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!