Seattle Day 1 (Tuesday)

We got up at three a.m. yo pack last minute things and get dressed before our ride to the airport arrived. He got there and we put all of our suitcases in the back of the truck. Next we all got in. Unfortunately the truck only had five seats, which meant we had to ride all the way to the airport squished together. We got on our first plane (after getting some Starbucks) on time and it was really empty. We had a layover in Minnesota. Of course, our gate was on the other side of the airport. :) Did you know in the middle of the Minneapolis airport there is a full-blown shopping mall? There is. We had to walk through it to get to our gate. :( Thankfully we made it to the gate in plenty of time. The flight was really crowded and stuffy. I was thankful to get off. Papa met us outside and we drove to Auntie's house. She greeted us, along with Gram, and we went for a walk to get lunch. All of us ate outside at Panera except Caleb and Dad, who ate at Panda Express. After that, the girls and guys split up to do our own thing. Us girls went to a kitchen store and party store to grab some stuff for the wedding. Then we stopped by a shoe store because Gram needed some shoes for the wedding. I found a pair of sparkly converse that I fell in love with. I am still thinking about what to draw on the toes. :) When we got back to Auntie's house, I went through some clothes of hers that she was going to give to Good Will. There was a lot of clothes that did not fit, but a lot that did too, which makes me very happy. After a while, we loaded up the cars and drove to our rental house. It was really small, but it worked. Mine and Caleb's bunk bed was just in a tiny nook off the hallway. I didn't really like it, but living with a curtain as your door/wall can be counted as an adventure, right? After exploring our house and hanging out for a while, we went to an Irish restaurant. I wasn't really hungry, but I got a shepherd's pie. Everyone else was a little bit more adventurous. We went back to the house and set up computers and internet. Mom, Gram, and Papa all went to Trader Joe's to stock up the kitchen, while the rest of us stayed home to rest. I went straight to bed. End of day 1. :)

I'm home!!

So after a long week in Seattle, I am home! Starting tomorrow I will post my journal entries from each day.

I feel bad not posting anything at all. :( I guess I could tell everyone that I am in Seattle for my aunt's wedding. It was yesterday and it was wonderful. I will start posting things on Wednesday about the week. I have been keeping a journal of everything, so I will just post those entries. Au revoir!!

Just letting everyone know (especially three girls of whom I promised), I will not be posting for about a week, because I am out of town and want to include all the details, but not while I am still here. :) So, I will post later. Have a good week!

P.S. To those I promised, I am sending you guys emails everyday with updates. Promise is just compromised, not broken. :) I may send you more than one email a day, so remember to check it. Also remember I am a little behind you guys time zone wise, so they may not be up before night time there in Chicago. :) Love you all!!

Caleb's birthday

Yesterday was Caleb's birthday, but I did not feel like putting up the pictures. In the morning, Mom and I went to get our hair cut and the boys went around and looked at crossbows. While we were at the mall, Caleb got a set of throwing knives. They are quite fun. :) After lunch we gave Caleb his main birthday present. A kilt. That night we had small group and they threw a little birthday party for him. (In other words, we got a cake, which had chocolate ice cream in the middle. YUM!!!) Since I don't feel like explaining in words, here are some pictures. :)

 Caleb in his kilt.

Caleb with his throwing knives.

Me with my knife I got to stick. :)

Me on my swing.

Caleb happily showing off his knives.

Me with my new hair cut.

My evil face. :) (or not)

Happy Birthday!!

Today is the day to wish my dearest brother

Happy Birthday Caleb "Flyboy"!

 I hope your birthday is absolutely wonderful. I love you big brother, even though I don't always show it. :) I can't believe you are already 17! 

 

MOPS

Well, yesterday I watched 17 one year olds for two hours yesterday. My mind is not really working still from all of that work. There were five of us with the 17 kids and we had several kids who screamed the whole time. Thankfully the two year old class did not have too many kids and they took some of our really loud screamers out. There was one little boy named Caleb and he was in a dinosaur outfit, so we called him Calebasaurus. He adored my brother Caleb. There was also a girl named Ellory who had the prettiest eyes every seen. They were amber. She was also a snuggler. Most of the kids were really good, except for one who could break glass with his scream. Overall, it was a lot of fun. By the way, Misty is feeling much better.

Another really long post

I am seriously needing new blog titles!! Maybe having a full day and being brain dead is what is making me not be able to come up with anything. :) Today was library day with Izzy, so we took her to story time at the library. Our tradition is that we take a walk on the bike trail right by the library and then take her in for story time. She is not at all a shy child, but at story time she will not leave my lap. Today I convinced her to play with the bubbles without me. I was quite proud of her. :) After we all picked out some books, we left the library and went to feed the local swans. A long time ago I named the Gus and Gertie. They are beautiful and I wish I had pictures of Izzy getting to feed them. Around the swans there is a really tall fence. It is probably five feet tall. Izzy could not get the feed to the birds, being only two, so I put her on my shoulders. She thought this was one of the most fun things she could have done. After that we came home and started lunch. It was going to be quite a while before we ate, so I took Izzy outside to play for a little bit. She asked if we could go for a walk on the trail behind our house and I told her yes. Of course, she does not call walks walks, she calls the flowers because that is the only reason (in her mind) you go for walks; it is to find flowers. I laugh every time she asks if we can go flower. :) She ran up and down and around me finding flowers and announcing it. She also likes hanging off of things, so I let her hang off of a tree for a little while. Izzy quite enjoys that type of thing. Caleb came out after a while and told us lunch was ready. We fed her so lunch and then put her down for nap. Our usual nap routine is I lay her down on the little couch in the living room with her special pillow, blanket, and puppy, then I turn on something on the tv I want to watch. I do this because she will not fall asleep very quickly if she is just laying there and tries to find other things to occupy her mind, which usually causes trouble. I do school while little bit is napping. Today I was going over to one of our friends houses to cut out the pattern for a dress I want to make, but we decided to wait because we are not positive of the measurements and also it will be too cold to wear the dress by the time I have it finished. So I am waiting until the spring to start sewing it. After we came home, Izzy was awake and we played some games until her brother got there. Then she ran around the house pretending to be a puppy until her mom came. After her mom left, mom ran to get dad from work and we had dinner. While mom was making dinner, I decided to do one of my school assignments. We are supposed to do a kind act for someone in our family this week. It has to be something they need and not something they want though. My first thought was to clean and organize Caleb's room. This is what I am doing, but I did not realize how kind I was really being until I started. Unfortunately I will not be able to finish until morning because Misty is not feeling well and she likes sleeping on Caleb's bed. (By the way, I would highly appreciate prayers for Misty. She is really not being herself and I am really worried. I guess prayers for the family would be nice too, because she is a pretty old dog and we are all worried for her.) I know I spoil my dog way too much and could go into Caleb's room and clean, but why would I want to do that. The dog is just a good excuse not to do it. :) That is pretty much all that is going on in my life. Other than the book I got from the library is a music book that has a whole bunch of pop hits that I like a lot in it. It also has tips for each of the songs. I have not tried to play from it yet, but am really excited! Sorry this post was so long! I hope everyone has a good night/day! (depending on when you read this)

Labor Day

Today was labor day. I was not feeling too good this morning, so I just sat around. Then I had to do some school, because I do not have off. Thankfully I got a lot of my history done so I don't have to do as much when we have Izzy. A little while before lunch, Mom and I started working through my math. Algebra 2 is not fun. That took until lunch. We ate leftovers and Dad finished some strange war type movie he was watching. After a while, Mom and I worked some more on math until I finally understood what I was supposed to be doing. I still have not quite finished, but I got really close. Mom and I ran to the store to grab some stuff and then came home. The boys worked outside for a while and then we made hot dogs over the fire pit in the backyard. They were delicious! That is pretty much all we did for our tiny celebration of labor day.

 Caleb loading the fire with wood.

 Dad and Caleb standing proudly with their fire.


Misty ready to play.



Dad sitting in his chair happy to be outside. :)

 Rosco, the dog next door, trying to get Misty's attention to play.

 The lone rose that bloomed off a certain plant.

The hot dogs cooking in the fire pit. Yum!!

Caleb soaking the fire pit with his super soaker after we finish cooking dinner and the wood supply had been exhausted.

New Gadget thingymabob

So for those of you who have not noticed, there is a new gadget thingymabob on the side of the blog. It is titled 'Songs stuck in my head'. I put this up here because I always have a song or two (and sometimes more) stuck in my head. I thought it would be fun to put these up on here. You can learn a lot about a person by the type of music they listen to. Unfortunately, all the songs that get stuck in my head are not always the songs I listen too, but Caleb listens to. So this shall be incredibly interesting. Enjoy! :)

It works!!!

This morning, Dad had to go work because it is the first day of the month and there is a lot of work he had to do. I slept in until 9:00 this morning, so Mom and Caleb were already up and functioning. When I went out into the living room, Mom told me a guy was coming to fix the air conditioner. I was super excited. Yesterday it was 95 degrees inside the house, so Mom and Dad decided it was time to get it fixed. Right now I am enjoying my bedroom, nice and cold. I cannot wait for the whole family to sleep well and to be able to sleep with my door and window closed again.

Last week not too much went on in my life. Co-op was on Wednesday instead of Monday because the other family we are doing class with had something going on Monday. The only downfall of this is we only have 3 days, not counting the weekend, to get our work done. Technically we have more thought because we are not meeting at all next week because of Labor Day, so we have 2 weeks of work to do in a week and a half.

We took Izzy to McDonalds last week to let her play in the play place. At first she would not go into the play place at all because there were too many kids, but finally I convinced her that it would be okay to go into the toddler area. After she had been in there a little while, she started climbing up the big kid area. I did not think she was going to be able to make it to the top with all of the older kids going up and down, but she made it and walked around up there for a while. When she was about to go down the slide, some kids ran up the slide and it scared her too bad, so she came back down the way she went up. I was really proud of her for trying though.