Springtime!!

I love springtime when all the flowers come out of hiding and show their pretty heads!

Lunar Eclipse

This is the first time in my recolection that I've ever seen a lunar eclipse. Living in Oregon it's either too cold or too cloudy to see them when they happen. My kids were impressed for a time before they thought it was more fun to go inside and play Leapster games. My camera and I braved the cold though and this is what we came back with. Enjoy.

Beginning

Middle

End

Relay for Life

I now have a date for Newberg's Relay for Life. It's June 20-21, 2008. If anyone would be interested in joining the team, please let me know so I can get you a registration form when the time comes. I am really looking forward to participating this year. I plan on pitching a tent on the High School football field and staying the whole night there (hint hint if anyone wishes to come visit me there). Our fundraising is not doing as well as I'd hoped. We're nowhere near the goal we set for this year. I'm bummed about that. We still have a couple of major things we're going to try to get scheduled to get the community involved also, but we're still a couple months away from that due to Oregon weather. We're still also doing our monthly putlucks so we're still bringing in money for our donation, but like I said, it's nowhere near what I'd hoped for.

http://relay.acsevents.org/site/TR/RelayForLife/RelayForLifeGreatWestDivision?fr_id=5985&pg=entry

The universe is out to get me

I'm not sure what I did to the universe to deserve this, but here's how my day has gone:

1. My husband wakes me up to say the latch on his truck door isn't working and he will have to take my rig to work so I can call a friend to see if he can come help me fix the problem.
2. I call my Mom and ask to borrow her car if I can't get the latch fixed. I need to go get groceries.
3. I call our friend to see what I can do and he's not in town and can't help me until tomorrow anyway. I go with plan b and decide to definitely try to fix it myself. Later though.
4. A friend calls to see if my son can come to play at their house for a while. Sure, no problem. They live just on the otherside of the neighborhood, so we walk to their house.
5. I manage to get the door latch fixed and my daughter and I head to the store for groceries.
6. Truck looses power on the way to the store and won't go any further. I have enough momentum to get a little ways down the street before I can't go any further. I try to start the truck again, but it just won't do it.
7. I text my husband at work to tell him I hate his truck because I'm now stranded.
8. I call Grandpa K. to see if he's home and can maybe come see what's wrong with the truck. Both Grandma & Grandpa show up. Nothing obvious that he can see. Grandma keeps my daughter busy in their truck while I stay out in the cold with Grandpa.
9. Many phone calls from my husband later, Grandpa tows me and my daughter home to our house. Not a fun thing to drive without power steering or power brakes. The truck is now safely in front of the house until it can be fixed.
10. My daughter and I walk down the street to get Mom's car. I get my daughter loaded in the car to take it to my husband at the mill (I want my trusty Tahoe back!!!). ABS brake light comes on. (I'm thinking what else can I break today??????!!!!!)
11. We get the car to the mill and then head to Safeway to get groceries. As soon as my daughter and I get in the store, the power goes out in the building!!! It didn't stay off for too long before the lights came back on and we finished shopping in time to go pick up my son from his friend's house.
12. I've talked to Mom and asked if we can keep her "old" car until our truck can be repaired. She said yes. THANK YOU MOMMY!!!!

I've been told before that things come at you in 3's. I've had my 3 for the year. I'm hoping this is the last and there's not going to be another round coming at me anytime soon!!!! I told my mom when I talked to her that I was going to lock myself in my room and just cry for the rest of the day so nothing else bad would happen to me today! So far nothing has so I'm thinking I'm out of the woods for now. :) I sure hope so anyway. On the bright side we did get some money in the mail today. A check for a whopping $1.12!!!

Field Trip

Today I had the pleasure of being one of six chaperones on the Kindergarten field trip to the Pumpkin Patch. We got on the bus and traveled half an hour to Aurora to Fir Point Farms. After getting off the bus we met with our group leader, Kim and she went over her rules. Rule #1 - stay together so you don't get lost and we get to see everything the farm has to offer. Rule #2 - Don't chase the chickens if you should see some roaming around! Rule #3 - HAVE FUN!! The last was the easiest to follow although we didn't see any chickens running around loose, so we didn't have to worry about rule #2. :) Our first stop was at the "corn maze" that was actually just bails of straw set out in the pattern. The boys and one of the girls in my group took off running through the maze and left the other girl and I in the dust. Then I had to squeeze through a kid sized door to get out!! Yeah, that was fun! After the maze we headed over to feed their goats. The kids lined up along the pen and recieved a handful of food each to feed. Even my son fed them without getting scared and throwing the food at the poor goats. After we fed goats we headed for the tractor and wagon for a hay ride to the pumpkin patch. Once there they each picked out their own little pumpkin and it was was put on the back of a John Deere gator and taken back to our bus to wait for us. Once everyone had their pumpkins they gathered for a group picture. I had to tell my son to stop bouncing around and one of the other mothers laughed and said that was impossible for him to do because of all his energy. She's a mom that volunteers in class a lot so she knows what he's like!! I told her I knew that, but it was just something that I have to say from time to time. :) Next we visited the "nut house" where we all climbed into a house filled with empty filbert shells. The kids had a blast jumping around in shells practically up to their knees (me to my ankles). Amazingly enough, no shoes were lost in the shells. Next to the nut house were the rabbits and the pigs. The pigs were playing around and started play fighting and the kids errupted into giggles of laughter and chanted "fight! fight! fight!" This of course sent the adults into uproarious laughter as well. Our next stop on our tour of the farm was the house with a slide. Each kid got to go down the slide once before we headed to a little cabin that had pumpkins painted with each of the presidents of the United States. Not such an interesting room for the kids, so we headed off to our last stop.....the chicken coop. Finally at the end of the tour I was able to get my kids wrangled together in one single spot long enough to take a picture of them. For the most part all five of them were good. One of the little girls had a hard time staying with me because she was always wanting to see what was next and be the first to get there. I do think it's safe to say though that all of the kids that got to go today had an absolutely fun time. And I'm just about betting that they're all falling into bed about now exhausted from all that fun!!

Jordan Valley

We have been back from Jordan Valley for a week now and have finally gotten the laundry caught up and somewhat back to a normal routine. Matt goes back to school tomorrow after having 2 weeks off. He should have some stories to tell....the cowboy that showed up in camp, Great Grandma's deer, splashing in puddles on the side of the roads with the truck, watching the Gammett boys rounding up cattle with their 4 wheelers, the snow that fell on us on one of our drives, "driving" Will Gammett's 4 wheeler (it was parked in the driveway), the frog that I found on some steps near the Owyhee River. I took tons of pictures, as usual. Five hundred to be exact. (Good thing I got a bigger memory card before we left!!) We had a fun time as usual. Did a lot of sight seeing when Grandma wasn't out hunting. After she did get her deer that's all we did was explore the countryside. Both in Idaho and Oregon. The weather was a bit chilled and windy most days, but it also rained, hailed and snowed on us some. The last day we were there was the best one and it was perfect since we'd already decided to stay in camp and be lazy people. I sat under the awning with my legs in the sun and read most of the day, picked up the few things we had out and got the trailer ready to head back home. That evening we went down to Gammett's ranch and chatted with them a while before heading back to camp and packing it in for the night.

Kindergarten - Day 2

This morning I was all set to park the car and walk my little man to the door at school. As I turned to find a parking spot he piped up and said "Mom, don't park today, I can do it by myelf. I don't need you to walk me to the door." So, I parked along the sidewalk where I could see the front doors and watched my little man run like crazy, blowing past a number of kids, only to stop at the door and wait for a girl who was coming up behind him. She went into a different door though, so he continued on his quest to go to his classroom all by himself. Once he was inside and we couldn't see him anymore, Lizzie and I looked at each other and shrugged our shoulders. We figured he just wanted to ensure that I wasn't going to cry again today. When Lizzie and I picked him up after school he was all set to go and excited about tomorrow. I just asked him if he wanted me to drop him off at the sidewalk again tomorrow and with the sweetest smile ever...."Yeah."