Re Fun Monday

Okay so I have to scratch on the Fun Monday post this week. I was irritated with my phone company and of course internet provider and since we are moving in less then 2 weeks I decided to have cancel it till we get up to Alaska but once we get there I will be posting again. I have a couple of people who have agreed to guest post for me, if you guys could leave me a comment I will contact you back and let you know when and how to post for me. Anyone else who would like to post a guest post please leave a comment also. You really don't want to see my fridge though, honestly right now it is not a pretty sight!

I am hating it though! I miss my internet and I can't post any pictures when I blog and keeping up on all the blogs I do read is really difficult! I will post what I can minus the pictures for at least the next week and next week only if I am able to get to a computer before I leave. So those of you who may have emailed me please leave me a message in the comments section. I haven't had internet access since last friday. Ok have I whined enough?

I did want to comment on a couple of comments about wether or not my grandmothers hair is still naturally not very gray (hmm did that make sense?). Yes it is definetly is. My grandma has never cared much about fashion since she was about 40. She actually wishes her hair was more gray! She says people don't beleive she is actually 90 because she doesn't have a head of gray hair and if she has made it this far she should be gray, hmm especially after all her kids have put her through! I am really hoping to take after my mothers side of the family. My grandfather had a full head of dark brown hair when he passed away at 72. Looking younger then your age is pretty much the norm on both sides of my family I haven't posted many pictures of myself but when people meet me in person they are surprised I have 4 kids and am in my 30's.

Anyway on to something else. We are getting closer to having stuff together for the move I have much of the house packed and am working on the finer details now, whew! Kelly is finally in Ketchikan and working on getting a place for us to live......umm yeah I know that is short notice but his work is only just now sending him down there and that was supposed to happen a couple of weeks ago we had hoped!

Alright enough rambling for today. Have a great week!

Grandma's 90th Birthday party

So last Saturday was my grandmothers 90th birthday party. My mother, neice and I started planning it last January. It took quite a bit of planning due to the fact we had several family members who live so spread out around the U.S.

I had a couple people comment on the picture of my grandmother. Fortunatly my grandmother and her parents before her were very good about marking pictures. All of these older pictures you see have names of everyone in the picture and the date the pictures were taken! Its pretty neat since no one is having to wonder just who is in the picture. My grandmother has tons of pictures also so it was easy to find these pictures. My gift for her for her birthday was a scrapbook with several of these pictures in it for her to display. It has pictures of everyone in her family from her and her sister (who died at 21 of pnemonia) and her 2 younger brothers. In the picture to the left she is the little girl with the big bow in her hair in the front.

Anyway about the party......It went well. I made the scrapbook, my uncle had a painting made from the picture I used as the invitation which was of her and another cousins mother made a quilt using pictures of

my uncle, cousin and her kids now. It turned out pretty well. My cousin lives in San Antonio so I don't see her ofter. Actually the last time I saw her was 2 years ago when my uncle passed away. My other cousin lives in Washington DC as a newspaper writer and I don't see her very often. Actually the 2 of them had never met. This was the first time my

grandmother had seen all 5 of the grandchildren together in one place

and we are all adults and there really are only 5 of us. Its a long story and not something I really know how to explain

why we have never all been in the same place before. See we are an odd family because my grandmother was not a normal lady of her generation. She was married 5 times! Her 3 children are from her first 3 marriages and are each 6 years apart. My grandmother was different and led a very interesting life after growing up with several different kinds of jobs. Not to mention she likes to tell everyone her story about dancing with Johnny Cash and some other adventures with oldies country singers. She was never married to any of them though, unfortunatly....we may be more well off had she! She was a pretty crazy lady though.

Her 3 children all led very different lives. My oldest uncle was an many times awarded pilot in the Navy. He won several medals and awards during his time and eventually became a pilot for a major airline. He passed away 2 years ago from a tumor in his liver that took him within days of being found.

Her second son earned 2 masters degrees in different fields of science. He has multiple sclerosis though now. He was also had one of the first successful open heart surgeries when he was only 5 in 1950!

My mom was her youngest and only girl. She married my dad and they have been married for 34 years and in our family that is a major

accomplishment itself! She has also built herself up from practically having nothing and proved that someone who has a child very young can become something with a lot of determination and perseverance.

Both of her boys had one daughter each and my mom had 3 children 2 girls and 1 boy. My 2 cousins and my brother all share a birthday exactly 3 years apart for each one. How do you do that?! I think its pretty cool! It also makes remembering my cousins birthdays really easy.

From her 5 grandchildren she has 10 grandchildren 3 from my cousin, 4 from me and 3 from my sister ranging in age from 6- 22. To the right is my granmother holding McKenzie when she was 1 week old at Thanksgiving.

My grandma with her 2 surviving children.

Grandma with the 5 of us grandchildren notice the 4 girls....yes my brother has longer hair then all of us girls!

Grandma with 10 great-grandchildren. Funny story when my mom called grandma when my nephew (the oldest) was born and told her she was a great-grandma she thought she was just giving her a compliment! I've always thought that was funny.

Grandma is not afraid to take part in the silly face picture with the great grandkids even though not all of the kids are cooperating. The 22 and 19 year olds think they are to old to make silly faces.

Grandma at her 90th birthday party. She is extremely healthy for a 90 year old lady. She still drives....yes she passed the test! Also she just bought herself a brand new car. She has great vision still and only needs glasses for reading. She only takes a low dose of blood pressure medicine and her doctors are surprised that her bones are as healthy as they are. She has not broken anything since she was young. She asked me what we would do if she lived to be 100 (I'm pretty sure she will) and I told her that was just enough time for us to figure out how to have a 100th birthday celebration. Also notice she still has her redish brown hair? Yeah she does not dye it this lady has very little grey at 90 years old! I hope to take after her that way! Anyway I will be completely shocked if grandma doesn't make it to 100 years old and doesn't end up someday getting on the news for the oldest person. She is to damn healthy and spunky to let anything ever get her down. Also a funny note.....my kids call her Granny Grumps. My dad joked about that once at is stuck!

Wordless Wednesday......

Saturday was my Grandmothers 90th Birthday party. I will post more about that maybe tomorrow but for today I will leave you with a picture of her when she was 10 months old. I love these kinds of photos.

To check out other participants please click here.

Fun Monday....the best friend version.

This weeks Fun Monday is hosted by Willowtree and his request this week is this

"Tell us about your best friend. Particularly things like: where you first met, how long you've been friends and why you think you are best friends"

Of course I would say that Kelly my husband is my best friend but willowtree says that's to easy and doesn't count. So my closest friend would be Hannah. I we were best friends when we were younger but we don't really use that term anymore. She is like family to me.

I met her when we first moved to Portland when I was 13, she was just turning 10 and I remember her being upset because she didn't want to be double digits....it was cute. We do have a pretty good span in age or at least it was back then but we never really saw it that way.

For years we were pretty much inseperable as friends anytime we were not at school we were doing something together. Here we were her in the red shirt she was 12 (I think) and me with the crazy hair was 15 (again I think). We have always been really close to each others families as well and she called my parents mom and dad. When she would go to camp every year I would go over to her moms house and visit with her alot during the day in the summer. Her brothers, her and I would go to movies together, especially her brother Nathan who was my age.

The only person who ever got in the middle of our relationship was Kelly. When we started dating she was upset because I spent more time with him then her. But we were still best friends and she was involved with alot of things we did together any type of group things we did. She grew to like Kelly but still was not happy about us being together. She worried we were getting to close and what we may be doing and thought I was growing up to fast. Which means she was the only person who really saw how things were because we did do things we shouldn't have. She was the first person we told when we decided we were getting going to get married and she was happy for us. She was of course my Maid of Honor when we got married! I mean who else would I have chosen? I loved her like a sister.

Here she is walking down the aisle with Kelly's best man Ed (I called him Edweird). He was also younger then us by about a year or 2 Kelly would have to remind me on that. Hmmm I will eventually tell about our wedding but we are getting so close to our anniversary in August (the 27th) that I think I will save it until then. I was not happy about Ed being in our wedding and Kelly knew that but its okay. Like I said I might share that later on.

After Kelly and I got married we moved to Arizona and Hannah and I sent letters and talked on the phone a lot during that time. When we came back I still visited her a lot but things had changed a bit while we were gone. I had gotten married and had a baby so I'd kind of grown up a little. She was still in high school so the age difference was showing there for a while and we had a few years of only sporadic get toghethers and I hated it but it was hard to do things because I had all the kids and they were so little and she was still young and had no resposibilities yet.

When I was pregnant with Madison she got married to Eric her high school sweatheart. They were pretty young I think just 20 when they got married and we got back into more regular contact with each other. 2 years ago she found out she was pregnant with Emily and we really started to have get together more. We had something in common and we were back to one part of our relationship we had earlier where I was a little older so had been through things already and was there for questions she had. We talked about her pregnancy and mine. When the little Emmy came we discussed breastfeeding and diapers and many other things. Including being a stay home mommy to her baby girl. When Emily started having some medical issues we talked a lot because I had some experience with that will my kids. She even started seeing the same dr as we do including one of their specialists.

Last year she had Simon her little boy and we talked about boy baby issues.

I am so glad we have been able to get back to our friendship it is a little different then when we were kids but in a way the same. We have both grown up alot. I still consider her family and think of her as a sister. Her kids I consider my neice and nephew and we refer to me as Aunt Terri.

I love watching her with her kids because wether or not she agrees I think she is an awesome mommy. As some of you know we are getting ready to move in a few weeks and this is probably the person I will miss the most. She is the only person I told that I cried when I told her. I won't let our relationship get away from us again though. I'm older now and I have other long distance relationships with friends out of state that I am still very close to so I know I can. I will come back to Portland to visit people and she will always be at the top of my list of people to see. Also we will talk on the phone and computers and she has been given instructions that I expect regular pics of her and the kids so I can see them growing when I'm not there.

Kellys back in Anchorage

Like it says Kelly is back in Anchorage now so I can call him again! Yeah!

He uploaded a bunch of pictures for me to see where he was and what he was doing and I thought I would share a few with you....just a few....well my kind of few.

First I will show you one of the things that scare the crap out of me when he goes on these trips.

See this plane? I think he likes them. Me not so much. They are small and I don't know what it is but they freak me out and the thought of him flying around in one of these does not make me very comfortable.

Here is the cabin he was staying in and the Suburban he drove while he was there.

I've had a lot of you ask me exactly what it is he does. Well this kind of shows it. He fixes and takes these kind of things apart to fix, build or something. Honestly I don't know exactly everything he does with them other then he gets frustrated because something always goes wrong with these things. This one is an excavator. Hmm I really need him to write something here explaining it better. This is a hint Kelly leave a comment or something for me....please. Explain..... I just know they are really big.

I think one of the things he likes when going in those scary airplanes is the awesome views he gets to see. Here's a collage of the pictures he sent me of his view while there and in the plane. Pretty awesome don't you think?

I love mountains.

Saturday at the Enchanted Forest

I've been pretty busy this week so I haven't posted much and I'm a little late posting about our Saturday.

This Saturday is my Grandmothers 90 birthday party and I've helped my mother plan it. I am also making a scrapbook from several pictures spaning from the time she was born up to her 10 great-grandchildren, that and my cousin and her 3 children are in town. Oh and of course I'm working as well. A little tired......

Anyway on Saturday we got together again with Kellys brother Josh, his 2 girls and my SIL Gloria. We went to the Enchanted Forest in Salem, OR. We had a lot of fun! Click the link and it will tell you more about the park. It would take awhile for me to explain it there are several things to do.

One of the things they have is the Western Town and one of the things there is to get your picture taken with Abraham Lincoln. They kids even dress up in time period military jackets and hats. When I say the kids I do include Uncle Josh....he's just a bigger version of them. He does fit the part though doesn't he?

I thought Joshua looked to cute in his jacket and hat!

I kinda got the idea that McKenzie is missing her daddy a bit though. She wouldn't let her Uncle leave her side pretty much the whole day and this was pretty much the picture through most of the park.

Isn't Joshua a cutie pie.......If he keeps this up, he's only got a couple more years before he is more interested in girls and I could be in for some serious trouble!

Of course as you know I love to take pictures and I was not failing on that job during this little trip! I couldn't get all the pictures in just one by one so you will all get to see 3 collages with this post!

In this one are more pictures of the kids getting their pics taken with Abe Lincoln, Joshua going down one of the many slides in the park. Uncle Josh having some quiet time with Madison trying to convince her to come down closer to the stage for the theater production they did. We eventually got her to come down but not until after the play had started and she figured out it wasn't going to be scary!

One of the things they can do in the Western Town is to pan for gold and the kids did that of course. One of the buildings has mirrors in it that stretch you out to look funny the lighting wasn't great but I put those up anyway. A couple of pictures of Storybook lane. They have several stops that tell nursery rhymes and other storys its pretty cute except you realize just how many kids storys are kinda scary. Some of them Madison will not go into.

More pictures of the Storybook Village. If you see the one that looks like a witch, Madison did not go into that one! I think the thought of going into a witches mouth was to creepy for her. One of her favorites is the slide at the end, honestly I can't remember what the story is that it goes to, if the girls were up I'm sure they would remember.

Wordless Wednesday......looking back, Madisons glasses

Fun Monday....the car version

This weeks Fun Monday is hosted by Tiggerlane the Neophyte Blogger you can hop over to her site to see all the others participating in this weeks challenge.

This is what she requested for this weeks challenge.........

"I wanna see your CAR! It can be your current car, the first car you ever had, maybe your first new car with that new-car smell, a car you wrecked once, or even the dream car you would drive - given all the money in the world! Oh - and if you have a truck, SUV, lawnmower, whatever the local authorities allow you to drive, let's see it!"

This one isn't to hard for me because I already drive the car I want. Ever since the Durango came out I've wanted one. This is my 1999 Dodge Durango. I love it and it runs great for being a bit of an older vehicle. I don't want to upgrade to a new model though because I don't like the newer body styles

The thing I liked most about the Durange was first I liked the body style but also it had the size pretty much of a mini van without being a minivan and with 4 kids I have to have a vehicle that we can all fit in along with all of our crap we take with us. We like to go camping and other places where it is best to have a 4 wheel drive vehicle as well so this works for us great.

On the inside of my Durango you can tell its driven my a girl. The steering wheel has blue and white flowers on it. I'm planning to eventually add the matching seat covers but that will come on a different day.

Also I have my fairy and bracelet hanging from the mirror. The fairy has been in all my cars for the last 5 years, yes I've had a few in the last 5 years, ever since my friend Stephanie made it for me. Kelly has an Elephant hanging off of his mirror from her also. Kelly likes elephants.

Also since I have 4 kids I will give you a little glimpse of the inside of my Durango. Its full of crap! Kid crap and garbage from the kids. Yes some of it belongs to me but most of my stuff gets taken out the kids seem to leave behind something everytime they get in. Also we have 2 booster seats in back because my girls refuse to grow big enough to ever get out of them and the way they are going they will be 12 before they are big enough. In Oregon the law is 6 yrs and 60 pounds but neither of the girls is any where near 60 pounds and they are changing the law, or trying to at least to 8 years and 80 pounds which means at the rate the girls are going they will be in carseats when they are driving!

I know Kelly isn't here right now, he's in Alaska where we are moving but he drives a Ford F250 deisel that is lifted. This isn't the best picture of it but I couldn't find a better one. This is his baby and he was so excited when he was able to buy it!

For some reason we have always owned more vehicles then drivers we have in the house so we also have this 2007 Ford Taurus. Hmm I'm not exactly sure why Kelly bought it but I given up trying to figure out his reasoning......

The good thing about it though is it gets much better gas mileage then the other 2 vehicles so I do use it when my work takes me farther to the other end of the city especially when the gas prices are above $3 a gallon!

Also it has leather interior and I never thought I would like that but it is handy for cleaning it out when something gets spilled in it. Of course it has fallen victim to being full of junk as well!

So that is is for the cars we own. The only car that someone in this house would like to have someday is Kelly. He has always wanted a '65 Ford Mustang in Baby blue with a hard top. He can go on with all the other features it has to have or he would add but the picture basically shows what he wants.

Also when Izzak my son saw what this week was about he insisted on posting his own Fun Monday on his blog. You can check that out here. For those of you who don't know about Izzak he is learning disabled I choose not to edit his words at all and I have him write out what he is saying without giving him the spelling for the words. It is his blog I want it to be his so he does everything on it himself. He doesn't write many words though.

Better today

Thank you for your comments on yesterdays post. I was having a bad night.

I did take today off and we didn't do anything to specific we spent most of the day around the house. Izzak had to be at the church though at 6 for an overnight camping trip they are on today so we headed over a little early since I didn' t know what traffic would be like. It wasn't bad at all and we got there early enough for the kids to play on some of the play ground equipment before the rest of the people got there.

I tried to get all the kids in the picture but was hard to see with the sun in my eyes. I cut off Joshua apparently and Maddie is there but she is on the yellow wall.

Joshua running on the wheel. I can't do this......

He did well for a little while anyway!

Kenzie peeking through the yellow wall.

Maddie climbing the chains.

After dropping Izzak off I needed to take my phone over to the sprint store to find out why it wouldn't charge and to find out about if it would even get service when we move to Alaska. The phone was an easy thing they just gave me a different kind of charger that seems to be working much better and as far as I'm concerned should have bee the one to come with the phone to begin with! I found out though that we would be all in roaming with our phones in Ketchikan. It would affect our bill as we don't have roaming or long distance charges or anything but it means none of the other features would work. I have a contract with them until November 28th though. So now I need to call customer service and figure out if they will let me out of my contract. Then I need to figure out who does have service there so we can have our cell phones. We pretty much live off our cell phones. Its the easiest way for people to get ahold of us.

After the cell phone store we stopped over at another store to get a few things. Joshua had destroyed his shoes withing 3 months as usual so I needed to replace those and a few other things. While we were there Kelly's brother Joshua called and said they were headed over to Baskin Robins for Ice Cream and wanted to know if we wanted to join them.

Of course we did.

Madison and her cousin Kayla both had this blue sherbet ice cream and turned their mouths blue! Just look for yourself....

Thats Kellys brother in the background they look alot alike, dress alike and have the same hair style although Kelly doesn't always have the facial hair quite as long. That and Kelly is better looking!

Oh and a close up of Madison and the blue tongue!