Sunday, July 22, 2007

Gina's tea

thanks to Maria and Martha we had quite the goodies.




wanted to do something special for Gina's 16th birthday in November. That time of year is always very busy for us. With Thanksgiving, Christmas and LOT's of birthdays. Besides last yr I had about 8 babies due within a few months. One set of twins, and 4 ladies due ON Jan 2nd.
So I ended up having her party in April.
It was an old fashioned tea and hope chest party.
Everyone was to dress old fashioned and bring a present for her hope chest. We had bought the hope chest on her birthday.
The girls helped me get everything together. We printed pictures and made little scrap books. Everyone had a great time.
Here's a picture of all 7 of my beautiful girls.
Sorry I don't know how to flip pictures around.
The party was held at the birth center.
She ended up with lots of nice presents for her hope chest and lots of nice memory's'


I'm trying to get some pictures in


I finally got it to work.
this picture is James on his 8 yr old birthday with his nephew's, Hans and Eric.

Saturday, July 21, 2007

normal busy day

Well thankfully our electricity was only out till Friday night. Rick, Jon and Monica had arrived home before me and decided to trick me. They turned off all the lights and fans, so it was pitch black. They came out as I drove up and said, it's so dark we can't even find the matches. But just as I was about to walk in the door, Jon flips on the porch light and they all start laughing. Crazy family! It was certianlly a relief as I didn't know what I was going to about the fridge and freezers.

Well Friday I had a postpartum visit on the West Kootenai. (75 miles away) I brought Monica, Mark and James along. I figured we could go swimming after the visit. Well I ended up with a prenatal too, and after 4 hours of waiting we finally got to the lake at about 5 pm. We took a lovely swim. The water was warm and clear. It's so beautiful to swim surrounded by mountains.

Mishael, Cody and Gareth are moving in with us today. They need a couple months to fix their house up, and needed a place to stay. This way Mishael can run the house while I'm in the Philippines too.
Hope this goes ok......

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Interesting week

We started the week hoping to get a lot accomplished, but things don't always go as planned.

We are having a family reunion of sorts. My brother Jim and my sister Jeannie are coming up from Colorado. Their children are coming too, so all together it's going to be about 47 people. June, April, and my mom are already living in Kalispell.
So we have to finish lots of cleaning projects and yard work before everyone gets here.
Now the last few weeks have been very hot here. It is not normal for Montana to be this hot for more then a week. So the heat can slow us down anyways.
Monday ended up full of errands, Tuesday a sweet little baby girl was born. They called me at 8 am and delivered by 11:15, of course they don't go home till 6 or 7 pm though.
Then Wednesday we had childbirth classes at the birth center planned. We had quite a crowd. It's really nice because a lot of our moms like to come back and join us for our special classes. so it's quite a time of visiting and weighing babies too. We also had 4-5 prenatals to squeeze in during the busy day. It was fun but very busy.
I got home about 6 or 7, we had dinner and just as I was about to take a shower (which I never got), Maria called and said " do you know their is a tornado warning" "the tornado is heading towards Libby!" Well we have had some pretty good storms here, but never a tornado because the mountains keep them from going very far. Well with in a few minutes the sky got dark, and the wind was blowing pretty good. It wasn't very bad, lots of thunder, lightning and wonderful rain. Our cherry tree stayed in a permanent wind blown position. We had a couple of trees come down. And...... this is the big AND.... we lost electricity. This was Wednesday night. we have been told that we might not have electricity again till Saturday! When we loose electricity we loose water too. plus we have the fridge and freezers to think about.
So today was wasted in town as we didn't want to stay home, Friday I have the postpartum visit in the West Kootenai (70 miles from home), I thought I would bring the children and go swimming on the way home and there goes my week.
Well this is our life, it's always something it seems, but it's ussally exciting!

July 4th

The evening of July 4th was a lazy evening with only 3 children home. this seems to be happening quite often where our big family isn't so big anymore.

Gina was down in Kalispell doing fireworks with Ben, Joe & Moriah. Jon went with his friends family to Troy where they have a big production.

James wanted to go so bad but they ran out of car space.

Now MT in July it doesn't get dark till 11 pm.

well I took James to town to find some fireworks. I found someone putting off some over the river. It was beautiful In the dark you could see the river in the back ground, you can smell the water and hear the rush over the rocks. then the fire works would go off over the river, and it was a beautiful seen. I never grow tired of the beauty around here. I just constantly soak it in.

I think we live in one of the prettiest places in the world, and I'm constantly thankful for this blessing. Most of my children have grown up here and I wonder if they know how beautiful it is or is it just something they have always seen?

Camping trip

the last couple of summers we wanted to go camping. the older children we took camping quite often, but the younger ones have missed out and have never been camping.

So i decided instead of waiting for a time when we could all go and get out of town, I would just take the children somewhere local, so rick could come after work. we drove about 25 miles up the reservoir to a nice camp ground. I didn't want to ruff it too much. we got there in the afternoon and all the children set up the tents. we had Kendra and Lynette with us too. It was so much fun.

after we got all set up we went down to the "beach". It actually has sand ! but the water was low, and so we went to the deeper water so it was fresh. we jumped in and the cold took my breath away. but you get used to it. It's really weird how you hit spots that were as warm as a bath tub, then a wave as cold as ice water. I swam for a whole hour or more. It was so beautiful water as far as you can see, with beautiful mountains surrounding the water. I didn't see a person or a boat in sight.

we spent 3 days eating smores, smores and more smores. sausages, hamburgers, hat dogs and more smores!! I don't think we ate very healthy the whole time. I read Bruchko to them, they played games, and the boys fished. They caught about 27 fish and loved it!

Well after 3 days we were talking of going home. when suddenly a storm came up. I heard a huge tree snap and the wind was blowing hard. It was scary with out any cover. we started packing up as fast as we could. we finally got packed up and squished in the car, down the road a few miles and there was a tree in the road. The van could almost make it under the one side but the branches would scratch the car. We found a sharp butter knife and Jon and Mark started cutting branches with it, while we laughed at cutting a tree out of the road with a butter knife. It actually worked and we made it through.

So our camping trip was so much fun. No bears attacked, in fact we didn't even see a deer. It's funny because we see many deer everyday around our house, but we go way out camping and didn't see one.

Hopefully I'll figure out how to put some pictures in here too.

starting a blog!

I've been thinking of starting a blog for a while.

I'm not exactly sure where to start or how to do this but I'll give it a try.

I think the main reason I would like to try my hand at writing this blog is for a record of our lives. I would love to read a journal of my grandmother or great grandmothers daily life. I used to keep a journal myself years ago. It is very interesting to read back. It's too bad I quit writing. I've tried to start up again and it just doesn't seem to click any more. So now I will try a blog. I hope I can find a spell checker on here, since I have never been good at spelling.

The nice thing about the blog is that it's like writing a letter to everyone that wants to read it.