we took the bikes along so she could get in some good practice. Here is how she felt about that....
In case you can't see, she is NOT happy. She was telling Richard that she would learn tomorrow, but not today. Richard was kind a patient and told her he would help her. It only took a few times and she was off and riding on her own! After that she was on her bike every chance she got. Our campsite was at the begining of a circle and she rode that circle over and over again, with Joseph on her heels. Lots of kids came and went during our three night stay, and she made friends and rode bikes with them all!
We had some neighbors at the top of the circle who were there the whole time we were and they had four kids with bikes. After our success with Annalina we thought we'd teach Joseph to ride his bike. Luckily the neighbors had tools, and we removed Joseph's training wheels thinking he would learn quickly. He responded the same way Annalina had and REFUSED to get on his bike without the training wheels. Richard put them back on and he loved it.....maybe next year.....

Our Camping Adventure-Tip of Oregon Day

We wanted to get away for a few days before the hustle and bustle of school started up again. We had limited funds and decided $17 a night for camping would be acceptable, so I used my coupons and things we had on hand to make up a nice little menu and we set the date for the first week of September. Adrienne had a babysitting job all summer and she had taken a week off to go to Idaho and did not want to take another week off. At the last minute Jake was telling me about the Argus cross country pics he would be missing, and then there was also the time trials that would place him on Varsity or JV. He did not want to ruin our trip by asking to stay home, so I told him if it was important to him not to miss these events, he was welcome to stay home. So he did! He would have gone along happily and not complained, and that is why we felt it was so important to let him decide.

So we took the little kids and camping we went! We had so much gear that we had to take out the two middle seats to fit it all in without a trailer. We had a bike rack hitched up so we could take the kids bikes.
We went to Fort Stevens. It was a beautiful week for camping, not too hot, not too cold. We took a day to drive to the South Jetty, which the little kids excitedly called the very "Tip of Oregon". We climbed up onto the observation platform and had an incredible view! We watched some container ships come into the mouth of the Columbia River. The first photo below is probably my favorite of the day, the land you see in the background is actually Washington. The kids played on the river beach while Richard hiked up onto the rocks and went down the jetty a ways.
Here is Joseph attempting to climb a really tall tree with his sandals on. I don't think he could have made it if he had been wearing spikes, but it was cute of him to try!
Ahhhhh, enjoying our campfire! The kids LOVED roasting marshmallows, but we didn't actually get to do this until the second night because I left them sitting on the counter at home!!Joseph is a born camper. I admit, I am not a real enthusiastic fan of camping. There is so much dirt around, and spiders.....yuck! But seeing how much the kids enjoyed the whole experience helped me enjoy myself! By the way, I only saw three spiders the whole trip, but one was trying to get into the tent and it was moving FAST! Kinda freaked me out. And there were very few mosquitoes which was nice. We did not use repellent, and I only got three bites the whole time we were there!

Cross Country Season Has Begun!!!

Last weekend Richard and I had the pleasure of driving to Yamhill to watch Jake participate in the Trask Mountain Assault, is that not the most awesome name for a cross country event?? Anyway, this was his second competition for the season and it is NOT an easy one. It was full of hills, mud pits to slog through, muddy slopes to go up and muddy slopes to slide down. As hard as it is, Jake really loves running this race. It is exciting to be there, the energy coming off these athletes is eleectric as you can see from the start of the race below, there are SO many runners and though I know Jake is in there somewhere I have not been able to pick him out yet.



This race is run at the 3 Rock Ranch, which used to be the Flying M Ranch. There were so many schools there that we almost missed Jake running. We wandered for a long time looking for Glencoe, but could not find their camp. We had no idea what time the race started and had just decided to head home since Richard had been paged while we were on our way. We were almost to the parking lot when we found Diane Rasmussen heading in, she told us Varsity was about to start so we thought we'd just try to find him in the race. We spotted him midway through the race as they doubled back by the starting line. He had bright green tape on his shoes and around his head so he was easy to spot later. He finished strong!



OK, so here comes the emotional mother part, so if you are averse to this kind of thing and want to skip down to the next photo, you are encouraged to do so, I promise it will not hurt my feelings. Boy after boy was coming in for the finish and Richard and I were there at the end watching for Jake. My thoughts raced from excitement at watching Jake come in, to fear that he was out there somewhere hurt or struggling. Every runner we saw was covered in mud to some degree, so the irrational mother in me was starting to worry about my son. Would he be ok? Could he do it? I knew he could, after all he ran this same course last year. But I worried anyway. I watched and worried and thought about my Jake and what a wonderful man he is growing up to be. I thought about how proud I am of him and how amazed I am that he is working so hard at improving himself. Then the bright green headband came into view(for Richard, not me, my eyesight is not as clear as his) and I turned on the camera and caught his strong finish. Just look at him, isn't he fabulous!!!
So, as you may be able to see, Jake was covered in mud. I jokingly said, "how about a hug for your mom!" And that's just what I got! My first reaction was to cringe, I have a thing about being covered in dirt, its just yucky. In fact I believe my exact words were, "this is so against everything I believe in" but then I thought about it and realized what Jake had just done, and pride won out against the ickiness. I realized it was an honor for me to hug my filthy sweaty wonderful son! I wore that mud with pride and still have some on my purse, I may just leave it there for a while. I am so blessed to have the children I have. I thank my Heavenly Father every day for allowing me the honor of raising them. Each and every one of them is so dear to me and I am grateful at how they are all developing into such fine people, despite my shortcomings as a mother.

I am also grateful for my husband who had other things to do that day. I was going to go alone and thought the map looked pretty easy to follow. At the last minute Richard came along and I am so glad he did, I never would have made it, the roads out that far are not marked at all and I would probably STILL be wandering the backroads of Yamhill county today had he not decided to be my chauffer! Thanks honey, I love you!!

Back To School...for one of my kids....

So the first day of school is a bittersweet day for me, and probably is for every mother. It is exciting to get the kids back to school, more time to get done all the things that need doing, but it is sad in a way too. I took Annalina today(Adrienne and Jake will start tomorrow and Joseph in two weeks) and I watched her excitement at seeing all her friends she missed over the summer. Annalina is getting so big, it is hard for me to grasp at times how grown up she is getting. She is so tall and has such a beautiful smile. On this first day of school, and possibly every future first day of school, I find myself wondering, have I done everything I can to prepare Annalina to be successful in school? When I see the second grade click(sad they start so young) and the way they ignore her saying hi, I wonder if her feelings are hurt, or if she realizes at such a tender young age, that not everyone has the ability to be kind and loving to everyone else! I am just glad she is such a compassionate girl and that friendliness helps her make friends with almost everyone she meets. Her teacher is Mrs Gurske and her best buddy Magdalena is in her class as well as Gavin, Laef, Sam and Lizzy and a few others from last year. I think it will be a good year!

Hillsboro Air Show 2009

This weekend was the annual Hillsboro Air Show with the Thunderbirds being the main attraction. Well we have a future pilot in our family so Richard thought it would be fun to take him on a father son outing. I get a lot of one on one time with Joseph with the kids all being in school, but Richard has not had so much of that quality time with Joseph so this was a great opportunity. They rode MAX a few stops down to the fairgrounds exit and according to Richard that would have been enough for Joseph, he LOVES max and was excited to get to ride with daddy. When I picked them up this afternoon Joseph talked non-stop about all the exciting things he got to see. He had such a great day with his dad. And lucky for us, Joseph was young enough to get in for free and due to Richard's military service, he too got in free! Yippee!

Joseph, calling in an airstrike....

It got a little loud when the f-18 flew hornet flew by repeatedly-high speed passes....

Joseph watched most of the airshow from a reclined position on daddy's lap!

Party at WildWood

When we first looked at homes in this neighborhood, I absolutely loved the name Wildwood and I still do. When I think of it, I envision the book, Where the Wild Things Are. I am the secretary of our HOA. Its a lot of work at times, but I get to work with some great people and that is nice. This last weekend we had a Wildwood Neighborhood BBQ and lots of people came. Of course, I did not think to grab the camera but our neighbors across the street brought theirs and got some great shots of the kids in the waterslide. We also had a giant bouncy house, so the kids all stayed busy and we got to relax and chat with the neighbors. Good times!!