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.