Our Budding Edward Gorey....

Dan is drawing a lot with pen & ink lately. Right now, he's experimenting with the "Batman" motif. I think his drawings are reminiscent of one of my favorite illustrators, Edward Gorey-- another "pen & ink" man! Enjoy!

Let The Carving Begin!

Backlog of Birthdays....

Yes, Folks, it's been birthday mayhem around here!

The birthday kids: Dan, Mike and Brit.


We began with a birthday party for Dan. He invited all his little friends for a Halloween birthday. The kids decorated trick or treat bags and then used them for a halloween treasure hunt (much like an egg hunt with plastic eggs) except we searched for little plastic pumpkins filled with a toy or a goody! It was a big hit! There were about 125 plastic pumpkins hidden all over the yard (we held it to about 2 acres).

Later that night..... after Dan's 5th birthday party.....Mike had all of his church friends over to go to the local haunted house for his 15th birthday. Then they came home and watched Anaconda. We made Mike break up his birthday into two groups because we didn't want to host 22 kids at our house at one time, and he knew that none of his church friends like to play too rough, so he opted to do the more physical stuff with his other friends....

The next weekend Mike had all of his school friends over, who consisted mainly of the first string on the football team. They played a lot of football, some basketball, some X-box, and ran through the cemetery at about 11:00pm. We have no pics to show for Mike's crew. We were too busy giving them their teenage space!


Then, the next weekend, Brit had a slumber party for her 11th birthday. They went to Subway for dinner, decorated t-shirts and watched "Kicking and Screaming" (with Will Ferrell) and "Diary of a Wimpy Kid," among other things. Then they stayed up until about 4:00am doing Madlibs and telling stories and had a great time :-)

Halloween was just a footnote to all of this, of course..... :-)

FOR CRYIN' OUT LOUD!!!

Thankfully, we don't have to burn our Scout shirts in protest now. Mike passed his Eagle Board of Review tonight at the Seattle Council. Phew! I don't think I could have continued with any of this drama one more day without eating my stomach lining (: The joy!

PICS and MORE PICS....

Ok guys- We're still climbing upward, trying to get out from under the avalanche that is 'life.' Anytime I feel like I am moving at a frenetic pace, I just think of Ami and Alex and the new kidlets and then sigh (ha!) We are not that busy! I got nothin!

Bill had a photo session with a photographer for his senior picture and other miscellaneous fun poses several weeks ago, so I thought I'd share a few... We, as a family, have a family portrait scheduled for next week, so more to come soon. Meanwhile, enjoy what's here....

A Big Surprise For Brit!

Each year, Blakely Elementary School holds "The Fitness Challenge," where the kids compete to see who can run the most laps around the track in a certain amount of time. They continue this over the course of five days and then tally all the laps each kid was able to eak out during each day's timed attempt. This event is also a huge fund-raiser for the school and the kids really enjoy it, as opposed to selling light bulbs or wrapping paper to raise money (Ha!) When Bill was at Blakely, he received a ribbon for being a participant. When Mike was at Blakely, he took 2nd place for his grade level one year. Brit, surpassed both Bill and Mike by taking 3rd place for the whole school! She was so surprised and so tickled! She knew she had done well, but wasn't sure how her numbers compared to everyone else in the school until they called her name :-) The top three kids in each class were awarded champion ribbons, and then the top three for the whole school were awarded champion ribbons! Pretty cool.

School is almost over. I cannot even begin to describe how relieved I am. This year, I started to become agitated around mid-May as the kids began to be loaded up with huge projects, tests, concerts, school and class events, preschool parties and plays, etc.(UGGGHH!) It becomes the logistics dance from h---. With only two days left, we are all breathing easy :-) I love having the kids home from school. There's a lot on the bar-b- this summer, but it's all good and all fun ........TREK, Lake Powell, D-WORLD, Biking through Idaho-Montana-and Wyoming for the guys, football for Mike, crew for Bill, chess camp for Brit (the boys like to refer to this as "nerd fest"), some mini-sports camps for Dan, and hopefully Education Week in August. We'll see you all at D-WORLD!!

Coming of age...