Monday, March 28, 2016

Easter 2016

The spacy grin!

Coloring easter eggs!

A tradition is coloring eggs with the grandparents!

This year sponge painting was part of the process and the eggs had a nice finish to them.





Easter day waiting for the lamb.

With Grandma Judy.

With Uncle John.

Cooking with Daddy!

Goofy shots

Another goofy shot!

Searching for plastic eggs during the inside egg hunt.

Spring Break

Scarf evening.   We put on scarves and then Julie went to the symphony with her dad.

Play date...coloring

Look who lost a tooth!

Puppet show 

The audience even had a chance to participate.

Grandpa was even dressed up!

Randy had his mom's type writer serviced and the girls enjoyed typing a story about animals.   Watch out Jessica Fletcher!


Our family outing was to the aquarium in Newport.   Sabrina loved watching the various animals.

Posing by the sea lions!


In the fish tube.

Touch and exploring the animals.

For the ultimate family adventure we worked on gather wood.   A large Douglas Fir was removed from our back yard and cut into rounds which we then rolled down the hill to a splitter for cutting into pieces we could use.

The cut pile and Randy.

The next step is loading into the truck and stacking.

The jeans!

Our favorite work clothes!

Crazy classroom art

We studied fish and water cycles this year.   The rocks were student goals.  The hands making the river were things the students could be happy or receive a high five.   Solar energy (and the other forms of energy) are made of hands.   Details about the riparian zone are written on the blades of grass and the fish and beavers represent animals critical to healthy river systems.

The saying were written on balloons.

Latin roots were put on pedals.


Spring 2016

Randy has been working hard on the yard and the daffodils put on quite a show!

Three generations!

Reading to Grandpa.

Random shot.

Sabrina's birthday gift to Julie was a treasure map.   The small map was given and then she put in chalk on the driveway to follow.



We all had our moments of sickness this Spring.   Here, Sabrina was the only healthy one and she made us soup for lunch.

Randy working hard and Sabrina reading to him.

Starry night.





Tuesday, March 22, 2016

A few updates for the year--or oops, we forgot to post for almost a year!

This year we have started playing games after dinner or on weekends.   Sabrina has become a Clue champion!

At Halloween, Bat Queen made her appearance!   

Randy has been working so hard on the house.   The inside projects were basically finished in September where he shifted his attention to the outside projects.   

At Christmas, Sabrina was given a sewing kit and she has started to hand sew many projects.   Soon she will be able to sew small items with some guidance on the machine.


We had a few weather days off of school for floods and some snow.   It usually doesn't last long and is nice for looking at from a warm house, while reading a book by a fire!

Sabrina loves Benny Beaver!   The Beaver basketball teams have done well this year.   We were blessed with tickets for a woman's game in December.

The entire game is hard to "sit and watch" so Sabrina started climbing around Randy.   Luckily no one was really sitting right behind us.


Julie subbed for six months in a middle school classroom.   One highlight of the fall was the Salmon Watch field trip where the classes had field labs on the river.   As we went out to watch the spawning grounds, these chinook salmon were competing to get to the female up river.   Never have we seen so much action!   

The school had a fund raiser for a boy who is receiving treatment at Dornbecker children's hospital.   One activity was face painting!

Pretty flowers!

All of Sabrina's class had "Rio Strong" capes and shirts for the event as they were helping generate interest and funds for the family.

In August the cousins played king and servant.   Sabrina fanned her cousin with ginko leaves.   The King held his septer and cooled off.


As with many families, this fall brought on the schedule of craziness.   We suddenly found ourselves frantically trying to balance work, school and play.   Julie worked at Sabrina's school in a long term sub position which lasted from the beginning of September to Spring Break!  Sabrina continued to strive in first grade and is now reading chapter books to us at bedtime!  Randy continues with his home improvement projects.   He really has a talent for vision and potential when looking at houses and yards.   This year the house has been transformed to have nice landscaping and a fenced garden area.   Hopefully, we will be able to harvest apples, pears, peaches and plums right out of our own yard!  Soon raspberries will join the blueberries in the raised beds.   What a luxury it will be to eat from the garden in our yard!