Garden Tea Party

Kimberly had a really great teacher for Primary last year that she just loved. Sister Andrus is getting moved to Germany in a few months (actually about the same time we move) so she decided to give a tea party for her class from last year.


She bravely let them use her nice tea set that she got the last time she lived in Germany. None of the pieces were broken, which was good. They ate in the Andrus' backyard gazebo and had sandwiches, fruit, cookies and cupcakes, and punch. They played around on the lawn and got a little wet. One fun thing is that a bird built a nest in one of her hanging baskets and when she took it down this past week, discovered a nest with 5 or 6 newly hatched chicks. She took the basket down to show the kids. They were really sweet.

Sister Andrus is a great person. Kimberly always talks about her and will remember her. Thanks for all the time you put into your class. It makes a difference!

The Big Boy

Hard as it is to believe, Glade has been part of our family for 2 years. We celebrated his birthday on Thursday and had a good time eating hot dogs (who would have guessed a 2-year old would choose hot dogs for dinner :) ), cake and ice cream, and opening presents. We also went to Lacey in the morning for a free showing of "The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: A Veggie Tales Movie." We hadn't seen it before, but liked it quite a bit. The city also kindly held a parade for his birthday in the evening so we walked a few blocks down and enjoyed that.



Opening presents (Can you tell I was out of birthday paper and didn't want to buy more, so we're using Christmas? Good thing he won't remember.)


Glade is a sweet, happy boy. He is finally off of his binky as of a month or so ago. He is really great at sharing and although he has learned to say no quite often lately, he usually says yes. He loves to be read to, especially Dr. Seuss. He also is learning to use the potty, which is nice sometimes. He has lots of cute little things he does that I need to try to capture on film before he outgrows them.

This is the "smile" you get from Glade when you ask him if he is happy or tell him to be happy.


Me reading "Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You?" to the kids. Glade makes really cute noises when he copies the sounds in the book.


Glade loves cars, dogs, balls, and lots of other things.



We're glad you're part of our family Glade!

Father's Day

Father's Day came and went. We tried to make it special for Ryan and hopefully succeeded. Kim asked him once what he wanted and he told her a matchbox car. She dutifully remembered and even tried to trick him a few times by telling him over and over that he was going to get to open his rubber ducky soon. The kids each picked out a car for him. Kim, a futuristic concept car and Glade a Land Rover, which he called a Jeep. Ryan, being the cool Dad that he is, set up our table leaves running all the way down the stairs and made a great track for the cars to race down. Unfortunately, they are not as well-built as their full-scale counterparts, and the Land Rover sustained some major damage. The axles are bent and it doesn't roll straight any longer. I guess you can't expect much more. If you really drove a vehicle down that steep of a hill going that fast, it would probably sustain damage also.



I was neglectful and didn't manage to get a picture of the kids WITH Ryan, but he did take these of the kids.

Kim coloring a tie with a poem on it for him.


Glade taking an after church, much-needed nap on the couch.


We are very grateful for our Dads and Grandpas also and hope they know how much we love them. We are looking forward to seeing them in a month or so.

Love you Ryan! Thanks for being a great Father for our kids. They really love you and always look forward to your homecoming each day.

Summer Fun

The weather here in Washington has been surprisingly dry recently. The kids have been able to take advantage by playing outside fairly often. The love to be out, especially Kimberly. She has such an imagination. Ryan captured both of these pictures of her outside.

Kimberly dressed as a ladybug, making a house for a ladybug that she found in the yard. (Fortunately, the lady bug was able to escape during the night.



Kimberly making a house for a cat or something. She colored it with flowers and sunshine and the put the rocks on it. She told me it would keep the animals dry. It's still out there two weeks later, although it is unknown if any animals have actually used it for shelter.

Golfing Galore

A few weeks ago we took the kids to a little mini-golf place in town for Family Home Evening. It was the first time they had been. They seemed to enjoy it pretty well, especially Kim. Glade found the most efficient way to golf and after hitting the ball once at the tee, would run, pick it up, and drop it into the hole.




By the way, if the hat looks familiar, I made Glade a cute hat last spring and it got lost somewhere between Ohio and Washington. I managed to make him another one just like it again this year. It reminds me of one of the hats you might find at Grandad's cabin

The Week

This week seems to have gone by pretty fast. It has been a little crazy and VERY hot, at least for a 7-month pregnant lady. I am soooo glad it cooled down today.

I can't believe we will have a new baby in about 7 weeks or so! The time seems to have gone by very quickly.

I have spent quite a bit of time this week thinking about and working on our move. Several phone calls to Ft. Wainwright in Alaska have been made to figure out what we should be doing. We also got one big step completed. I made a reservation for our family on the ferry. We are actually really excited about this. We will take our car and drive it onto the ferry. We got a cabin booked for our little family for the date we wanted, so that was a relief. Then we will ride for 2 1/2 days through beautiful scenery and arrive in the Skagway, AK area (goldrush). Our plan is to see the sites in that area for a few days before making the 650 mile drive to Fairbanks. Maybe we'll see some other things on the way. If any of you have suggestions, let me know.

Here is the website for the ferry. The videos are fun to watch and make me really excited about this move. Hope our things don't take too long with the movers!

Now if only the last few things will fall into place (including amended orders making this an accompanied tour of duty so Ryan isn't traveling alone), we will be all set. Can't wait!

A Fun Day

We made our second pilgrimage to Capitol State Forest yesterday and really enjoyed it. This time, since the weather has been warm, we found the river and set up a picnic lunch on the rocky bank. The kids seemed to really enjoy it. Ryan was a really good sport about taking them in the water and keeping them entertained so I could have a break. The water was COLD! Everyone still enjoyed it though.

Kim perched on a rock waiting for her chance to catch a minnow.


Glade got pretty good at walking across the rocks. He sure is growing up.


Ryan (always the adventurous one) found a big fallen tree to climb up. Too bad it was so hot it gave his wrist a blister.


The highlight of the day was when Dad tried his hand at catching minnows and discovered a salamander right under his nose. It didn't really try to get away and the kids both got really excited about it. We held him for a few minutes and let him crawl on pants and hands and then put him back in his home.

Soaking in the Rays

It has actually been pretty warm and sunny around here the last week or so (nothing to you Arizonans though). It actually got into the upper 80s on Friday. I have used my Sun Oven more than ever before. I made 6 loaves of bread in it (2 at a time) on Friday, and cooked dinner in it on Thursday, including the rice. So that has been kinda fun. We don't have air conditioning, so I hate to heat the house up too much by using the oven.

By the way, I have had a couple of questions about it, so here's the low-down. My parents bought a sun oven for each of their kids for Christmas. It hasn't been quite as good for here, because of so many clouds, but anywhere in the Southwest seems like it would be wonderful. I haven't used it a TON yet though.

With the Sun Oven you have to plan ahead. It has an adjustable height with a tray inside that swings keep whatever you're cooking flat. You put it out facing the sun and at the right height for about 20-30 minutes to preheat. The warmer days work the best up here. Then you put whatever you're cooking inside. The door latches closed and cooking begins. My experience has been that it takes longer for things to cook, but it is kind of fun to be doing it all with the sun's energy. Just go out every 30-60 minutes to adjust the height and direction of the Sun Oven to keep it facing the sun. The best times to cook are about 11:00-4:00 or so. It is sometimes hard to get it up into the higher temperatures, which is why it takes longer to cook things. This past week I have gotten it up to 350* though, and it held on 325* for a few hours on the hottest days. Not quite as warm as I would bake in a normal oven, but good enough to do the job.

Overall, it's been kind of a fun experiment. I would like to cook in it more. The coming week is supposed to bring clouds, although we'll have to see how much since it is still supposed to be in the 80s.

Memorial Day Weekend

We had a really great weekend. Ryan had Friday and Monday off, so it was great to have him around more, well, sorta. He spent Friday getting ready to climb Mt. St. Helen's and left about 3:00 to get there. He camped with a group and hiked up on Saturday. You can read about his experiences here and here. He was the first one to the top for the whole day and seemed to have a good time. I would like to go there sometime before we move also. We'll have to see if that actually happens or not. Looks like a neat place.

Since he went up and down so fast, he got home pretty early on Saturday, so that was nice. We had a normal Sunday with church and family time.

Monday was Memorial Day and we decided to go on-post to the service to celebrate it.

We attended the ceremony at the cemetery. It was a nice program, not too long, just about right for two children to sit through. I really enjoyed it. They had an Army band and a tomb of the unknown solder. I never really knew before that the flag flied at half-mast until noon on Memorial Day and then gets raised to the top. The 21-gun salute really added also. The guns were pretty close by and so they were pretty loud. Our kids did pretty well though. Some others were crying. Kim just covered her ears and Glade didn't start whimpering until about the 18th shot or so. After I gave him a hug, he was all right. Very impressive.

Ryan and Glade in the peaceful cemetery.



Flags were on every grave.


The soldiers that shot off the guns. You can see the guns in the background.


Kim being her patriotic self.



We decided to stop by Burger King for lunch and then go to the lake on post. Too bad we didn't plan enough ahead. Kimberly didn't have her swimsuit, but managed to get wet and have fun anyway. Where was Glade during this time? Fast asleep in his carseat, which Dad kindly carried to the beach.



When we got home, we decided to try to make dinner in the sun oven, but it turned out to be too late in the afternoon, so we will have to finish the ribs up today. I have done a few things in there and it really works. Once when I made bread I baked 2 loaves in the sun oven and 3 in the regular oven and couldn't really tell the difference. I also baked brownies in there once. I will keep experimenting, when I have time. Washington's admittedly not the best place for this appliance because of all the clouds and rain.

Mother's Day

I had a great Mother's Day. We spent Friday night camping. You can read about it on Ryan's blog.

It was a really fun trip. My family took me out for dinner in Cle Elum on the way home. We stopped at the same restaurant when we were moving out here. The food was as good as we remembered.

Sunday morning Ryan and Kimberly got up and made breakfast in bed for me. Biscuits and Gravy, my favorite! Thanks, honey. When we got to church I was surprised to discover that the Primary was singing in Sacrament Meeting. The bishopbric forgot to ask us to do it. I'm glad I was just the pianist and not the music leader! It went fine, though.

In the evening we talked to my mom and mother-in-law to round out the day.

It was a great weekend.