Beautiful children on Easter Sunday

A few pictures from Easter Sunday -  without Chris.  He had an appointment after church and Jonas wasn't about to stay in his church clothes any longer.

(This is typical Jonas behavior - he is quite a silly boy.)

Things That Make Me Laugh

Conversations overheard in the past week:

• Quinn offered to read a story to Jonas. She chose a chapter book and Jonas asked if there were pictures. Her reply: "There's no pictures - it's a chapter book. You paint the picture with your imagination - like a TV show in your head."
  
• Lauren (referring to Jonas' pillow pet): "What's his name?" Jonas: "Wuggles" Lauren: "Wuggles - that's a cool name." Jonas: "It's MR. Wuggles to you."
• Mattie: "I would be so much farther along in life and school if other people weren't so stupid."
  
• Jonas: "Mrs. Chroninger (his teacher) has a rope and when we're bad she ties us up and when we're really good we get to swing on it for a whole hour."
• Jonas: "I want to be on the clouds with Jesus. I would run on them like a treadmill."
• Sam (on his way to learn swing dancing at mutual): "I'm a stud - I'm going to dance with all the ladies." Lauren: "Are you sure you're not a dud?" Sam: "No. I'm a stud."

And someday I'll laugh about this....

I play the piano for the choir at church. This is not by choice - the choir director is a force of nature. She gets what she wants and she wants me to play the piano. So I do. Because frankly I'm totally intimidated by her. Sunday the choir was scheduled to sing "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" which is a beautiful song. And it sounded beautiful on Sunday. Until we came to the second page and I realized that I did not have the second page. I had feelings of complete panic and helplessness. In a matter of seconds I had a hundred thoughts run through my head. Mostly I was thinking, 'It must be around here somewhere.' But it wasn't. The choir kept singing; the director didn't notice I had stopped. Until the choir finished the first verse which was supposed to be followed by a piano solo leading into a key change and the second verse. I have heard the phrase deafening silence before but never experienced it until then. There was a deafening silence and 100+ pairs of eyes all on me. The choir director looked at me and I lifted both hands and whispered, 'I'm missing a page.' I think that whisper could be heard on the back row - it was that silent. She handed me her book (with tears in her eyes) and I picked up with the piano solo and pretended nothing was wrong. Someday I'll laugh about it...hopefully.

We've taken over the blog-PART 2

Mom is still too busy and updating the blog ended up on our chore list...so here we are again. We left off in October I think so here is a look at our Halloween. So we started with some pumpkin carving.

Mattie,Quinn, and I made interesting cat (it didn't turn out too great)

Sam and Jonas' turned out a little more successful-Jonas tells me its a Mario,but I think it looks more like a Luigi.

Then we went trick-or-treating Quinn was the Queen of hearts and Jonas was Ninja. They went trick-or-treating with their friends and mom and dad.

Then Mattie and I went with some friends too. I was the Cat in the Hat and Mattie teamed up with another Maddie and the were Thing One and Thing Two.
I didn't see Sam all night I think he was watching movies with his friends

Then came November....
First was dad's birthday! But....he was to busy with work to celebrate( psh I think he just didn't want to turn 41) so he had to wait 3 weeks and celebrate with me and Mattie!
Next, we had a lovely Thanks giving with our family (no pictures).

Then, Mattie and I had a birthday!! We turned 13!
My wonderful mother rented us a hotel room and we had a sleep over!!


Then on our birthday we opened some gifts and hung with the family.


Jonas has been learning nursery rhymes in Kindergarten. In December they got to put on little plays for the parents. Here's Jonas as Humpty Dumpty with the king's horse and man trying to fix him.


Sadly we still don't have any snow, but we still had a great Christmas. The cousins came and we went swimming and ice skating. I don't think we ever took any pictures though.


We decided to make our own snow. After a long search for a helium tank and lots of paper cutting we made it snow!!! Then we had Christmas Eve dinner at our house.

Then Christmas day came.



Stay tuned for part 3 - New Year's Eve!! You're gonna want to see this....

our mother got busy so we've taken over the blog

PART ONE
since our mom is too busy to update the blog we thought we would take over. So here is a look at the last 8 months of or life!
In July mom and dad decided to go to Hawaii without us (completely unfair). Mom celebrated her 40th birthday there and they had a lot of fun... without us :(



Then we spent the rest of the summer hanging out.
Mattie and I went to girls camp. It was our first year and it was so much fun!! Can't wait to go back next year!


Sam did his Eagle project! He painted a united states map on the playground at a new Elementary school. It took some work, but when it was done it looked great.

Then Mattie and I have developed a liking for photography-here are a few of our pictures.
And of course our trip to Northern California. We went to the Redwood forest. Hiked around for a while. It was pretty cool and it was a really nice hike!
and of course we had to visit Paul Bunyan

After the Redwoods we took a rafting trip down the Smith River.

then we hiked down to the beach

Then summer ended and we all went back to school. Sam started High School and Jonas is a Kindergartener, Quinn started the 3rd grade and Mattie and I are in the 7th grade. We've definitely kept busy with dance,swimming, and volleyball. Well that gets us to October, but I'm tired of sitting at the computer so I'll get the blog fully caught up tomorrow.

Playing Catch Up

We seem to have fallen behind on our blog. Not surprising as we have been busy with so many activities. Here are a few of the highlights:

The birthday boy - Jonas is 5! (ok so it was almost two months ago....that's what happens when you're the 5th child)
He got his own Nintendo ds - after begging to use everyone else's.

We had brownies and ice cream on his birthday - we'd had enough cupcakes after Quinn's birthday!

But he was too busy to eat it!


The cupcakes did make an appearance a few days later as we celebrated birthdays with family. This robot put a big smile on his face..



Among his many fun gifts was this kite which he's had fun flying - thank you, Jared and Christina. And a big thank you to all of our family who spoiled him with presents.


Film Festival Update:

I got to take Sam to Portland one night for his film screening at this very cool old theater in the Hollywood district of Portland.

The silent films were all screened on the big screen while the composer of the soundtrack played live on this very cool old organ.

While he and his friend, Billy, didn't win it was a great experience for them.



Sam's new love:

Sam begged me for 2 years to sign him up for lacrosse. I really didn't want to - it meant expensive equipment and several trips a week to Bend for practices and games. After 9 years of sitting through baseball games every spring - really cold and windy and long baseball games - like 3 hours long - I was kind of over spring sports. I finally gave in this year after talking to a couple of friends who were willing to carpool. Let me tell you about lacrosse - it is nonstop action for 45 minutes. And then it's over. I love lacrosse! Here are a few pictures...



Sam scoring a goal...with two defenders on him. Great shot of the ball going into the goal, isn't it?


They ended the season with only one loss (and that to an elite team from the Portland area). I wish I'd signed him up years ago.....


June 2011

The school year ended with Sam's 8th grade graduation. It was a little bit of a sad moment for me watching him get his middle school 'diploma', but also a moment to reflect on how amazing this son of mine is. And now we have a high schooler....


The girls' dance recital followed school ending. They were all beautiful. Here are a few of their pictures.

Quinn was part of the the ballet 'Alice in Wonderland'.

I'm not sure what's with the Charlie's Angels pose. I think it's a result of several hours in the dressing room waiting their turn to perform.

And we can't forget two more sets of braces in our family. (Sure am grateful for the family discount!)

So that brings us to mid-June. Many exciting things have happened in the last few weeks as well, but that's a story for another blog.