Lovely Fall Storms

The month of October has been quite stormy, with high winds causing power outages about every other day! We celebrated 10/10/10 with a particularly bad storm, with sustained winds of around 80 mph. and gusts over 100 mph.! Anywhere else I think that would be considered a hurricane, but here it's just a fall storm, sightly windier than usual. Well, it caused lots of damage! Here are some bad pictures taken on the move:

A telephone pole that broke in half

One of the wire holding things that broke off a pole

and a landslide. Trees and wires were down everywhere, and a huge fish processing boat tore away from it's dock and ran aground. Our power was out for 21 hours. That wasn't bad considering they were saying it could be 2 or 3 days! We were warm and cozy and able to cook on our woodstove, so it was kind of fun! Our friends came over to get warm, and stayed the night, and we played a game of Catan by candlelight. The kids were quite used to the power being out by now, so they didn't really care.

Sunny Seattle

Matthew had a bit of time between building jobs, so we decided to come out from under the clouds, and go to Seattle for a few days of fun in the SUN! Of course, just as we were getting ready to board our jet, the power went off again in during another storm! And yes, it was a rather scary, bumpy ride!

We visited auntie Christy and my long lost parents who are also visiting there. Our first day we went up the Space Needle, which is something Logan has wanted to do for a while. I think the kids were a little dissapointed that it didn't actually go to space.

Beautiful Meadow! (I was having fun with a special effects photo app on my iphone, as you can see.)

City view from the top.

More....

Next we rode the monorail into downtown and back.

Pretty picture of Ashlen running next to the Space Needle. She's such a happy girl!

This is a labyrinth painted on the ground just below the Space Needle. The kids all did it and loved running the path. I need one for my yard! When they're getting too wild I can say, "Go run the labyrinth 3 times!" It's surprising how long it actually is. That's the "Experience Music Project" (EMP) in the background.

Barefoot Boy of course had to take his shoes off on the sidewalk in downtown Seattle, near a man who was screaming unintelligible things about whiskey bottles!

From City to Farm

The next day we visited a farm with a pumpkin patch and a corn maze! It was beautiful, and our first time seeing either of those. The maze was fun. They gave us a map, and we had to find numbered posts with a hole punch attached to punch the numbers on our map to show that we found all of them. We didn't think it would be all that hard, so we started out letting Ashlen lead the way, which she did with great noise and excitement, only to realize later that we hadn't seen any # posts, and had no idea where we were! But I figured it out and saved the day. I'm a hero.

In the background are the entrances to the 2 mazes. We did the castle one, not the vampire, in case you were concerned!

Ashlen was on overload, saying, "Ball! Ball!" everywhere, and trying to pick up the biggest ones! She was so cute.

This was at the Auburn Supermall. I thought it was cute. Logan and grandpa had lunch together.
We came home the next day to slightly nicer weather. It was a fun trip! Yay for flight benefits!

Birthday Boys

October 2, Brennen turned 3, and Grandpa John turned...59! They had a yellowcopter applesauce cake. Here's a slightly better pic of the cake. It was slowly falling apart (and ending up with mysterious chunks out of it!) It didn't turn out as good as I had hoped, but it was the best I could do while feeling sick. Brennen loved it though, and it was yummy!

Because I've been sick, we just had a family party, (with Krista too!). We had spaghetti for dinner, then opened presents. Brennen was so excited about each new thing! (grandpa too!)

September things

In September more friends moved away. Ryan and Stephanie went to Destin, FL for a new Coast Guard post, and Carla and Steve transferred to Oregon for the Forest Service. Sad for us, but good for them!

Logan misses his buddy Gavin. Throughout the month, the kids played lots of games of "The Movers Are Coming". Saying goodbye to friends seems to be a way of life around here.

Matthew finished the main part of our new deck! It is beautiful! It has glass for the railing across the front. Logan was a faithful helper!
My dad had his last ride in the yellow helicopter, and is now retired from the Forest Service! (but I guess not officially till the end of the year.) So now he will have lots of babysitting opportunities! The kids went to say goodbye to their precious Yellowcopter before it headed back to Juneau. Watching that helicopter slinging things was the highlight (ha ha!) of their summer!

School kids

School started this week for Meadow and Logan! Here are their first day pics.

They are going to Clover Pass. We have a great new principal this year. She has about 30 years of experience in Christian schools, and is making a few good changes. She is re organising the classes a little. Meadow and Logan are together in a Kindergarten class. Instead of pre-kindergarten there will be K4 and K5. They both will go for a half day, 5 days a week. They will be taught together but the K4's will have a little simpler curriculum. We're told they should all be reading by Christmas time! Meadow is already learning on her own to read, so I think she's going to catch on fast. Logan really enjoys math, and is very good at adding up numbers. It should be a good year!

The rest of our summer

This past month we had a visit from a friend who I hadn't seen in 18 years! Jenny Tennant and her daughter Ocean visited for a few days. It was good to see her again, and Meadow and Ocean had a great time playing together. Meadow made friends with this deer! She held out a leaf and slowly walked up to it. It actually came toward her a little, then just stayed there eating leaves while Meadow quietly watched. And of course the kids entered the slug race at the Blueberry Festival. Their slugs are the brown ones that just sat in a pile. Next year they plan to bring a trained white slug!Meadow retrieving her sleepy slug.

So we all drowned our sorrows in lots of blue cotton candy!

New stuff

A few nights ago, Logan accepted Jesus into his heart! At bedtime I was reading a story that mentioned sinners going into eternity. I know, it doesn't really sound like a bedtime story, and I was even thinking it was a bit above him, but as I explained what that meant, he started asking questions about Heaven, which led to him wanting to ask Jesus to come into his heart. (That's the short version anyway.) This picture is just after. He was excited. One morning recently, I was awakened by Meadow saying, "Mommy, I need help. Ashlen's milk is exploding everywhere." As I sleepily tried to figure out what she was talking about, I suddenly realized she meant "in the microwave!" I ran upstairs and sure enough, there in the microwave, with a time of 12 minutes remaining, was a burned and melting mess! I forgave her though. Sweetly, she had decided to try to make breakfast, and had poured herself some milk, and tried to warm some up for Ashlen. :)

We just had a fun week with Auntie Christy here for a visit! She has her own lights that she balances on her head. It's the new fashion in Seattle. And we are about to repaint our peeling house. These are the new colors we tested out tonight. Pear Green with Espresso trim! Or we could stick with white trim. Do you like it? Which looks better? (pretty sure we're going with brown.)

Seattle Again

On Sunday I (Caren) took Meadow and Logan for a special trip to Seattle, and to pick up auntie Christy and bring her home with us! We had big plans to go up the Space needle and a few other things. When we arrived, we went for dinner to Chuck E Cheese's. Here the kids are riding a video roller coaster, and you can see their faces on the screen.

Unfortunately, the next day I woke up very sick, and spent the day vomiting. (I'm sure you all wanted to know that.) So Christy took the kids to playgrounds and other fun things that they wanted to see, but not the Space Needle. We flew home the next day when I was finally feeling better. The kids took turns sitting by Christy on the plane.

Logan found lots of coins on the trip, and saved them up so he could buy a gumball! So here they're showing their gumballs in front of our jet "Tinkerbell" who flew us home. When we touched down on the runway, Logan patted the wall and said, "Good job Tinkerbell!" I thought that was cute.

The model on the ferry across to town.

That's about all the pictures I took. It was a nice little trip anyway.

A very technological evening

Tonight we made good use of modern technology. We were on speaker-phone on our home phone with my dad, who was on skype with Katie and William with his phone on speaker-phone, and we had Christy on speaker-phone on my new iPhone, and we were texting each other from Matthew's iPhone to Katie's cell phone and Williams cell phone, and talking about it. Then Matthew took a picture with his phone and sent it to my dad's blackberry. Unfortunately he didn't receive the picture in time to show it to Katie on skype, which was our hope, so here's the picture. Also, he and Christy were both watching a Mariners baseball game, and "ohh-ing" and "aahh!!-ing" at things at the same time.

Does this make sense? I suppose we could have all just written each other a letter and sent it in the mail!

Our Trip

Well, I had hoped this next post would be pictures of Barrow and me swimming in the Arctic Ocean, but alas, our flight to Fairbanks was full so we could not get on. We almost made it but the last 3 people booked on the flight came running to the gate at the last minute. It was a disappointment, but we decided to spend some time in Seattle instead. So, we took the new Light Rail to downtown Seattle. We shopped at Old Navy and Nike, then walked down to Pikes Place Market, which we didn't like much. Then we found the "gum wall". It's a wall along an alley that is covered with chewed gum! We weren't chewing any gum at the time, so we didn't add to it. Isn't it lovely? We decided we'd better not take the kids to see it because Brennen would surely pick some off and chew it!

Then we walked all the way to House of Hong in Chinatown, were we met up with Christy and her man Chris, and our friends Trista and John, for a huge, delicious dinner.We overnighted at Christy's, then returned home today. It was a nice little trip, kid free, but I missed the kids. I think Seattle is more fun with them. We will try for Barrow again at the end of the month hopefully!

4th of July

We had a fun day beginning with breakfast and an early service at church, then the parade and festivities in town! It was supposed to be really rainy today, but the sun came out instead!

Ashlen loved watching the parade.
The main highlight for the kids was all the candy they got from the parade, and afterward they had their first cotton candy too.
By the time we arrived at my parents house to spend the afternoon, they looked like this:

Sugar low, I guess!

Another special event happened today, Meadow lost her first tooth! (we think she must have swallowed it.) She was quite excited about it! This is a flag 'fruit pizza' we made.

After a nice dinner cooked by Matthew and fun visiting with friends, we went to see the fireworks. Logan only lasted a few minutes. This is on the drive home. Everyone fell asleep. (all the kids, that is!)
In the morning, Matthew and I are going to try to fly up to Barrow!!!!!!! I hope to finally swim in the Arctic ocean, and see the midnight sun! It will depend on space on the plane. One of the segments is full. We're just hoping a couple people don't show up for the flight so there's room for us, since we fly stand-by for freeeeee!