President's Day weekend

My dad came out last week from the East Coast to spend the long President's Day weekend with us.
Saturday was WARM, so after I got back from my Team in Training run, we took the kids for a walk around a local lake while Craig got in his run by lapping us several times. Then the kids took Grandpa to their favorite sushi resturaunt. By the time we were done, the table was littered with empty sushi plates and grandpa was thuroughly impressed with both the quantity and variety of sushi the kidos managed to pack away. (I wish I had remembered my camera!!) The rest of the day was spent napping, playing cards...


...and playing a little Wii Tennis.

On Sunday we headed up to Mount Hood...we had our skis, but were a bit concerned about the weather and the rain. The last week or so had not been good for the slopes. As we reached the turn-off for Timberline ski area, it was still raining! But about 2 miles from the parking lot it switched to snow, so our ski day was saved.

Despite the wind blowing snow and sleet at us all day, the conditions were quite a bit better than I had tought they would be. With several inches of fresh snow, we got some good powder runs in, and despite the fact that the top of the mountain was closed, I think we all got a good skiing fix.
We met up with our friends C and M at the lodge so that the boys could snowboard together.


A is on the left...its kind of hard to tell with all the gear on!)

I am most proud of W's ski day. For the past year, she has been really trying to learn to snow board and decided after our last trip to the mountain that enough was enough!! So on Sunday she strapped on skis for the first time and had a blast!! After her morning lesson, during which she wowed her instructor with her quick learning, we took her to some more challanging slopes, and she did great!

I even got to ski a bit with K after I picked her up from her all day ski school.

We closed the weekend with chocloate birthday cake with fudgy frosting goodness !!

Happy Birthday Grandpa

Kung-Fu fun

Last weekend was not only about getting ready for Halloween, it was also all about Kung-fu!

K had her promotion on Friday night.











She received her Orange/purple belt






A and W tested on Saturday morning.




Wendy got her teen's Orange belt









Alex received his purple/white sash...a sign of his level of commitment and dedication to his school.

As part of his test he had to defend himself against multiple attackers.



I am feeling super lucky these days that we found such a great Kung-Fu studio. Sifu Tom and his family work hard to make sure that the whole family feels included. We are all taking class now, and everyone is working hard and looks forward to going to classes. Last week we even had a private Tai-Chi class with our Sifu where we learned the first 12 steps of the Tai-Chi short form. Every day we practice it together. How many families do you know who get to share in the same activities like that??

The Halloween Report

Halloween was a blast as usual.

Pumpkins were carved.



Power tools were used...No fingers were lost.

Our great friends had a super fun "Zombie Beach" themed party on Saturday, inspired by this classic movie.



















It is so much easier to get creative with costumes when you have a theme to work with!!
We had done the zombie thing last year and wanted a new look this time.


C is the lifeguard from the movie, I am a beach towel, K is a sand castle, and A and W went as each other!

Halloween night was also a great success. The kids went to a party at Kung-fu in the afternoon and then got butt loads of candy Trick-or-Treating here in the neighborhood. Alex and his buddies stayed out untill they had visited EVERY house in our neighborhood. The girls each collected a one gallon ziplock bag FULL of candy...Alex almost doubled their haul!! There is now an obecene amount of candy in this house.

The kids are anxiously looking forward to Saturday afternoon when they get their annual "1-hour of all the candy you can eat" Halloween candy pig out. Should be fun!

A little video from W's Fall Concert

Hi all,

Well, Craig forgot to take the camera to A's band concert, but we I did take it to W's concert last night. Here is one of the two songs the 6th graders played.

W is the cello player on the far right... if you look closely you can see the top of her head peeking up over the top of her music stand.

The first day of school

Well, here we are...Its 8:00 and W and A are already at school!

This neighborhood is particularly nice for W...We have 5 sixth grade girls within a 1 block radius of our house!!! They made quite a parade on the way to the bus stop at 7:15 this morning. One other mom and I were the only ones who came to the bus stop...We didn't need to, but our girls kind of wanted us to. Tomorrow they do it on their own. (sniff...sniff...My baby's all grown up!!!)

Later today the real sniff sniff moment will be when K hops aboard the kindergarten bus with out much more than a smile and a wave.

**Posted later**

K waiting for the bus on our front porch.















K's first bus ride to school!















Mrs.R's class...and a few of K's new friends.














As expected, she had no problem getting off to school on the first day.
So far Kindergarten has been a great experience all around. K has made several new friends...her favorite part of the day is recess...and I get to volunteer in her class every Friday!

Heading to the Coast

Well, its Friday, and the family is headed to the coast for the last weekend of summer. We will be camping in Pacific City with our good friends.

Now, camping means different things to different folks. For us it means getting the trusty Motorhome out of storage, filling it with food, clothes, and gas. Not exactly roughing it, but honestly, way more comfortable!! Not to mention the fact that tent camping in the Pacific North West, with all its damp, cold weather potential, is totally unappealing. I much prefer to stay dry, not have to hike to the nasty campground toilets with the kids in the middle of the night, and have the option of using the heater if things get chilly.

Our motorhome has had a long and adventurous life...See...She may not be much to look at, but we love her!

Now we are not super campers. We are not out spending every weekend in the woods. We don't go out more than a handful of times a year. We love it when we go, but we are a busy family, and this is what we can manage. Anyway, there are often LONG periods where the motorhome is just hanging out all by her lonesome in the storage place...Just waiting. With her battery loosing its charge. So, we have had to develop this little routine of going to fetch the motorhome battery and charge it before we can go anywhere. Last night Craig and I took the battery back to the storage place, plopped it in and hooked it up. Nothing. Bummer! So we started the "try to jump-start the motorhome" ritual. Nothing. Tried again. Nothing. And again...For like, 10 minutes. Nothing. BUMMER!
On a normal weekend this would have been no big deal. We like to camp on to he fly. We don't usually have reservations, just the idea that 'camping this weekend would be fun'. But this weekend we are meeting our friends on the coast, and we do have reservations, so we really needed to get this motorhome going!

After much banging, fiddling, key turning, and getting nowhere, we decided that the battery was indeed dead. The elegant solution...We took the battery out of Craig's car and put it in the motorhome. Then we pushed Craig's car into the motorhome's parking place and left it there to hang out with the RVs for the weekend. We will figure out the battery mess later...After the camping trip. (I told you we were great procrastinators!)

So, we are heading out in a few more hours. I have to go pack, check our supplies and go grocery shopping for camping food like hot dogs and s'more fixens.

I'll leave you all with some pics of the kids giving the motorhome her annual shower.

Have a great weekend!!

mmmmmm...cotton candy!

The kids had a great time yesterday at Oak's Park. It was a bit cloudy, but the rain held off long enough for us to get our fill of fun for the afternoon. This was a fun "End of Summer" field trip.

School starts next Tuesday...Yippee!! (I'm doing the happy mom dance!!)

A's guest blog session

To: my mom's blog readers

This is A here, with my 1st issue of "annoying stuff that my mom does"

Oh my god does she ever stop knitting? All she ever does with her spare time is knit and kick me off of the computer to read knitting blogs. Even when I am practicing reading online (well, actually, It's reading comics on the internet. potato potahto). When I am at my kung fu class, I look behind me and, SURPRISE! She's knitting. And once, when she was knitting a pair of socks, she got bored and unraveled the whole thing into yarn balls! Knit knit knit, unravel. Knit knit knit, unravel. It is so annoying.

The only good thing about my mom knitting is that she cannot lecture me while she does it. She lectures me so often that now, in order to save time she just says something like "Treat sister nicely lecture". Which is nice, but it took at least 5 years of really boring, real lectures to get there. TOTALY worth it :). OMG my mom is coming! I gotta stop! Don't know when I'll post next, see ya!




He is a real sweetie pie isnt he? Look for more guest posts by my kids in the furure.
Betsy