creek around the block

We have this neat creek around the block. Sort of like a community swimming pool without chorine. It's really a safe creek. We call it a creek, but it's good size. Not too swift though. Although every year it changes completely. For many years there was a little dammed up part, so it made it pool more. It's always nice on a hot day to walk around the block and swim.

This is Lee standing in the middle




We had a boys day at the creek. (Monica was still gone to Calif.)
Mark and Gareth

Brother and Sisters visit

We've had some very relaxing weeks around here. I don't have another birth scheduled till August. Jon is at a wilderness camp for 3 weeks, Monica was gone to Calif for 2 weeks.

My sister Jeannie and brother Jim came up from Colorado for a week. We had a great time hanging out, eating and talking.

Paul
Carson and Mark
Carson and Mark in front of the falls
James, Carson, Mark and Monica
James: x marks the spot!
Kootenai Falls
Joyce and June
Gina
Picnic lunch
The kids were hot from hiking around, so they all decided to put their heads in the water and cool off.
We got to the park and started the BBQ right away, starving kids!
Jeannie, Moriah and Miriam
Mishael holding April's baby, Gideon
Mishael, about 6 month pregnant now.
Moriah, Gina and Monica
Mark and Carson climbing up a wall for a short cut.
Lee (Martha's) We found a great place to swim, but it was so cold it hurt!
Jim, Grace, June and Issac
Carson is great with the boys. They were having a great time.
Monica, Gina, James and Mark

catch up

My Computer had to be fixed. So I sent it off to Michael. It is finally back and working great!

I had a very busy April and May with births, so it's nice to have some time to catch my breath. Looks like a slow summer, hoping to do some camping and short trips, just having family fun.

This is Monica's cactus. It blooms so nice every year.
Our swimming pool, up and ready to use if it would just get warm enough.
This is Frisky is the grass. It's very nice and green around here right now.
My container garden. I have these on my back porch. So far nothing much is growing. I do not have a green thumb.

Our new shower. The tile came out beautiful.
Jon, who still loves taking pictures of himself. I thought this was a nice one.
Jon again who when he is home, can usually be found right here.

My new garden fence. This was part of trade for a birth. I actually had 2 trades going on at the same time. This one guy cleaned up down trees, moved the garden fence, fixed all sort of little things. It was wonderful. The other one was the labor on the bathroom. He's doing a beautiful job.

It's a boy!!!!

Moriah's Ultra sound

No doubt this time!



My 3 due mama's!

Gina Choir

Gina's sings in the Choir in her school plus she take voice lessons. She has an amazing teacher and it's so nice she has this opportunity. The Choir made a trip around to sing and came to Libby.

mothers day

I had a great mothers day. Not everyone could be there, but everyone gave me a call and sent cards.

Martha, Moriah and Mishael plus their families were going to get together with us. Miriam had to work, so we ended up eating at Apple-bees and Miriam could be our server.

Afterwards we went to a park and just had a nice visit.

My girls gave me such nice presents:

Gina sent me a card that made me cry, Maria sent one that was thankful for the little things, like potty training! It was funny.

thats a tortellini salad in the front of my flowers. I thought it made a nice picture. I marinated the cheese. It's so good that way.

finally a day off from running

For the last 2 weeks I've been running every day. 2 births, postpartum visits, a prenatal class, Kalsipell one day, children's science projects. My house is a mess, the sun is shining. Hopefully I can catch up around here today.

Gina is home for "Home leave" She is driving her own car now and having fun with the extra freedom.

So Monica used Gina and her friends for her scientific study.
Monica was seeing if different music will change your heart rate. So using my little pulse oximeter, she was able to find out that it really didn't change just from music alone.

Mark's study was "will garlic on your foot taste in your mouth?" Yes it does a little.

Tabasco sauce on your wrist taste in your mouth?

week end hike

We had a nice weekend although still very busy. The pathfinders club had to do a 10 mile hike to get the badge this time. So off they went to the park down the road. They hiked all the way to the falls.

I had a CPR class to go to and a community "prenatal - 5 fair". After the hike I joined the pathfinders and we hung around a big camp fire eating hot dogs and smores. Most of these friends are vegetarian. So they eat the weirdest hot dogs out of a can. It must be something you grow up with because they look pretty weird to us.

Rick has been busy with the radio station, and Jon has been hanging out with a big youth group.

Jon had a track meet on Fri and won one 1st place, 2- 2nd and one 3rd. He's pretty fast!

pizza hut fund raiser

Mark and Monica get to go on a trip with their teacher. It's called Ed Fest. This is the first yr they are old enough to go. First they go to Bozeman to the school that Gina is in for a couple of the days. They will have a science fair, sport competitions and eat vegetarian food. Then the teacher takes them on some special educational outings. A very exciting trip.

So to raise money for this trip Monica and Mark were part of a fund raising event. They were the servers at our local pizza hut. they had to take all the orders, serve all the food, just like the normal paid servers. Only the school got to keep all the tips for the trip.
Here is Mark with a tray of ice water. Scary!!

Monica taking orders!

The park down the street

We have a park down the street. It's not the swing set kind of park, it's the beautiful kind. It starts about 3 miles down the road and then you can only walk or ride a bike into the park. It's along the Kootenai river and if you walk far enough in this park (about 7 miles) you reach Kootenai falls and the swinging bridge. Well I've never hiked that far, but we used to go to this park quite often. Sometimes I would go when I just needed a quite place to pray, or when we wanted to take a nice family bike ride, or just a good hike. There is good fishing on the river, a black berry patch and a grave stone, apple orchard, old- old cabins. So it's a fun place to explore.

Sunday it was a beautiful day so I took the children and we started to hike in. The children had their bikes. the boys were having a great time exploring. After exploring the cabin and watching Search and Rescue practice bringing a stretcher down a mountain side, we decided to sit and have a little picnic. I just started reading a book to the kids and I get a phone call.......A client that was early, surprised us all. So we quickly headed out to our car.

Got the children home, packed up my stuff, made a few phone calls to assistants and off we went. The family lived quite a ways out of town. Arrived at the house and 10 min. later they had a beautiful little girl. What an amazing day with God's timing perfect.

I'm so enjoying the warm weather. Hoping for lots of hiking, camping, picnics, BBQ's and swimming party's this summer. My midwifery schedule is really slow this summer, so it should give me lots of time for children. Well if life doesn't bring other stuff to make us busy.

the rest of our trip

For the last part of our trip we decided to go to Cranbrook and then head home through Eureka.

More pretty views.

Almost the whole trip up was on a beautiful lake or Kootenai River, but it looks like a huge lake.


We thought this was interesting where it says "metric free"
Rick who I only rarly can catch smiling on a camera.
On the ferry boat.

We were planning to go out to eat after we got to Cranbrook, but we had snacked and we were not very hungry.

So we decided to go to A&W.  It was so good and lots of fun.  Huge root beer floats, and papa burgers.  They were really good.

They serve vinigar in little packets for the french fries!
See how big they were!


These are the beautiful mountains we see on the way back from Cranbrook.

2nd entry for Ainsworth trip

This is another beautiful view picture.  What we can see from our motel room.

There are 3 pools at the hot springs.  The Caves are 106 degrees, the main pool is 98 and then there is the cold pool.  They say if you are in the hot pool and go in the cool pool, that it's cleansing.  So we all tried it, but it actually hurts.  As you stand in the pool all the blood rushes to your feet, they get really tingly and painful.  They say this blood rush cleans your liver.  This picture below is Mark in the cold pool

This is Rick visiting, notice his glasses on still.

This is an old building.  Inside we could see through the windows it was all set up like an old store.  Really neat, but closed.

These are are nice pudding desserts

Monica's coffee drink.

This is the large pool

This is Monica and Mark in the cold pool, saying: hurry take the picture fast!

The caves start out with tile, but as you go back it's a very dark cave with the mineral staglites and dripping ceiling.  It's really hot in there, like a sauna.  

Monica made the batter before we left home for this chocolate pudding cake.  We baked it in the toaster oven.  We bought spray whip cream which is a very special treat for us, and fun to decorate everything.

Ainsworth first part of the trip

Our weekend trip to Ainsworth started actually on Wed evening.

 

 I have had some really stressful weeks of late and a lot on my mind, so I'm was really looking forward to trying to really take some time off.   After the 5 births in one week, 4 births being in 2 days, lots of prenatals, and this Wed. was a class day on going through labor.

So Tue I should have been getting ready for our trip and the class, but instead we were trying to help Gina buy a car and for some reason  I got this notion that I needed to clean out a closet at the birth center !!  

   

 So Tue I cleaned out a closet all day, and  found Gina a car.  Wed I had a class with a good turn out.  I always bring something for lunch, but didn't really have anything prepared.  I brought a spinach , tomatos, feta cheese and an Asian dressing.  Mishael was there and put it together while I was doing prenatals.  :)

So Wed. after class we  headed to Kalispell in the van and Gina's new car, we had a very nice evening at Martha's house. Maria, Moriah, Gina were there.  Gina was so excited about her car.  It's a Buick Century.  It has 6 seat belts and it's not a real little car.  It's  a 1991, but only has 53,000 miles on it.  Hopefully it will be a good safe car for her.

Thursday we had appointments and meetings all day in Kalispell.  We slept at home Thur night and I woke at 5 am worrying about clients.  I knew I needed to be able to make sure everyone was OK so I could relax for the weekend.  A few more phone calls, pack the car with food and clothes and off we go.

We left about 11 am, finally free and easy about everything at home.  Time to enjoy family and views and truly relax.  As soon as we hit Canada no more phone calls!!!

Monica, Mark and James had never been to Canada, so everything was new for them.  Strange because  we used to go to Canada quite often with the older children.

The first thing we saw that I wish we could have gotten a picture of was a huge male elk.  It had a big beautiful rack.  I've seen lots of Elk, but never one with a huge rack.  It was amazing.   

The pictures are mixed up a bit, but I'll give you descriptions.

We got to go on a free ferry.  It was 40 minutes long.
We picked up some skate boards for the boys in the first little town we were in.  Some things are cheaper up here, but most things are more.  We do get $1.25 for every $1 American, so that helps a little with the high prices.  So in this picture the boys are fixing the new skate boards to make them better.
Monica is unloading the ice chest.  It's a good thing we brought food.  There is only one restaurant in this little place and a typical dinner is $24 a plate!  The motel has a kitchenette and I brought a toaster oven.  We picked up some really nice partly prepared food at Costco.  Egg rolls, Mandarin orange chicken.  Orange juice, bagels, cream cheese.  We couldn't bring produce over the border, but I thought I would buy them up in Ainsworth.  I didn't realize how small the "towns" were up there.


This picture is Rick very happy, because after months of looking for his meter, calling all his friends, buying a new meter, here he found it in his suit case.  Why did he bring it with him last trip.  Rick is famous for bringing too much stuff with on trips!

These pictures are on the ferry

This is a glass house made of embalming fluid bottles!  Strange!

we live in an amazing area

We have a moose hanging around the house.  We used to have them around and hadn't seen them for years.  Now it's  around almost everyday.  Not right in our yard, but across our street.  It seems like a pretty mellow one, as he hardly pays attention to us.  

Here is the moose with her baby.

James and his friend Jake. They were sledding down this neat hill.

We get these neat ice falls.  Actually I don't know what they are called, just they are all over.  Miniature waterfalls that freeze in the winter.

I had 2 postpartum visits on the W. Kootenai.  Which is about 70 miles from Libby.  It's always such a beautiful drive.  I always think it looks like a postcard.

March weekend

Moriah and James.
Eric 4 yrs old

Eric being silly
Mishael and Gareth
Rick, Miriam, Jon with a Heidi (Cody's sister) in the middle.

This is the coal car.
Grandpa gave Eric his own special cantainer of ice cream!  :)
The engine
The amazing train cake.

We hated to eat it after it was all done.

Moriah and Joe decided to come up for the weekend.  it was Jon's birthday on Sat. and Eric's on Monday.  We all had a great time.  Joe brought his snowmobiles up.  I made a lasagna dinner and cheese cake for Jon's birthday.

Sunday Moriah and Mishael made this fantastic train cake.  Train cakes are a tradition in our family.  Just about everybody had a train cake at one birthday or another.  Well this one was pretty fancy and it turned out really nice.

The whole weekend I didn't know if I would be able to be home.  It's been a crazy couple of weeks because I ended up with 3 overdue mom's and 1 due today.  That's 4 ladies that can and should be having their baby's any time.

Finally Wednesday one of them had their baby and the next 3 went in labor on Sunday!  Yep!  All 3 started labor the same day.  

But God helped the timing.  One of the labors quited down, the other one delivered Monday morning, the next one Monday afternoon.  We have 2 birth rooms at the birth center and we juggled people and stuff around and had 2 babies born on the 9Th.  Now it's Monday evening and the last mom is on her way in.  The only problem is I've only slept maybe 4 hours.  Hopefully I'll be alert enough to make wise decisions.

Fasting?!!

We still have lots of snow.  Can't wait to use that swimming pool again.

We lost a lot of trees with the heavy snow.  We have a few just bent over like this.  We can either use a come-along and try to pull it up, or just cut it down.  We like our little forest.

So I was reading about people that have a hard time loosing weight and they said sometimes it's because you have toxins built up in your body.  So I decided to do a "master cleanse"  This is where you make this lemonade of fresh lemon juice and pure maple grade B syrup.  You drink this lemonade all day and that's all.   No food at all!   You supposed to do this for 10 days.  I did it for 8 days and now on day 9 I decided to add veggies to my "fast".  It wasn't very hard to do as you feel pretty full from the lemonade.


This was my dinner  on day 7 and oh it was sooo good.  I couldn't believe how good broth could taste.
The strange thing is when your not eating you can get really into cooking food.  I've been cooking up a storm.   I made a pot of sauce and snuck in a huge bunch of spinach.  You never even know it's in there.  
It was Cody's birthday so we made him a couple cakes to celebrate.
James made the chiffon cake
Monica made the Carmel cake
Gareth in the bath.

Here James is separating the eggs for his Chiffon cake.
James making his famous chiffon cake.  He can do it completely alone now.
I made donuts one day. I never fry anything, but I figured it's a good time since I won't be eating them.  They were just a plain easy sour milk donuts and I added flax seed and wheat germ, so they weren't totally empty calories.

January pictures

Mark, James and Monica went to a Derby race with their Pathfinders club.

Mark is holding up his little Derby car here.

James with his Derby car
Here is the race track
Cody and Jon
Miriam Loves A1 sauce.  Not just a normal loves, like on steak and normal things.  But she almost can eat it straight.  I even saw her try it on dessert!  So Dad likes to spoil her and he went and bought her 2 more big bottles.  
For Joe's birthday he rented a room at a ski  hill.  It was lots of fun.

Hard to tell if this is James or Mark under all those ski clothes

On the way to Eureka for a postpartum visit, we saw some big horn sheep.  I haven't seen then for years, and I happened to have my camera!


this is the hot tub at the ski resort.

Gareth such a happy little guy!
Eric
James going skiing

James had a fun day!

The older children were gone this morning, so James decided to make us breakfast.  He made french toast for me and an egg for his Dad.  Later we decided to go out for an ice cream cone.

Here is James with his double scooper.  It was huge!



Checking the receipt..  I trained him well  :)

My new bedroom!

Here you can see my beautiful new comforter.  Also you get a little look at the nice rug Mishael crocheted me for Christmas.
It's such a comfortable room.
I noticed most quilt sets don't have ruffles any more.   So this one with ruffles, flowers  and lace was something I  was looking for.

You can also see my new windows.    You can't see the ceiling, but all the popcorn off the ceiling and freshly painted.
Mark built a snow man on the roof of the house.  Here it was already melting a bit.  
After so many house projects I was not looking forward to emptying my bedroom, painting, and going through stuff.  There is actually a box in my closet that I packed up about 8 yrs ago and I've never opened it since.  It's mostly sentimental stuff, but that is still ridiculous.  

So this week I took the plunge!  Miriam started painting for me, I hired someone to come in and take the popcorn off the ceiling.  We already got the new windows in, but we had to replace the window sills.  Everything still needed washing too.  That soot is amazing stuff.

So the room was emptied, new carpet, new paint and I finally put my new comforter on my bed!  I bought it with my birthday money (back in Sept) and didn't want to put it on till my room was done.  It looks beautiful!  

 

pictures

Gareth is Mishael's little one.  He's almost 2 now.
Eric being silly
Turkeys in our yard
Eric brought his Thomas train set up.  We were all enjoying it.
Eric, Mark, Caleb (a school friend) and Gareth

Joyce and Jon

Mark, Monica, Mishael holding Gareth
James
Jon who took about 100 pictures of himself with my new camera.  

We  had a whole flock of Turkey's in our back yard.  We often see them in the neighborhood, but this is the 1st time in our yard.

Happenings and pondering.

I actually got a new camera.  I was really missing it.

The only problem is I really dislike trying to figure out new technical things  I liked how my old camera had a very clear spot that said "Auto" on it.  I need things real simple.

Well I'm sure the children will show me how to use it!  lol!

Our household hasn't had any big exciting things happen.  Just back to normal life after the nice 2 week break from school, births, activity's.  It was so nice to stay home and enjoy watching snow fall.  It was terrible to notice all the leaking spots our roof is having problems with as the snow melts!

This last week I got some new windows in the bedrooms, got some painting done, Joe and Moriah came up for one day, I had a nice butter birth, ran children here and there, and just very normal life. 

 Eric is here for the weekend, and after church I'm hoping for a nice lazy Sunday before my busy week.

I'll have a postpartum visit in Eureka (75 miles away)  on Monday, so that takes all day it seems, Wed. we have Dr appointments in Kalispell, plus all the normal piano lessons, basketball, youth groups, prenatals on Thurs this week.  It will be a busy week.  Which brings me to my deep thoughts of late:

We had a friend of ours die a couple of weeks ago.  I just keep evaluating and reevaluating my life and what I do with my days.  Life just seems to be whizzing by.  Do I really do what I want to do?  Children grow up so fast and I have so few years left with the ones at home.  But life is busy.  Running them here and there, paying bills, paperwork and phone calls, keeping a house clean and running smoothly takes a lot of effort.  But then the things that are important like taking a child out for an ice cream cone, or reading bedtime story's,  seem to get taken over by something "more important"  at the moment too often.  Always thinking we will do it tomorrow.  I want to live life with the priority's that are truly important, but in the mean time you can't skip the cares of this life.  

I heard someone say on the radio,  "you can choose to spend you time how ever you want, but you only get to spend it once"  

Well those are my deep ponderings lately. 

The end of my week

Well my relaxing week went on.  The snow has been so heavy that no one could drive from Kalispell to Libby.  So Kendra, Nettie and Hans have been with us all week.  Besides Gareth, Mishael and Cody  here much of the time.  Someone should be coming to get the children tomorrow when there is supposed to  be a break in the storm.  

Well they have all been having a great time, staying up very late every night, getting up very late, running like wild Indians, shoveling snow, washing dishes and baking.

Yesterday we made the dough for gingerbread men.  We never got a chance before Christmas.  It was fun to watch them all cutting out cookies today.  They are all pretty good cooks and they are old enough now to clean up too.  For dinner we made  baked fried chicken dinner, with mashed potato's, green beans, fruit cocktail.  Boy did everyone  like that.

Well when there are so many little children at the dinner table, conversations can get pretty silly.  So I try to guide the conversation.  We started with "what do you want to be when you grow up?"  Then we went to"what is your favorite subject in school?"  We also told a story one sentence at a time.  One person says a sentence, and then the next person adds one more sentence to the story, etc.  The story always gets really silly.  We made some rules, "no dying, no sinful acts"  otherwise the story's go really weird.  In this story  it started out with the nice kid that like baseball was sprayed by a pink elephant, and eventually had his leg bit off by a shark, which kept them all in laughter.  They can't help be silly I suppose.

So I thought I would write down what they all said they want to be when they grow up, and 10 yrs from now we can look back and see if any of them stick out their childhood ideas.

Monica would like to be a pediatric surgeon, favorite subject is Math.

Nettie would like to be a Doctor and go to other country's helping people, telling them about Jesus. Favorite subject: Math

Hans, would like to be an electrician and a chef, favorite subject is Math.

Kendra would like to be a dancer, and an artist.   Favorite subject is reading and then Math.

Mark would like to be a Doctor and favorite subject is for sure Math.

James would like to work at Disney land, designing new rides, and he would like to be a pilot also.  James also loves Math.

So you can see we definitely have a thing about Math in our family.  Rick, Maria, Moriah, Gina, Monica, Mark and James all love math.  Not just do OK in it, but they actually love math.  They think it's fun to figure out problems, just for fun.  I like math with a calculator, but not so much all the higher math.  I can't remember how much Michael and Martha like it.  I think they like reading/writing more.

The week after Christmas

It's been a wonderful week!  The Lord has blessed us abundantly!

Kendra, Hans, and Lynette stayed with us after Christmas.   Mishael and Cody have been staying here a lot too.  All together we have had 11 of us most of the time.  We are having so much fun!

Normally every morning I wake up with this huge list.  I divide the list into 4 categories.  Calls, computer, home, town.  Usually all 4 categories are full!  Usually my calender is full!  Usually I have to make at least 2 trips into town a day, sometimes 4.  Usually I'm running, running, running.  Not this last week!  :)

  We have had a ton of snow, and the children are home from all their school and activities, so for 8 blessed days I haven't even started my car!  I just am enjoying every minute of it.

Since we have been fixing up the house, it's so much easier to have company and to keep the house cleaner.  With the snow outside, it gives that wonderful homey atmospher of a cozy house. 

 

 The only interesting thing going on this week has been our mysterious leaks.  On Christmas morning right through my new ceiling/light fixture in the kitchen we had this strange drip.  After ripping up my beautiful ceiling a bit, we finally found that ice is building up and getting under the splits in our medal roof.  We cleared the roof of snow and ice and the drip stopped.  (my kitchen ceiling will have to be patched :(.   My bathroom ceiling has had this happening for a while, and each yr we try to fix it, and each yr I think we got it, and low and behold it starts again! One of the major problems on this side of the house, (the original house, before additions)  is that the guy that built it didn't put the plywood on the roof rafters.  So our bedroom ceiling is drywall, insulation, tar paper and tin roof!  No plywood!  I'm afraid we are heading for a big roof job!  

Well then yesterday I went out to the garage and the ceiling out there is leaking!  How can it leak, their is an office above it?!   Sure enough, upstairs in the office there is  a big closet and upon investigating I found a very wet closet.  We obviously have another leak.  :(

Well everyone has some sort of problems.  I count my problems pretty minor right now.  We are living in a beautiful warm house, have plenty to eat, have a wonderful family and everyone is pretty healthy!   

Last night at midnight  we were out in the beautiful snow banging pans and yelling happy new year.  Out here in the country I think we were the only ones making noise.  I wished I had my camera as it would have made a great picture.  I truly miss my camera, and as soon as I can scrap some money together I'm going to get a new one. 

We were watching "the Music man" before midnight, eating sugar popcorn and a fruit shake.  I loved that movie when I was young and watching it again brought back a lot of warm, happy feelings.  "76 trombones in the big parade"   I'm so glad Monica likes old musicals, it's been fun watching old movies.

Sugar popcorn is just adding a couple Tbls. of sugar to the popcorn as it's cooking.  It's not carmel corn, but just gives it a nice sweet/salty taste.  

Well that's it for my new yrs up date.

Christmas pictures

Mishael, Mom and  Martha wearing our beautiful scarves from Peru.
Maria, Miriam and Moriah.  Maria and Moriah  accidentally wore the same shirt.
Just the girls, all 7 of them.

Joe and Miriam

Miriam is opening her George Foreman Grill.  I had Miriam for my secret Santa.  We just exchange names the last few years.  So we have a price range for each person.  It was fun to see what I could get for her for $50.  I managed an electric broom (Miriam loves vacuums) a Pyrex set of baking dishes, a George Foreman, a very pretty box that I told her is to hold her receipts.   I thought I did  pretty good for my budget.

Monica and girls

Rick just likes to make serious or weird faces for pictures.  In reality he was very happy.  I gave him these chocolate covered almonds that I made with  dark chocolate.  Moriah got him a book on the Beatles, Martha gave us a picture of the boys all blown up.
Our silly family picture
I thought this picture turned out pretty good for no planning.  

We are all there except Michael.  He was missed this Christmas.

Miriam and Jon being silly
Maria, Mishael, Gareth on Grandma's lap, Martha

Tony, Eric, Lee, Hans, James, Paul

Jon pushing the couch

Lee, Kendra, Monica, and Nettie
Martha

Joe brought our new couch up from Kalispell for me.  We had no couch in the living room and I finally found one at a store that was going out of business.  

But Joe couldn't back the trailer in the drive way, so Jon pushed the couch all the way up the lane!   


Martha showing James how to use his new marshmallow gun.
This one is the silly family picture

winter update

The snow is coming down in nice powdery flurries.  It's so pretty.

It's very dry snow that doesn't stick together very well.

Well today the children and I are heading to Kalispell in this winter wonderland.  I'm wondering if this is wise!  We are going to spend the night so we can drive during the day.  Since these are the shortest days of the yr, it gets dark by 5 pm and doesn't get light till after 8 am.  

The plan is today we do our shopping, Costco, Lowe's, Kmart, Glasses ( I need glasses).  Tomorrow we go to June's to make ravioli's.  The girls are coming over too and we will make as many as we can. If we don't make enough Tue then we will make more on Christmas Eve up here.  It's the tradition.

We have a few more traditions too.  Like Apple cake for dessert.  I'm not sure why, we just started that years ago and we do it every year.  An anti-pasta platter.  This is usually beautiful. with olives, salami, peppers and cheese etc.  We snack on this all day, and eat our raviolis later.  

We also have a wonderful punch we make every year.  We used to have a shwan's man come by.  they gave us the basis for this recipe and we changed it around.  It's got a little cinnamon in it, plus some cranberry sauce.  You freeze it and it's a little slushy. 

We have also decided that finger foods are for Christmas Eve.  So I made some Calazone's last night.

We tried to make a gingerbread nativity scene, but my dough was not cooperating.  So we just ended up with some yummy gingerbread cookies.

So it's true I lost my camera.  :(  I am so sad about it.  I had been thinking it's probably getting to be time to get a new one anyways, as this one was getting pretty old, and I was having trouble with blurry pictures.  But I don't have the money right now for one.   It was a future thought. How am I going to make it without a camera through Christmas.  Plus all our pictures from our trip are gone and Mark's singing in the choir.  The blog and my camera have become my journal.  I'm hoping someday to be able to print it all out and have a photo journey of our lives for our great, great grandchildren.  I just think how I would love to read and see a journal like this of my great, great grandmother. 

Well it's 8:17 am and I'm finally seeing some daylight.  It's really snowy out there.  Wonder if I should leave my cozy home to drive 100 miles, shop in crazy stores...... but then this evening we plan to watch an old movie at Martha's in her nice cozy house.  Maybe I should buy a camera instead of my glasses!  :)  Priority's you know!  lol.

Children's Christmas program

The children had their Christmas program at their school.  It was a really cute play and I was so proud of them.

James was an Inn Keeper, Mark was a main character, a newspaper reporter and Monica was a king.  Monica sang/said a rap, and Mark sang a solo. 

 If I was up in front of all those people, I would have froze and gone off key or forgot my lines.  But not one of them did that.  They spoke clearly and seemed to enjoy acting.

The most amazing thing to me though was Mark's voice.  He sang  a solo. It was serious song, and his voice was really, really good.   Everyone mentioned to me afterwards how amazing his voice is.  I remember him being so little and just barely talking and he could sing entire songs on key.  He defiantly has a talent.  I just pray he will use his talent for good. 

Today Monica, Mark and James have a piano recital.  It's snowing and cold outside and I do wish I could stay home in our nice cozy house.  We have a beautiful Christmas tree this year that Jon and the boys got from our forest and our house is really feeling like  the homey picture in my imagination. Warm house, spotlessly clean, drinking hot chocolate and baking cookies with the children. Well it's sometimes sort of like that.   Well it's never spotlessly clean, but we try.   

We are planning on going to Kalispell on Tuesday to make our ravioli's for Christmas.  Part of our tradition of eating ravioli's on Christmas has become to make them together.  Now with my sister living close this has been fun to work together on this.  So we will make a day of it. 

Hopefully I can get some pictures.  But this time I actually lost my camera ( not just the cord).  I'm really grieving over it.  I lost it on the trip.  The last I remember taking pictures was a Gina's work. So she is going to look around and see if she can't find it.  I don't know what I will do if she can't find it.  I really love my camera, although I think it was starting to act up.  It's already a few yrs old and was just a basic one to begin with.  

We are home again

Trips seems to be a bit harder as you get older, or maybe it's a trip in the dead of winter!!

It was still fun and still good, but we are so glad to be home safely.  :)

Our trip started on time and most went as planned.  All except the end.

We did our site seeing trip to Helena.  The governors mansion, the capitol, etc.  James and Monica got stuck in the elevator in the capitol, that made an exciting moment.  Miriam met us up  in Helena and we took her out to eat at a mexican restaurant.  We didn't know where the restaurant was, and so we were going to follow Miriam.  It's a busy city and we just were watching her car. It  turns out we didn't notice and she led us onto a one way street going the wrong way!  She quickly turned into a parking lot and we just thought she was taking us on a merry goose chase.  lol 

We spent the night at her house.  She is renting from Maria. 

 Maria bought a  big house for less then $40,000.  It's really a nice house.  Needs a new kitchen and lots of paint.  But it has a great foundation and roof.  No major problems.   Miriam was very hospitable and got us all air mattress and beds for everyone.  

We went to the Caverns next and the boys climbed way up in a huge cavern.  

The cabin was really nice, but it was way to cold to have our BBQ outside. Inside was very cozy.   For some reason when they told me there was  a BBQ outside I thought they meant a gas BBQ.  I don't know what I was thinking.  It was  a BBQ pit.

Next we picked up Gina from her work at Wendy's.  She got us dinner for  half price.  

Watched her sing at her school and it was beautiful.

We were sleeping in our little cabin at the Lewis and Clark caverns when this horrible windstorm woke us up.  Of course I'm thinking that a tree is going to come through the roof.  After I woke up a bit more I realize there are very few trees in Eastern Montana.  So on Friday the weather was dry and clear, on Sat we woke to a blizzard.   Roads were icy and you could hardly see a road at all!

We finally got to the school  through the snow storm and over lunch decided that it was best if we drove during the day or plan on getting stuck in Bozeman. Weighing our options we knew we better skip the evening concert and head towards home. 

 It was so cold outside and the wind was blowing so hard, I asked Gina if there was a way to pull the car up to the cafeteria. She said "yes, can I move it"?  Gina still doesn't have her drivers license.  I began explaining how she doesn't know how to drive on snow, etc. etc.  Rick said, "let her do it, she will be OK."  So off her and Jon run to get the van.  A few minutes later, she runs in saying she wreaked my van.  I thought they must be joking, but  they wern't.  She had slipped and ran into a parked junk car.  My poor van got a broken front corner,  and poor Gina, she felt so bad.  We laughed as it was so ridiculous that I had just warned about this very thing! 

We took Gina to a big dollar store and visited a bit more before we left at about 3:00.  It was a slow drive home on icy roads, but the snow had slowed so at least we had good visibility.  It was very cold. -1 F. and at some places -9.  In the east it was horribly windy too.  So with the wind chill it was probably -40 degrees Fahrenheit.  We got home about 1 am. to a very cold house and a beautiful winter wonder land outside. 

 It's zero here this morning and the heaters been running steady all night.   Frisky was in the garage and happy to see us home too.  The trees are white and it's absolutely beautiful.    It's supposed to be cold like this all week.  Our furnace won't keep up, so we will have to add some electric heaters too.  Also I have ordered a few new bedroom windows.  Ours have lost the seal between the panes and one has a big crack, so they are not insulating well.  Hope the pipes don't freeze.

run, run, run

Another day of running around!  We have so many things going this December.  A play at church, a play at school, pathfinders, piano recitals and lessons, Mark's Choir, Jon's basket ball and Gina has a choir performance in Bozeman.  So last night Rick and the children had play practice for church and Mark had a choir performance, Rick had a radio meeting, and 2 children had a pathfinders meeting.  (pathfinders is like a boy/girl scout club) Plus we are trying to get ready to leave for our  little family vacation.  So I ran some kids to one place, picked up someone else, went back and dropped off one kid here and the other 2 somewhere else, then back to watch a performance!

We leave tonight right after Rick gets home from work.

Our plans are to drive to Moriah's tonight and watch old family movies with my sister and some of the girls.  Today is one year since my mom moved on to heaven.  So we thought we would all spend some time together eating Italian sandwiches, and watching home movies.

Thur morning we will leave for Helena, the state capital.  Here we plan on taking a tour through the capitol, the "governors mansion", the catholic cathedral, and go ride a carousel.

Then we will spend the night with Miriam in Butte.  

Fri we are off to a cabin we rented close to Bozeman, where we will have a winter BBQ.  Then off to see Gina sing.

Sat our plan is to go see the Dinosaur museum.  James is very, very excited about this.  Sat evening we again hear Gina's choir and take off right away towards home.  We hope to at least make it to Kalispell that night, as Sunday we have to  be at the church here in Libby by 2:30 for the church play and another performance for Mark Sunday evening.  

Isn't it a crazy life I lead!  At least I have no babies due!

So I better get off to work, packing clothes, food, bedding.  

Saturday

Since the children go to a 7th day Adventist school they have church on Sat.  The children will take part in the meeting about once a month or so.  Every time they have this meeting it really throws me off.  Going to church on Saturday.

So the children sang songs, and they play chimes. Over the few years they have been playing the chimes they have become pretty good.

Then Monica and I decided to go the ballet.  I've never been to a ballet and I thought it might be a good experience for  Monica.  It costs $15 for both of us, and I let her invite a friend.  

It was the Nutcracker done by a ballet company in Kalispell.  Well it was an experience, but I don't think it was our thing.  

Sunday morning, we went to our church, I had a prenatal appointment, and we came home and had to clean the house.  Such a backwards weekend.

Small towns

I love our little town.  Every year our town starts out the Christmas season with a tree lighting ceremony.  

It starts out with a parade.   A parade in winter!   It was probably about 30 degrees out last night, while lines of people were watching a short parade.  Our town loves parades though.  We have 2 big parades a yr.  One in the spring and one in the fall.  then we have a few more small parades throughout the yr.  Nordic fest, Logger days, Opening day of baseball , Christmas, etc.  They always throw candy for the children, wave and a clown comes through, lots of fire trucks and sirens going.  Now when I was young a parade was exciting because of the marching bands.  We might see a marching band once in a while here, but it's nothing like when I was young. I miss that.  I grew up with orchestra music and marching bands and I feel like my children are missing out.  

After the parade everyone gathers around this big tree at the end of the "gut".  The gut is a culdesac at the end of main street.  The select children's choir sang a couple of songs, Mark is in the choir.  I forgot to bring my camera, but they were so cute.  They wear little tuxedos, and the girls wear long black dresses.  The whole thing started with a prayer for our town, and then the middle school principal read the Christmas story out of Luke 2.  Then they lit up the Christmas tree and everyone claps.  Santa came in on a fire truck because city ordinances say they can't bring reindeer in the city!  

I was really blessed how our town is bold enough to honor God and declare that Christmas is about Jesus' birth.

"He who honors me I will honor", I pray God will keep our little town through this economic crisis.  We already had an economic crisis before the national crisis!

After the town tree lighting Mark's Choir went over to the memorial center.  Here they were having a Hospice tree lighting.  It was a sober, fancy meeting with a huge tree.  They lit one light at a time as they read off names of people who had died this last year one by one.  It took about an hour for them to light the tree this way.  I didn't know about this, or I could have had my mom listed. Hospice was so wonderful to us.  Helping us through things we would have no idea how to handle.

  The choir sang a couple of songs again at this ceremony and that was our interesting evening in our small town.

True we don't have a lot of things to do like the big city to does, but we do make fun out of anything we can.  At least we never lack for things to do!