What would you do for Missionaries?

Every year our AWANA club has a loose change drive. Cubbies has only won once, and that was two years ago. well to help encourage the kids we bribe them to put a pie in leaders faces (the winning club gets to pie a leader in front of all the clubs).

So every year I make a small sacrifice... I have become a professional at the pies, I wear a garbage bag, shower cap- that's right, now whip cream in this beautiful mop and then Cassandra get's to dump water over my head afterwords to speed up clean up.





Jeff Lamping took the 2nd pie and our children's Pastor, Bill Montgomery took the third and the rest of the water







Good times! I can't wait til next year.

Memorial Day Weekend

the whole weekend was going to be a quiet one, but low and behold it wasn't. Saturday we spent most of the days running errands... Then we babysat Gabe for a couple of hours, he is such a good baby and I love playing with him.
How can you say no to these baby blue eyes?


On Sunday we went out to Lake Retreat camp. David's grandparents, Lanny and Loretta where up from Arizona to help out for the weekend. We got a good family shot in front of the gazebo Lanny built for his late wife Alice. It was the first time I had seen it and it was really beautiful. She would have loved sitting there next tot he lake enjoying the laughter of the kids on the water.



And of course my quest for the family photo... I saw the tire swing as an opportunity to frame my fun family...


And there were plenty of other opportunities for more family photos:



Then Alex, Lisa, Sheri, Andrew, David & Josiah took a canoe ride. here are the various photos of them having a good time. Josiah did have to work up a little bit of nerve to get out there, but once he did he was beaming.





Monday we just hung out at home and had a relaxing day.

Another Round of Catch up

I am so sorry the blog has been quiet for so long. It has been a CRAZY month. I will finish the couples retreat stuff later, but let me catch you all up on the most recent activities. My Uncle Walt passed away in Las Vegas, NV. So I made another trip to the "sin city" to support my mom & aunt through the funeral and everything else. My sister Kim came out as well and we spent the weekend doing a variety of things... let me share.
His wedding photo- 43 years ago:



I also had never seen a military funeral, and I must say I was AMAZED at how wonderful it was. I have video, but as usual I'm having issues uploading it. i will try later.

My sister and I also enjoyed lunch at the pub where Jason works. It's an Irish pub that was shipped over from Ireland.



The food was really great and over course the service was AMAZING (Thanks Jason!), nothing like making your brother wait on you hand and foot. LOL.

We also spent some time around Las Vegas doing more tourist stuff:

I got to go on the Gondola ride FINALLY! My parents came along, it was a good break from all the services and such that was going on this weekend.




We had an AMAZING Gondola driver guy, he was funny and he could really sing!

We then headed to Fremont street so Kim could see the lights and I finally found a giant slot machine. So for the fun of it, I played it.




Sorry, no giant jackpots.
On Monday we drove out to Boulder, NV to the Veterans cemetary and had the burial. It was 115 degrees that day and I felt every degree...

Monday evening I traveled from Las Vegas to Orange County, CA for a business trip that was already scheduled. It was the shortest flight I had ever been on, and the bumpiest. More on that trip soon. i will also add more photos of Vegas in the coming days.

Couples retreat

So I returned from Las Vegas at 1:30 Friday morning and konked out in my nice warm bed. David and I got up that morning and picked up Ben & Cassandra and went to meet Tod & Lorena Gates and Kim & Keith for breakfast before we headed downtown to the victoria clipper.





We boarded the boat for Victoria, BC and we played card games, dice games & catch phrase. Apparently we were a rowdy group, but we had fun!




after checking into our hotel we headed over to parliment to take the tour. Here is some interesting stuff we say.






Photos infront of parliment:









after that we met up with the Monan's for dinner.



We then returned for our first session. The Speaker was GREAT! He had a lot of insight.

All of this was just on Friday :-). I will add saturday to the blog tomorrow.

Time to play catch up

Oh I hate when I neglect my blog, so here I go, two weeks worth of catch up... bear with me. First I will do the condensed verson of Vegas since I did my little book earlier.


So my uncle Walt went in for emergency surgery a few weeks back and my mom flew down immediatley to be with my aunt and him. My parents usually make the drive from Seattle to Las Vegas every May, so the following Monday my dad was going to drive down there on his own to meet up with my mom. I didn't really like the idea of my dad going alone and I hadn't seen my aunt & uncle since 1992, so I took the time off work and headed down with my dad.

We left Seattle at 12:00 on Monday... well more like 12:30 because we started the trip off with the ULTIMATE comfort food, Dick's drive in.

This drive was going to be very exciting for me because I had never been to Eastern Washington (other than Wenatchee).

Did you know Yakima is "Washington's Palm Springs"? Now I have never been to Palm Springs, CA, BUT if it is ANYTHING like Yakima, WA I will GLADLY pass.

We drove through Eastern Oregon and then on to Idaho. And boy does Idaho STINK. From the moment we crossed the border until we got to Nevada. it either stunk of cow farms or onions. But the nice part was you could legally drive 75 MPH, which means 85 without getting caught- Yahoo.

After we went through Twin falls the road was pitch black all the way into Nevada. As we came around the bend the sky with lit up with neon signs for Jackpot. At night you would think this was a HUGE town with all the neon, but here is what it looked like during the day.



My dad and I had a great time enjoying the sites, seeing the wild life and having a contest to see who could get the gas tank as empty as possible... We didn't really do this on purpose, but a couple of circumstances made us both question whether or not we would have to wait on AAA. And for the record I won, I got the tank down to 1/2 a gallon, my dad only ran it down to 1.5 gallons. (I thought my mom was going to faint when she heard what we did).

We arrived in Vegas tuesday afternoon and after seeing my aunt, uncle and mom; my dad took me to fremont street.




That was fun. We then picked up my brother from work and went to his house since that was the couch I was staying on for my trip. We spent each night out on the town, then got up the next morning to go see family, give hugs, kisses and support. then go play, then come back to the hospital, then go out. It was very draining.

Here are some generic photos:






the flowers are my favorite photos! I am going to frame them. I will explain the dolphins another day... right now i need to blog way too much!!