Pretties...

Most of these pics are of the seagulls because even though they are noisy scavengers, I got some really pretty pictures of them in flight, but this one is from the bow of the ferry as we crossed from Seattle to Bremerton and the water on Puget Sound was just gorgeous!  I had to take the picture, and it came out so well I just had to share.  The world really is a beautiful place!

These are the seagulls lined up waiting for people to feed them the remainders of their Ivar's lunches.  I just found it comical that they were so certain of getting food from the various tourists, and they definitely didn't go away disappointed!

This one was sitting on the fencing not 5 feet from me!

No, I don't know the person in this picture, but I thought it was funny watching the seagull flying alongside the ferry keeping his place right next to us.

Road Trip!!

We took ourselves a road trip to Steve's parents' house this weekend and had a marvelous time.  We left immediately after church on Sunday (taking a detour through Carl's Jr. for lunch) and arrived in the late afternoon.  There was plenty of time for visiting, playing with bubbles and snacking on chips and salsa before we decided we were ready for dinner.

Madison, of course, had to blow bubbles directly onto Grandma's arm, eventually resulting in a soapy film on her elbow.  Sorry, Grandma.
Judy had asked what our menu requests for the evening were and Steve told her we wanted London Broil, potato salad, corn on the cob, brownies, and chocolate cream pie.  Judy gave him everything he asked for :)  Don't bother counting the candles on the brownies; they wouldn't add up to any particular number since Judy just filled the platter and then Madison proceeded to put a candle in EACH brownie.  By the way, since Steve, Madison and I all have birthdays this month and are in the picture, Kellen took this photo for us!
I think I got a little muddled on my layout of the pictures, because I'm almost certain that the presents came BEFORE the dessert, but Grandma and Papa give both kids presents at birthdays so Kellen got a new model plane that Papa helped him put together and Madison got a new Barbie, a book (containing 6 Dr. Seuss stories) and a new outfit.
And no trip to Grandma and Papa's house would be complete without playing in all of the Disney toys in the spare bedroom!
The next morning was Destination: Seattle!

Our first stop was at the Ballard Locks, where we got to watch all the boats being brought in and out.  Kellen thought it was pretty cool to see the different boats and to watch them being raised and lowered in the locks.  Madison: less interested.  Oh, well.

She loved the fish ladder, though.  The Ballard Locks has a fish ladder off to one side and, obviously, even has a viewing area where you can watch the fish that are swimming up stream.  I think that Madison's favorite part was following the fish depicted in brass circles along the sidewalks that led you to the fish ladder.

I know, this is miraculous, but I am actually IN the picture!!  This doesn't happen often, of course.  I was taking a picture of the kids up here and a nice gentleman asked if we wanted to be in the picture, too.  How nice!

Then we had to stop in the museum at the locks, which had this model with functioning switches that lets the kids see exactly how the locks work to raise and lower the boats.  Cool thing: Steve played with this thing at the same museum when HE was a kid!
After the Ballard Locks, we made our way into downtown Seattle and the wharf.  Lunch was held at Ivar's (an absolute must!) and shared with the local seagulls, since the signage was so permissive.
Madison and I staked out a table while Steve and Kellen ordered and brought our lunch out.  
Half the fun, of course, is throwing your fries to the seagulls when you're done and seeing them catch them, sometimes in mid-air if you throw it far enough out and up.
Lunch at Ivar's was followed by a walk down the wharf to Pike's Place Market.  Wow!  That was amazing.  There was so much to see.  We bought some cherries and peaches (so much better quality than you see in the supermarkets, really.  And, since we had come prepared with a cooler of ice, we also bought some salmon, tuna, and clams.  The one thing I didn't have Steve take a picture of was Madison towards the end of this walk.  She doesn't stay put so we were taking turns carrying her on shoulders or piggy-back and, since she hadn't had a nap at that point, she finally fell asleep on my back!  She was SOOOO tired.

Then we drove the car back down onto the wharf and got in line so that we could ride the ferry to Bremerton.  The kids had a blast being out on the front and rear of the ferry feeling the wind blow.  Madison played 'airplane' while Kellen kept trying to jump and see if the combination of the wind and ferry made him land somewhere other than where he jumped from.

Once in Bremerton, we headed south towards home, finally.  In Tacoma, we stopped at The Old Spaghetti Factory for dinner.  Madison was a bit cranky (still tired) but the food was really good.  Steve and I used to go to the Spokane one occasionally when we were newlyweds, and again in Oakland, but the last time we went was about two years ago and that was without the kids.
It was a long day, but we had LOTS of fun and really enjoyed the opportunity to visit with Steve's parents :)  We didn't get home until about 1130pm, so the kids went straight to bed and no one was up before 830am today (that's sleeping in, for my kids) and we've made it a pretty lazy day today.

The video that I have here is of the kids rolling down the small hill in Bob and Judy's back yard, which I think Madison had more fun doing than Kellen did; she talked him into doing it with her.

Craft Tag!

Okay, I know it's a LITTLE early, but I am gearing up for Christmas and I thought I'd start a tag to get everyone's creative juices flowing. I will not include actually tagging others since I'm not sure I have very many reading my blog lately; I've been too sporadic :)

Rules: If you're reading this, consider yourself tagged! Leave your name in the comments of my blog so that we know where to find more ideas and then, on your own blog, list 5 homemade gifts, trying to avoid duplicating what others have already posted. When instructions for the gift are needed/helpful, then please include links or general directions. Happy Crafting!!

1. picture cubes - start with four 1" blocks and six pictures; cut the pictures down to 3" blocks and then into four equal parts; glue the four blocks together into a cube and then glue your picture squares onto the faces of each block; decoupage (sp?) over the whole thing!

2. old-fashioned monkey doll - go here for step-by-step directions, but it's a monkey doll made out of one pair of men's socks!

3. scented jelly jars - 1 bottle of liquid potpouri brought to a boil on the stove; add 1 envelope of Knox unflavored gelatin; pour into jars and allow to set; decorate up the jars and gift away!

4. kitchen angel - go here for directions; one dish rag, dish towel, and pot holder folded up and tied with ribbons to make an angel; includes cute poem to accompany this kitchen decoration.

5. tukaway tote - go here for the pattern, which must be purchased for $9; this is a new take on the quillows that were so very popular a while back in that the bag folds up into an outside pocket!

I Skype!

I had some rollercoasters to get there, but I am finally on Skype! I'm so excited! Mom told me last night that they had been Skyping with LaNita that evening and it suddenly clicked in my brain that the laptop has a built-in web-cam. Needless to say, the moment I got off the phone I was trying to download the software. Then came the drop in my ride. My laptop (actually it's a netbook) has partitions in the memory making the C: drive only 4gb while the D: drive has 150gb, but the software is designed to only install in the C: drive, and there wasn't enough room!! AAAGGGHHH! This morning I tackled the problem again trying to remove the partitions (not really recommended, according to the experts) and trying to move unessentials from C to D in order to create more room. I finally managed it, the program loaded and installed, and I got on to chat with my parents this morning! As small a thing as this may sound like, living at the outer regions of the Northwest means I don't get to see everyone very often, even though phone calls and blogging are always available to me. I know, there's always something better out there (when are they going to fix the quirks in that instantaneous teleportation idea, anyway?) but for now I have a new toy, and I am definitely looking forward to making use of it :)

Heaven on Earth

During some of our running around this summer I did get just a couple truly beautiful scenic shots that I wanted to share with you all.

This is the view from Adventure Cove (where Kellen went to resident camp this summer) rather near Tillamook, OR.

This is another beach, a little south of Adventure Cove, where we had stopped to fly our kites before getting Kellen from camp.
This is a small waterfall (Shellburg Falls, I believe) located in the Santiam National Forest where we'll be having our Pack Family Camp this month.  This shot, obviously, was taken from the path behind the falls.  And if you follow the path around you could walk all the way down and, theoretically, stand under the water; not a particularly GOOD idea, but you COULD.

Our Summer In A Nutshell...

I know, I haven't blogged in months, literally.  So here is a REALLY brief view of just a few of the things we've been doing this summer.  These aren't in any particular order, so I will try to give approximates of when they were happening...

National Night Out was last week (Aug 4th) and our Pack was co-hosting the Bike Rodeo.  Kellen was on a road trip around Oregon with Steve's parents, Steve was at a church council meeting, and Madison and I went to National Night Out with Michelle's family.  Madison went through the bike rodeo a couple of times (every time she decided she wanted to ride her bike again) and the rest of the time we kept the trike available for other toddlers to use on the rodeo so they could participate and get the certificate.

These are the tunnels for a play set that Madison got for her birthday (I think two years ago) but she didn't undo all of the ties on them this particular day.  At one point, she even had put one to two My Little Ponies in each of them so that these tunnels looked like caves, or stages, or maybe houses for the ponies.
The last week in July Kellen went to Camp Lutherwood again, and had a blast.  Steve dropped him off on Sunday afternoon (while I went to a Pack Committee budget meeting) and Madison and I picked him up on Friday afternoon.  During the week, while Kellen was gone, Madison and I went to vacation Bible school Mon-Thurs (Madison in the pre-K class, me helping with the 5th graders) so it was a great week all-around.
The week prior to that, we had Day Camp, which deserves a whole post of its own (but I'm not sure I'll get that far).  Since it was a wild west theme this year, the boys were wearing neckerchiefs and in this picture they're panning for (fool's) gold.
The first week in July our den went to cub scout resident camp at Camp Clark Adventure Cove and, being second year Webelos now, they got to spend an entire week!  Kellen, of course, is posing for his picture and looking like a smooth dude over there on the far left.
On the day that we were going to pick up Kellen, the rest of us started out by taking a picnic lunch to the beach in Lincoln City.  It was reasonable weather, but not as much wind as we'd hoped for, since we'd planned on flying kites.  So these next couple of pictures are rather in reverse.  This one of Madison was later in the day when we stopped at a second beach further up the coast when/where there was finally enough breeze for the kites.  Madison was quite excited to actually hold onto her own kite and fly it.
This is the first beach of the day, where we had our lunch (Steve insists on doing that in the car because he doesn't want sand in his food; what kind of beach lunch is THAT anyway?) and I even made a sand castle.  The hardest part was getting Madison to wait on knocking it over until I had at least managed to finish it.  She did like helping me dig, though :)
Right after we arrived and set out the blanket, I pulled out the camera and Madison started running laps around the blanket trying to be faster than the camera so that I couldn't take a picture.  Not quite managed, obviously!  Most of the time, I feel like taking pictures of her is like this, though :)
Here is Kellen riding in the Fourth of July parade and he even got to wear Grandpa's scout uniform in the parade!  So, if the uniform looks a little outdated, it's because it's from the 1950's and Bob wore it when he was about 12 years old!  The reason for the older uniforms in this year's parade was because the them was "Through the Years" or something to that effect.
Another instance of Madison on the fly...
The first weekend in June we had our Pack Crossover where Kellen was officially moved from the Webelos I den and became a Webelos II.  I know I look a little silly in the uniform, but the Committee Chair is supposed to be in uniform at Pack events... I personally could do without that part.
This one was back in May, right after we got our plants put into our garden, which looks MUCH different from this now.  Steve is just barely visible chilling in the chair under the trees while the kids chill themselves under the water.
This is another picture of our garden, still quite early on.  The large, obvious ones are the green beans and there are also tomatoes and broccoli in there.  We planted peas, pickling cucumbers, and artichokes around the other side of the house, too.  Now I just need to post a new picture to showcase how far it has come since then...
Okay, I know this looks really bizarre, but this is one of the rooms in our local children's museum.  It has a motion-sensitive camera on the floor that projects your movements up on the screen, and it had a half-dozen different designs that it rotated through; it was like seeing yourself in a kaleidoscope on some of them!  Very cool!
This is by no means everything we've done this summer, but it shows a little bit here and there of what has kept us busy.  We have three birthdays this month so we will be going up to Bob and Judy's house this weekend to celebrate before they go on a road trip, and then we'll be going into Seattle for a day as a family, too.  And Steve is even on vacation next week so we can relax and do what we want to do with the time...

Quips from Madison...

Okay, so this week Madison had two things she said that were just so funny, I had to share.

First, it should be understood that, as cheerful a child as she is, she does not like to get up in the morning. She is capable of being quite the grouch in the mornings, and it's hilarious to see her alongside Kellen in the a.m. because he bounces out the minute the sun is up while she pulls the covers over her head. So I was waking her up one morning and the conversation went a bit like this:

Me: It's time to get up :)
Madison: I want to stay in bed all day.
Me: You can't do that, you have to get up and go to school.
Madison: Go away.
Me (laughing): But I love you!!
Madison: If you love me, you have to go away.

She was so serious about it and I just busted up laughing at her.

And then, on Wednesday evening, Kellen came out of his room after getting his scout uniform on and Madison wanted him to play with her. He wasn't interested. She tried to play hide-n-seek by going into the hall closet. He took that opportunity to sit himself down in front of the door so she couldn't get out. I was loading the dishwasher and looked over at him, telling him he needed to get up and move; he wasn't allowed to lock his sister in the closet. He scooted away and Madison stuck her head out from around the door and promptly informed him, "You're old enough to know better." I wanted to laugh again, but kept myself in line enough to remind her that she didn't need to tell him that.

They are just so funny... What would I do without my kids :)

Back to the Books!

Alright, no guarrantees on how long it will be again before I put up any new posts because the Spring Term starts today. This term I have Western Religion, Spanish (203), 2-D Art, and Tennis. We dropped through Wal-Mart last night to pick up a cheap tennis racket, and I'll still need to pick up all of my art supplies for the art class after she gives us the list in our first class tomorrow, but I already have everything else.
In the meantime, I've killed too much time this morning doing very little so I need to get Madison ready to leave so that I can get to my first class on time :) Hopefully, I will manage to check in a little more frequently in the next couple of months!

The Grades Are In!!

I'm making this really short because Steve is ready to watch a movie with me, actually he's about to start it without me... Anyway, I got four A's out of four classes this term, coming away with an Academic Honor Roll this term and a final GPA of 3.21. Hooray!!

And the Diagnosis is...

Bronchitis. I have bronchitis. I made an appointment today; actually, one for myself and one for Kellen. Kellen just has a head cold. So between co-pays for the two of us and the medication prescription that I filled for myself, it was a $120 day. Ouch. So the next couple of days I wil be taking a steroid to help dry out my lungs and a narcotic cough syrup that will help control my cough and allow me to sleep through the night, which I haven't done the last couple of nights. The good news is that it should be enough to get me back on my feet in time for next term starting on Monday. I wasn't entirely certain that I wanted to go to the doctor for it, but Steve decided we should err on the side of caution since bronchitis can have similar symptoms to, or develop into, pnuemonia; a particularly bad thing, we're thinking. So I have a couple more days to recoup, and that will hopefully be enough.

Sickies

First, the good news. I did get my phone back. Hooray!! I walked up to the class where I left it (this was the last day of class for Winter term) and it was sitting on a chair outside the door. I personally felt like that was a really good way for someone ELSE to pick up, but that's not what happened. Anyway, it worked out fine. They had hit a reset button the phone before they gave it back so I had to re-load everything that used to be on it before, but even that I don't mind, since I at least had the phone.
The other good news is that the Winter term is over. Last week was finals. I think I did reasonbly well on most of it, although the Earth Sciences one has me a little worried. Ive worked hard on my grades the last couple of years and I'd like to make the Dean's List again; we'll see if I did well enough to manage that this time. It's not much, but I at least know for certain that I dind't fail anything; I definitely got A's in theatre arts and pe, but those are both kind of hard to fail. I think I have a B to an A in Spanish, and I think I'll come away with at least a B in science. Laying it all out like that makes it sound like I am unreasonably stressing over grades that are really just fine, but there's a reason Steve pokes fun at me and calls me a 'Hermione'.
The unfortunate thing at the moment is that even though the kids and I are home on spring break, we're all sick. Like hacking up phlegm, sniffly noses, sore throats, achy muscles, and the lot. We haven't left the house since the Pinewood Derby on Saturday. We may have to actually go into the doctor tomorrow if we don't start improving since we all have to be better by Monday; school waits for no man. In the meantime, I've tried out a couple of home remedies for expectorants today. The one for a ginger, clove, and cinnamon tea was awful; the ginger gave it way too much bite. I wasn't impressed with the bay leaves tea because it didn't taste like anything at all, but lack of flavor is one of the reasons I don't like drinking tea anyway. The other two that I tried were thyme and savory teas which, sweetened with a little honey, were definitely my favorites.
So hopefully the sick status improves greatly and really soon. The bad thing is that Steve seems to be getting sick now. I know this sounds a little bad, but I'm glad at least that I'll be feeling better by the time it really hits him; it's a whole lot easier to take care of another sickie when I'm not sick.

Setbacks

I went in to talk to an advisor on campus today, to make sure that I was on track time-wise for everything I need in order to get into the Education program and graduate on time. Apparently, I'm not. When I first transferred in, I had asked different people (one of them a standard advisor, the other a Spanish advisor) if I was going to still be able to fit everything in if I re-took the 200-level Spanish classes. They said yes. The real answer was no. Keep in mind that all I have left after the Spring '09 term is a math class and the remainder of my Spanish courses before I enter the Ed program and take all of my Ed classes. But that leaves me with a total of 12 classes (all in 3rd or 4th level Spanish) that will have to be taken inside of two terms. It's just not practical. It just might be feasible if the schedules line up, and if my advisor lets me, and if the number of credits that would end up being fit within the limits of the maximum allowed per term. That's a lot of if's. And here's another one. If I had known that re-taking the 200-level Spanish was going to set me back this far, I would've taken the plunge on jumping into the Span 301 instead and trusted to my abilities in Spanish. Ugh. So this either means finding a way to take the 3rd year Spanish classes during the summer or pushing my likely graduation date back quite a bit. Steve is not going to be happy about this... I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to tackle this one.

Piano Recital

Some months ago Kellen's piano teacher let us know that there was going to be a recital in March and gave us the date for us so that we could put it on our calendar. Kellen has been working on his pieces for this for several weeks now. Last night, when I called the teacher to find out the specifics on the recital, she let me know that Kellen didn't really feel ready with his pieces so she had sent in the information for the students performing (to put on the program) and didn't put Kellen on it. I am so irritated that she basically allowed Kellen to make that decision without talking to Steve and myself! We both talked to her and she's going to try to get him back on there, but I feel that it's totally unacceptable for her to have let a 10-yr-old decide something like that. And, when I told Kellen that his conversation with her had resulted in him not being on the program at all, he was upset, too. I don't think he realized that. His fear was that he wasn't going to have them memorized in time for the recital, but he doesn't need to have them memorized for this one, just for the festival that happens late next month. Recently, because I assumed that the teacher would communicate with me on problems that Kellen is having, I just wait outside after the less for Kellen to come out (Madison being in the car with me) and I obviously need to change that. I am going to have to start going in every time and asking how he is doing, because she isn't communicating with me on her own. Ugh, it's so frustrating. Hopefully, she will still be able to put him on the program, because we told Kellen that working towards being able to perform in front of others and let us see how he is doing along with the other students is part of taking the lessons. Steve placed a great deal of the blame on Kellen last night, threatening to take away the lessons and the piano, but I don't think that would've been a good idea. Kellen likes playing and would actually be upset to lose the music.
It's kind of funny, really, because Kellen thinks he wants to be a chemist. I'm not sure where he pulled that idea from, but he's very artistic and that doesn't usually go hand in hand with science and chemistry. During Lent our church is doing an extra service every Sunday evening and this past Sunday they had a member of the church come demonstrate pottery and related it to how God is our Potter. Kellen was fascinated! He sat right up front on the floor in front of the pottery wheel watching the bowls and vases being shaped while he worked with his own little lump of clay. And yesterday evening, while we were waiting for my Bible study to start, I played on the piano a little in the sanctuary and Kellen beat along the rhythm on the drums. It wasn't exact, but he had picked up the emphatic points of the music and was hitting the drums in time with it. He also tries to dance along with almost any music he hears; it looks more like a noodle wiggling around because he's so uncontrolled and rather uncoordinated, but he loves doing it. The thought of him in a still, sterile environment like a chemistry lab is kind of funny to me. It'll be interesting to see where he actually ends up :)
On the phone, I still haven't gotten it back in hand yet. I'm going to make calls around the campus to see if it's been turned in already and no one has called me...

About the Phone...

I have a small update, even though it's not much yet. In my PE lecture today the professor pulled me aside to let me know that she had received an anonymous email from someone who says they know who took the phone and that they are going to return it in the next day or so. I suspect that they are only finally returning it because I personally talked to each of the classes and made it personal, which is a little discouraging because it means that they had to be convinced to do the right thing. But if it means that I'm getting my phone back I told the professor I wouldn't ask any questions or cause any trouble for the individuals. They had managed to hack the phone and put some things on it, so they are going to remove those before they return it, but that indicates that from the moment they picked it up they didn't really have any thoughts about returning it, until I pestered everyone continually. So I'm really pleased that it looks like I'm getting it back, but the initial dishonesty of people is a little bit of a downer still.
In the meantime, when/if it actually comes back to me, we're going to add the $5/month insurance so that we're protected if I do something this riduculous again!

Just popping in...

I know, my posts have been truly infrequent lately. I apologize (I probably already did that in an earlier post) but school really has me swamped lately. Not that this is any different from last term... The good thing is that all of my hard work paid off in spades last term because I made the Dean's List, and I'm on track to make it again this term. Yeah!
A few of you knew that I got a new phone a month or so ago. I lost it this last week. I left it in a classroom and, when I realized I didn't have it, I went straight back; it was already gone. It couldn't have been more than 10 minutes. I'm still hoping that someone is going to try to find a way to get it back to me, but that's dwindling day by day. It happens to be a smartphone with a password on it. If you enter the incorrect password too many times, the phone locks itself down. There's no external information on it to tell anyone that it belongs to me. I've notified campus security, the local police station, the cell phone company, and the manufacturer of the phone. I also talked to the office in the building where I left the phone and had my professor from that class send out an email to all the students in that class. No luck yet, and it's been 5 days. The day it happened, Steve said I'd never see the phone again, but I keep hoping that he's wrong. I am posting a sign in the student union building and the library tomorrow to see if that will net me anything. So discouraging.
Well, that was kind of a bummer. Um, on the up-side, Steve gave me a gift certificate to a local salon for Valentine's Day so I have a whole year to go in and get several pampering things done. I'm thinking about making a haircut the first one, but they also have a hot stone relaxation therapy something-or-other that is calling to me, too. I'll have to decide.
Oh, I know! Just this past weekend, our cub scout pack went to OMSI for a scout-only night! It was so cool because they have a DaVinci exhibit in right now! They had models of inventions that he had designed/made, details on the Mona Lisa, exhibits of many of his other famous paintings; it was a great evening. Unfortunately, they didn't allow children under 4 to go, so Steve stayed home with Madison. Lucky for me, I guess :)
I'm sure there are other bits of news I could catch up on somewhere in this, but they're escaping me at the moment, and it's after 6pm, so I really should go make some dinner for the kids. Steve has a meeting tonight so he won't be home until late, but at least it means the schedule is relaxed a bit for the evening; the kids aren't nearly as demanding about when they get their dinner :)