Hey look I've finally decided to post! **warning it will be long**

I know I've been gone forever and I've gotten a few messages from people wondering if I quit blogging. I didn't really quit more like I took a break.

For awhile it was just that I didn't really have anything to blog about. Life was kind of boring I guess you could say and I felt like if I was blogging I would just be repeating the same things everyday. Also I was kind of in a funk I guess you could call it. I still am in a way. I'm working on it though. Life just gets to you sometimes, you know? Some of you have been around at other times when I've this kind of issue and know that I was on medication for depression, anxiety, etc. before we moved here to Alaska. Many of you know that I decided to go off of everything when we moved here and at the begining it was going really well and I wasn't having any issues with those problems or was able to deal with them well. I am still determined for now to stay off the meds but at times it has been a struggle. I just don't like the way some of the side effects of them make me feel. I am considering the anxiety meds though but I am still holding off for now though. One of the biggest issues right now is the anxiety which causes me to have difficulty sleeping and generally being around other people sometimes. I do force myself out though. I've been in that place before where I could barely leave the house and don't really want to get there again though. I'm doing better though like I said.

Anyway things did pick up around here after awhile though and the last few months have been hectic for us all.

In August it will be 2 years since we moved here, it seems like we've lived here longer then that though the kids have all changed so much.

Izzak is still growing like crazy. He's not even recognizable from the kid we moved here with. It's really weird to look back at pictures from just 2 years ago. Just look at the difference....

Here he is just about a month before we moved here at age 12.



And now at age 14 he is very different. Of course you can't see real well since he doesn't like me having my camera out much and he always has his sunglasses on. I really do need to get a better picture of him. Can you see the huge differences though? For one he doesn't shave his head anymore and now has that long hair style going. Also he's grown about 8 inches since we moved here and thinned out a lot.

He's doing well though with home schooling. He's reading a lot better then when we were down south and has had a lot more progress in the last 2 years then the 7 he was in school before. He has a lot less stress not having to deal with other students and getting into fights and everything that was going on his last year in school when we were in Portland. He's still a great kid with an awesome personality in my opinion. He listens well for the most part and doesn't give us any major issues. He hasn't done to much in the last 7 months since I last posted other then growing and going to camp. He went to boy scout camp at the begining of the summer and had fun although he tells me he got in trouble alot. I sometimes wonder if they single him out a bit though, he isn't the oldest in his troop but he is the biggest and I've noticed they seem to expect older behavior out of him sometimes as well as him getting in trouble along with Joshua when he is near him by association. I don't know how to talk to them about it though and he is getting frustrated enough he is about ready to quit. He also went to camp with our church youth group. Hopefully I'll get some pics from that one soon and I'll share those since I might get a better picture from that. He did well there and didn't have any problems. I can't believe he is going to be a high schooler this year! I don't feel old enough for that...

Joshua has grown like crazy since we moved here as well just look at the difference in his pictures! He still looks like a little boy here and again this was just before we moved.

and look how much he has changed....



He's doing well with homeschooling also although it was a little rough this year. He did like challenging me when it came to assignments alot but got most things done like he was supposed to. He also went to boy scout camp with Izzak this year which was probably the farthest away from home with us he has ever been. Camp was in Juneau so they had to take an 18 hour ferry ride there and back plus they were gone for a total of 10 days. He did well for the most part. We are still having a lot of issues with him and his behavior though. He is still taking meds for his ADHD although he is off of them for the summer. We changed his meds though this last fall from what he had been on for a few years and that seemed to help things a bit. He also went to childrens camp with the church but not youth camp. He did really well there and I got alot of compliments on how helpful he was. Joshua played baseball again this year and his team did really well. They were the number one team in the Ketchikan league having only lost 2 games this year but they didn't win in the tournament so they ended that in second place. It was really hard on the boys but they did a fantastic job this year regardless.


Next we have McKenzie here is the summer before we left again at age 8..


And now at age 10....


Another with her friend Clarrisa


She is still little but she doesn't look it besides her size. She is growing up and I think she is going to be breaking hearst someday. She already gets boys flirting with her.

She is doing great with home school as well and has had probably had the least momentus year of all the kids so far, which is great for her. One of the reasons I decided to home school her was because she missed so much school before because of getting sick all the time. She has gone the longest in her entire life this year without getting any more then a mild cold. It's been great. She has always spent all winter down with some kind of illness I was happy it was better without her in school. She participated in her first parage this year with the girl scouts but I couldn't get a picture of her because of where she was standing.

Lastly we have the baby of the family Madison at 6 toothless and huge grins. Honestly I miss her being so little....


Madison now at 8 with all her teeth. Isn't she pretty in this picture?


She is growing up so much it makes me a little sad. She still has all the spunk she ever has though. I hope she never grows out of that. She's had a more going on this last 7 months then anyone though. She had her tonsils and adnoids taken out in March. Since she is so stubborn and hates taking liquid medicine she refused to take any pain killers or pretty much anything after the first day. I really fought trying to get her to take them but she is very stubborn. We ended up having to take her to the emergency room for 3 days in row for iv fluids and pain meds. She said she prefered the iv, weird kid. She is also doing great with home school as well and really soaks everything up. She was in her second parade this year with the girl scouts and I was able to get a picture of her...


Like Madison would ever make it difficult to find her anywhere she could get attention....




Kelly is doing well although he may be getting laid off this week from his job here that we moved up with but we are not worried. He already has 4 job offers lined up so no fear there. The only thing is the one he most likely will take will be away from home for 10 days at a time with being home for 4. The choice for not being away would have him working 6 days a week with only one off so and we decided that 4 days straight would be better. We are not absolutely positive on the lay off though so we will have to wait and see how that pans out. I promise to not go so long without posting again and will be back soon.

Izzaks had a busy 2 weeks

Actually we have all been busy the last couple of weeks. Summer is going by so fast. I can't believe it's almost August already!

I sent our extra boy, Connor, back home to his family in Portland. He was here for 2 1/2 weeks and I'm sure he had a lot of fun. It was his second trip of course and everyone here remembered him from the last time he was here so they all excepted him back into the group like he had never been gone. The boys took him to the marina to go swimming a couple of times and lots of other things as well.

Kenzie FINALLY comes home on Thursday the 31st. I am sooo excited. I miss her soo much right now. I keep telling her not to expect to be far away from me for awhile. Her momma needs much Kenzie loving time. She will fly home with my friend Johanna and her best friend Clarissa who are also in Portland right now. She might have come on a different day but she was scarred to fly home by herself so we got her on the same flight.

Okay on to a little of why Izzak has been busy. He has gone to 2 different camps in the last 2 weeks. The first one was for 3 days for a kayak/canoe trip with the boyscouts.

Here he is with his own camera. Doesn't he look lovely dirty! You should have seen him when he got home. This is almost clean compared to that. They knocked their canoe over once while he had his cell phone in his pocket and took 3 days to see if it would dry out and lucky for him it did and is working fine now.


This is one of the lakes they were canoeing on during the trip. Beautiful, isn't it? I never tire of seeing pictures of this place we live now.....honestly.


Here is their campsite. They were definetly doing the "real" camping thing. No facilities anywhere for them, just the woods for privacy and the lake for cleaning....uhm and it's a glacier fed lake so just a bit chilly....


A couple of days after he got back from the boyscout camp he had another youth camp with our church.

He loves going to this campground. He helped close it up for the season last fall and open it for the season this last spring. He's been there several times since we moved to Ketchikan and it takes a boat ride to get to.

When he came back this time he couldn't stop talking about the bears they had at this camp trip. They've had bears here before when he's been there but not as many as they did this last week. He took tons of pictures of the bears. Here is one of the pics he took. You can see the green inner tube thing right by it. Does that tell you how close they were to the bears? Honestly they are really safe though. They have bears there all the time, the island the bear is on is called Bear Island but they have never had a bear attack or anything and they have used this camp for years.


He had a lot of fun. A couple of his friends went also and of course girls, which makes all camps great in Izzaks eyes.

I was told by one of the parents that we need to have the "birds and bees" talk with him because he is so interested in girls. I told them that we did that a long time ago and that Izzak has been "interested" in girls since he was born, basically.... Honestly I'm not worried about him at this point. He flirts but it's all fun. He is actually a very responsible kid for 13.

So anyway it has been busy and I'm still sucking on the posting more frequently thing. I promise I am working on it......

Busy Saturday as usual....

Do the days ever get slow around here? No not really.....
Saturdays almost seem like the worst with all the kids home it seems they all have things they need to go to for one reason or another like this Saturday started with Izzak having a boy scout expo thing at the local "mall" to show what they do during meetings and such. It was to be a kind of recruitment thing I guess. He had fun though. He had to be there at 11 till 2.

Joshua needed to be at baseball for their first practice game today at 12 till 3

And the girls had a birthday party from 1 till 2:30. Anyone note the fact that they all had to be somewhere in the same time span?.......Yeah makes for an interesting day when Kelly also had to work so I was running around all day from one place to the next to be at each event and getting them there.

Here are pictures from Izzaks event.



Izzak is the rope tying man... he likes to do them and he is pretty good. He learned a lot from his dad before boyscouts so a lot of the nots they teach he already knew. He likes being the one a little ahead of the game..

Here are pics from Joshuas game...





Yes they play on gravel. Everything here is played on gravel fields....baseball, soccer and football. With the amount of rain we get all year there is no way to keep up a grass field it would just be mud and the grass around here doesn't really grow well too wet, can you believe it? Fake turf is too expensive and wouldn't really work well either with the amount of rain according to what I've heard. This was a practice game though so they don't have their full uniforms yet. They get the shirts and hats just before their first real game which is next week.

I didn't get pics of the girls party they went to because that was the only thing I didn't really stay for. I really wanted to see some of Joshua playing and had to fit that into the little bits between running the other kids back and forth. It does make the day go by faster though....... That and I was up late last night with Izzak in the ER for a UTI poor kid....had to go to the bathroom every 5 minutes which is hard to do with 7 people in the house! I have to schedule an appointment with his pediatrician this week since he has some history with a problem he was born with that could mean something else is wrong.......I'm praying it is a random thing otherwise we have to figure out how to get him to Portland also since regular urologists wont see him only Peds ones and the one who has followed him since he was a baby is in Portland.

I've had a couple of questions about how I'm doing and the fact I haven't been posting as much as usual. I'm doing fine. Still haven't gotten rid of the tooth infection thing completely though but I have problems fighting things like that and always takes a little longer but my face isn't swollen or painful anymore at least and I'm feeling a lot better. My sis in law who was diagnosed with breast cancer is working on getting her treatment she was having a hard time in the smaller town she lived where the doctor was actually making comments about how she was going to pay for it. He asked her if she had a family member or someone she knew who might die soon and leave her a bunch of money! Can you believe that? She has moved back home to Portland and is being seen at the office I talked her into going to that I know is a really great place. She has kind of a bad prognosis though. If the cancer doesn't go into remission they are giving her 3-4 months which is kind of freaking Kelly out. He really wants to go back to Portland to see her since he is afraid she might not make it and they haven't been on the best of terms in awhile while they were once really close. Josh my bil who lives with us will be going to Portland around the same time as Maddie and I to see the neurologist about his MS.

I haven't been blogging much lately cause life has been sooo busy here. Homeschooling 2 and having 2 in school is a lot of extra work running to different activities and making sure I get the 2 picked up sometimes turns into a challenge! That and they are all in scouts and Joshua has baseball 4-5 nights a week right now. Also my own computer is down so I am down to using Izzak or Kellys laptops for posting.

I will be posting again monday at least for Fun Monday and hope to get a little more in next week.

The boys and Boy Scouts

I had said that the boys and Kelly went to a boy scout camporee this weekend and hoped Kelly would take some pictures. Well surprisingly he did. What is it about men and not thinking to take pictures? I constantly take them! But he did get a few which I appreciated.

Here is the flags for the flag ceremony.



They learned about throwing Tomahawks, I'm not sure why or for what purpose they need to learn that but oh well. They are boys and boys like throwing sharp things don't they?

Here is Izzak throwing his.



And Joshua of course....


A little scary to me! Seriously fokes the way this kid is I would not want to be around during this and would be VERY far away. The kid is dangerous with sharp things! He threw his and it went over the large log target and hit a log a ways behind it. No this is not one of those moments I would want to be around for the picture taking.

That is about all he remembered to take for pictures though.

One of the other things they were doing on this hike was to earn their polar bear badges. They were to wade out into the very cold water chest high and recite the boy scout pledge. Brrrr...
Izzak did it and I'm pretty proud to know he did it except suddenly he decided the water isn't so bad and wanted to go to the lake with the puppies today...uuuhmmm there is still a thin layer of ice on many parts of the lake!

I was at the same campground the afternoon before their campout with a bunch of the other homeschooling moms and kids having a picnik and so the kids could get together and play so I had taken some pictures of the area, mostly of the river they did the polar bear badges in.

It is a beautiful place just look.....









I have found very few places here that I don't like so far. It is a beautiful place and the sun has been out for the last several days which is soooo nice although it is still pretty cold but we did get up to 50 today it almost felt warm!