Spring Break Canada Trip - Monday

Early Monday morning (about 6:45 am) Trevor & I left to head to Canada. It's about 500 miles from where we live to my folk's house via the 97 through central Washington.

I had to do a little shopping in Portland and we took a little break at Multnomah Falls, just because they are RIGHT THERE off the freeway. I'm always trying to look as I drive by (bad idea). This picture is just out of the tunnel which the freeway passes over.

The weather was nice & dry for the trip, though there were reports of possible snow showers, we only saw a couple of little flakes around Brewster, WA.

We crossed the border into Canada at Osoyoos around 6:45 pm, and then it's another two hours to Kelowna & my folks. I drove the whole way, since Trevor was mostly busy sleeping. I'm glad I took some Tylenol tho, since a long drive like that tends to tense up my neck & shoulders.

Making Tempura

For Easter Dinner, Diana made us tempura. It was awesome!

She prepped all the veggies and stuck them on skewers to deep fry in peanut oil (doesn't burn).

She doesn't eat mushrooms, herself, but they made a nice bouquet :)

New Link --->

Re-Navy! is Renee's (Nae's) new blog.

In case you're new to my blog (who are you & why are you reading my boring blog?), Renee is my former Girl Scout who joined the Navy last year after graduating early from High School.

She is very energetic and likes to express herself. Just ignore the spelling errors. She's a product of the texting age... :P

Renee also loves comments. :) And Trevor. She tells him every chance he gets. He responds, "Um.... okay."

Connor Requests

Connor likes to have me take pictures. He likes to look in the little viewscreen on the camera to see how things came out.
Pretty much every time he sees the rainbow on the floor of my room, he wants to get in it for a photo.

The second shot he's pulling my sewing machine cart for me.


This is from today. He positioned us all and told us to put out our arms.

Don't know why, but it was fun :)


In this one, he asked Trevor & Diana to hide him and then said, "Smile!" so I could get a photo.

At least he's not afraid of the camera...

Happy (K)Easter '08!

Happy Easter!

This morning I kicked everyone out of bed bright & early to get ready for Mass.

Connor did especially well today. Mass is tough for him, since it typically lasts a good hour and a half (if not longer). We usually bring a bag full of books & activities to help him stay quiet. And something to eat. Today he just played quietly with the travel drawing pad - it's one of those boards with the black stuff on the bottom, with a grey sheet and then a clear sheet on top. You use a stylus to write on it, and then lift up the sheets to clear it again. That worked great! He never even had to get into the snack!


After Mass we came home for a big breakfast. I made Pillsbury Cinnabon cinnamon rolls, and belgian waffles. I made a strawberry syrup with frozen strawberries, even though we had bought fresh ones. The fresh ones were just too nice to cut up into a sauce. We are eating them fresh. There was also whipped cream to go with the waffles. Lee made scrambled eggs and veggie sausage.
After the meal, Lee & I played Easter Bunny and hid the eggs in the yard. This year Connor was looking forward to the hunt, which was really cool. He was anxious to get out there. It was damp and muddy, but that was fine - the forecast was for rain, and at least it stayed dry!

I still had the mini candy bars I'd gotten in Canada last time I was there, so the kids got Aero bars & Smarties in their eggs, besides the regular M&M's & such.

All three got a Lindt Chocolate bunny first thing this morning. After church, Connor ate his WHOLE BUNNY at once! Usually he'd leave those alone (and I'd get them) but not anymore!! After that good behavior at church, he can run around and jump on his trampoline to work off the bunny. :)

Experimental Gardening

We bought these cedar trees a while back, and put them in nice big pots on our little porch made from leftover wood.

They got bigger, but I noticed last year they never really got very green again. They aren't dead, and there's a little green, but it's mostly that reddish color - and they really were green when we bought them.

So I'm thinking they aren't really very healthy in those pots - but I'm not sure, hence the experiment.

We're leaving one in a pot because it's not dead.




We planted the other one in our yard. The white buckets are just collecting rain to continue watering when necessary.

This one has been here a week so far, so I can't tell if it's doing well or not. We've had continuous rain for the last week, so it should have gotten enough water, at least.

Connor kept wanting to get into the hole Lee dug to plant this though. Once this one was in, Lee dug him another hole.


Here's Connor's hole. It's about three feet deep and a couple of feet wide. Plenty large enough for Connor to enjoy.

And then he gets a bath :)

Spring Things

Here's the ornamental cherry tree in the front yard. It's looking very Springy. From the dining room window behind the lacey curtains, it looks like a pink cloud.
















This is a 'double' daffodil. Okay - they're really called Jonquils (at least by the Breck's catalog), and it looks more like quadrupled to me.



Either way, it makes them a bit heavier than their stems can support, and they tend to flop over.










Next time I'll get more regular ones, like the lighter colored ones here - they stand nice & straight!

Going to Canada

I'm taking Trevor with me to Canada over Spring Break. We're going to visit my folks, obviously. My dad's health has been up & down, and I just want a chance to spend as much time with him as possible. Trevor is my travel companion because he's the first-born grandchild on my side of the family. He's #10 on Lee's side.



My folks had to wait a long time before Trevor came along. I was 28 when he was born, and I was the first one to get married & have kids. Diana was next the following year. Connie had Catherine a few years later, then Mikael. Then I had Connor, and Carolyn had Kaleigh, and then Cole. Aaron is the last kiddo on our side from Connie.



My mom took care of Trevor for me when he was 3 months old, till Diana was born. So Trevor has a pretty special bond with my folks as the first grandkid. It means a lot to Trevor to have a chance to visit with his Omi & Opa again too.

Lee is still job-hunting, and Diana might be doing something else during our Spring Break that I will post on later... Connor will hang out at home and enjoy it being Spring - outside as much as possible.

Things are blooming outside :) It's nice. Pray for an uneventful trip for us, and no new snow!!

Change at Church

We have had a couple of priests at our church who have been a little contraversial. Our Pastor is pretty opinionated, and isn't shy about telling everyone what he thinks. Most of the time that seemed to be that we parishioners were not donating enough money. It used to be recognized if you donated TIME, but that kind of fell by the wayside.

He also bugged a bunch of people with closing our parish school (not that my kids went or anything). He saw it as money pit, so he closed it down. A lot of families were not happy with that either.

I actually saw a woman stand up at one point during a mass and yell at Father for a good ten minutes, and then she stormed out and never returned. So, yeah, he bugged some folks.

The other priest came to us pretty soon after he accidentally "married" three people in his former parish. He said it was not a marriage, but a blessing. Still, why would three people need to get a blessing together?

Trevor & Diana served at Mass since they were little. Neither of these two priests seemed to take the time to learn our kids' names, even though they served bi-weekly, if not weekly (filling in for someone who didn't come). I would be surprised if either Father knew my name. Granted, I'm not around all that much outside of Mass, but there are a lot of people that know my name there.

So I guess in June, our Pastor will be moving over to take on administration duties at the Homeless Family shelter he got built with the help of the parish & community. It's a neat thing, and has helped a lot of folks. But they haven't had someone 'in charge' and that's where his heart is - so that's good. The other priest is just going somewhere else. Not sure where yet.

I am hoping our new priests are a little more personal. Both of our current priests have been a little stand-offish, and neither seems to live in *our* world. Our Pastor was apparently pretty rich before he was called to serve the Lord, and I don't think he's ever figured out that this particular parish isn't all that rich. He sees the need for helping the homeless & poor, but if you weren't homeless, he seemed to think you were rich. Oh well.

I would like the new priests to get to know us a bit better as a parish. Not just the people making the big donations. And for crying out loud, learn the names of the people that volunteer at the church!!

Uh oh - too tasty!

We have been messing around with yeast doughs - Lee made some dense bread (yeast was too old), I made some really light bread (it was too warm in the oven to help it rise), Lee made a nice pizza dough for Connor's 'Pepperoni & Pizza' and Diana made Dampfnudel today. Those are yeast bread balls that are steamed to cook them, and served with vanilla 'sauce' (or pudding). She's going to bring one to school tomorrow for her German teacher to try :) So after the initial figuring out how to get the dough to rise properly in our coolish house (set the oven to 'warm' and leave the door open), we are having some nice yeasty things to eat.


Lee decided to try deep-frying as well. We like watching Alton Brown on Food Network, and he did an episode explaining that if the temperature is right, the fat seals the food so that it won't absorb too much oil, and it's not actually as bad as you'd think, calorie-wise. Yes, it's still deep-fried, but if you do it yourself, maybe not as bad as getting deep-fried stuff from fast food or restaurants.

Lee started his first foray into deep frying with corn tortilla chips yesterday. They turned out really yummy. We had some nice avocado dip & salsa with them for dinner last night. There were still enough to snack on this afternoon & while Diana was having some, Connor told her to say "cheese" and told me "take a picture, Mom." Just as I took the photo, he jumped in on purpose, and made us all laugh because that was his intention in getting me to take a photo :) I took a couple more shots with Lee, but Connor didn't get the timing right on those, so you don't see his mischievious face...



I think we're going to have Diana try making tempura next. I love tempura!!

I am really trying to avoid the next thing - yeast dough + fryer = donuts! I would eat way too many. I stick to my goal weight a lot easier if I'm not making donuts.

Coming Down the Home Stretch

of our final cookie sale. Sales are over Sunday & then we deposit and we're done!!


I will continue to buy them from scouts for the rest of my life, probably. Preferably Older Girls, since there's a big disparity in sales by age. It was a lot harder selling cookies with the older girls - we had to resort to costumes, huge signs, speaking in unison, etc. just to get people's attention.



We never earned huge amounts, since we had a smaller troop. When Renee's folks worked at the mill, that was a big year for us (thanks Nae!). The rest of the time, Diana has always been the top seller for our troop. Granted, she didn't have to share sales like Amanda or Mary, who both have younger sisters.


I have ONE box of sugar-free chocolate chips left unsold. I expect we'll buy those and Lee can have them :) I have two boxes of Samoas put aside for August, when we'll compare them to the "Caramel Delights" being sold in CA. And I still need to get one more box of Thin Mints, since I accidentally grabbed a box that should have been Carolyn's! (don't worry, it's not a big deal to get more - I can ALWAYS get more!).


Through these sales, Diana has amassed a nice T-shirt and towel collection. This year, you had to sell 250 boxes pre-sale to get the shirt. She did it though! It's a cute shirt this year too. Diana was never one for the stuffed animals & such, but they came with the other stuff. She liked the CD coupons to get music. And obviously, she got a lot of patches for her vest.

The black shirt with the sequin belt are from this sale - she will get the rest of the prizes next month. The orange & periwinkle t-shirt & hoodie set are my favorite. They say "Girl Genius" in glow-in-the-dark. Missing is her other favorite shirt with cat eyes that glow in the dark. It's probably lost in the closet or behind the chest of drawers or something.


If we want to raise any more money this year, we can do something on our own as a fundraiser. The girls are still looking at Canada, and if they don't want to have to pay for their passports ($100 each) all on their own, we'll have to figure something else out.

No Train Service

So yesterday I'm going to reserve Trevor's seat on the "Coast Starlight" train from K. Falls to Eugene. Even though I know I have the right station names & numbers, it won't get to the schedule to reserve the seat.

Finally I see there's an alert in red just above the part of the screen I've been focussed on. "Due to mudslides, the Coast Starlight will be unavailable from Sacramento to Portland until April."

Argh.

So rather than the 4-hour ride to Eugene, Trevor will take the Shuttle bus from K. Falls to Medford. It's a lot shorter for him on the bus, but it adds another hour to our trip to come & get him. We'll work in a visit with the folks & all, and I'd better drop off a geocache travel bug or two while we're there.

We do have a train that goes thru town here, but it's only for freight. I guess the different kinds of trains don't use the same tracks. Shame - it stops downtown.

Too Busy

I could use a vacation, I think. I seem to have a bazillion things I need to do buzzing around in my head.

Spring Break is coming up, but it will be filled up with house & yard stuff, I'm sure. Plus until Lee is working, we're not driving anywhere unless it's really necessary. So we missed Kraig's & Nancy's b-day celebrations :(

Keep those positive thoughts coming on a new job for Lee soon! Until then, we'll keep plugging away...

Trevor update

Lee & Connor drove out to OIT today to go & visit Trevor.

We've been talking with him on Sundays on the phone, and last Sunday he informed us he'd used all his food points on the swipe card they get (part of tuition), even though he was supposed to have been budgeting those points (20,000 points/10 weeks = 2000 points a week). Somehow he used them all up 3 weeks ahead of time. All he had to eat anymore was Top Ramen.

This last month he also discovered what overdraft charges mean on your checking account!

Yes, indeed, one learns a lot one's first year at college!

Anyway - Lee took him grocery shopping and stuff, and I should get the whole rundown tonight after Lee & Connor get home.

His grades are better this term than last, and I guess he rocks in CAD class :)

He has learned a lot about himself & life away from home so far - it's all good (except the overdraft charges and the no food part).

More Connor Pics

Because he's my son & I think he's cute :P

Connor turns 10!

First thing in the morning, he opened his presents. He actually likes opening the presents more than the presents - unless he specifically requested something. This year, all he asked for was "a party."

So we get little things like Pringles chips, cheddar cheese popcorn, a Ben Ten sticker book, and Diana gave him a Wii game. He also got that trampoline since he wore out his 3rd one now.

"The Party" meant a cupcakes & juice party at school. Connor isn't social enough to have a bunch of kids invade his house ;) Lee got big mylar balloons and brought cupcakes & juice to his classroom at the end of the day. Connor saw him and said, "Now it's time for the party!"
After school, Lee & I took him to the newly remodeled bowling alley to play a game. They can raise the bumpers just for the one person (Connor) so the rest of the people can bowl normally. I think I would have preferred the bumpers!!

After that, we went downtown to get Diana. She wasn't ready yet, so we visited the comic book shop & visited with Brett & Nancy. Then we got Diana and went to a pizza place that has an indoor play structure (better than McDonald's) and Connor got his "pepperoni and pizza" with root beer.

Diana & I had to go to GS Leader meeting, and we met Amanda there. After that, we asked Amanda to come back with us for cake, since she's known Connor since he was in utero (back when she & Diana were in 2nd grade & I was the pregnant classroom aide).

Connor read his card from Omi & Opa (thank you!) and then we sang Happy Birthday & ate cake.
He helped me count out his 10 candles on his cake :)

He said he had a Happy Birthday :)

Whoops! Sorry Tim!

We sent Tim a trial account for WoW, which he tried out tonight, I guess. We added him on our "friends" list so we could see when he got online.

Lee saw him online with his Grasp character a little before we were supposed to meet up with Shoo & Robert.

Tim just popped in & out again after a quick "Yo." In the meantime, Lee switched characters to play with Shoo & Robert. We were doing player vs. player, and a lot of text scrolls by so we missed Tim popping in again :(

I don't know if Tim knows our other character names.

If not, please add these to your friends list, Tim:

Tina's are - Keight, Suella, Wamoo, Driala & Porttal

Lee's are - Tuuk, Pillopants, Grasp, Citibank and Zaluu

Shoo's are - Gorlach and Jimmyjoe (those are the ones I know).

Robert has Boans.

Hopefully next time you log in, it won't look like no one is around?

159 Days to Go!

I happen to be a huge Olympics fan. The TV belongs to me during the Olympic Games every two years. This year, Beijing, China is hosting from August 8 through 24. Beijing 2008 Olympic WebsiteSince we're planning on going to California during part of that time, the TiVo will be busy, I guess.

There's a gal from our town who competes in fencing, and is currently hovering around 3rd place in the Nation. Her mom works at my school, and is already is planning to go to Beijing. Isn't that exciting?? I hope Lacy makes it and we wish her all the best.

Besides fencing, I think gymnastics are a big thing for me to watch. However, I don't think we'll get a chance to watch this performer...

Pop Stars

Last month, there was a Pop Star event put on by one of the older girl scouts. Amanda & Diana went to help.

In the first photo, they are leading songs before the event got going. The other girl is Amanda's sister, Whitney.

There were different stations to do things like get make up done, play with costumes, watch movies and sing Karaoke. Diana manned the Karaoke station with me.


A while back, our council bought a Karaoke machine for about $50.00, I think. Leaders can rent it out to their troops for a $10 fee, or donation of a new Karaoke disc. Most choose to add to the Karaoke library that accompanies the machine. When it gets back to me, Connor helps me check it out and make sure it's all working again.


We were using a list so everyone could have a chance to sing that wanted to, but by the end of the evening, we had to stop taking names, and we just let anyone who wanted to join in with the people whose songs we were still able to play.

I think it was a popular station for the Pop Star event!

The Final Booth Sale!

That's it for me! Whether Diana decides to do a troop as an adult is up to her, but I have fulfilled my Leader duties as of this morning from 10:00 to noon!

Sitting there with Amanda, her mom, Molly, and Diana, you wouldn't believe how many people came up and said, "Where are the girls?" We made Diana & Amanda turn around to show their vests, but I wonder how many people that didn't ask went by thinking there were no Girl Scouts at our booth! Oh well!

At the end, we only had the Samoas and Sugar Free Chocolate Chip cookies left. Amanda was getting ticked though. We finally had Sugar Free cookies, and the people who use their Diabetes as the reason they can't get cookies STILL wouldn't buy them! We had the same 3 boxes for two booths, and only sold one today. They weren't low-calorie, just sugar free.

Someone gave us a donation of $4.00 (cost of a box) and so the girls had to open a box of Tagalongs. It's always the same kind with these guys. Good think I get my own Samoas! We have only 7 boxes left, but 5 of those I need to trade for Trefoils & Lemon Cremes which were preordered. Between the preorder & when cookies came, Diana got more orders so we wound up short on those. I probably could have managed another case of both, but I really hate to push it. I really, really didn't want to have to do another booth. Typically, I can find another troop willing to trade a few boxes here & there anyway. In the beginning of March I'm able to get boxes instead of cases, and I can always fill up the rest of the orders that way.

I'm just really glad I don't have to sit in front of stores with cookies anymore! Wheee! (8 years is enough!) On the other hand, hearing Diana & Amanda talking in unison from so many years of doing this together was pretty funny. They got more reaction from that than anything else! It went like this:

D&A: "Would you like to buy some Girl Scout cookies?"

Answer: "No thanks (or other No answer)"

D&A: "Thanks anyway!"

Or...

Answer: "I already bought some."
D&A: "Thanks for supporting Girl Scouts!"

Or...

Answer: "How much are they?"

D&A: "Four dollars a box!"

They had a unison answer no matter what the question was. Then the people would say, "Wow, you must have been doing this for a long time!" or "In unison!" Then the girls might break from the unison to say Amanda was a 13-year scout, and Diana was an 11-year scout. People were impressed with that too. :)

Booth vs. "Made"

Apparently there's a show on MTV called "Made" which takes teens and *makes* them in to their dream thing...

This afternoon at 4:30, they will be at OUR high school taking applications and doing interviews for an episode. I guess it takes about a month to make people over.

I've never seen the show, but according to their website, they turn the geek into a rapper, the clutzy girl into a figure skater, etc.

Both Diana and Mary want to try out for this (why not?), but our first booth sale for GS cookies will be at Wal-Mart today from 4:00 to 6:00. Typically, we can sell up to 100 boxes per booth on the first weekend of sales (altho the forecast is for rain, and it's so stinkin' early in the year, I'm not all that hopeful). However, we do sign up for our booth slots on a lottery basis, and I can't just dump the first weekend sales. This is the best booth time I got - We'd be left with tons of unsold cookies!

So my compromise is that Mary should go to the tryouts for Made and try to be there early. Once she's done, she can trade places with Diana at the booth sale. That way both girls get to try out, and both will do their sales.

We'll lure Mary into the plan with Taco Bell...

Canadian Flag

Last week, the fifth graders from my school visited the local VA hospital to sing patriotic songs to the veterans. It was pretty cool. I was there to assist the student from my classroom, and got a little extra tour finding all the wheelchair ramps :)

While we were going through the rehab center, there was a bunch of information posted on a white board, including, "On this day in 1965, Canada adopted the Maple Leaf flag."

I'm thinking - hang on, I was still living there in 1965. What did the flag before this one look like?

Well, there was a period of time where they flew the British Union Jack, and/or the Canadian Ensign flag.

The Canadian Ensign flag actually looks a bit familiar to me.

This all happened because of the The Great Flag Debate in 1964 when a new Prime Minister was elected.

Out of all that came our Maple Leaf flag. I'm glad they picked it - I've always really liked it!

Cookie Time

It's actually a pretty small haul this year. Most of these were pre-ordered, and I have enough for a couple of booth sales, or maybe just the first one since we're going to be at Wal-Mart the first weekend of sales.



Connor helped me separate out the orders last night. I had written little slips for each order, and he read them off to me while I collected the boxes. Then we taped the slip to one of the boxes in the group. Diana has some to bring to school tomorrow, and then in the afternoon, we'll need to go to Lee's old job because he had gotten orders for her there :/ Lee is not going to be joining us, but we did phone the floor manager so she could let the rest of the people there know their cookies would be in on Friday. I didn't want those folks to go buy booth cookies, thinking since Lee isn't there anymore, they wouldn't get their pre-order!

Looks like Connie

Diana's friend took these shots. I don't like them well enough to have them be her senior photo, but they both remind me a lot of my older sister, Connie.



I guess it's the angle or something...

Usually Diana looks more similar to Carolyn than Connie to me :)

Friends

I don't have a Costco card anymore. The closest one to us right now is an hour away in Eugene, and we just didn't get there often enough to warrant the membership.

However there are people I work with that do get up to Eugene more frequently. Costco has a great price on Nutella. It's like $8.00 for two large jars. If I try to get it in the grocery store, it's almost $4.00 for one small jar - probably a third of the side of as the large one.

Connor decided recently that he likes Nutella sandwiches. He didn't want PB&J (probably got sick of it), but now we don't have a sandwich for him if we run out of Nutella. So I asked the ladies at work to get me some the next time they go to Costco.

This last weekend, two of my co-workers went there. They both decided to get me two packages of two, so I wouldn't run out so fast again. So now I have EIGHT. LOL

Won't Make the Final Cut

We finally had some decent weather today (actual sun!!) so I forced Diana to grab some outfits & call her friend who does photography to come and take some shots around town for Senior pictures.




Here's Diana calling on her friend's cell phone to tell Lee I locked my keys in the car (I had my camera - that was the important thing!)








Here's Diana's ghost emerging from the trees.

















She just wanted to hang upside down, but it would look weird on the wall & in the yearbook, I think.

















And here she's distracted by a mouse. It's in the left corner of the photo. We decided it was mentally slow, since it was letting Diana hand-feed it, as well as letting Diana's friend get her camera within 3 inches of its face.

Both girls jumped when it stopped eating and started hopping around. Hee.

Diana Wins!

Wheee!

Today was the assembly at the high school where they announced the winners of the video contest & Diana got First Place! She will get a check for $100.00!


She didn't get surprised, because Mary was at the first assembly, and Diana was attending the second one. As soon as Mary heard Diana had won, she texted her "you won!" Then an older lady Diana doesn't know heard Diana talking about the video before they went into the assembly, and she asked if Diana had done the anime one. Diana said "yes" and the lady congratulated her on her win - heh.


Lee was able to go to the assembly too, and he said Diana's video got a lot of great reactions. Later, there were lots of kids with their hands up at their heads doing the Carmelldansen :P

Diana got a lot of good kudos ;) Yay!

Here's the link again if you want to see it (or if you missed it before). Diana's Pretty Girls Video

Get Smarter & Feed People

This site has been around a while. It's just kind of cool.

If you have a few minutes, check how good your vocabulary is.

I try to play until I get to 1,000 grains of rice donated. Don't worry - it's legit. The rice is paid for by advertising on the website.

Fun!

Free Rice