Beginning of summer harvest

Back in sunny land and enjoying the beginnings of our summer garden. John's folks watered for us while we were gone and everything lived and thrived. Our apple tree was groaning with fruit this year, and bunches of pies are being made.
yellow grape tomatoes
getting cucumbers now. usually 1-2 a day so far.
the girls in our corn rows. so fun for them to wade through.
beginning tomatoes.

What a blast gardens are for kids. I must confess I have helped very little. I do water sometimes and help John pull weeds, but the bulk of the work has been John with three eager little helpers. John usually comes home and goes straight to the garden to water, check fruit, and just hang with the family. We are going green, 50 feet from garden to table. Doing our part to help the environment. :)

Cousin Camp pictures

We just spent 2 fabulous weeks in the Great Land, Alaska. The weather was good for the most part, and we hit the first big salmon run of the season. We stayed at my folks house in Cooper Landing. Lots of fun was had fishing and seeing the beauty of Alaska. We have a full freezer of salmon now too!!! These pics were taken at my home church. The bottom pic is my parents with their 7 grandchildren (ages 8 and below). Everyone got matching shirts and we had a wild little photo session. I don't recommend a photo session with 7 napless children who have been running around all day. Just a helpful little hint.
More pics to follow when I am caught up with life and we are back in a routine.

My baby girl is 8 !!!!!!!!!!!

Today was Evey's 8th birthday party. Lots of Hello Kitty fun was had by all. She got lots of fun crafts and games, a beach towel with her name on it, clothes, etc. Cake turned out so cute. This afternoon has been spent playing with new scrapbooks and crafts. Fun fun.

updates of photos-per sister's request

These beach pics were taken by Lenore last month. Finally got around to posting them. The kids all buried their cousin Catalina in the sand. Had fun, but what a sandy mess they were. Jack totally loved crawling around and eating sand and seaweed. Carrie is making a sand angel.
Evey got her face painted at the end of year Awana fair. Thank you so much to all the Awana workers. Our kids love going every week.
Jack last night eating his first spagetti dinner. He loved it.

What's been happening

Life is continuing to move a fast clip here. I really feel like it moves too fast. There are slow days, but they still are busy with feeding, watering, cleaning, and managing four little wild monkeys. Let's see what has been happening. Last week Carrie ran into a cabinet and split her forehead. That was ugly. Seems to be healing ok. Doing better with a butterfly bandage then stitches would have done. This week I took three kids in to doc(Josie, Carrie and Jack), and wouldn't you know all three had ear infections. That was a big office copay and Rx copay day.

Another new development is that I have been interviewing with a local urgent care. Looks like I will probably get the job. Very nervous. It will be lots of intense training and will require lots of actual brain power on my part. Yikes. Feel a little rusty in that department. It will probably start in July, train for 4 weeks and then work one shift a week.

Rachel- young..thin..nursing student

Trip planned and purchased for Alaska. Going up to visit family for 15 days. Should be fun and also a lot challenging to care for and entertain my four kids, plus adding in my sis' 3 little ones. My mom and dad are so excited to come home from their time in Moscow, and get to play with all 7 grandkids at once.

fishing Russian river '94- bad haircut, but nice fish

So that's is life right now. I read and check on your blogs, but don't make a lot of comments lately. Just really busy and hard to sit and comment. Sorry. Love you all and enjoy your updates.

4 little monkeys

Kids playing with new toys given to us by Vikki (and Joel). Thanks guys. It is tons of Thomas the train tracks and cars and towns and I don't know what else. Very cool. I think we need Joel to come over and show us how it all works.

Next series of photos are the 4 little monkeys sleeping in mommy and daddy's bed. They all felt a little needy last night. We hardly saw them yesterday due to church, small group and taking Jack to the doctor. They all decided they needed to go to sleep in our bed, so we let them. I nursed Jack to sleep and then stuck him in the bed for the photo. We liked looking at them all piled up asleep. That is quite a pile of kids. We did move them later so we could sleep.
By the way Jack is fine, just a lingering cough.

Easter pictures