Mark's Birthday

Mark is 10 years old! The double digit's!Monica made a snow board cake for Mark. She did a great job.

This was Mark having to get his birthday attack! he was giggling like crazy!


A closer look at the great snow board cake.
You might have guess Mark cannot wait to snow board again this year.
I'm afraid this is a common seen in our house. Jon seems to think it's his job as big brother to keep his little brothers tough. I think the boys think it's fun in all reality, but mom doesn't think so.
Monica with her master peice
Flying James!

Our field trips

June, April, and the girls joined us. This is Monica with Dayton.this is the Conrad Mansion.
They didn't let us take pictures inside because the flash can damage the antiques. It's like living history in there.
The Conrad mansion was one of the first house in Kalispell built in 1891. The family was very well off. They say Mrs Conrad was a pack rat. Even had all the receipts, so they could tell us the price paid for each piece of furniture. They have 8 fire places.
Teddy Roosevelt stayed here quite often as he was friends of Mr Conrad.

The next pictures are of the chocolate factory. We loved this place.
Pictured here is our home school group from Libby.
Above is Gracie watching chocolate!
This is a machine that melts the chocolate and keeps it the perfect temperature. Temperature is the trick to great candy.
This was a neat funnel, that has a plug in the tip. this way you can fill molds without drips in between.

I learned that the cocoa bean grows only close to the equator. This is why Cocoa was so cheap in the Philippines. I guess they don't know how to make the beans into decent chocolate though.

what a week!

Such a week. Gina had to get down to Bozeman on Sunday night along with Masha and Shannon. I knew I had a horribly busy week, but I had to go, so I took Jon and Monica and headed down . I got to see where Gina is staying at the school, meet her teachers, dean and friends. See what kind of food they eat, ( this is a seventh day Adventist school, so it's vegetarian) lunch was great, they had a salad bar as good as any restaurant, but dinner was really weird, it was a sandwich, but the filling was your choice of hummus, zucchini or lentil stuff. I got home Mon night about 1 am.
these are the dorms where they live.
Tuesday I hear of the sudden decision to for my mom to move back to Colorado tomorrow! She had begun to plan to move back and we were all expecting it. She had been up here a year after coming for a visit, getting sick and just sort of being stuck here in a way. The sudden decision was based on an infection she has on her foot. It needs surgery right away and she felt like she wanted to use the doctor in Colorado. So I took a quick trip to Kalispell on Wed for a quick goodbye, a birthday party for June, and Mark’s asthma testing. Then to pick up Kendra and Nettie, as Maria flew off to Germany on the same day.

Paul and Uncle Mark. They are only months apart and they are best of friends.Mark getting his allergy testing done. He's allergic to all sorts of stuff. Mold and ragweed were the worst of them.

So the week went on, I stayed in Kalispell Thur and Friday, we went on a couple of great field trips, did our shopping and managed to get home with Kendra and Nettie included by 8 pm with a VERY full car.

My birthday

My mom with one of our kittens. I was surprised she made the long drive up from Kalispell.
Mishael and Gareth. They spend a lot of time at our house. We really enjoy it. It's so nice when children grow up and you have all these wonderful close friends.
Well I started out my birthday a bit depressed. I suppose coming from 3 weeks of an incredible experience of being in another country where people are basically non confrontational, and where I basically had a very low stress visit there, to my home, where it can be loud, very stressful, and sometimes confrontational. Teenagers seem to love confrontation in our family. You would think they all want to be lawyers, as if you say the sky is blue, they have to point out some brown specks.
So coming home and trying to get back into the swing of teaching school, paying bills, stretching budgets, clothes needing mending, clutter everywhere, and winter coming on and getting 2 houses ready, has been a bit overwhelming to say the least.
Moriah decided to come up and some others were planning on coming the next day, so that cheered me up.
I ended up having a nice relaxing day. Then Sat. I had a nice surprise of June, April, my mom, Martha and Miriam all joined us too.
Mishael made Lasagna, Moriah the sauce, Martha made my favorite chocolate chip chiffon cake.
We had a great day of visiting, and chasing all the baby boys! Gareth and Dayton are crawling up stairs now. Eric, Gareth and Dayton are quite a team.
I took out all my beautiful Pearl necklaces that I bought in the Philippines. I gave one to my mom, and I tried to figure out every ones favorites for their birthdays.
So I'm 46 now, and overall God has blessed my life. I really couldn't ask for more. I have the most wonderful family and just about everything I've ever dreamed of. Thank you Lord!

bears, skunks and cold

I suppose fall is truly here. I knew this summer would go fast with the trip to the Philippines. We are already needing to run our heaters. It's hard to imagine just a few weeks ago how hot I was.

When I got home, I was informed of the bear getting into the trash almost every night. so every night Frisky was barking away and trash was everywhere.
I called the fish and wildlife and they brought me a nice bear proof trash can.
Jon has seen it a couple of times, and we keep trying to get a good picture, but he usually come s around in the night.
So what was really surprising is that there was one at the birth center! It was in the trees behind the house. (the birth center is in the center of town)
Here's the picture and article from the local newspaper. This bear made front page!
http://www.thewesternnews.com/
So one evening we were looking for the bear and instead we found a skunk! It was right nicest the the house, and Frisky was barking like crazy. Of course we got her in the house.
Life is always interesting at our house!

tigar balm

I really like tiger balm. I once wondered if you can get addicted to it! At the time I had a terrible chest cold, and it felt so good that I couldn't go without it. Well I got over the cold and thankfully I didn't have to attend tiger balm anonymous!
Well if you've ever bought the stuff you would know it's costly. Like $3.50 for a little bottle. So when i was in Davao at Victory plaza, I happened to notice they had tiger balm. It was only 47 peso's! Less then $1 a bottle. Of course i bought about 7 bottles. I also thought I would buy some other balms while I was at it.
They had all different kinds. Most were under 30 pesos, and you never know if it might be some wonder balm, so I tried some.
Sure enough I opened the balms today and right there in the instructions one called TAI-HO Balm says: "the best remedy for cough, cold, headache, toothache, pimples, gas pains, asthma, rheumatism, neuralgia, swelling pains, burns, sunburns, bruises, cuts, stings and all minor skin diseases." Dragon Balm also includes knife cut wounds.
I sure can't imagine a balm being that balming for so many aliments. Pimples and gas pain, lol!.

Monica with our newest and last batch of kittens. This is the last as I am going to get her fixed this time.
Mark and James. Daddy came home with tinker toys for the boys.

My new Kitchen!!!!

I'm going to begin this post and add to it later. I would like to post pictures of my old kitchen, then the process of building the new kitchen. these pictures are not in order, so there are a few old ones stuck in there. The 2 old ones are from Thanksgiving 2006. This next year, the holidays will be a bit easier with my nice double oven.
We still have many details to finish the kitchen, but I totally ran out of resources to finish at this point. But step by step I'll get it done!In this picture above you can see a little of my new back splash. It looks really nice with my granite tile counter top. By using granite tiles it was actually cheaper then laminate. I would have loved to have a solid surface granite, but that stuff is extremely expensive. I have one little "baking counter" It's 2x3. I thought I would just get a solid surface on this one. It was going to run about $5-600 just for this little piece. I think I'll put up with the tiles!


This is Maria and Kendra in the old kitchen. It's funny that it doesn't look so bad in this picture, but pictures can be deceiving. The upper cupboards were not too bad, but the lower ones were literally falling apart. The whole front of the cabinet would completely fall out. the boards inside were press board and were disintegrating. So there was nothing to hold the front on. The drawers wouldn't even slide in anymore because the boards inside the cupbord disingrating had caused the whole thing to be uneven.
This is Michelle and Fred, peeling potato's for mashed potato's. It's a tradition for Fred to make the potato's on thanksgiving.


Joe, Moriah, Michael, Jon, Regina, were the main kitchen remodel crew. Martha came up a few days to cook us some meals in our upstairs little kitchen. They were amazing in all they got done. Joe even took time off work to help us, besides him and Moriah chipping in by buying supplies and he wouldn't let me pay him back. All sorts of freinds and family came to help at times. What a great family I have.

It took many, many days, paint cans, and swatches on the walls to figure out what colors to paint. We are very happy with our final choices. We really liked the red idea, but were scared of the wrong color red. This one turned out great.
The tan is in the hall, the red in the kitchen.

We had rented a big dumpster during our kitchen remodel. Moriah and Joe were staying down stairs in a make shift guest room. She had taken her wedding ring off one night and put it on the end table. At some point she realized that her ring was gone. We all searched, and searched. Joe offered a reward to go skiing to who ever found it. It was a beautiful diamond ring and we prayed, cleaned, searched, and pretty much gave up, when Jon decided to once more jump in the dumpster and look again. It was full of drywall chunks, and nails, ashes (from burning piles of garbage) He jumps in and with in 30 seconds, yells "I found it" It was a miracle!
So Joe good to his word, took Jon skiing. Jon had a little tumble and broke his nose. It was a bad break. It began to heal wrong too so we had to head back into a doctor for him to re break the nose and set it right. Thus the long story to explain Jon's nose in this picture.

I did it!

I was asked by the volunteer ambulance if I would teach the class on emergency childbirth and the newborn.
Of course I said I would love to. I have wanted to meet the ambulance crew (before I have an emergency).. So I thought this would be a good opportunity. But truth is every time I have to speak to a group, I get nervous, forgot how to speak and I speak quickly. So this morning I woke up thinking, "I don't want to do this" "Why did I volunteer" "Maybe I should call her and tell her I can't do it".
Well I knew I couldn't quit on her, so at 11:30 I drove off shaking a bit. They were running behind so I sat through a couple of their classes, ate lunch with them, which helped me to get to know them. It's only 12 people all together, and they were of course very nice.
I didn't have to even ad lib, it was all written out for me. I just had to add comments and explain things.
Well I don't know if I did a good job or not, but they said I did and they would be calling me next year.
Maybe Sherry or Karen will do it next year :). I left feeling good that I actually stretched myself again and did it.

Yesterday we helped Michael move in to his own apartment. This was a happy event for a few reasons. One is that he has been living in the birth center. It was fine, but it will be nice to have the 2nd birth room fixed up and to get the house clean and it pretty much stay that way.
The other reason, is this is the 1st time he is in totally his own place. He has had many different living situations, but this is a good step for him. His own 2 bedroom apartment. His rent is cheap, and it's sort of in a low life area, but not too bad. It's very close to his work, which is is working 40 hours a week at MT Sky net. He can ride his bike to everywhere in town in no time flat. So we helped him move from the birth center, tried to gather a few items to get him by. trash cans, a pan or 2. He gr abed some plastic plates and forks till he can get some better things.
Well the 1st thing he will need is some furniture. We had an entertainment center, some folding chairs and he's borrowing a folding table. He has a computer desk. I'm sure before you know it, he will have it furnished and set up.

sleep, sleep, sleep

These are my sweet chickens. I'm taking some pictures of them because I will need to get rid of them. They love us so much they will not sleep in their house, but sleep on our deck. So you can imagine what our deck looks like. (I didn't take a picture of the mess below them)



Well I've been home over a week now, and I'm finally starting to feel normal again. For the 1st week home I was so tired, and always slightly nauseated. No appetite. Mishael said, "mom I've never known you to be picky" Well as of yesterday I have my healthy appetite back! Sort of a bumber cause of course I would love to loose weight. I lost a few pounds in the Philippines, so now if I could get my energy back I need to start a good exercise program. I know this is the best for me, as the diets always backfire and I end up weighing more in the end then when I started.
So getting back to a regular routine of life has taken adjustment. I think the hardest thing is to come from a country where people are so poor, and yet the sweetest people. I never heard anyone complain, even the driving when everyone pulls in front of everyone else, no one seemed to get angry. It's a culture shock to come back to our country where we live quite well, yet we complain and get angry at the littlest things. I suppose we are a bit spoiled in this county.
We thought this picture was funny in Davao, because they don't have any street signs, and to have this one is very useless.
Martha and the boys came up the last few days. Here's a picture of Tony. He's growing up.

introduce you to some of the people we met

This is a gecko. We were trying to get a good picture, but they like to hang around the light fixtures, so this is the best we could do. Usually they don't come close to you either. They eat ants and mosquito's though.

This is Jonna, she is a graduate student that has become a supervisor. She was a big blessing and encouragement to me. So wise and filled with the Holy Spirit.
this is one of the Helpers. I forgot her name. She came in once a week t clean the house for us. She is very sweet. They ended up hiring her after quite an ordeal. Her family was so poor that she got desperate and signed a contract to go I think it was Singapore to work over there. She would have to leave her family. The husband and children came to the mission leaders crying, begging them to help get her out of the contract and back with them. They did help her and hired her as their personal "helper", which is what they call the lady's that every family has. The helpers come in daily to clean, watch children or what ever you need. I wish I could bring one back!
Nora was another person I met, that does the laundry. She has 10 children, 5 at home, plus one older daughter and child living with her also. So we had much in common. One of the girls leaving gave her a few toys and clothes, and she was so happy because she could share something with her neighbor. Such a sweet lady.
This is Elizabeth from Switzerland and Tiffany
This is Jena

Before we left Monica took pictures of many of the students

this is Carmen, She is from Pennsylvania. She has already graduated and is now a supervisor. Always very helpful and encouraging. She was the one to teach us an IV class. She also took us on a few outings, to see the market and the black sanded beach.
this is Lois. She is very joyful. Her and Monica hit it off well. As you can see in the next picture she is a little silly. Lois was also a mac expert, so if I had computer problems she could help me.

You can see here what most of the furniture looks like. It's made of bamboo.
this is Jenny, Madia, Lois