Taking J to School

This is the farewell family picture the morning that we left. Missing from the picture is three family members: J's Mom was at work, younger brother was at early morning seminary and baby brother was sleeping.

My sister is a genius. She came up with this cooking bucket. J is in a dorm-like room that has a shared group kitchen every other floor. Thanks to me awesome sister, J can tote everything she needs to the kitchen to prepare delicious, home-made, affordable meals. It's complete with everything someone would need to cook the basics, including basic spices, cutting board, knives, grater, can opener, peeler, utensils, spatula. measuring cups and spoon, small pot, skillet, and more. We used it to prepare several meals while we were there. It is slick!!

J has a small fridge and a microwave she shares with her roomate and here is her little food/supply shelf we bought at walmart. It's all stocked up, so no worries Mom! We met J's roomate and she seems very nice. Her family farms hay in a small rural town in WA. Just think of the work eithic those roomates have between the two of them! Geesh!

J's bed. They elevate the beds so that you have places to store stuff.

More dorm pics. That is J's desk

What the room looks like from the entrance of the door.

The group kitchen. J is blessed! Not only does she live on the same floor as the kitchen, but she lives 3 doors down. Yeah! On Saturday J and I spent several hours cooking food that we could freeze. She has about 14 meals she can defrost using the microwave in her room. More importantly she learned how to take some protien (like chicken, ground beef or black beans) and make four of five kinds of meals using that portien, then how to freeze it very flat in a ziploc bag. The food takes up very little room in the freezer and is easy to defrost. The girls in the picture is another student in her dorm. She is from Indiana. She was so nice and chatted with us as we worked.

Another picture of the kitchen

Dorm lobby

Outside of the building

Across the street is a train. It can take her all over the city.

She is a quick walk to campus. The buildings on the right is where the school is. She is only 2 blocks away!

The campus is beautiful. Very well maintained with gardens everywhere. It's hard to not be in a good mood when you are walking around. It made me miss college days!

J's ward meets on campus. Here all the chairs are set up for church. I asked her how it went on Sunday and she said it was "very big!"

This is moments before I left to come home. J and I spent two long days together figuring out schedules, fixing registration problems, working out kinks in finacial aid, shopping, cooking, learning about student health insurance and how to use a planner. A special thank you to my mother-in-law who spent the first day with us and helped us to organize J's room and helped with alot of other things. We also attended the student orientation and lots of activities. It was the best organized, most comprehensive and fun orientation I have ever attended. The school put out alot of effort to help the new students meet other students. They assigned them to mentors and they broke off into smaller groups and did get-to- know-you activities. They fed them breakfast, lunch and dinner (free) for two days. They set up a huge inflatable, broke up into teams and did obstacle courses. They hiked a mountain together. Students would come up to J and talk to her, invited her to go to Jamba Juice, sat with her during meals. The place is like Disneyland! Everyone is super smiley and will bend over backwards to help you. I was so impressed!! J couldn't be in a better place. I left with the overwhelming feeling that she was in the ideal spiritual and academic enviroment.

At the orientation one of the administrators talked about no matter how each student arrived at the school, that there was a reason why they were there and that the Lord's hand was in it. I was trying to keep from openly bawling. I really felt the spirit and I knew that God had helped to orchestrate all the events that lead to J being able to attend that school. There was a full team of people behind the scenes helping to make it a possibility. It was such a privelege to see all the efforts combined. It has brought me so much joy and it has inspired me to see all the unselfish acts on J's behalf and her family's behalf. It just underscores to me how important each life is to our Heavenly Father. We all have such value to him. Each of us is worth legions of effort.

A thousand thank yous to everyone's conribution! You are loved and appreciated!!

Janea

Rock Around the Block - 5th Grade Musical

Sadie tried out for the 5th grade musical and got the part of "Misty" a beatnik or early hippie. At first she was dissapointed in the role she got, but I just told her to be greatful to have a speaking part because there were 70 fifth graders that tried out and only a few speaking parts. Sadie and Kamry go to a HUGE elementary school. Over 1,00 students! That is about the size of my highschool! The show is obviously set in the 1950's. I couldn't believe how well done it was and all the effort that the parents and diretor put into it. It was senational. Most the costumes were made by a seamstress and the kids were able to perform the show on a real stage at the local Jr. High. Actually it's a middle school, but you can't believe the size and scope of the auditorium. I was seriously impressed!

Sadie did a great job and made everyone laugh. She has a real talent for drama.

Misty is the side kick to Riff (think, the Fonz) and there is our good friend and neighbor playing a police officer who is after Riff.

Here Sadie is with a Elvis type rock-star.

Restoring Health and Energy Medicine

My Mom is a certified Biofeedback tech and has her website up and running. She practices energy medicine, which if you want to learn more about you need to go to her website http://www.thompsonbiofeedback.com/. She was sick for many years with an auto immune disease and it tanked her health in many, many ways. Energy medicine and some diet changes she have restored much of her health. She hopes to be able to help other people with chronic health problems. There are so many people out there that have exhausted all of Western Medicine's remedies and are left with chronic, pain, fatique, inflamation etc...and who are discouraged. If this is you-- My mom can help!!

For Christmas Keith and I decided to get a story book made that uses Brynlee's Photo superimposed over a mermaid to make her look like she is the main character in a book. We needed to send in a picture to the company that was making the book, of her head in an upright position, smiling and her eyes looking at the camera. It didn't seem like a hard task, but it turned out to be an almost impossible one! Brynlee loves to pose when the camera is on her. We took over 50 pictures and couldn't get one that would work! She is always cocking her head to one side, doing something cutesy with her lips, making silly faces and she RARELY looks at the camera. The picture to the right is the one we finally used. It was the only one that came close to the criteria we needed. I took me three days to get that picture!

A review of Events in 2010 - Rasberry Picking

In search of the perfect rasberry!

Rasberry picking is one of my very favorite summer activities. I have such fond memories of picking fruit with my Mom in the beautiful Carnation, WA, as a kid. There is something so wonderful about gorging on with fruit afterwards. We are a little crazy about picking fruit. Each year we pick strawberries and rasberries and usually bluberries. This are all seperate events, unless I get lucky and am able to get strawberries and rasberries on the same day. (doesn't usually happen). On a good year we also can peaches, make applesauce and fruit leather from the sour apples on my mother's tree, and I make pesto from fresh basil from a farmers field. I buy a huge amount of basil and then make it into pesto and then freeze it in small quanties.

My out of state friends can't believe we don't pick blackberries. Blackberries are a weed here and people are always fighting them off from taking over their yards. We eat our fill of fresh blackberries. The best kind are the slightly unripe ones that are sour (all my lemon-loving siblings agree!).

Every year I dream of apricots. But I can never get my hands on them! Apricots don't grow well in the Northwest. If anyone knows where I can buy some boxes of Apricots Paleease, let me know!! I dream of having a stash of dried apricots. Not the awful, squishy, soaked in sugar, bright orange ones you buy in bags at the store, but home dried apricots, tangy and chewy, and delicious. My taste buds are going crazy just thinking about it.

Aaah the taste of summer!

Super Heros

We just recently moved into a home! Hooray! But before that we lived in apartments for a year while Keith looked for a job and we tried to decide where we wanted to live. These pictures were taken one summer day. The kids had dressed up as SuperHeros using towels and they made construction paper masks. The cape Kamry is wearing is actually very strange Froggy/Rainbow wall hanging she found next to the dumpster.

"I can't believe anyone would throw this away!!" She exclaimed. It hung on her bedroom wall the rest of the year and then disappeared in the move. Hmmm. Not sure where it could have gone...(smirk). Okay, I just couldn't bear to look at it anymore!! It was really weird. It did make a great superhero cape though!

Don't mess with these dudes!

Blogging Repentance

Okay, so I have been a bad blogger. I actually just read the comments people posted on my blog that I started three years ago! Thanks everyone!

I keep going back and forth trying to decide if I should do it or not. I have a thousand reasons not to do it... If I blog then I will probably turn into a lousy journal writer. I can't blog because I am ashamed that I don't keep up with other people's blogs. And of course the biggest reason... if I blog, what if a pyschopath identity thief stalks us because of all the personal information I have slathered on the internet. I don't know what they will do with all that info, but something bad I am sure!! Of course I could make up fake names for all my kids, like twitter toes and dimple cheeks, but then I will probably end up confusing myself.

I know,I know, I can put security measures on my blog and only allow invited people, but all the people I kow that do that, for some reason, I can never get on their blog (during the once a year time I try to check everyone's blogs). I don't know why. Does my password expire? Does it kick me off if I don't check it often enough?

Anyway, enough rambling...I've decided to do it, just so that my kids don't feel bad I don't have a cute blog memory book to give them. I know my kids will feel hurt about that when they see all hundred of their friends with these fantastic picture laden books chronically their childhood.

So here goes...