Pumpkin Patch

After the days of being apart while I was visiting my Dad, Matt and I decided to do something fun as a family on Saturday. Around here there are quite a few farms that are open to the public this time of year. We went to one last year that we really enjoyed; so we decided to take the kids to a farm again.



At first it seemed like the day might not not turn out that well. The first farm we went to was not as interesting for the kids as we had hoped; so they were kind of grumpy and irritable. We finally left and decided to go to the same farm as we had went to last year since we knew we enjoyed it last year (and it happened to be close to where we were already)



This farm was much more fun. There was a neat gift shop that Matt and I enjoyed browsing through. We bought some fresh apples and squash and a few other little items. There was a huge blown up apple bouncy toy that the kids enjoyed jumping in. They also had face painting and a hayride. We all rode the hayride together and really enjoyed it. They also had a pumpkin patch that the kids enjoyed climbing around in. They had hay bale mazes too, but for some reason our kids didn't go in them. I guess they were too busy with the other things. We took pictures of course! I decided to post last years pictures from the pumpkin patch to compare how the kids have grown in the past year.



All in all we had a pretty good day. It was nice to enjoy a fun day as a family!





Here we are on the hayride (I'm taking the picture) What an adorable family I have!

Here are all the kids in the pumpkin patch.

Here are Ruby and Garrison last year. Notice Ruby's faithful elephant? I still feel sad when I see pictures of him. I wish we hadn't lost him...

Here is Christian and Anthony last year.

Here are all the kids together last year.

This is Ruby posing in the pumpkins this year.

Here she is with elephant last year.

Garrison this year.

Garrison last year.

Christian this year.

You can't see him real well, but this is Christian last year.

Anthony this year. The sun is in his eyes, but it's still a cute picture!

Anthony last year.

Smells

By the way, we had a really good weekend at the cam pout. I always enjoy seeing all the brethren. There were good meetings and lots of good visiting. It was wonderful to spend a weekend surrounded by so many loved ones. There was a baptism and a beautiful ordinance supper. I looked down the row of all my beautiful sisters and my heart just burst with love and joy to see all of them and feel the wonderful fellowship.

There were 6 bishops from different assemblies there. I had them all pray for me for a private problem I've been having. I didn't feel like it was important enough to call the elders to come to my house; but I decided to take advantage of the opportunity of them all being there. It was a wonderful feeling to have them all gathered round me as they lay their hands on me. I could feel so much love to and from them. I thought about each one and how I've known all of them for quite a few years; some for as long as I can remember. They each hold a special place in my heart and are good examples before me and my children. So far it seems that the problem they prayed for is gone! Yahhh! It was very bothersome.

All in all it was a good weekend.

I believe it was Sunday morning I woke up early to help with breakfast. When I stepped out of my cabin a horrible smell met my nose! It smelt like maybe somebody had some fertilizer or something. I teased one of the teenage boys about using too much cologne; and I told Bro. Jim that it smelt like Tulare! (a major dairy town, for those of you who don't know). Even as I joked about it I got to thinking about a prophesy I may have mentioned before. It told me that my sacrifice was pure and that I was a sweet smell unto the Lord.

I thought about how I know that all too often my sacrifice is not so pure and I wondered if there were times that I smelt like dung unto the Lord, or worse. In one of the meetings a brother got up (I forget which one) and was talking about the scribes and how the Bible says they were like sepulchres. They looked beautiful on the outside, but inside there was corruption and rotting flesh. I thought about how horrible that sacrifice must smell unto the Lord.

Throughout the weekend I kept smelling different smells. While breakfast was being cooked there was the wonderful smell of bacon in the air, that fertilizer smell never did quite go away, though sometimes it wasn't as bad as others. Sometimes I would get a whiff of someone's B.O.; or I would walk by someone who had some good smelling perfume or lotion. Even though I didn't smell it this weekend I thought about how someone could use too much cologne or perfume and it could end up being a bad smell. As I smelled each smell I kept thinking about how each sacrifice has a different smell unto the Lord.

Some people's sacrifice has a wonderful smell; others not so much. There's even those who do too much on their own without God's lead and direction and their smell is too overpowering. It really got me to wondering how my sacrifice smells unto the Lord. It really made me want to give the Lord a better sacrifice. I sure don't want the smell of dung, corruption, B.O. or any other such thing to reach the Lord's nostrils because of me.


Here is a couple of verses that I read yesterday that I thought were uplifting:

"Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,
I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus."

Philippians 3:13-14

Girls Night Out

Getting a pedicure is something I really like to do to indulge myself. Most of the time I feel guilty spending extra money on something frivolous like that; so I don't do it very often. With Matt working all this overtime I felt like it would be ok to go get a pedicure.

I found a Beauty School not far from me that only charged $15! Since I decided to do this I thought I would see if any of my fellow sisters wanted to come too. It ended up that they ALL wanted to go! It worked out that the school was open in the evenings when our husbands could babysit. So we all agreed on Tuesday. There ended up being 7 of us in all. It was fun to get pampered like that and get to visit together.

Before our appointment we all met at a Starbucks that was nearby and got ourselves a drink. Because there were so many of us we ended up having to have 2 appointments times; but that was ok. I was one of the later appointments and I just got to visit with those that were getting theirs done first. The only thing that wasn't good there was they only had folding chairs for you to sit in. I was ok, but poor Sis. Cherrie is 8 months pregnant, so she was pretty uncomfortable; but all in all we had a pretty good time. It was nice to have a girls night out.

Like I said, I don't get a pedicure very often; so when I do I like to make it worth while. I like to pick colors that are different. I especially like to get little decals on my toes. One of the girls had some decals and she let me have some! Here are some pictures of my pretty toes! I chose a pretty blue; with raspberry colored sparkles!

I really surprised some of the other sisters with my choice, but I'm very pleased with my pretty toes!

Oregon Airshow

I'm kind of late with this post. My excuse is that I'm having a yard sale this weekend and I've been busy going through stuff.

A few weekends ago, Matt and I took the kids on Friday night to the airshow here. We had a really good time! Sometimes when we take our kids out it's not so fun because they get cranky or bored, but they actually did really good. All of the kids enjoyed watching the airplanes doing tricks; even Garrison. They had a lot of different planes doing different tricks. I had never been to an airshow and I really enjoyed it.

You can't see this plane real well, but they were bigger than the other planes doing tricks and there were 4 of them at once; and they had red, white and blue tail smoke. They were pretty impressive to watch.

Here was a duo doing some tricks. It definitely takes talent and lots of practice to get all the moves synchronized like they did.

This is a pretty good picture of one of the planes. I actually took a lot of pictures, but it was hard to get good ones.

When it started getting dark they had some planes go up that had some sort of sparkling tail smoke so you could see them in the dark; and they had some parachuters (my spell check just told me that parachuters isn't a word, but I don't believe it) with sparklers attached. It was pretty cool to see. I tried to take pictures, but it was useless. My camera is just not made to take good night pictures like that. They had a really good fireworks show at the end. We actually left during it because it was pretty late by then and Matt was tired and had to work the next day. We saw the fireworks as we were walking to our van though. It was very impressive. It was nice to get ahead of the traffic and get to go home without fighting the traffic rush after the fireworks were over.

It was a really enjoyable evening. It's so nice when we get to have some nice family time like that.

It's Alive!

A couple of nights ago I was laying in bed reading a book; when I felt something! I thought could this be my baby moving already? It seemed a little early to start feeling the movements, but I lay there and sure enough! What was very surprising was how strong the movements felt. Let me tell you, when I'm reading a book, I'm usually very engrossed; so for me to notice the movements meant that they were fairly strong for so young a baby. I put my hand on it and just enjoyed the moment! Of course I told my husband who was at the computer in our room. He even came over to see if he could feel it since the movements were so strong. He wasn't real sure, but he thought he could feel slight movements! Every since then I've noticed my baby letting itself be known to me! I love this point in the pregnancy! I'm not so uncomfortable with pregnancy, but I still get to enjoy feeling this small being moving inside of me! Now I have a little over 5 months until I get to see it eye to eye!

Real or not?

A few weeks ago we took the kids to the Saturday Market in downtown Portland. We road the Max, which the kids think is really cool! Even though we didn't have much money to spend it was nice to browse around at all the different booths, and also see all the interesting people. There was a point when it was getting to be nap time and Garrison started throwing a screaming fit, but other than that it was an enjoyable outing.

At one point we were taking a bathroom break, and way up on the edge of building Christian saw an owl. I zoomed the camera as far as I could and took a picture, and then when I got the picture on our computer I cropped it even more. While we were watching it we did see it move. I guess it never occurred to me to wonder why an owl was out and moving in broad daylight. After I cropped it on my computer I thought it looked like it was fake. Maybe it's some kind of surveillance camera or something.

What do you guys think? Is it fake, or not? The more I look at it, the more I think it's probably fake.

The Coast on the 4th

Since Matt had the 4th of July off, and it happened to be on a Friday and we got a check in the mail that made it possible;we decided to spend the weekend at the Coast. It was a last minute decision. I called close to 20 Motels, most of them were full, or they were WAY beyond our price range. I actually managed to find one that was a reasonable price; so I jumped on it. We decided to pack up on Thursday and head to the coast right after church. We got to our Motel around 11; which wasn't too bad. For the price we got it for (especially it being 4th of July weekend) it was actually nicer than I expected. There were 2 queen beds in a separate room and then a hide-a-bed, dining area and kitchenette in another room. It was kind of old, and the bed wasn't real comfortable, but I was pretty pleased with what we got for the price. It was a nice enough place to call home for a couple of days. The kids did amazingly well settling down and we all slept pretty good. After having breakfast at a really nice restaurant (where we couldn't even finish all the food we ordered) we stopped at a toy store to get some sand toys and then headed to the beach.

These pictures are backwards. I always forget that you have to put them on your page in the opposite order of how you want them on your page. Well these pictures are of us making sandcastles after getting good and wet; so we are getting good and dirty! Christian wanted to make his castle with no help from anyone or any castle molds. Ruby had help from me. The reason their eyes are squinty is because the wind was blowing pretty hard and they kept getting sand in their faces. Spellcheck is telling me that squinty is not a word, but I'm going to use it anyway!

We were all so dirty after playing in the water and sand that we didn't want to sit in a restaurant; so we ordered pizza and all took showers and then tried to take a nap. That didn't go over too well. It's hard for kids to sleep in that close of quarters; especially when its still daylight outside. I guess we got to rest anyway.

This is the only picture I have of Matt. Isn't that awful! I guess he was taking most of the other pictures.

Christian and Ruby in their soaking wet clothes. I wasn't going to let them get that wet. Just wade around a little, but the water was amazingly warm for the Oregon Coast and they fell in a few times; so I gave up.

Even though Garrison fell a few times and got a little scared; he always got back up and ran with a huge grin on his face to meet the next wave!

Here's Anthony having fun.

Here's me with all the kids except Garrison.


After our showers and resting time we went to a Chinese restaurant. Our kids actually really like Chinese food, mostly the sweet and sour. There were going to be fireworks on the beach about 3 miles from where we were. We were told we could see them from the beach at the town we were at rather than going to the really crowded beach 3 miles away; so we took the sand toys down to the beach again and let the kids play until fireworks time. This time I didn't let them play in the water; so they wouldn't get quite so dirty. There were a lot of people setting off their own fireworks; so we got to see them. A lot of them looked like illegal fireworks. Their were quite a few people on the beach, but not nearly as crowded as the other beach would have been. there were a lot of bonfires on the beach. Some people even shared theirs with us. That was nice. The bad thing about the fires is it was still windy; so if you were downwind from any of them (which we were) it was very smoky. The big fireworks show was disappointing because we could just barely see it. I don't even know if the kids even really noticed it. But they had fun playing in the sand and watching everyone Else's fireworks; so it wasn't a huge disappointment. We had bought some sparklers, but it was just too windy on the beach. we did those a couple of nights later at home.

The kids were so worn out that they went to sleep pretty easy. The next morning we worked on packing up. There was a watermelon that we had cut into the day before and we ate that for breakfast. We had intended to buy breakfast, but it was so late by the time we got out of the Motel it was so late that we just got lunch. Since you have to eat seafood at least once when you go to the coast that's what we had for lunch. We walked around in the shops for a little while. We bought the kids each a silly hat, but sorry, no pictures! There was a carousel in one of the shopping centers; so we all rode on it. It was fun. The kids threw such fits when we had to get off that we figured they were tuckered out and it was time to go home.

Looking back I see that I have rambled on a lot, but now you have all the details of our fun weekend. It was nice to get away and have fun as a family.

The Brave Little Squirrel

The other day I took the kids to the park to play. As they were playing I noticed this little squirrel who was going around the play area scavenging for food. I was really amazed at how close to the kids he would go. Of course I whipped my camera out and found some old pieces of food from our van. (It was horribly messy, but yesterday it got a total detail job done thanks to my wonderful husband!!) Anyway, I threw these treasures out to him and I tried to get the kids to sit quietly to see how close he would come to us. Maybe if I hadn't had the kids with me I could have gotten him to eat out of my hand; but the kids couldn't sit quite still enough for that. They did pretty well and he got within a foot or two of us. Here are some pictures I took. It made our little excursion to the park that much more special.

Rascal Flatts Concert!!

Last night Matt and I went to a Rascal Flatts concert. I had never been to a real concert before so it was a new experience for me! It was really great! It had been awhile since Matt and I had went out by ourselves. It was a very nice evening. Sis. Marisela's girls stayed with out munchkins while we were gone.

Taylor Swift opened the concert. She was really good. I like her songs and admire how good she does at such a young age. The crowd LOVED her! She really interacted with everyone good and got us all pumped. Since I had never been to a concert I didn't realize that the greatness of Taylor Swift's part of the concert was just a small taste of the main act.

I want to rewind for a minute. When we bought our tickets I'm pretty sure the ad on Craigslist said that the seats were on row 214. In this Colosseum there is the floor (where the basketball would be in a ball game) and then there's the 100 row, then 200, then 300. So we thought the 200 row wouldn't be too bad. When we got to the concert and the people were helping us find our seats our tickets said section 114, row D! So our seats were on the bottom row (not counting the floor) only the 4th row back. So we ended up having way better seats than we thought we did! The stage was on one end of the floor, and we were close to the other end, but we could see pretty good. Right in front of us in the middle of the floor though was what looked like a small round stage, but it was not connected to the other stage.

When Rascal Flatts started there was of course some awesome effects, smoke, firework type things and all kinds of lighting effects. Their band was on the stage with a huge screen behind them that showed music videos and other effects throughout the whole show. Anyway, Rascal Flatts rose up out of that round stage that was right in front of us! It was so cool! When they were ready to go to the main stage there was a bridge type thing that came down and connected to the main stage. They spent about half of the concert on that stage right in front of us; so that was really awesome!

The reason I wanted to go to a Rascal Flatts concert is because I love how they sound, but they seem like good people. Their songs are, for the most part, morally good and true. The way society is these days it's nice when a group like this comes along who can hold to good values and not be afraid to sing about God and whats good and right. And they're still very popular! Of course I don't know them personally, so they might be horrible people in real life, but I like their songs! I really liked the way the talked to the audience like they were normal people just like us.

Here were some highlights of the evening:

* Matt and I road the Max to and from the concert so we wouldn't have to deal with parking and traffic. We've lived here for almost a year and hadn't rode it yet. It was a neat experience. It was nice to just be able to relax instead of dealing with traffic. Now we definitely want to take the kids sometime. They would love the train ride!

* When Taylor Swift was on stage she did this drumming battle type thing with a woman band member. The really cool thing is they were playing on metal trash cans!

* During the break in between concerts we watched these guys climb up these cloth ladder things up to the lights hanging from the ceiling. They sat up there throughout the show working the lights. It seemed like there wasn't much between them and falling to the floor. Matt and I discussed how much they must get paid to do that. Matt said he thought maybe $30 an hour. I think it would need to be more than that. I'm thinking I might be too much of a scaredy cat even if they paid me lots of money!

* During one song the lead singer of Rascal Flatts picked up a little girl out of the crowd and brought her on stage with him for awhile. I was imagining what a wonderful moment he made for her!

* One of the last songs they sang was "He Ain't the Leavin' Kind", which is about how God doesn't leave us. During the song he had some men from the Marine Corp standing on stage fully decked out in their uniforms standing to attention. I'm not really into the military, but I thought it was a nice patriotic thing to do.

* Another cool thing is there was a few songs they sang which weren't country songs at all, like "I Feel Good" and "American Woman."

* Also during Taylor Swift's concert she introduced each band members and they each played a solo for us. They were very good. During Rascal Flatts concert their guitar player and fiddle player each played a really awesome solo. It was really cool.

I know I've kind of went on and on, and there's probably even more I can tell you, but the bottom line is I really, really, really enjoyed my evening out!

The next concert I want to go to: Josh Turner, because he has an awesome voice; and he seems like he has good moral values also.