How Cooks Are Born

Pearly and Bunny reading through smoothie recipes to see if we have all of the ingredients on hand.

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San Fran!

Pearly and I spent 4 days touring San Francisco area with her choir. I am their accompanist and "choir mom". We had a great time. They sang at Southern Oregon University, Chico High School, Pier 39 in San Francisco, and also at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo, CA. I especially enjoyed the Alcatraz tour. What a fun time with my daughter and 59 other students (and 10 chaperones).

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Whidbey Island

It's been a while. We're surviving life with a husband/father who lives 4 hrs away and commutes home on days off. It's been challenging, but at least the bills are being paid.

In the meantime, I took the boys to our yearly family camp on Whidbey Island. It was gorgeous 4 out of the 5.5 days. We didn't complain one bit knowing how past years have been so rainy. We had a great time.

Pearly stayed back home to attend volleyball try-outs. She made varsity - yea! But she was sure missed at camp. High school is the time where teens have to learn to weigh tough decisions and she is no stranger to that anymore.

Here are a few of my favorite pics. It was great that Tall Dude could go this year. He was a big help and was so sweet with his younger siblings. I don't know many 20-yr olds who take the time play with their younger siblings. What wonderful memories for these boys.

Tall Dude and Caboose (4 yrs)

Brown eyes, 12 yrs

Bunny, almost 8

3 youngest boys

Bunny (almost 8) and Tall Dude, 20 yrs.

On the ferry leaving Whidbey Island

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Mother's Day 2010

Mother's Day started like this: Orange Boy (12 yrs old) made homemade cinnamon rolls. This is the 2nd time he's made them. He put them together last night and put them in the fridge overnight. In the morning, he put them in the oven on very low to rise and then baked them. This kid is amazing. He was craving cinnamon rolls about a month ago and decided to find a recipe and go for it. Some young lady is going to be very blessed to have him as a husband some day!

Can you say YUM?!!!

After church, we had a picnic lunch at a state park and went for a walk in the woods - right in the middle of Portland. Can you believe all of this in the middle of Portland? I love Oregon!!!

My two oldest sons!

Found a snake along the path.

Oldest three kids

The whole family - yea! We should have taken a family shot BEFORE the hike. Oh well. I love it anyway! What a great Mother's Day. I am so blessed.

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Present

I received a priceless gift from my daughters this year. My eldest daughter asked a friend to do a photo shoot of she and her sister. I love my sweet girls!! They are 8 years apart, but they sure love each other and had a great time together making this gift for me. I am so happy with these pictures. Birdie is 23 and Pearly is 15.

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Merry Christmas

Last week, our children participated in the Christmas performance and Caboose was all too thrilled to be Joseph. Actually, he did very well as a stoic Joseph. He is such a serious kid and it's always a challenge to get a smile. See how much better he looks when he doesn't realize Mama Paparazzi is shooting him? LOL Here he is before he saw me with the camera:

And here is after - lol!!!

We had a wonderful Christmas celebrating with our family. I felt especially spoiled with my dh getting me an iMac - wow, I forgot how wonderful they are.

Here are a few pics from our sweet day together.

Eating our traditional Christmas breakfast - homemade crepes with Oregon raspberries. We have a new "adopted" son hanging out with us. He's in the Coast Guard and his parents were stationed with us in Maine years ago when we lived there. His parents are overseas and so we are "keeping an eye" on him.



I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and that you were able to enjoy special times with your loved ones.

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Little Ones

Today was a different kind of day. It was standardized testing day for my three oldest homeschooled children. However, Pearly and I forgot that she had agreed to babysit 2 other children and so I decided to watch the children instead. So at our house today, we had an extra 3-yr old (curly redhead you see here) and her brother who is about 14 months old.

It was a special treat to take them to take them for a walk where we smelled the roses, saw the horses, played on the swingset and hung out in the backyard.

Don't you think this little redhead girl could be my child? I think so and tell her parents all the time. Her parents and I have been talking about an "arranged" marriage so that we can keep the redhead genes going. These two are only a couple weeks apart in age. She is Miss I-Can-Do-It-By-Myself and very intellectual. Caboose is Mr. Laid-Back-Whatever-You- Say Boy. Could be an interesting combination.

Unfortunately, the horses did not want to come up to the fence today, but we had a nice walk anyway. I love the back of children's heads. My dh used to ask me why I would take such a picture because he wanted to see faces. I like pictures like this because it forces you to look at the little things, their posture, hand gestures, just the simple cuteness of little ones. I love this. Look at Bunny on the far right - I highly doubt he will stand like that at age 13. That is 6-yr old posture - 6-yr old cuteness!

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My Wonderful Mother's Day

I was going to post a whole bunch of pictures of my Mother's Day, but thought this slide show summed it up better. It was such a gorgeous day and having my whole family together was the best gift of all.

From Movies

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Crossing That Line

Bunny has grown into a new stage in his life. He once used to like to give Mama kisses, but now must be bribed, coerced, manipulated, ahem . . . forced to kiss the Mama who carried him for a full 9-month pregnancy term PLUS 19 days overdue. Hello????? If that doesn't deserve a kiss or two, I don't know what else does. Anyway - Pearly snapped the shot so that at least we both will have proof that he did used to kiss his Mama.

Wasn't that worth it? I think so!

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Tall Dude

Tall Dude holding his cousin after a Christmas performance.

Warming up for a concert choir competition.

Tall Dude "officially" graduated from HS last year, but there were a couple things that we as parents thought that he still needed to work on. We decided that it was best if he stayed home one more year with the purpose of working on a few things and also to give him the opportunity to fine tune his goals for the future so that he wouldn't be wasting time in college taking classes that wouldn't be beneficial to him. This proved to be a good choice. He was able to take a class called Engineering as a Profession which is taught by a local businessman. The class is funded by the local public high school, so he is bused to the center to take the class. Tall Dude was thinking of taking business classes in college, but part of me wondered if he might like some engineering as well because he's great at math and building things. So this class was wonderful in that it confirmed to him that engineering is indeed a good fit for him now his plans are to combine engineering with business.

Another great benefit to taking one more year of HS classes was his opportunity to sing in choir. I directed a 12-voice ensemble a couple years ago and he loved it, but I was hoping he could get another chance to use his beautiful bass voice. He joined a 65-voice concert choir and also was selected to sing in the 16-voice a capella choir. This classes meets at 6:30 a.m. I wasn't sure how this would work out because the previous year homeschooling, we didn't see him up nearly that early. We have been thrilled to see him motivated to make it to choir on his own every morning. He has indeed put forth the effort and stepped up to the challenge. It's been a great year for him and I'm so proud.

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New Do

This is a picture of me taken last week. I have lots of natural curl, but it has looked old, tired, frumpy and I've been tired of it. I tried to keep my hair long because my husband likes long hair - he thinks it is sexier when it is long. After he saw my new cut, he told me he liked it, but still preferred it longer because long hair is "sexy". I told him I beg to differ - that if I feel frumpy, then I'm not feeling too sexy. He finally caught on and said - "by all means, keep it short". LOL

Here's my new do I got yesterday. I straightened it. I like it because I do have the option of just letting the curls dry naturally and have a different look, but it is a nice change. Ignore the not-so-lovely lighting in my very dark home.

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Tagged

I normally don't do the tag/blog things, but this one is kind of fun. I was tagged by Northwest Ladybug (long-time online buddy) with the following instructions: "Go to the 4th folder with pictures on your computer and then upload the 4th picture in that folder. Discuss."

So, here is the 4th folder, 4th picture on my computer:



I took this picture of a picture in my house in Dec of 2002. I had just bought my first digital camera for the primary purpose of selling on eBay and so I went around the house taking pictures testing it out and I have no idea why it was never deleted.

This picture does have an interesting story. My husband was active duty Navy and we were stationed in the Philippines in 1988-1990. Filipinos are famous for copying things and they do it remarkably well. During this time, my husband was sent to Bahrain during the beginning of the build-up prior to the Gulf War (Desert Shield). He was obviously feeling lonely for me and found this card and sent it to me with the instructions that I was to find an artist to paint it because he wanted to hang it in our bedroom. That's exactly what I did. I love this painting and the story behind it.

What I think is particularly funny is that every one of our children has thought that it is my husband and me, despite the fact that in the picture the lady shows cleavage and wears heels. My boobs can't "do" a cleavage unless I'm nursing and get into weird contortions and I do not wear heels, tyvm.

Okay, so now I will tag 4 people and hope they will think this is fun:
Audrey's Playground - mommy of 2 gorgeous daughters, tackling life's twists and turns with optimism, and is having fun with her fairly new camera
Global Nomads - an expat living in the Persian Gulf who takes gorgeous pics of her life/journeys - oh, and she knits!
There's nothing like a daughter to love . . . - another mommy of 2 gorgeous daughters (one is a redhead) and who recently bought a new Nikon and enjoys photography
My Life as Mama Jodi - a sweet lady I met on a scrapbooking board years ago

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For Coffee Drinkers Only

Back in late September, some online buddies were discussing how they like their coffee from a French press. I was clueless. We don't drink a lot of coffee - maybe only with desserts and so I skimmed their comments. But when these ladies kept at it, it made me wonder what was the big deal. They told me that when you use a filter, it also filters out the natural oils from the coffee beans that keep the coffee from being bitter. That made sense to me as it was the primary reason I did not like coffee - that bitter taste. My husband's birthday was just around the corner, so I bought him a French press since he started drinking coffee more regularly (due to his office making it available to employees).

No doubt about it - French press coffee is definitely different than coffee from a coffee maker. We were sold.

So, this Bonjour Unbreakable is the one I bought after talking with a customer at the store who already had one. The carafe is unbreakable plastic and I thought that might be a good buy because so many people had posted reviews on other French presses that glass carafes break easily.

After a couple months, my husband noticed a crack on the plastic press. Within a week, the press had broken to bits. This is what it looked like after 2-1/2 months of use (click on picture to enlarge):

Okay, let me just add by this time, we had gone from occasional coffee drinkers to daily coffee drinkers and only from the French press. One day, the husband took the French press to work since he didn't have enough time to make his coffee in the morning. Wife was not happy.

Now we had a broken French press and dh was resorting to using his engineering degree to invent his own French press with a strainer.

We needed a replacement, and fast. I went online and after reading quite a few reviews, decided to purchase this at Clive Coffee not only because they had the best price online and reasonable shipping, but also because they are local and I could hopefully get it more quickly. Not only did I get this gorgeous French press, the people at Clive Coffee included a bag of Tres Rios hand-roasted coffee beans from Costa Rica! Woohoo! I ordered it on Friday and received it Monday.

I also sent the husband pics of it so he can drool at work. So far so good. The quality is superb and the press part looks well made. There are no plastic parts. My first cup was excellent.

Happy days are here again!

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Facebook Reconnections

Well, these past few weeks have been an emotional whirlwind to say the least. Finding the answers to my questions about my biological father and family so suddenly was amazing. I'm still sad about the fact that I never got to ever see or talk with my biological father. That is a pain in the soul that is very hard to find words to explain. How could I have love for a father who seemingly abandoned me, yet then find out that he carried my picture in his wallet for years? I was told awful things about my father my whole life. Most of them were true. But yet, I still feel an unconditional love toward this man. So, that chapter of my life was taken from me in his death, yet a new one unfolds with the meeting of my new half-brother and sisters and extended family. I still haven't met one half-brother and I'll probably leave it in his court since he knows how he can get a hold of me. At least I know about him and he is in my thoughts and prayers.

Interestingly, since all of this transpired, I posted my reunion story (the same story I posted here) on my Facebook wall. What I didn't know was how many other people have similar stories. Two people e-mailed me privately on Facebook telling me their story and how my story encouraged them to look for long lost friends/relatives. One person actually found her maid of honor after 25 years of no contact. Isn't that great? After that, I decided I should try to find friends from our college group where dh and I met. We were a close-knit group and it was during a pivotal time in all of our lives; yet as often happens, we lost track of each other.

I was able to find two friends from that college group on Facebook. We decided to make a Facebook Group so we could have a central location to reconnect, share stories, and pictures. In less than one week, we've found close to 20 people from that old college group and now pictures and memories are being posted. I thought I'd share a few here from my younger years.


This was where we held retreats at the Oregon coast. I was probably 20 years old. I'm right smack in the middle with the blue sweater and dh is to the left of me with the gray/striped sweater. This was probably the beginning of our courtship.

And what I found more interesting is the guy who took the above picture was also connected with me in the youth group and youth choir I was in when I was about 16 years old. He was an avid photographer back then and saved every slide! I was thrilled to be able to see these old memories.

This was when we were on a choir tour when I was probably 16 years old. What great memories! I am the far left person in the top row.

This must have been a quick stop at a convenient store for snacks, just a guess. I'm in the back with the light blue sweater.

And here I am sleeping on the tour bus. Seriously, who keeps these kinds of pictures for nearly 30 years?! I love it!

Now this picture really got me. I recognized the guy and befriended him on Facebook when I saw him posting on our mutual friend's picture. I remembered him from the high school choir, but then through our correspondence, he told me that he remembered me from further back than that. He was a student teacher in my choir class in 8th grade and remembered that I also played the piano for the class. This guy remembered me from over 30 years ago! That floors me. I remember looking up to him as an 8th grader because he played so well and aspired to play the piano just like him some day.

So, do you have lost friends or loved ones? Start searching on Facebook! And if you do find someone because of my post encouraging you, please drop me a note. I'd love to read your story!

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