Legoland California

Legos are a huge thing at our house. An activity that I happily support. You can't go anywhere in our house without finding a Lego piece. Hopefully you didn't step on it barefoot! The Lego magazine was introduced just over a year ago, as well as Lego.com. What a marketing genius. With the magazine came the realization that Legoland is not that far away and even better each issue has a free child ticket with the purchase of an adult full price ticket! The wheels had been turning in their heads on how we can use these free tickets since the children outnumber the adults. But they didn't have to figure for too long because in November, Grandma told them that their Christmas gift was to spend a week down in Carlsbad visiting Legoland. This was a dream come true.

So last month, mom and I drove the kids down (Jathan was able to join us for a couple of days). We spent 3 days at Legoland, a day at the beach and a day swimming in the pool. We had a condo with plenty of space + a kitchen. We had a great time.

I have to admit leading up to the trip I was a bit nervous because we had struggled so much with Drew on past trips. The meds seem to help him, but still you just never know. We packed a stroller to carry water bottles, snacks and lunch. And to carry Drew. He will be 7 next month, and looked way too big for the stroller, but you know what? It helped a huge amount. He cannot distract himself, so when he is tired of walking, that's it. He won't walk anymore without a fight. It doesn't matter what exciting thing we are headed to, he cannot concentrate on anything but how tired he is of walking. So into the stroller he went. I battled in my mind thinking "he is almost 7, we are not asking much of him" "He can physically do this, there is no reason he has to be in the stroller" "Are we making it worse by enabling him?" But at the end of the day, we had a peaceful time at Legoland. So, all I could say is we did what we needed to do to make this a pleasant trip. And it was!

Monday, the day Jathan joined us at Legoland was a rainy day. We got wet, but we only had to share the park with 500 people. That made up for the rain.

Slowing Down

Sometimes I think the key to surviving being a mother, wife, teacher, (pick any other title that applies) is the ability to multitask and squeeze things into tiny time slots. And some days it is true. Many things would never get accomplished if I didn't. Would I ever get any laundry done?

But I have been reminded lately, that maybe that isn't always the best way. Especially squeezing things in. I can't even count the times we had some place to go, I looked at the clock and saw we still had 5 or 10 minutes before we needed to leave, so I picked a "quick" task to do. To me, it just makes sense. I mean, not doing anything for that 5-10 minutes would be a waste. Right? But 9 times out of 10, that 10 minute project really took 11 minutes, now we are late and you know how the story goes. I'm stressed. I'm yelling at the kids to get in the car, and they never get in as quickly as I would like. So now I am really stressed. I am yelling at the driver in front of me because he actually made a complete stop at the stop sign. (ok maybe I am only muttering under my breath, but you better believe the kids in the back heard) I know my blood pressure is on the rise, but my testimony just plummeted.

I don't know if any of you struggle with this. But I have found that when I am trying so hard to be efficient, I often times am not a very nice person. And it is my family, most always my kids, who pay the price. I am yelling at them to hurry, I say "no you can't help with dinner, because we have to get it ready quick", etc.

I have to slow down. Do I really need to do everything on my "to do list" right now? Is it really more important than being calm and nice with my kids? More important than having time to stop what I am doing to listen to what they are saying?

Now I know that there are times when you have to get things done. And sometimes you have to multitask while your kids are talking because, lets face it, some kids will talk all the time (which isn't a bad thing) and if you have multiple kids, you would be stopping and listening all the time and never feed the family.

MacKenzie loves the kitchen. I am ashamed to say I have denied her request to help me prepare dinner countless times recently. I have lost sight of what my job raising her is really about. I can justify that it takes so much longer than if I just get it done myself. But what am I doing? Is my only goal that her tummy is full or is it to train her so some day she will be able to put a meal on the table for her family?

Thursday night, all the kids helped in some way with dinner. Whether it was food prep or clearing and setting the table. Did it take longer? Oh I am sure. Drew missed the bowl when breaking open an egg, the whole thing was on the floor. Paige was pretending she was on a cooking show, describing in detail every single thing she did and why. But that is not all, we ended up with a wonderful meal, time together, proud kids and full tummies.

I don't know why I have to learn this lesson over and over. Maybe if I slowed down I wouldn't have to.

Lucky 13

August 1st was our 13th wedding anniversary. Thirteen wonderful years with my best friend.

My mom was visiting from Indiana, so we left the kids with her and ventured up to Kings Canyon National Park to hike to Mist Falls. The hike totaled 9.2 miles, mostly flat with a 600 foot elevation gain at the end, but it wasn't bad at all. Every bit of the hike was beautiful. So I got to spend the day with my most favorite person doing one of my most favorite things! I am a blessed girl!

This is our drive through Sequoia National Forest.

Now for the hike

We reached our destination: Mist Falls

Lunch, not a bad view

We walked a little closer to the falls and sat on these rocks for a while. It was quite loud with the water raging next to us, but so relaxing. We had a huge snow pack this past winter and now it is all melting causing the rivers to rage, which is both beautiful and dangerous.

We drove home and found our kids had made a shadow puppet show similar to what Paige and Clay learned about in Williamsburg. So that was our evening show after a pizza dinner (one of my favorites) Anniversaries look different now that we have kids. I look at them (the kids) and think of how they are one of the many benefits to marriage.

I think God for our marriage and Jathan's godly leadership and love for me!

Fruits of Labor

Our peaches are coming fast and furious. I am determined to allow as few as possible go to waste, however, it is next to impossible to keep up with them. I took a few days off of climbing up into the tree picking the "just starting to get soft" peaches and now I am in trouble. Now many are in the "eat me this moment" stage. So back at it I will be. I love our peaches, and most stone fruit in general, but as far as growing, the citrus is much easier. They will last many, many months on the tree and even on the ground for days provided they stay dry. But not so with stone fruit. You better be ready, because when they are ripe, you only have a couple of weeks and then they are gone. They have either fallen to smash on the ground or our friendly neighborhood birds have pecked away at them all. Maybe friendly isn't the word to describe the birds. The other day while up in the tree, one was squawking terribly at me. I felt like I was in intruding on its space until I reminded myself that we were the ones that pruned the tree this winter and thinned the fruit one by one this spring. We are also the ones to rake the leaves in the fall and pick up the fallen fruit in the summer. So I do believe I have every right to be in the tree picking its fruit!

Our raised bed garden on the side yard isn't doing too bad either. Mix tomatoes and basil from the garden, garlic, cheese and olive oil from the farmers market and some lavash bread from Trader Joes and you have a pretty tasty lunch!

I hesitated about putting a garden on our side yard by the street. I wasn't sure if our neighbors would appreciate the look of it. But I found it to be quite the opposite. Every time I am out tending it or picking something from it, if someone is walking by they comment about how much fun they have watching the garden grow. I have conversations with people I have never met before because of the garden. So it has been a blessing.

We are using the abundance of peaches to make more contacts with neighbors as we have been delivering fresh peaches to most all of them. Jathan and I realized and are convicted that we have not been using the opportunity we have in the neighborhood for the gospel. So that is going to change. The peaches have helped us open the door with communication and now we are working on more intentional contacts. You can pray for us if you think of it.

Colorado - Kansas - New Mexico

In the middle of May, Jathan had a conference in Estes Park, Colorado. The kids and I got to tag along. It was so much fun exploring Rocky Mountain National Park and the surrounding area. After Colorado, we headed to Kansas to visit Jathan's sister and her family. Here we were able to attend our nephews graduation. On our way back to California, we stopped in New Mexico to visit our friends from our days in Indiana. I wish we could have stayed with them longer, we had a wonderful time, two nights just wasn't enough. Finally home again the first day of June. We had a great time, but there really is nothing like sleeping in your own bed!

Snow is not on the list of some of my favorite things. But it sure is beautiful up in the mountains. The picture below is in the morning after a snow fall the night before. The older three and I went on a bird walk with a local naturalist at the park. It was so interesting and beautiful.

The weather forecast said no snow, well that isn't what happened. We were not prepared and being from a place that doesn't snow we really didn't have much at home that would have prepared us anyway. So off we went to the thrift shop and for $35 we came away with 5 bib overalls, 4 coats, 4 pair of snow gloves and 3 pair of snow boots. For another $30 we got a brand new but on clearance pair of water proof hiking boots for Clay that will last him a couple of years and hopefully his younger siblings too. Everything was sized larger than needed so we will hopefully get many years out of them. (except my bibs, I am hoping not to grow too much myself!) They will come in handy as we venture up to the Sequoias to play in the snow.

In the picture of Paige, we are over 2 miles above sea level, that is the highest we were able to drive in the park.

Paige and Clay got to take an archery class where we were staying. The younger two weren't old enough. We stayed at the YMCA Conference center and it was wonderful with activities and classes for the kids. Most everything was free except the archery, but that was only $3.

While passing through Denver on our way to Kansas, we stopped at Casa Bonitas, a very unique Mexican restaurant. I can't say the food was much to write home about, but the entertainment on atmosphere was worth the trip. Cliff divers, flame juggling, skits, caves, pinata. It was a lot of fun.

While in Kansas, the kids not only saw their cousins, they also got to spend time with their grandparents who also came to watch the graduation.

In New Mexico, Jill and I took the kids up to Santa Fe for the day to do a little sight seeing. We saw the oldest church and oldest home in the US as well as some cool shops. In the picture below, bricks are being made to restore the oldest church.

Homeward bound. Crossing the Mojave as soon as we get into California. This is our view for a couple of hours.

Two Kids

We are two kids down this week as Clay and Paige are in Williamsburg, VA with their grandma and aunt. They are learning lots about Colonial history and it sounds like they are having a grand time.

So it has been just the four of us this week. And wow! what a difference it makes. The first day was a bit of a struggle, I have to admit I missed the other two, it was so weird not having them around and knowing that they wouldn't be for a week. But then getting to focus on just the younger two has been so nice. We had a bumpy morning yesterday, the younger two didn't quite know what to do with themselves without their older ringleaders. But today has been filled with laughter and chatter between the two and I think they are enjoying their time quite well.

Now that the two kids are occupied with something, I thought I would update the blog a bit. I am not sure if anyone reads it anymore, updating it less than once a month does not help encourage people to follow, but for those of you faithful readers here is a nutshell of what has been going on in our lives.

After returning from our two and a half week trip out east, we finished up with school and were excited to bring on summer break. In June we had swim lessons a couple of times. A lady from our church offers swim lessons to our family at her home. It is great, as they kids can work on what they need help with and they get lots of individual attention. Their strokes are improving very well. The beginning of July, our college friends that live in the LA area visited for the Fourth of July. It was a great time with a couple trips up to the national parks, swimming, games and fireworks. Also this summer, the kids are in a reading program at the library, earning prizes and reading lots of books. The older two, especially Paige, concentrated on reading books about colonial times and Jamestown. This was to prepare herself for their big trip.

News on "M". We still haven't finalized and we still have no idea when that will be. Her social worker told the court November, then he told me he hoped before school started, then he said that wouldn't happen but hopefully soon after it starts. So I really have no idea when it will happen. Until there is a court date set, I am not going to get too excited. I feel like we are bonding better with her, but we still have a way to go. I hate to admit it, but she can still do things that just get under my skin, and I know that if it were one of the other kids it wouldn't bother me as much. But it is getting better. She is no longer in therapy, her therapist thought that she was doing well and didn't need it anymore. We have been working on her asthma. It is all new to us. I had asthma as a child, but hers seems to be different. We haven't had much trouble with it except on our trip which landed her in the hospital for 3 nights. Last month two women from the local hospital came and evaluated our home for possible triggers. They literally did the white glove check which was a bit embarrassing and stressful. And then gave me an action plan and came back two weeks later to make sure I made the changes and cleaned the way I should. "M" came with over 40 stuffed animals, I am not exaggerating. They said she needed to be limited to two animals. The other kids also needed to get rid of all but two a piece that way I could wash in hot water, dry and then put them in the freezer every other day for 24 hours. That was hard, especially for Drew as he told me he didn't like asthma. I let them keep 5 each, I couldn't do the 2 a piece, but I will try to stay on top of cleaning them. (just don't tell the hospital ladies!)

Drew completed his school testing. All of it just in time for them to hire a new special ed teacher that won't start until the beginning of the school year. So we really didn't get anything accomplished yet. We have had less raging, which is wonderful, though when he has raged the things he yells at me breaks my heart and can be a bit frightening. After he calms down he is a different kid again and you are thinking "what on earth just happened?" One of our biggest challenges is communication. Trying to figure out what he is saying can be close to impossible and frustrating for both us and him. It isn't understanding the words, sometimes that is a struggle, but after figuring them out he just doesn't make sense or we think he does and find that the words he is saying is not matching with what he means.

So anyway, those above are ways you can pray for us.

We are back

Well maybe you didn't know we were gone. We just returned Wednesday night from a 2 1/2 week road trip. Colorado for a conference, Kansas for nephews graduation and then New Mexico to see friends on the way home.

It was an adventure. Lots of fun and a bit stress ("M" spent 3 nights in the hospital for asthma). I'll share some of our trip in the future. Right now we are adjusting to home.

Laundry has been the focus. Washing clothes, hanging them to dry, taking them off to fit the next load on. I finished the last load this afternoon, they are folded, not quite put away, the kids will do that in the morning. I believe there is suppose to be rain, so it is finished just in time. Of course, I can never really get caught up with laundry.

In addition to putting things away and washing clothes, I decided to rearrange some furniture. I realized today that the last several times I went on a trip, I came back and rearranged some furniture. I am not sure what that is about.

But anyway, we made it home after traveling over 3,000 miles. Thanking God for protection.

Egg Dyeing Gone Wrong

It is inevitable when you want something to be perfect that it turns out just exactly the opposite.

This is our first Easter with "M". And it was to be her first time ever of dyeing Easter eggs. She was supper excited about it. So the day before Easter I had everything ready. The eggs were boiled and I had the dyes out and ready to go. This year we were using this swirling sorta dye that I had in the Easter box that my mother-in-law had given us for the kids. This was probably the problem. This certain egg dyeing kit looked a bit complicated so I held off a few years to use it. You know when the kids were a bit older. The box showed perfectly dyed eggs, with beautiful pastel colors all swirled around the egg. They looked professional.

Well I read the directions, had everything set up. Put the drops of dye in the water. Now I went first to demonstrate how to do this new technique. Per directions, I put the egg in where the dye was floating and then brought it out in a spot that the water was clear.

Voila!

A perfectly white egg emerged from the water. Now my hand was a bit colored and felt gross because this is all oil based. But not a drop of dye was on the egg. OK, well the kids wanted to try anyway, so they all submerge their eggs and swirl around and dip over and over again and they came out bleach white. Oily hands and white eggs were not what I envisioned for this perfect first time egg dyeing occasion.

So out come the crayons, stickers and any other left over egg decorations from years past. I went back in the house to look over the directions again. Drew comes in asking if he can eat the egg that he accidentally cracked. I say yes. And soon they are all wanting to eat some eggs. I go back outside to see eggshells everywhere, crazy decorated eggs, and happy children.

So I guess it wasn't all a loss.

And yes we even had a guest participating.

April's Happenings

Not a very catchy title, but hey, that's what this post is about. Just so you know that we haven't fallen off the face of the earth, I'll fill you in on what April has brought us...

We began April with my sister leaving after a several day visit. Her visit ended our 4 week guest stay. From March 4th thru April 1st we had visitors at our house every night except 2. The kids love visitors especially because the first visitors were missionaries that had 3 kids around their ages, the second visitors were their grandma and great grandma, lots of attention, and the third was their aunt. More attention. We were happy, though, to have the house back to normal and go back to our normal routines.

We celebrated Paige's 9th birthday this month, which I did post about, even though it was a bit late.

Last week was our semi-spring break. I say semi because like semi-retirement, we still did a bit of school work. We are going to take another break later before school is out, but we did need to tone down a bit and rest. Spring break was fun for the kids because they got to play more with their friends and swim a bit.

Paige loves her new wet suit. She freezes whenever she is wet, even if it is 100 degrees outside. I guess when you don't have any body fat, it is hard to stay warm. :)

We celebrated Easter. Our church had an Easter brunch, that was delicious! We had a wonderful service. And enjoyed dinner at our house with a few friends. The kids got to have a little egg hunt. Jathan and one of our guests hid the eggs. They tried making it challenging on the kids, and in the end they even had a hard time remembering where the last one was hidden.

We planted a garden. Jathan and the boys built these nifty garden boxes to put on the side yard. It is an area that isn't used much. The kids and I started seeds indoors and then were able to plant them a few days ago in the boxes. We will see how they do. I also worked on my herb garden in our back yard. I added some mint (in a pot), basil and lavender. In addition to that, I already had thyme, oregano, sage, chives, cilantro and rosemary.

The boys went to California Hot Springs with a couple other dads and their sons. Here they have pools that are fed by naturally hot springs. They have some to soak and then they cool down the water a bit for the swimming pool. The boys had a great time.

I got to go a way for a weekend to scrapbook. I feel a bit guilty about it all. I left on a Friday afternoon to go to LA and spend the night with my friend Suzanne. We had the house to ourselves because her husband took the rest of the family to visit his sister. Then we went to a hotel in Manhattan Beach to scrapbook Saturday through Sunday. It was a very nice hotel, I must say, so I felt a little out of my league there. I returned home to find a bouquet of flowers from Jathan. I thought I should bring him flowers, he was the one who had the kids by himself and still had to preach on Sunday morning. Then I found out the next day that he had scheduled a pedicure for me!

Jathan and I are going to end the month by running in a half marathon tomorrow. I will try post how it goes, but if you don't hear from me in a while, you will know what happened to me. Seriously, though, I am excited/nervous. I know we can do it, we did a trial run of the 13.1 miles a little over a month ago, but I still get nervous about these kinds of things.

I know I left a lot of details out, but I will try to fill them in later. But just because it has been so long, I thought I would get you up to speed a bit.

Birthday Week

A couple of weeks ago turned out to be a birthday week at our home. Our littlest one turned 6 on March 15th. Drew had been looking forward to the day for quite some time, when he was finally 6 years old! And the week before, my mom and grandma began their visit and we were able to celebrate my grandma's 92nd birthday.

In our house you get a party for your odd birthday and we do something special as a family for your even birthday. Thankfully, it was a "celebrate as a family" year since I had strep throat on Drew's birthday. So the rest of the family, including my mom and grandma, all went out to celebrate his special day. However, I did get to join in the celebration when he opened his gifts.

Here is the birthday boy, with his sibling made "birthday crown"

Out to dinner for Drew's birthday.

Out to dinner for Grandma's birthday.

March Madness

We look forward to the tournament every year. And every year we are hopeful that our Boilers will go all the way!

We all fill out a bracket, trying to go with reasonable guesses not our heart, well most of the time anyway. Paige loves it! And has won several years. Drew picks the lowest number every time and only has to make a decision as to which number #1 to pick when it gets to the final four and the championship game. This year the winner gets a night to pick the menu for dinner (and if I win, well I was told they would prepare dinner with for me)

So we will see how it goes.

I know we are already to a good start when as soon as we finished filling out the brackets, Drew says "Who won?" Um, it has just begun. Then "M" says, "Is this football?"

Happy Belated Valentines!

I hope that you had a wonderful day yesterday. I am a little late in posting, but that is mostly because I was a bit busy to sit at the computer for any length of time.

Jathan and I celebrated Saturday night with dinner out at Chili's (I love gift cards), a little shopping (now that is something that I don't love to do, but Jathan insisted that I buy a belt since my one and only one fell apart and purchase new running shoes) then we headed over to some friend's house for a game. The game was guys against girls. It wasn't exactly marriage building, but it did help us practice seeking forgiveness from each other. And just to let you know the girls won! To help Jathan's sore feelings we stopped by Coldstone Creamery (yet another gift card) on the way home. That will lift anyone's spirits!

Yesterday, was more of a working Valentines. The kids and I had school. And with it being Jathan's day off he worked really hard at tearing out the carpet and padding and removing/prying off the nail strips. The nail strips were not easy to get up from the concrete, I image they had been there since the 80's when the house was built. Before Jathan was finished he took "M" to an appointment and I took over the job. The other three kids were at a neighbors house, I enjoyed the quiet (except the pounding of the hammer on the concrete and my music blaring) Jathan said he didn't want me to mess with it, but once he left I changed clothes and got to work. As I was working I was formulating in my mind my answer to convince him that it was good I didn't listen to him and did it anyway. I was practicing my "I love you and I wanted to be an encouragement, I enjoy this type of thing, so it was fun, I was careful not to hurt myself" speech. Thankfully when he got home, he was happy on the progress and admitted that he was beginning to get overwhelmed with this project and how he was going to get ready for a bible study on Tuesday and a sermon on Wednesday. So I wasn't in trouble. Jathan's parents sent the kids money to take us out for dinner, so that was what we did in the evening. Thank you Grandma and Grandpa!

In case you are wondering why Jathan was ripping up carpet, we are redoing our floor in the kitchen, family room and dining room. It has been something we have wanted to do for a while, the carpet is quite disgusting (it is under our dining room table, you can probably picture what it looks like) and the linoleum in the kitchen, well, it is an eyesore and beginning to come up. In the midst of figuring out what I want, God blessed us with wood laminate flooring at an amazing price from a friend. When it is all said and done I will show you pictures and share with you more about how we got the floor.

Anyway, I hope you had a wonderful Valentines Day.

Looking Back - Winter in CA

Since I missed posting anything the last couple of months of 2010, I decided to start a series called "Looking Back". I took a whole lot of pictures and there is a lot to tell, but I don't want to recap 2010 all in one post (I doubt you want me to either) so I thought periodically I will put up a post about 2010. So here is my first one.

As many of you know, winter in CA is a bit different than many other places in the country. Even Fall is different. Leaves still fall off several of the trees, you will notice it especially when you are driving by a stone fruit orchard or nut trees. However, when you think of Fall, like October and November, our leaves are still very green. Then comes the change, when everyone else has moved on to winter (we have too, we have our Christmas decorations out) our leaves begin to change and we finally start raking the first of December. You drive around town and think "Oh, a beautiful Fall day" Of course you have the Christmas lights to look at too.

So you have the month of December, where you feel it should be winter, because you are singing songs about a winter wonderland and a white Christmas, but you are still raking leaves. What to do? Well this year we decided to do a typical winter activity, at least typical in colder climates.

We went ice skating.

Only this isn't typical ice skating, it is advertised as synthetic ice. Huh? The ad says you don't even need to bundle up. Well this we have to check out.

We find half price tickets on the internet and a group of us drive about an hour to this outdoor synthetic ice skating rink. We decided to pack heavy coats, mittens, scarves and hats, because where we are from, you dress warm for something like this. Keep in mind that we went with families who were not native Californians, one mom had lived in Colorado for many years, and the other lived in upstate New York.

Well we arrive to find a little rink (and I mean little) with a white picket fence around it and Christmas music blaring. It looked like ice from afar and they are using real ice skates. Then we get closer and see it is white plastic.

This will be interesting.

We lace up our skates and hit the "ice".

The problem is that the blades on the skates do not cut through the plastic like it does on ice and you end up sliding about a foot and figure it is easier to walk. The older crowd wasn't too happy about this. My young kids didn't think it was too bad. Of course they had nothing to compare it to. After about 20 minutes of this, the coats, mittens, and hats came off. After about 10 more minutes the skates came off. We found we could slide a whole better better on the plastic with our socks. I wasn't sure what the employees would think of this, but before long they were conducting sock sliding races and contests with our group. They must not have minded.



After our adventure, the socks went in the trash. They looked pretty bad. It was an experience, but we all agreed that we were especially thankful we didn't pay full price for this. But it will be a memory we won't soon forget.

Recovered

I think our home is in the recovery stage now. Starting last Sunday, we had a new person come down with a fever everyday. It hit everyone except me. Jathan was struck the hardest, that happened on Tuesday, making him victim #3, and he still isn't quite right (health wise, I mean!)

Today, I was freezing and tired all day and Jathan was sure it was my turn, but this evening after a run, I was rejuvenated. So hoping and praying that it is over.

Anyway, in case you were wondering what was going on in our home, now you know. :)

?????

As I was taking photos off my camera and putting them onto the computer, I found this picture:

This is my dresser, but those are not my G.I. Joe figures. And I didn't take the picture either.