The VanderHoevens

The Bay in Two Days

2009-10-26T12:19:00.000-07:00

Although it was more than a month ago now, I needed to take a moment to blog about the great birthday I had this year.

It seems that Valerie decided to surprise me with a last minute vacation to San Francisco for just the two of us. She had already taken care of all the arrangements in advance and had even gone so far as to contact my boss at work to clear my time and make sure that there wasn’t anything major I would be missing in my two days away from the office.

San Francisco is one of those great cities that must be seen and visited that is just a couple of hours by plane from Seattle but we never seem to have enough time to go down and explore until now. It had also been a long time since just the two of us went anywhere together and thanks to the very nice friends who were able take our kids for us, this was destined to be a stress-free and much-needed vacation.

We caught the first flight of the morning to San Francisco on Tuesday, September 15th. Our plan was to not rent a car, not figuring to need or want one since we would be spending all of our time in the city. Since it was just the two of us for a couple of days, we packed all of our gear into a large backpack that I wore to keep us very mobile.

Upon arrival in San Francisco, we took the BART system right from the airport to down town. The plan was then to purchase a three day unlimited cable car pass. The cable car stopped not far from our hotel in Fisherman’s Wharf. What we hadn’t counted on was that the cable cars throughout our time there were exceptionally busy. We waited for about ½ hour to board them as they came and went full but it looked like we would be there much longer waiting.

We decided to hoof it to our hotel instead and started walking and exploring. It turns out though that what had only been a couple of inches on the map was really quite far. San Francisco is also very hilly (gasp!). Well, after a few blocks we decided to just hop in a cab. That was a good decision… since we survived. Ever play that video game “Crazy Taxi”? We lived it.

We checked into our hotel and ditched our bag and headed back out again to explore the city. Valerie had booked us passes on a double-decker bus tour that you could hop on and off of throughout various loops in the city. In other words, you get off in areas you would like to explore and then later catch the next one that comes by.

We decided to spend some time in China Town and spent several hours walking up and down the streets and alleys there. There is a lot to do and see there and was a lot of fun. There were crowds of people so it was a great place to visit while kid-free.

The highlight was Chinatown Restaurant where we had lunch. It looked a bit seedy from the outside and probably was but the food was fantastic. Everything we tasted was absolutely delicious. We devoured everything that was placed before us.

We had also heard there was a “fortune cookie factory” in Chinatown that you could visit. Finding this became sort of a mission for us. Apparently the tern “factory” is used VERY loosely here. After much searching, asking and wandering we finally found the factory behind a little door in a tiny alley. Two ladies are there cranking out fortune cookies all day long. We loved it and got to taste the cookies right off the… whatever that thing is that they use to make them.

Other than Chinatown, we did a lot of other exploring around the city by various means of transportation and by foot. We crammed a whole heckuvalot into the day.

That night, there was a San Francisco Giants game in town vs. the Colorado Rockies. I really wanted to go, not because I care about either of those teams but because I really wanted to get a look at the stadium there which I had seen so often on TV. Aside from Safeco Field and the former Kingdome in Seattle, I had very limited exposure to other Major League ballparks.

We took public transportation across the city to the stadium, getting there just an hour or so before game time. We got a couple of cheap tickets from a guy selling on the street and before long were in the park. It is a very nice stadium. We did a bit of exploring, standing in the left field bleachers waiting for batting practice homerun ball and even climbed the ladder and rode the slide down the giant Coke bottle above the stands.

We basically did the whole loop around the stadium seeing everything there was to be seen, not caring much about the game itself.

We did park in our seats for a little. It was quite cold and windy once we sat down but it was here that we discovered the best feature of the stadium of all. They have these vendors that walk around wearing hot chocolate dispensing backpacks available for purchase. No doubt, we were all over that. They even had whipping cream canisters in holsters on their belts.

The game was maybe halfway over when we decided to finally call it a night. It had been a long day for us. We again caught a taxi outside the stadium to take us back across town to our hotel.

The next morning, we had early morning tickets to head out to Alcatraz Island and explore there. I had always wanted to visit Alcatraz but had never been before. Valerie had been. It was a great boat ride across the foggy bay. While on the island, I also wanted to do a Virtual Geocache that I had heard was very cool. It didn’t disappoint.

Valerie had insisted that I do the audio tour with headset at the prison. I didn’t really want to. The idea seemed hokey to me, I thought I would rather just wander around and explore on my own. I was wrong. I did try the tour and LOVED it. It was very well done and did so much to enhance the visit there. It was really fascinating.

The audio tour dovetailed nicely with the geocache we were working on too. Valerie, as usual, kept track of all the paperwork and math that needed to be done for us to log the cache.

All in all, Alcatraz was probably the highlight of the trip for me. I knew I would like it but it was even better than expected.

Since we had visited so early in the morning, we still had a lot of the day ahead of us when we got back. We did do some wandering around the touristy area of Pier 38 at Fisherman’s Wharf but it was even too touristy for us so we didn’t really stay there all that long.

We hopped on a bus tour that we had wanted to do that took us among many other places to and across the Golden Gate Bridge. Crossing the bridge was another thing I had always wanted to do. We sat on the very front row of the open-aired upper deck of the bus for the scenic and windy crossing.

Eventually, it we started running out of day and had to go check out of our hotel. I put on the backpack of our gear as we were able to do a bit more shopping and touristy looking around on the way back to the BART station for our trip back to the airport. We had crammed about a week’s worth of vacation into two very long days and were, by now, quite exhausted.

We got home very late that night and rounded all the kids back up and home again.

This was a great birthday. I can’t wait to see how Valerie tops it next year. ;)

Tolmie Peak Hike

2009-10-15T00:01:00.000-07:00

It is raining outside today. Hard.

Sometime in the last couple of weeks, it seems like the seasons have really changed on us. We have about six months of rain to look forward to.

In anticipation of the coming winter, I (Jeff) decided to sneak out for one more little outdoors adventure with Joshua and Benjamin for the day last Saturday. I was looking for a little day hike to somewhere cool, with great views that would also be a little challenging for the boys. Something for them to remember.

I decided to take them hiking in Mt. Rainier National Park up to the old Tolmie Peak fire lookout. It is a fun hike that I have done before.

We started early in the morning and drove up the 17 miles of dirt road from Carbanado up to Lake Mowich where we caught the trailhead. The hike is about 7½ miles round trip from where we parked and gains I think somewhere around 1,000 ft. of elevation.

Little Benjamin at three years old did very well keeping up where we could but did ride my shoulders for parts where the trail got a little rough or where we were doing some pretty good climbing. Having our backpack of gear on and Benjamin on my shoulders gave me plenty of chance to huff and puff myself.

The trail was great even though it turned out to be quite cold up on the mountain. We at times were hiking in snow flurries which was a lot of fun for the boys. They tried to catch snowflakes on their tongues.

The weather never really broke for us so Mt. Rainier remained hidden in the clouds. We didn’t quite get the views that you can sometimes see on this hike...

...but there were still plenty of beutiful things (fall colors etc.) to be seen.

We rested at Eunice Lake for some water and snacks before the final climb to the lookout on top of the peak.

We only stayed on the top long enough to catch our breath and take a few pictures. If you know Ben at all (very energetic) you will know that it is a stressful time to watch over him standing on a peak surrounded by sheer cliffs.

When we got back to the van, before heading home we stopped to eat once more. There we were mobbed by Gray Jays (aka Camp Robbers) waiting for us to drop or be careless with any food. They would come right up to the boys and take crackers right out of their hands or even mouths.

The birds were actually easily the highlight of the day for Benjamin.

Within minutes of heading back out in the van, Ben was fast asleep which is always a sign of a good day.

Birthday Cake - YUM!

2009-10-14T00:00:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago on my birthday, Jeff made me the most amazing cake!

It was DELICIOUS! Devils food cake with whip cream & strawberry pie filling in the center, then whip cream and fresh raspberries on the top!

Does it get any yummier than that? He gets extra brownie points for making my birthday such a good day! But it would be ok if he stopped trying to get so many candles on the cake. Hahaha

Daniel's mission call

2009-10-13T00:00:00.000-07:00

Our nephew Daniel Walsh got his mission call a couple weeks ago. This is always a very exciting day in our family. Daniel had been stalking his mailman every day for a couple weeks, and it was finally here.

We all gathered at his house to see him open it to find out where he would be spending 2 years of his life. We all had our own ideas - but in the end............

Wait for it..........wait for it.........

Reading it out loud to his mom and sister over skype.

And it is.............................

Argentina Buenos Aires West mission. December 16th

To see him actually open the call it is on video here - Daniel opening mission call

Geocaper - Playing real life Clue

2009-10-12T00:00:00.000-07:00

The last couple years we have participated in a really fun geocaching event called the Geocaper.

Last year we were 3rd place - Geocaper 2008

We were hoping to come back this year and place even better. We were once again the House of Orange, and had shirts, and the women folk had orange hair ribbons.

While last year's game was based on the Amazing Race, this year it was based on the board game Clue.

We are all ready - all decked out in Orange

Working fervently on these puzzles -

And then in the end - we didn't solve a single puzzle. Guess more time on puzzle skills, less on hair ribbons and shirts......

BUT - we will be back next year..............and we can only go up from here!

Visiting Keri and Kids

2009-10-11T00:00:00.000-07:00

We had a few days this summer where we weren't actually doing ANYTHING - WHA??

So I took the boys, packed them up in the van, and headed over to Yakima to let the boys see their cousins over there, and I could visit with my sister. She also had air conditioning - just an added bonus to getting to see her and the kids.

We had a couple fun filled days. One of our days we went to a splash park - it was deserted. We weren't sure if it is wasn't hot enough for the Yakima folks, but it was plenty hot for us.

We went and picked cherries at an orchard. Of course Ben shared with Zach.........

We went over to Dave's parents house - and Josh got buried in their sand pit.

We had loads and loads of fun. Thanks for having us over! We love you guys!

Summer Shows - Enumclaw and Meeker Days

2009-10-10T00:00:00.000-07:00

This summer Windmill Lettering participated in a couple crafts sales - Enumclaw and Meeker Days. They were both fun, and it is nice to get our name out there.

At the Enumclaw one, there was a booth for kids to take their pictures as bible characters. Here are the boys dressed up -

In Enumclaw, they said they had no security at night. This was our first show that had that. So instead, we supplied our own security in the form of Jeff and Josh sleeping the night in our booth on the cement. They officially voted Jack and Mike for next time.....

This was our set up for Meeker Days in Puyallup.

This was a nice show and was going along just fine, until the last day when the heavens opened up and we all soon looked like this -

Homemade Pizzas

2009-10-09T00:00:00.000-07:00

This was a fun activity I did with the kids over the summer -

We got pizza dough and made out own pizzas. They got to shape the dough, which for my kids was the funniest part. Josh tried to make a platypus and was genuinely disappointed it didn't turn out actually looking like one.

The fruits of their labor

Canning

2009-10-08T08:15:00.000-07:00

When given the opportunity to purchases some boxes of peaches this year, I jumped at the chance. I grew up enjoying canned peaches and knew my kids would love them too.

This year I canned 2 boxes of peaches, and 1 box of nectarines. It was nice because it was a manageable amount to do all in one day. I ended up with about 40 jars of peaches for my family to enjoy all winter.

I would have to say - we already have one big fan!!

At the same time as the peaches, we also got a box of tomatoes. I have never canned tomatoes before, but we wanted to try salsa. Jeff found a simple recipe online, and we were off.

This -

Plus this -

Became 2 dozen jars of yummy spicy salsa!

First Day of School

2009-10-07T00:00:00.000-07:00

School starting this year was a big new change for our family.

Sarah started HIGH SCHOOL!! She left Meeker Middle School and is now a freshman at Stadium High School.

For those that haven't seen it - these are some pictures of the school. It was also used in the movie "10 Things I Hate About You"

Along with high school comes starting seminary. She now has class at the church every morning from 5:45 am - 6:35am. She then heads straight from church to the bus stop to go to school. So far, this has been pretty successful so we hope that continues. Add dance 3 times for a a week and it makes for earlier nights and a tired girl.

This was also Sarah's first time ever to not be in uniforms! She was VERY excited about this. This is her on the first day. When Jeff asked her why she was wearing flip flops her answer was simply "because I can".Josh is now enjoying his last year in elementary school. He is in 5th grade now and was trying to pretend to be sad school was starting, but he is a big old faker. He was actually excited to go back.

Cub Camp

2009-10-06T00:00:00.000-07:00

Jeff is a Webelos leader for Josh's cub scout troop. Earlier this summer they had a cub day camp.

The theme was "Mad Science".

Their group were the Nuclear Scientists -

Josh and Jeff had a blast the whole time with all the classes, and cool science experiments.

Fife Police Visit

2009-10-05T00:00:00.000-07:00

Earlier this summer, we were driving through the city of Fife where I used to work. I saw a police car next to me and waved to the officer because I knew him. I was explaining to Ben that I used to work for the Police Department.

He was born while I worked there, and I stayed until he was about a year old. At that point, graveyard just became so hard with a toddler, and Jeff had recently gotten a new job that allowed me to stay home full time.

So, even though my other kids remember me working for the Police, Ben does not. I asked him if he would like to go see a police car, a jail, and a real police officer. He was thrilled.

We went and visited the dispatch center, and saw the jail on the cameras. Then a very nice officer gave Ben a little tour of his car, showing him how to turn on the siren, the lights, and even let him talk on the radio to say hi to the girls in dispatch.

Thank you Officer Fleming!

He was in heaven!!

Zach wanted to get in on that radio action too!

New Kids on the Block

2009-10-04T00:00:00.000-07:00

If you knew my sister growing up, you understand her obsession with the New Kids on the Block. She was in love with them - mostly Donnie Wahlberg, but really with the group as a whole. My poor dad spent more than one night camped out on the sidewalk for tickets for her to go see them.

When we saw they were coming to Auburn, we knew we HAD TO GO. Keri invited her friend Christine and I invited my friend Amie and we had a girls night out.

There were not a lot of people there to begin with -

There were some crazies!!

Keri and Christine

Keri and little Kayli at her first concert!
We had a really good time, I actually liked it a lot more than I thought they would - and my poor kids are still having the after effects of it with me playing their CD in my van quite often.

4th of July fun in Bonney Lake

2009-10-03T00:00:00.000-07:00

We had a fun 4th of July this year - celebrating out at the Sirrine compound in Bonney Lake.

Pam had a bunch of fun team games planned, and we had lots of hanging out with family and letting the kids play.

Since fireworks are not illegal in Bonney Lake - we certainly couldn't do things half way -

This was the pile in the back of Pam's truck.

This was a toy that the Lutz family found somewhere that was just screaming to be lit up.

Forks revisited

2009-10-02T00:00:00.000-07:00

Windmill Lettering was hired to supply one of the big stores in Forks with vinyl items for their store. We had such a big order, we decided to drive out there to deliver it. Sarah had not been out there before.

Here is Pam organizing just a portion of it -

We had a very long, but fun day!

Laura, Sarah, Michelle, Josh, and Edward
Outside the Cullen house
Dr Cullen's parking spot
My boys seem to find things to climb everywhere - this was at the Cullen House
Bella's house

Baptism Day

2009-10-01T00:00:00.000-07:00

After the wedding in Twin Falls, we were headed the next day to Yakima.

Our niece Kelsi Button was getting baptized.

Here are some fun pictures from that day. We love you Kelsi bug!

Twin Falls - the wedding part

2009-09-30T00:00:00.000-07:00

While Ben and I were sitting bored at an Urgent Care Center - there was also a wedding.

Our nephew Adrian Walsh married his sweetheart Laura Watts for time and all eternity in the Twin Falls temple. Yes, there is now another Laura Walsh.

I heard it was beautiful. Also - a little tidbit for Twilight fans - they were sealed by Stephenie Meyer's grandfather.

Look how beautiful they look -

The whole extended family that made it

Later that afternoon we headed to Murtaugh for the reception - we got a little lost, so asked this cow wandering around for directions...here he is headed back home while never being very helpful!

We finally found it -

My silly 3 boys playing on the grass outside. I think this was also the same day Zach really started to take some steps. We kept trying to get a good video of it, and it just wasn't working as well as we had hoped. Although now there is no more little staggering - it is pretty much a full on run 24 hrs a day. He fell right in line with all of our other kids right around 10 months.

After the reception, we had a surprise waiting for us in the hotel lobby. Jamie and Landi!! My kids were very excited!

Twin Falls - I hear there was a wedding too....

2009-09-29T00:00:00.000-07:00

** Warning for the queasy ** Gross picture ahead **

We were finally in Twin Falls, Idaho and getting in the van headed to the temple to see Adrian and Laura get sealed. Ben was standing on the front seat of the van looking out the sun roof waiting for everyone to get to their cars.

As he came back down to go sit in his seat, he sliced his finger on SOMETHING up there and ended up with this...........

Yes, that is a nasty big chunk of his finger hanging off.

With a wedding in about 30 minutes, I checked with the front desk for where an Urgent Care Center is, and then dropped off Jeff and the other kids, and went to go find somewhere to go get this taken care of.

He was quite a trooper actually, because through it all he never cried. We waited long enough that the wedding was all done and over with. When they told me they were going to have to tie him down to a papoose board, I decided it was time to go get Jeff to help with that part. Turns out THAT was the only thing that made him cry. He panicked with it, and they told him if he held still good enough he could have it off, and he did.

Here he is with the nice doctor that stitched him up. He ended up with 6 stitches and a nice scar he will have forever. But for a boy, he thinks it is pretty cool and will be happy to show anyone that asks.

Heat Wave

2009-09-28T00:00:00.000-07:00

We had a trip scheduled this past July for our nephew Adrian's wedding and our niece Kelsi's baptism. They were one day apart with the wedding being in Twin Falls, Idaho and the baptism in Yakima, WA. And since these are both must see events, we were planning our road trip.

It was right in the middle of the incredible "Heat Wave of aught 9"

Without air conditioning in most homes here in Washington, this is what our thermostat looked like the day we left -
Jeff joked a little about leaving a day early and finding a hotel for the kids to swim in to cool off in rather than them trying to do this -

It took me about 5 minutes to have a hotel room in Pendleton Oregon. And of course, right in the middle of this heat wave, our air conditioning went out in our van - whoo hoo for cars!

This is at a shop in Pendleton where we hoped, hoped, hoped it was an easy fix.............

They were able to make it temporarily cool, and by that, I mean, for about an hour...no worries though, Idaho can't possibly be hotter than Washington and Oregon...hahahaha..now off to Idaho.

Woodworking Day

2009-09-26T00:00:00.000-07:00

Just in case you haven't visited Windmill Lettering's blog lately.....and if you haven't, why not?

Windmill Lettering

We decided this fall season to create some Super Saturday kits to be available to order. We are also going to be in the Tacoma Dome Holiday Gift Show. Those 2 items have changed our business! We have been incredibly busy the last little while. Pam made up some really cute countdown blocks for Super Saturday kits that have been ordered all across the country. I think as of today, we may be supplying about 30 different wards their Super Saturday kits.

Between these 2 things, we needed a work day. We all got together at Pam's house up in Bonney Lake and worked, worked, worked, We worked all day Friday, all day Saturday, and all day Sunday (after church). Here are some pictures from our weekend....

Feeling Wicked??

2009-09-24T00:00:00.000-07:00

On September 19th, Sarah finally got to make use of her birthday present!

Back in May I had gotten her tickets to go see the Broadway production of Wicked when it came to Seattle. She was in a show choir last year that had sung multiple songs from it in their final concert, so knew she would love it.

To make it even more fun, we invited Adrienne Urvina to come with us, and make it a fun girls day out.

Of course we had to stop for lunch. I had never been here to eat, and it was just a block away from the theater. We had THE MOST DELICIOUS lunch any of us had ever had. We had food off the lunch menu, and not their famous steak but it didn't matter. Needless to say, Jeff - for our anniversary, we will be eating here!

Little excited? Heck yes!!

Almost there!

Outside the theater for the sold out show.

I had read blog posts from my cousins when they had gone to see the show in both Portland and Arizona. From their reviews, I already had pretty high expectations. I would have to say though, that we were blown out of the water. This show was so wonderful I can't even explain it. If you get a chance to go see it, I would do it in a heartbeat. I would go again right now if I could. I have even tried to get tickets to go with Jeff while it is still here, but no such luck. Everything from the singing, dancing, costumes, scenery....just everything is so good. We all had a very fun day!

He's 1 ! Happy Birthday Zachary!

2009-09-22T08:18:00.000-07:00

September 21st is a pretty special day for us.

Not only was it the day Jeff and I got engaged back in 1992, but a year ago we welcomed this little guy into our family.
We have been so lucky to have him in our family.

We decided to have a fun little Zachary day. We decided we were going to get his hair cut for the first time on his first birthday. But I wanted to get some pictures taken with his baby hair, because I knew from experience, once that first haircut is done, you totally lose the baby look and look like a toddler.

We went to the mall and got pictures taken at Sears. My mom has pictures of all of her grandchildren in the wash basin picture at Sears. Now most parents got them done around 6 months, and I completely forgot. So, decided late was better than never. He was a tad big for the tub.We also got a few others of him. They turned out pretty adorable.

We stopped at Build A Bear and he got to pick out a Teddy Bear.

Here is our before shot for the cut.

During

Our little man was not thrilled with the haircut idea. He never cried.

But I also could not coax a smile out of him.

Later that evening we had a little family birthday party for him. Thanks to everyone who came. We had Grandma, Grandpa and Tara, Joe, Madi, Gavin, and Annika, Opa, Aunt Judy, Uncle Jack, and Laura, Aunt Kirsten and Uncle Ady. I know weeknights are not always easy, but with my dad working retail, I worked around his schedule so he could be there.

This was Zach's cake. Chocolate with chocolate frosting. :)

Very patiently waiting......He seemed to like it!Zach was not the only one who enjoyed the frosting!

Happy Birthday Jeff!!

2009-09-11T00:37:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to give a great big Happy Birthday to my sweet husband Jeff today.

This is him doing one of his new favorite things - climbing mountains.
He has been doing this as part of training to summit Mt Rainier next year for his 40th birthday.

He is celebrating his 39th birthday! WOW - you are getting old!

He is getting soooo old - he might be a little sad about it today.

If you could help cheer him up, that would be great - his email is vanderhoevenfamily@gmail.com.

This his him with the smile he will have on his face when he gets all your emails.....hahahaha......

LOVE YOU SWEETIE!

Mt. Adams Climb 2009

2009-08-31T15:05:00.000-07:00

Valerie and the kids were kind enough to let me go on yet another adventure this summer that I have been training for for some time. Having climbed Mt. St. Helens a couple of months back and sitting on the summit there with Joe Urvina and Gordon Wilde, we looked to the east and saw, 50 or so miles away, the much larger Mt. Adams looming above the cloud cover. It was then that I decided that I wanted to climb that one too before the summer was over.

While St. Helens sits at 8,365 ft., Mt. Adams is almost 4,000 ft. higher at nearly 12,300. Which meant that there would be some different challenges to deal with in regards to elevation (lack of oxygen in the air) as well as the possibility for fluctuating weather conditions, etc.

Anyhow, I left out Tacoma home at around 2:00pm on Friday and drove south east through Morton and Randle and at the advice of my car GPS took Forest Service Rd. #23 following signs south toward Trout Lake, WA.

The road was beautiful as it wound through the woods. I was really enjoying putting my little Audi TT through the paces as I was the only soul out there for miles. Eventually, the two paved lanes became one paved lane, odd but I pressed on. Then, I got to a sign that said “End of Paved Road”. Hmm… that wasn’t so good. I was winding though the mountains four-wheel-drive style over the washboard road in my little car. I’m not sure my car will ever forgive me. I had GPSs falling off the windshield, the glove box flying open, etc, etc as I drove. Occasionally, I would come by someone camping off the road with their big truck or Jeep and they would just stare at me as I drove past.

Along the road though, Mt. Adams finally came in to view off to my left.

Eventually, the road became pavement again and I was very happy. I made my way to the Ranger Station in Trout Lake and secured my climbing permit and signed in to the register there. I then headed up to meet Gordon, my climbing partner for this adventure, at Cold Springs Camp. Sorry little car, eight more miles to unpaved rough road to camp.

Gordon had already pitched a tent and had a fire going so we were able to enjoy a pretty relaxing evening until we headed to bed at about 8:30pm. The reason we went to bed so early is that we had to be up at 3:30 am to pack up, eat something and start hiking. We hit the trail at 4:05am lighting our way by headlamp.

We made great time in the early morning and the stars in the sky were incredibly beautiful being so far away from city lights.

As we made our way higher up the mountain, we eventually could see the lights of Hood River, OR and The Dalles, OR far to our south which was also very cool. We became somewhat disoriented a couple of times in the dark as the trail became rougher and harder to follow by headlamp at places but we generally did very well and kept a brisk pace going with very few rests all the way up to a flat section on the mountain called Lunch Counter which I believe is at right around 9,400 ft.

We were at Lunch Counter just after 7:00am and took our first real break to get something to eat and to adjust the clothing layers we were wearing. A lot of people choose to camp at Lunch Counter in order to acclimate to the elevation change so there were scattered tents in the area there although not much was stirring yet that morning.

There is about a 2,000ft. vertical climb heading between Lunch Counter and a false mountain summit called Piker’s Peak which was our next target. By this time of year, a lot of snow had melted out on this portion on the mountain and we were left scrambling up endless boulder fields of loose rock and scree. It was hard to make progress since with each step up, your feet slid a half a step back down. It was killer. We also had to watch footing to make sure not to twist and ankle or knee way up on that mountain. Having to pay so much attention to each step was mentally as well as physically exhausting.

What snow fields did remain on the mountain were now sheets of solid ice with scattered boulders. These fields were definitely not safe for ascent without crampons.

Although we were closely following a waypoint for Piker’s Peak on the GPS, we wandered a bit too far to the right (east) on our way up until we dead-ended at N 46° 11.458 W 121° 29.153 at a rather large crevasse with large cliffs and an ice-wall to our right.

That was a brief detour though as we had to backtrack only slightly and to the west to find the correct route to Piker’s Peak. Once there, we caught our first glimpse of the true summit.

The trail thankfully leveled out and even descended about 200ft. before the final push to the summit which I believe was just shy of 1,000ft. more of climbing ahead of us.We took a rest here to get ready for the final climb.

We did well on this section again. I was surprised how little effect the altitude here was having on me considering that only the day before I was enjoying the thick air of sea-level at home.

Gordon and I had the whole summit to ourselves during our time there. We arrived at 10:35am, exactly 6.5 hours after we had left camp.

While there we refueled and yet again changed layers of clothes to match the conditions. The views were not great from the summit as clouds had been chasing up the mountain behind us all morning as we climbed and we were now surrounded by fog and a swirling cloud layer. We stayed long enough to snap a couple of pictures up there, find the two geocaches in the area to be logged and started our descent.

Heading down was by far the worst part of the trip for me. I had hoped to glissade having read of great 10 minute descents from Piker’s Peak all the way to Lunch Counter but it was impossible with the lack of snow. We again were on the boulder fields stumbling (several butt-falls) and picking our way back to Lunch Counter. Again we had to be on constant alert lest we bust and ankle or badly twist a knee. It took at least a couple of hours to get back down to lunch counter from Piker’s Peak.

Along with the rough terrain, the weather had caught up with us on the way down. We were in some hail and a pretty steady snowfall for quite a while which made the descent even more interesting. Still though, it was never perilously bad weather.

In order to keep our course though, at a couple of places we did have to traverse some steep ice-fields that kept things rather interesting. We stepped very cautiously as we crossed.

We took a final rest at Lunch Counter and made the last push back to camp. We were blessed with sunshine for most of the rest of the way. We arrived back at camp safe and sound 11hrs and 20min after we had departed.

All in all, per my GPS, it was a 14 mile round trip which actually seemed much worse considering the terrain we were working with. We had climbed somewhere over 6,000ft. vertically. It made for an exhausting day but it was a great adventure that I will have to remember for a long long time. I’m already starting to look around at some of the other peaks that might be available to us for next year.

Thanks to my family for letting me go to do cool things like this and thanks to Gordon’s family too for letting me borrow him.

Summer Days and Summer Nights

2009-08-08T00:01:00.000-07:00

While we have been on the go so much this summer, some of our most fun days have been those where we just stayed home and had fun -

Give us a D - A - D for Father's Day

2009-08-06T00:01:00.000-07:00

I have tried each year to take a picture of the kids for Jeff for Father's Day.

This year I had the kids sit in a cool old rocking chair that belonged to my grandmother out on our front lawn.

I had them hold letters to spell out DAD and had it framed to read that.

Happy Father's Day Jeff! We love you!!

Goodbye Meeker Middle School

2009-08-05T00:01:00.000-07:00

This coming fall we will now have a child in high school. It is pretty hard to believe - both that Jeff and I are old enough to have a child in high school, and that our little baby girl is old enough to high school.

Sarah had a great 3 years at Meeker Middle School, and is ready to now move on to Stadium High School and seminary. What a big change that will be for all of us!

Her grandpa and I were able to attend her 8th grade graduation ceremony and we were so proud to see her up there with all her classmates. It was so wonderful to see what a nice young woman she is becoming -

Here are some pictures from that day -

Sarah and her good friend Emily Oman.

Sarah, Grandpa, and a snoozing Zach

Sarah and Mom

Our High Schooler!

Canning Cherries

2009-08-04T13:03:00.001-07:00

I have enjoyed canning fruit in the past. I have done peaches and pears before.

This year I decided to try cherries. I remember having canned cherries at home growing up and they were delicious.

A friend in my ward has a connection for fruit and was able to get boxes of cherries.

She also invited me over to house so we could can them all together and share the work. That was a busy and very messy day, but we ended up with some wonderful rewards in the end.

Summer is just slipping away!

2009-08-04T12:34:00.000-07:00

We have been so busy this summer, I haven't taken the time to blog......

I am now ready to play catch up - I have 14 or 15 pending blogs and will be spacing them out one a day for the next couple weeks so it isn't too much at once.

I actually thought with summer coming, I thought things would slow down - how naive of me.

New Indoor Record

2009-07-28T19:37:00.000-07:00

I know I complained about how warm it was inside our house last summer but we set a new record today.

Remember, this is the temperature INDOORS, in our downstairs family room, the coolest room in the house.

Blech. Okay who has A/C? We are coming over.

Happy Birthday little sister!

2009-07-26T08:23:00.000-07:00

Today is my little sister Keri's 30th birthday. I can't believe she is getting so old. hehehehehe

Here is a picture of her in her "younger days".

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU KERI!

Happy Birthday... tomorrow, kinda.

2009-07-17T10:43:00.000-07:00

I want to also wish a very happy birthday to my eldest sister Diane who has a birthday on the 18th.

It may seem like I'm blogging this a day early but since she lives in Guam, she is actually 18hours ahead us us. Which means, that as I type this at 11:00am on Friday the 17th my-time, it is already 5:00am Saturday the 18th Guam-time. Very confusing.

Not to distract from the point though that we also wish Diane a very happy birthday. We love and miss you!

Happy Birthday Poomper!

2009-07-16T10:31:00.000-07:00

I see we haven't blogged in a while. I guess we have a lot of catching up to do.

One thing I can't miss though is the opportunity to write a Happy Birthday post to a great sister and person.

Happy 45th Birthday Pam! We all love you!

Mount St. Helens Climb

2009-06-22T13:28:00.000-07:00

I remember back in 1980 when I was 9 years old, Mount Saint Helens was all the big news in the northwest and around the world, and for good reason. It was on May 18th of that year that this volcano sprang back to life and blew the top 1,300 feet of its top off and all around the region destroying hundreds of square miles of forest and killing 56 people in the process.

I lived overseas in Spain with my family at the time where my dad worked but as we maintained Seattle as our home-base, we followed the news closely.

Just a few weeks after the eruptions, we returned to the Washington for a few weeks visit and I remember that while traveling in the state, I was able to gather up a baby food jar of ash which I still have to this day. I also remember my parents buying me a souvenir yellow T-shirt with a picture of the volcano and the words printed, “Even saints sometimes blow their tops”. Hilarious.

Still today, St. Helens remains one of the more interesting peaks in the northwest as every few years, it seems to rumble to life again blowing off much smaller eruptions and slowly building the dome in the remaining crater.

Today, it is also popular with recreational visitors. Most visit the official visitor’s centers on the north side of the volcano that have views into the crater. When the opportunity presented itself this year however, I decided to take a more interesting look at the mountain, one from the top looking down.

Back in February, Joe Urvina and I decided to buy permits to climb Mount St. Helens this year. We had to buy fast since only 100 permits are available per day and they sell out fast. We decided to climb on the June 20th, the longest Saturday of the year. I’ve been excited to go up there for months and had been trying to get in a bit better shape for the adventure. That time finally came last weekend. We were happy that Valerie’s cousin (my cousin-in-law?) Gordon Wilde was able to secure a permit and join us as well.

Joe and I met up at my house for the long drive down to St. Helens on Friday afternoon. We checked in at the Lone Pine Resort in Cougar, WA and met up with Gordon, picked up our permits, signed in on the climber’s register and headed on up to the mountain.

We drove from there further up the mountain and a few miles of dirt-road up to Climber’s Bivouac, the place where we would camp and spend the night. There we broke out the BBQ and grilled some man-steaks for dinner before climbing into our sleeping bags for a very short night in a very “cozy” tent.

We woke up with first light at around 4:30 AM and quickly gathered our gear together, ate a quick breakfast and hit the trail heading up. We probably were on the trail starting at just after 5:00.

Here is our route…

The first couple of miles were through the woods and even though there were large sections of the trail covered with slushy, spotty snow, we made very good time through here. We did have to pause at one point to take off many of the layers of clothing that we had put on earlier in the journey. We were moving fast, so we were really heating up. The higher we went, the more snow we did encounter.

We eventually reached the tree line. This is at 4,800 feet of elevation, it is beyond this point where permits are required. From here, we had to make our way up to Monitor Ridge. This was actually kind of interesting. The climb onto the ridge was quite steep and was frozen solid, as in skating-rink solid. We were without crampons or ice axe so we had to kind of carefully pick our way up, trying not to fall and slide down into the rocks below.

Once on Monitor Ridge, the climb became a bit of a boulder scramble for the next couple of miles as we made our way higher and higher up the mountain. This was pretty exhausting as there was quite a bit of route-finding involved as we made our way though the rough volcanic rocks. There was never really an opportunity to just turn your brain off and keep your feet going, you instead had to watch every step you took lest you twist and ankle or knee.

To add to the difficulty, it had become quite foggy through this section making navigation that much more difficult. It was clear to us though that when heading to the top of something, up is always a good route choice.

To keep things interesting for me, there was a geocache to be found at a seismic monitoring station on the way up. I believe this was probably around the 7,000 foot mark.

From there, we just kept heading up the mountain and eventually the boulders became smaller and smaller until we were just climbing a slope of pumice, rocks and sand. Probably somewhere between 500 and 1,000 vertical feet from the summit we finally broke out of the clouds and caught our first glimpse of the top of the mountain not far above us.

One last push and we were standing on the top. It was pretty cool to have a view of the St. Helens crater 2,000 feet below us even though, the crater itself was filled with clouds. Sitting on the summit was a bit like a view from the window of an airplane on a cloudy day. It was just a sea of clouds all around us with only three other volcanic peeks visible to us. Mt. Adams in the east, Mt. Rainier to the north, and Mt. Hood to the south.

We sat at the top for quite a while and enjoyed some lunch even though it was very cold up there when the wind blew. Having climbed so early in the morning though, we pretty much had the whole place to ourselves. We didn’t quite get the view of the crater and Spirit Lake that we had hoped for with the clouds and fog below us filling the crater but this was very beautiful in its own way. All in all, I believe it had taken us about four hours to reach the summit.

Before too long, packed our gear back up and headed down just on time to see some more later groups starting to make their way up the scree below.

We had hoped to be able to glissade a good portion of the way down but this didn’t work out. The ice was so solid that a glissade would have probably broken the sound barrier as well as several bones. We instead picked our way back down the boulders which just killed my knees until we it was late and warm enough that the snow started to soften. We were finally able to do some glissading just before reaching tree line again.

As much fun as the climb was, I was very happy to see the car again once we made our way back to camp and head back out. My legs are feeling just how much fun we had still today.

Because Sometimes...

2009-06-09T00:01:00.000-07:00

...plastic flamingos aren't tacky enough.

We present 3.5ft. ornamental lawn manatees.

Mother and Child with gold finish - $49.99. Loverly.

Apple Blossom Festival

2009-06-08T00:01:00.000-07:00

We had a lot of fun working at the Apple Blossom Festival. Here are some pictures of our booth. Here is how Zach spent most of the weekend. He was quite a hit for everyone that stopped by. He had his own make-shift playpen and loved it.

Field Trip Fun

2009-06-07T00:01:00.000-07:00

One thing that has been fun while I have been staying home with the kids is the chance to chaperone field trips. The kids always love it when I can tag along.

I was able to go with Josh's class to the Washington State History Museum

Here is my group. Josh dressing up in costume. The whole class. Zach was a fun little tag along. The kids had fun making him laugh all day.

Grease is the Word!

2009-06-06T00:01:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, I had my first break away from Zachary and went to see Grease at the 5th Avenue Theater. I went with Adrienne Urvina, my friend Amie Nicolas, and her mom Debbie Betenson. It was a lot of fun. These 2 pictures of us was all we got before the dragon lady told us we had to put our camera away....

Taylor Hicks from American Idol was in the play and was signing autographs for people afterwards. I would have to say he was VERY GOOD in his role as the Angel that sings Beauty School Dropout.

Look Who's Walking

2009-06-05T17:59:00.000-07:00

...well, sorta.

He's got the shopping cart walk down at least.

Mom - Where are you??

2009-06-05T10:21:00.000-07:00

I know this picture is horrible - it is off my cell phone, and really, taking a picture of something that never stops moving ends up blurry quite often.

We have our ward's Super Saturday tomorrow, and not the largest committee working on it, and between planning that, getting the vinyl ready for it, and shows we have scheduled the next 2 weekends, and spending last week helping with my grandma's funeral, our house and kids have had a lot of time where I am technically HERE, but not actively chasing after them. With 4 kids, that can lead to trouble. This is especially true with a 3 yr old.

Not only does my house look like a bomb went off, but this just walked down my stairs!
I was informed he was making himself into a monster!

Don't worry house and family - I will be back soon!

Great Wolf

2009-06-05T07:00:00.000-07:00

Last week we had the chance for a quick 24 hr trip down to the Great Wolf Lodge.

What a FUN FUN FUN place to go to. I would have to say, if you get a chance to go for a good rate, GO!

Here are some pictures of the quick trip.

For Sarah's birthday present, Grandma and Grandpa paid for a pedicure for her. Man, do they know Sarah and what she likes! Tara joined in because she has been begging to have a pedicure since seeing them on Jon and Kate plus 8. There is a children's spa there where they sat in a banana split seat. They had a blast!
There was a kids activity room that had a fun story time for the little ones.

There is always time for ice cream!

This was Ben as we drove home - exhausted from all the fun!

Summer coming?

2009-06-04T00:01:00.000-07:00

I just loved to come home the other night to this site. I am so ready for summer! And the news on little Zach? He is officially 8 months old and he just cut his first tooth - whoo hoo!! I am thinking probably about 2 more weeks until he is walking. He is scooting all along the furniture. We are just waiting on the whole "sleeping through the night" that we hear about from others.

The First Place Cha-Cha!

2009-06-03T00:01:00.000-07:00

Part of the whole birthday weekend included Sarah dancing at the Quest for the Best competition. She really enjoys ballroom dance and has learned a lot this year. She dance with Jonah Jepson in the Newcomer Cha Cha and Waltz, and then also one lever up in Bronze in the Cha Cha, Waltz, Samba, and Rhumba.

It was quite a great birthday present to get first place in the Newcomer Cha Cha. Their award winning dance is shown below. We were so proud of them!

Happy Birthday Sarah!

2009-06-02T00:01:00.000-07:00

Our little girl turned 14 a couple weeks ago. Kind of amazing that the little 6 lb 14 oz little baby we held in our arms 14 years ago is now so grown up. Her birthday was quite a fun-filled, crazy weekend. I started by picking her up at dance and surprised her by taking a group of her friends out to Red Robin for dinner. We had Laura with us who had turned 14 the weekend before.

While we were there, they were the 10th and 11th people to be sung to just since we had been there.

Dinner turned into a sleepover and since Saturday was her actual birthday, naturally she needed candles on her pancakes for breakfast. Of course they were trick candles and she couldn't get them out for anything. Laura, wanting to cut to the chase, and the yummy food, just took hers still lit and put them out in water. Happy Birthday Sarah!

Welcome to Broadway!

2009-06-01T00:01:00.000-07:00

Sarah has been in a "show choir" this year. Just choir - nothing like the new series Glee...
She has had a lot of fun learning different Broadway songs, and recently had their end of the year concert. It was the funnest choir concert I have ever been to. They sang songs from HairSpray, Wicked, Pink Panther, Cinderella, and more.
Good job Sarah!

Dancing Through Life

2009-05-30T22:20:00.001-07:00

Tonight was the culmination of the entire year of Sarah practically living and breathing dance. She has completely fallen in love with ballroom dancing this year. I can't remember the last time she walked a straight line across a room. Everything she does seems to involve dance.

They had the year end concert at the Auburn Performing Arts Center this weekend. They had one show Friday night and 2 shows on Saturday night.

It was a great show. They did so good. I was so proud of her. She has turned into quite a graceful young woman.

It was also fun to have 2 of our nieces also be in the dance. Both Laura Walsh and Michelle Sirrine were also in the show. They all did so good.

With the past week being filled with all the fun of helping plan a funeral and grieve for our my grandma, it was wonderful to forget about all that for just a couple hours and watch these great kids dance their hearts out.

It was nice to have so many of our family come out and be able to see her dance. I think between the two nights we had Aunt Pam and Uncle Mike, Aunt Judy and Uncle Jack, Jennifer Walsh, Grandma and Grandpa, Tara, and Aunt Keri all come out to see it. Thank you!

Spring Break / Zoo

2009-05-30T00:01:00.001-07:00

It worked out this year that the Buttons, the Urvinas, and our kids all had Spring Break the same week. What fun for all the cousins. We talked the Buttons into coming over here and joining us. We had to take this whole group of wild animals to the zoo to visit the other wild animals. Wow - it is becoming a big group when all the kids are together, and they have so much fun together. Feeding the goats is always a popular activity there. You can certainly see from my pictures which of our children don't stray too far from me. :)We had a lot of fun on the merry-go-round. Adrienne and Annika

Keri with Ben and Andrew
The babies just chillin'

Ben liked this tiger because it was roaring very loud for all to hear.

Does it still count if you don't keep it?

2009-05-29T12:52:00.000-07:00

It is rare that I get a chance at work to leave the office at some point during the day. Thankfully though today was a little slow and I had the chance to get out and do some bargain hunting nearby.

Today I found a little USB-powered mini-paper shredder and the box had plenty of things that made me smile that I thought I would share.

It boasted in various places about being able fulfill such useful tasks as “Shred Postcard Size Paper!” and “Shreds the smallest jobs!”. Yeah, it is pretty useless alright.

My favorite thing of all though is when I looked closely at the memo… er, post-card-sized memo being shredded in the sample picture on the box…

Uh, might want to pay attention to that one Sparky.

Great Day for Up!

2009-05-28T13:20:00.000-07:00

With fantastic weather in the forecast and a rare day off work for Memorial Day this year, I wanted to make sure the day wasn’t squandered. I decided to spend the day with three off my brothers-in-law (Jack Walsh, Joe Urvina, Dave Button) and a nephew (Daniel Walsh) and do what is probably my favorite day hike in the world, the hike to Camp Muir in Mt. Rainier National Park.

This hike has what I think is some of the most beautiful scenery anywhere in the world, at least from what I have seen so far.

For its part though the hike is a bit of a butt-kicker. Camp Muir is the base camp primarily used by climbers ascending to the summit of Mt. Rainier. The round trip scheduled for the day would have us at right around 10 miles which isn’t too bad on the surface. But add to that the fact that you climb nearly 5,000 feet in elevation to that and it gets a bit more difficult. Also, this time of year, the second you step away from the parking lot, you are in snow for the entire trip. Did I mention, this was my favorite hike?

Our group met up in Tacoma at 3:30 in the morning to make the hike and from there drove the couple of hours it took to reach the Paradise Lodge on Mt. Rainier where our hike began. We geared up quickly and were on our way.

By leaving very early in the morning, our hope was to be on well frozen snow at least for our ascent which seemed to pay off. We made good time climbing steadily across ridges up steep hills until we were on the mountain just below Panorama Point.

Things got kind of interesting here. Later in the year, when the snow has melted out, there is a clearly defined trail through a rock cutout that safely guides you through this very steep section of trail. This time however, the cutout was completely snow-covered still and it was unclear the best way to go.
Looking in front of us to the Nisqually Glacier seemed the easiest approach terrain-wise but it was evident that there had been many recent avalanches there so we didn’t head that way, Instead we headed up a very steep hillside on the hard snow and ice. Crampons and an ice-axe would have been totally appropriate here but we didn’t have that gear along.

We all kind of picked out our best options to get by this area. I chose to follow some very deep footprints that had been made by someone while the snow had been softer to dig my feet into and give me stability on the slope. The guy had a much longer stride than me though making following difficult. For this short portion of our hike, it was better to not look down, which is where you would be headed had you lost your footing.

Once past this area, it was a pretty easy hike over to Pebble Creek where we met up, rested briefly and refueled before taking on the remaining 2,800 feet of elevation gain on the Muir Snowfield. This part is only fun in retrospect. It is a really huff and puff climb. It was like being on a giant snowy eternal Stairmaster. Our group split up a bit here, each keeping our own pace.

The views from the hike were great, we could see Mt. Adams and Mt. St. Helens (which Joe and I should be standing on the top of in three weeks) and even Mt. Hood all the way in Oregon.

Eventually Camp Muir came into site which is deceptive. It seems like you are almost there when you see it but it still takes forever to get there as you are exhausted and the elevation is starting to take its toll with the thin air.

As we each arrived at camp, we relaxed (passed out) and enjoyed the sunshine and very rare balmy weather up there.

We even took some time to explore the rocky outcrop above camp and took a picture with the memorial plaque that commemorates two climbers killed very nearby.

Once everyone arrived and was rested, it was time to head back down again. This is MUCH quicker since gravity was now working with us. The snow by now though had become very slushy, the consistency of a snow-cone which made footing difficult as sometimes you would stay on top and sometimes you would stick in up to your knees.

Glissding wasn’t a very good option even with how the snow was. Once we arrived back at the steep Panorama Point though, I decided to give it a try. In case you don’t know, glissading is fancy mountain-speak for sitting on your butt and sliding downhill. Anyhow, I quickly picked up more speed than I wanted, tried to apply my brakes (feet) and quickly caught air, flipping over and doing a face-plant sliding the rest of the way down filling my shirt with snow.

This was all much to the delight of Joe Urvina who watched from above and then wisely chose himself to skip the sliding here. Dave Button was kind enough to retrieve my poles and GPS which had both come loose from me, pictured here.

Jack Walsh wasn’t with us at this point but I heard later that he chose a different glissade chute for this section of the mountain with even worse results. I guess he tore his meniscus in his knee and will have to have it operated on later this week. Doh!

My tired feet and sunburned face were eventually very happy to see the parking lot come back into site. Paradise never before seemed so aptly named. I was very happy to get out of my by now soaking wet boot and socks and head back down off the mountain.

We had a blast. I’d do it again today if I could.

Pacific Science Center

2009-05-28T00:01:00.000-07:00

There was a geocaching event opening at the Pacific Science Center so naturally we needed to be there the opening day. What a fun day with us and the boys.

First a yummy pizza lunch in the center house, where Josh met quite a strange tall man. Onto the geocaching...... there was a fun exhibit that taught people the basics of geocaching. We also visited the butterfly house. Seriously, Ben could live in there. He was so fascinated! He had a card he carried around that he called his "butterfly map."
Both Josh and I also had butterflies land on us which was pretty fun.

We will miss you Grandma!

2009-05-27T19:02:00.000-07:00

While the country was celebrating Memorial Day this past weekend, our family had a horrible loss.

My grandma Lila Willis passed away. These past few days have really allowed us to lean on our strong beliefs and be thankful for the knowledge that we have about the plan of salvation and in knowing that we will be with her again someday.

She has been quite sick for awhile, including the beginning stages of Alzheimers and a bad fall 4 months ago that led to a broken hip. She has not been back home since then as different parts of her body just were giving out.

While we have been incredibly sad at our own loss, we also have the great knowledge that Monday was a great reunion day for her. Over 50 years ago she lost a 3 yr old daughter in a car accident, and as a mom of a 3 yr old, I can only imagine the loss she carried in her heart in not having her daughter to raise. She is now reunited with her precious daughter Kay and with my Grandpa that we lost to cancer when I was 8 yrs old.

This loss makes me so thankful that she has been freed from the pain she was in, but she also leaves a large posterity that will miss her until we are with her again.

We were lucky to have lived close by my grandmother while growing up and to be able to spend lots of time with her. We would spend time baking together and reading stories. I am sure all the grandkids remember her "library" that we got to check books out from! She always had an immaculate home and a beautiful yard. We used to love eating the huckleberries that grew in her backyard. She was a frugal woman who saved everything, just in case she might need it again. Just this past week while going through some of her papers we found thank you letters that we had written to her as children more than twenty years ago. It was such a fun thing to find on such a hard day. We also had fun laughing and crying as we looked at old pictures and letters that she had saved. I know that she loved her family very much and while we do mourn her loss, I know that I will see her again. Till we meet again...

This is a picture of me as a baby with my mom, my grandma, and my great grandma Folsom. I was the first grandchild on this side of the family, (and therefore obviously the favorite!) and this was the first 4 generation picture taken.

Easter Fun

2009-05-27T13:18:00.000-07:00

This will be the first of 11 posts that I have waiting to publish in the next 11 days. Another month again, and a month worth of posts all at once. I can not believe how busy we have been.

We had a very fun Easter this year. We were able to have a nice evening coloring eggs that promptly turned into Ben having blue hands.

Doesn't everyone have a Dutch Flag easter egg?

Eeeww!
Sarah used rubber bands to make a cool pattern on one of her eggs.

Easter morning started off with fun little Easter baskets, then off to church. How many years do you think my boys will let me have them completely match?

Playing Catch Up

2009-04-26T14:15:00.000-07:00

I can not believe how busy we have been. We were just looking at our calendar until September and we have stuff going on almost every week until then.

I just uploaded 6 posts worth of pictures, so will be working on those for a few days.

I just wanted to catch up before I fell too far behind. Too bad, it was thanks to a double ear infection and bronchial infection on Zach's part to give me a few hours home alone (only one child is close enough to alone) to get it done.

This was Ben as he was getting ready to walk out the door for church this morning. Not to sound boastful or anything, but he is a big fan of me right now. Total mommy's boy. :) How can you not love a bouquet like that................

Egg Drop time is here again.

2009-04-26T13:12:00.000-07:00

The Egg Drop competition around here has always been a lot of fun. For those whose schools may not do it, the kids are supposed to create something for an egg to be in that is only allowed to be 7 inches total in any direction, weighs less than 8 oz, and has no parachute. The principal is raised up 20 or 30 feet (based on how brave the principal is) and they drop the kids' inventions.

The goal of course is to have your egg survive the drop. I would say we have about a 90% survival rate in our house.

This year Josh decided to "go green" and reuse some items from around our house to house his egg. Anyone who has been in our house recently may recognize it.

One other disclaimer - egg drop day coincided with "crazy hat and free dress" day and he decided to wear his bike helmet - not because they have to duck the eggs from the drop.

Here he is with his creation.

A little closer look at his "vinyl ball" These are just a small portion of all the weeding we have been doing around here gearing up for our Wenatchee show next weekend. Here is Mr. Blix up high dropping eggs down to their possible demise.

And the results ?..................................................................................

Another successful year for the VanderHoeven egg drop!

Wenatchee here we come!

2009-04-26T13:11:00.000-07:00

Windmill Lettering is ready for our first show of the season. We will be heading off next Thursday morning to participate in the Apple Blossom Festival. We have been working really hard, and I am sure all of our families are ready to have us back from the world of vinyl, but we are really excited and have a lot of fun new items to sell.

This is Pam's dining room right now.

If anyone will be in Wenatchee next weekend, please stop by and see us. We would love the support.

Our Food Storage Adventure......

2009-04-26T12:58:00.000-07:00

In recent months we have been working on our food storage. I have been slowly trying to build it up and get it organized in the garage. After Pam and I went to the church cannery for a night, we decided, in true VanderHoeven style I might add, to take it one step further. We decided to have a canning day with the whole family.

Pam checked out a sealer from the cannery, each of us went out and got our bulk foods we wanted to can, and we decided to make a fun day of it.

When I realized that between us, the Sirrines, Ady and Kirsten, the Walshs, the Keenans, and the Lutzs, we had 400 cans to fill in one day I was a little overwhelmed. WOW!

This was the scene in Pam's living room as the day started.
Before too long, we had an assembly line going, and tackled this task.

Salt anyone?
Jennifer Walsh was head of the labeling committee.

Jacki and Kirsten ran the sealers. Jacki was able to also bring one down from a cannery near her house. So we could have double efficiency.
Pam, Judy, and I were the "filling the cans" crew.

Believe it or not we were able to get those cans filled in about 5 hours. We canned a huge variety of things. Flour, Salt, Sugar, 4 or 5 different kinds of pasta, rice, pancake mix, potato pearls, brownie mix, powdered milk, roll mix, popcorn, tortilla mix, and even dogfood (last of course).

Now for the AFTER shots -
Next month I will be working on canned vegetables and soups. I really had a lot of fun doing this, and hope to make it a family tradition once or twice a year.

Happy Canning Day!

2009-04-17T09:23:00.000-07:00

I love this picture that showed up in my email last night and wanted to share.

One of our family goals this year that dove-tailed in with cleaning the garage was to really work on our food storage. Today, Valerie will be going over to my sister’s (Pam Sirrine) where several of the ladies in the family will be doing dry-pack canning together.

This is Pam’s living room right now.

It looks like they have a busy day ahead. We have nearly 100 cans of rice, flour, sugar, salt, pasta, etc. (I don't really remember what else we bought) coming to our house alone.

Looks fun. We'll need to remember to store a can opener too.

Junior and the Opener

2009-04-15T14:38:00.000-07:00

As you could probably tell by one of my earlier blog posts, I am a bit of a Ken Griffey Jr. fan. We were all pretty excited to hear he was coming back to Seattle this season for what is quite possibly his final year in the majors.

I was fortunate to be able to go to the home opener yesterday to welcome Junior back home again. I went together with Val’s dad and her brother, Joe.

There were a lot of… odd festivities before the game with them parading out the flags of all countries that participated in the World Baseball Classic this year for some inexplicable reason. It was like the opening ceremonies to the Olympics… only without the reason or the athletes. I still cheered for the flag of the Netherlands. Got to give some love to the motherland.

The moment we were all waiting for was when Griffey was finally introduced and came running out to the field on the red carpet that had been rolled out. Since I’m being artsy fartsy today and turned my pics B&W, the red carpet is gray…

The sun came out and the opened the roof right after all the pomp and circumstance just before game time which felt just wonderful.

The M’s played fantastic again too which we are starting to get used to. They are off to a 6 and 2 start which is a refreshing change. They now have great defense taking to the field behind Franklin Gutierrez (I think I have a man-crush!) and Endy Chavez.

The M’s won this one in extra innings which kept us excited right up to the end. We should have a great summer!

Sittin' Pretty

2009-04-13T16:23:00.000-07:00

We are so far behind in blogging - but I will catch up.

But I walked into the family room yesterday and saw the sweetest sight just laughing back up at me. I had to take a picture. We are sitting now............ he is very proud of himself!

Dog Days of Spring

2009-04-06T08:44:00.000-07:00

What a glorious weekend we finally had this week. Temperatures broke into the 70’s over the weekend which was a welcome change from what things had been like here for the past several months.

I noticed on the news last night that they said that it had been 188 days since temperatures were as warm as they were yesterday. Hopefully that means that we have a bit more of spring to look forward to.

On Saturday we spent the evening visiting in Bonney Lake and brought the dog, Boone over with us. Since we brought our black lab, and the Sirrines, who we were visiting also have a black lab and my brother who has a yellow and chocolate lab also brought his dogs over, we had quite a lab party going on.

That is a lot of dog.

Some of us boys took a short walk to a nearby pond where we could throw a ball or two around for the dogs and they could romp around and do dog things.

It was a lot of fun and even Benjamin loved getting in the action even though the dogs were disappointed by his throwing arm.

At one point Ben called out to me. “Dad, I found a lizard!” Indeed he had found a little newt on the shore of the pond. He was proud of himself and to show his find.

By the way, those are Cheetos around his mouth and on his hands. It looks like he had been licking newt.

In the end, the dogs got to get good and wet and dirty. That’s how you could tell they had a great time.

Rainy Days and Thurdsays

2009-04-03T09:53:00.000-07:00

We have had Valerie’s sister Keri and here three kids over visiting this week during spring break. That meant that we had the semi-rare occurrence of all 12 grandkids/cousins on Valerie’s side of the family were in close proximity this week.

Valerie had the great idea that this would be a great opportunity to get a photo of the whole group together since this really doesn’t happen very often and that we should probably get the kids all together to take a photo for posterity’s sake.

I thought that it would be great to take the whole group down to one of my very favorite places, Browns Point Lighthouse Park which is only about three miles from our house and is just beautiful and full of opportunities for great pictures. There are Puget Sound backgrounds, big neat driftwood logs on the beach, a 100+ year old lighthouse keeper’s home with picket fence and garden. Lots of people go there for portraits and it isn’t uncommon to even see folk there having wedding photos or senior portraits taken.

The only potential for problems was the weather which has, for lack of a better term, SUCKED so far this spring. Yesterday was unfortunately true to form with periods of rain followed by periods of even harder rain with occasional breaks for torrential rain. We were kind of hoping against hope that by the time everyone assembled, the skies would part and give us a good opportunity to get the kids out into the park, get some great pics and get back into the car before the rain started again.

We all gathered in our vehicles in the parking lot down at Browns Point and it quickly became apparent that the weather was not going to break for us. In fact, if possible, the rain seemed to even fall harder as if to scoff at our wishes.

It was time to think of plan B.

Do we take this assembled restless heard and descend with 12 kids on one of the local studios like Sears where we could have them photographed against a background of artificially good weather or maybe with that neat Disco-Starburst background or better yet the wagon wheel?

Okay, so maybe that's Olan Mills but you get my point.

Frankly, I would rather spend two hours standing in the rain then ½ hour in Sears’ Portrait Studio which is topped only by the Sears Auto Center as my least favorite places this side of Hades. Seriously, it is worse than Wall-E.

We decided instead to head down to Dash Point Pier where there is a picnic shelter that might keep the kiddos out of the rain just long enough go grab a picture or two and we could call it good, mark it off for history and get on with our lives.

Even there under the cover of shelter, it was very cold for the kids so we moved quickly. Cover the soaking wet picnic table with a dry blanket, stack the kids up and… say “cheese”.

We quickly popped off a few pictures before deciding that that this was probably as good as it was going to get…

My favorite part is how every kid is looking in the direction of their own choosing. “Hey! – I’m over here! Look at the guy with the camera!” Whatever - good enough.

Capturing history is tough work. I think I now understand why the pioneers always looked so grumpy in their portraits.

As a reward for mild hypothermia, the kids were taken to a McDonald’s with a playland.

I’m sure it was all worth it. To somebody. Someday.

Monsters vs. Spring Break

2009-04-02T10:19:00.000-07:00

With this week being Spring Break for our kids, we felt some obligation to make sure that they have at least a little bit of fun. Unfortunately, the weather around here is still stuck in winter-mode so anything out of doors was out of the question and Sarah had skipped town on us on Sunday morning traveling with the Walsh clan to go visit cousins down in Medford, Oregon so it is just us and the three boys.

On Monday afternoon Valerie texted me at work to see if I might be interested in going to the movies with the kids that evening at the SeaTac Mall… er, “The Commons”. Of course I was and ended up heading straight there from work to meet them for the 5:15 showing of Monsters vs. Aliens, the latest animated creation from DreamWorks.

The boys were excited to see this movie so we bought our tickets plus and extra $3.50 per person for the 3-D glasses that we needed to see the film. Ouch! At least the glasses are ours to keep for future films.

The first thing that I can say about the movie is that the 3-D effects were fantastically awesome and were probably worth the price of admission alone. DreamWorks went above and beyond with the world they created and this to me was easily the best looking computer-animated film I have ever seen. It really was amazing. I especially loved some of the opening scenes in space and also some of the scenes at the Golden Gate Bridge.

Things have come a long way since the since Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing” video that I remember by which I was once so impressed.

Unfortunately, the story for the movie itself was kind of blah. There were some funny parts but really not that many, at least to me.

I’m still a bigger Pixar fan with the notable Wall-E exception. Pixar seems to just do a better job with stories than does DreamWorks. This animation here will be hard to top though.

The boys of course still loved it. I could tell because we made it through a whole movie without anyone needing to desperately get out to head to the bathroom, get a drink, or do whatever. We can’t even make it though Sacrament Meeting at church normally able to say the same thing even though that is in 3-D too.

Back to the Derby

2009-03-26T09:29:00.000-07:00

We have been very negligent about posting to our blog lately as we seem to have hit yet another stretch in our family schedule where virtually every waking moment is has been taken up by some commitment on our calendar.

That said, a couple of Saturdays ago on 3/14, we had our Cub Scout Pinewood Derby again. If you recall, last year, Joshua took second place in a very successful run. This being his last year of eligibility since next year he will be too old for Cubs, we were determined to do even better.

We again went with a very basic Ikea-inspired car design, stained an lacquered wood with shockingly no vinyl at all on the car. Josh tolerated the design as long as we includuded some pieces of a broken circuit board he found out on the street. That accounts for the little red and blue bumps on the top of the car. Josh named his car the “VanderHoeven Machine”. Good boy.

We were worried that this car wasn’t as fast as what we had used last year as I had some trouble futzing with the wheels to get them lined up just right.

Those fears were quickly gone though once we actually got over to the Stake Center and got racing. This car turned out to be very fast and posted both the best overall average time in the many heats it ran (2.64 seconds). We also posted the best time for a single run (2.62 seconds). I believe that this was vs. 17 other cars racing in his group.

After running several heats, the fastest four cars were selected to run in the final series of four races. Josh won all four of those races as well and at the end of the day ended up in first place. Here is one of those races. Josh's car is the one on the far side of the track.

He was of course thrilled.

Now we are out of the Derby business until Ben gets into cubs. Our next race will be in the spring of 2013.

Boyz n the Hood

2009-03-23T13:00:00.000-07:00

In the last couple of years in our family (on the VanderHoeven side), there has been a bit of a baby boom and more specifically, a boy-baby boom. We were at my dad’s house visiting on Saturday evening when we realized we were sitting in a room with seven little boys all age three or under. No little girls were present. We decided to line them up on the couch for a picture.

From Left to Right Connor Keenan, Cory Keenan, Logan Sirrine, Tyler Aguirre, Adam Aguirre, Benjamin VanderHoeven and Zachary VanderHoeven. These boys are going to have a great time growing up together. We only need two more to field a baseball team.

We also had to get a picture of the “A-B-C” boys who were born in quick succession Adam – Ben – Connor.

Twilight in Forks

2009-03-13T00:01:00.000-07:00

We had the opportunity this past weekend to go on a little mini-vacation which as you know, I just love to do. It seems we can’t let a month go by without at least going somewhere.
Unfortunately Sarah wasn’t able to come on our trip as she had to stay back with the Walsh family for the weekend due to dance commitments.

On Friday afternoon, when I was done working we loaded the three boys and the dog in the car and headed to Forks, Washington.

The directions to Forks are rather simple. You drive SW for two hours until you are in the middle of nowhere on the Washington coast. Forks is about 110 miles north of there.

This is a part of our state that is just gorgeous but people don’t get there very often since it is very remote. It is funny in that is only a little over 100 miles NW of our home as the crow flies but there are major bodies of water (aka The Puget Sound) and a mountain range (The Olympic Mountains) in the way so it took us about 4.5 hours to get there.

Valerie was excited to visit Forks ever since she devoured all books in the Twilight series which for the most part is set in Forks. I hadn’t read the books myself but I did go see the Twilight movie in the $2 theater with Valerie a few weeks back.

The story in the first book is basically about an angst-ridden teenage girl who moves to Forks and falls in love with an aloof 100-something year old Vampire who goes to high school with her, looks like he just stepped off the cover of GQ and makes a lot of Zoolander faces. She also meets his vampire family who all live in Forks since it is the rainiest town in the Continental United States and they don’t like sun what with them being vampires and all. She then runs around in the woods with her new vampire boyfriend who speds his free time climbing tall trees really really fast and playing baseball with his family. (BTW: Vampires love to play baseball in old-timey outfits - who knew!) Then while they are playing ball, a bad stranger vampire comes who wants to eat her and wrecks their whole game. Thankfully all the good vampires beat him up on a road-trip to Phoenix, then rip off his head and burn his body in a ballet studio. Now they are free to be in love again! It is all very sweet.

I’m not sure if it is a true story or not but for some reason teenage girls (and my wife) just LOVE it. I give the movie a C+. I’ve just started to read the book but I’m not sure I’ll make it all the way through.

Anywho – Valerie was excited to see all the places in Forks referenced in the books and it seems that Forks is welcoming visitors with open arms. The town is flooded with Twilight-hungry visitors. There is even a store in town called “Dazzled by Twilight” that sells nothing but souvenirs of the series. The store does a very brisk business.

We actually stayed a few miles outside of Forks on the Quileute Indian Reservation in the town of La Push. This is also an area mentioned in the book. Oh, I left that part out. The Quileute Indians are apparently werewolves or are descended from them or something like that. Vampires aren’t allowed on their land or something bad will happen but I'm not quite clear on what that bad thing is. That part was kinda fuzzy in the movie.

Our boys were happy that there were no vampires allowed at the Quileute Beach Resort although they were less happy to learn that it was teeming with werewolves.

We were a little worried about our accommodations going in. The lady Valerie talked to on the phone when she made our reservations made sure to let Valerie know that there was no TV or phone in the rooms which kind of enhanced the feeling of remoteness.

We were very pleasantly surprised when we checked in though to find our little two bedroom suite to be super nice. It was modern and very clean. The best part was that we were right on the beach. You could hear the waves crashing right from our room and could even see the surf breaking right from bed.

(Excuse the mess, we toolk pics while we were packing up to leave.)

This was a great setup for us since it was quite cold and windy on the coast. I could walk out the door and onto the beach with the kids and goof around until they were all frozen and apple-cheeked at which point we could retreat to the room to warm up for a bit before doing it all over again.

The beach there was pretty cool to. There is a lot of driftwood since we were right at the mouth of a river that came out of the Olympic Rain Forest. Trees fall in the river, wash out to the Pacific Ocean and then wash up on the beach. Did I mention that there was a lot of driftwood?

Ben and Josh had a blast here as there was no shortage of exploring to do, climbing over giant logs building forts and shooting each other with improvised driftwood guns.

The weather kept things interesting too with rain followed quickly by sun then hail, etc. On our last night there, it actually snowed a little bit which was very beautiful on the beach.

Valerie did get to see all the Twilight stuff around town as we moved about actually setting up a very neat Twilight themed geocache. Click here to see our actual cache listing on geocaching.com which we did a great job on if I may say so.

We took a lot of pictures and did the math to get this all set up. Valerie even spoke with the head of the Forks Chamber of Commerce to get their approval for the location where we hid the actual cache and they were excited about us setting this up and will advertise this to visitors.

Getting this all set up was one of our prime missions on this trip.
As far as geocaching ourselves, we didn’t do much, just a handful here and there and a couple of stops on the way home.

All in all, it was a great weekend away and we will certainly add this to our list of favorite places to visit in our home state. We already can’t wait to head back.

My Crafty Day

2009-03-12T07:43:00.000-07:00

I was looking at my boys room yesterday and realized that I had moved Zach into that room, but had not made letters with his name on them. I had made them for my older kids awhile ago and decided I was going to make some for Zach today.

Amie had asked what I was doing today, and I mentioned that I was making them, and somehow I roped her into helping. :) When I got to the store, I found some other letters I liked better than the ones I already had up. My solution for that? Let's remake ALL of them.

5 hours later, I think they turned out pretty cute. A huge thank you to Amie for "helping me", or as Josh called it "having me hand things to her."

The pictures can not even really show how cute they are, but I love them. And even though nothing else got done yesterday - at least they got finished. These are a few of the extra cute ones individually. Don't you think she should sell these?

Movin on Up!

2009-03-05T08:47:00.000-08:00

Today is the day. Zach is finally getting too big for the bassinet in our room.

I moved Ben over to the bottom trundle with Josh and now added a third boy to the bedroom.
Now just to see if that means more sleep for us, or less because we will have to go further to get him in the night.

And now is where I would usually say "Anyone need a bassinet?", but with our history, once we have given everything away, it has meant we would need it again, so I am going to go with keeping it for awhile ......... just to be sure.

Go Diamondbacks… or Braves…

2009-03-02T10:03:00.000-08:00

…or Phillies or maybe even Reds.

My family loves sports and we especially love our local Seattle sports teams. As anyone who follows sports in our area knows, 2008 was a disaster of cataclysmic proportions. Everyone sucked. SUCKED!

With the bitter taste of 2008 in our mouths it has been a little difficult to get amped up for the 2009 Mariners season even though they do appear to be somewhat on the mend.

Thankfully, my older brother Ady had a great idea to make the 2009 season a bit more interesting for all of us. There are 30 teams in Major League baseball so we decided to have a baseball pool of sorts.

We found 30 people in the family to each pull one Major League team randomly out of a hat. The team you picked is now your team for the 2009 season. If that team goes on to win the World Series this year, the entire family throws a large party in your honor. A party with like balloons, cake, banners, the works. The 29 “losers” in the family are required to buy you an actual gift of at least $20 in value.

Sadly Ady, whose idea all this was promptly drew the Kansas City Royals (2009 odds 100/1) from the hat. He can begin shopping for gifts immediately.

I drew the Arizona Diamondbacks, Valerie drew the Atlanta Braves. We also let Sarah and Josh play so they could learn how to gamble at a young age and learn important math skills as they relate to betting lines etc. They drew the Philadelphia Phillies and Cincinnati Reds respectively.

We have a minor chance of pulling a winner out of our family and a major chance of spending $80 on gifts. Sarah has our family’s best shot at glory with the Phillies. If one of our children wins, we have asked that gifts be wrapped festively in Christmas colors and signed “From: Santa”.

Here are the complete odds for the season…

Boston Red Sox 3/1
Chicago Cubs 5/1
LA Angels 5/1
Philadelphia Phillies 6/1
New York Yankees 6/1
Tampa Bay Rays 10/1
Chicago White Sox 10/1
New York Mets 12/1
Milwaukee Brewers 15/1
Minnesota Twins 15/1
LA Dodgers 15/1
Toronto Blue Jays 20/1
Detroit Tigers 25/1
Florida Marlins 30/1
Houston Astros 30/1
St. Louis Cardinals 30/1
Cleveland Indians 30/1
Atlanta Braves 30/1
Arizona Diamondbacks 40/1
Colorado Rockies 40/1
Texas Rangers 50/1
Cincinnati Reds 50/1
Oakland Athletics 50/1
San Francisco Giants 80/1
KC Royals 100/1
Baltimore Orioles 100/1
Seattle Mariners 100/1
San Diego Padres 100/1
Pittsburgh Pirates 200/1
Washington Nationals 300/1

Seriously, so blessed.

2009-03-02T07:54:00.000-08:00

I actually have a post to sit and write from this past weekend, but this morning after I got Sarah off on the school bus and headed back upstairs to get Josh up for his day, I walked into this in my bedroom.
As a mother of 4 busy young children who never slow down until the exact second they have fallen asleep each night - it is easy to become totally exhausted and forget how sweet and wonderful these children are that have been given to us to raise and care for.

How can I not look at these two and just take a moment to be thankful for all of my blessings?

I want to be a fireman someday.....

2009-02-26T10:36:00.000-08:00

For playgroup this week Amie had arranged a trip for all the kids to go tour the local fire station. The kids were very excited about going over there. It was so much fun. The firemen that were there were so nice and patient with a huge group of children 5 and under.

Our whole group - there was a lot of us yesterday!

They let the kids climb up and in and all over the firetrucks - which they loved! We got to hear the sirens which they also liked a lot. One of the firemen put on his firesuit to let the kids see what it looked like and he showed them how they use oxygen tanks to breathe, and what it sounded like - the kids were fascinated.

A great big thank you to the firemen for all their patience yesterday - they gave a great tour and as we were driving away Ben said to me "Mommy, I want to be a fireman - they are cool and they are heros"

Happy Birthday Ady!

2009-02-25T00:01:00.000-08:00

We hope you get everything you want today.

Great gifts…

Great food…

Time to play with the dog in some swanky duds...

And plenty of rest…

We love you!

Hokey Pokey

2009-02-21T07:36:00.000-08:00

Last weekend we did a joint birthday party with our two boys (we will get away with it as long as we can..)
They had so much fun roller skating last month they really wanted to go back again. Personally, I loved the fact that we could do a fun party and afterwards my house was not a war zone.

We had the party at Pattison's West in Federal Way. The place looks EXACTLY the same as it did when we were in junior high. You can choose rollerblades or to kick it old school in actual roller skates. Quite possibly also the same ones from when I was in junior high.

Ok - one thing was updated - they had a sign with vinyl on it..........We had a little party room and we had a lot of fun with all the friends/cousins that were there.

There were so many kids there it was kind of a zoo and I left feeling like it was maybe too crowded of a place to have a party until Josh said as we got in the car "That was the best birthday party ever" - I guess that is really all that matters.

Another Hospital Trip!

2009-02-18T20:27:00.000-08:00

Sarah and I had quite a day today. She hurt her knee on Monday while at dance. I kind of figured she had just landed on it wrong, but this morning, she couldn't put any pressure on it at all still - so decided it was time for a trip to the doctor.

When he saw her knee he was concerned that there was quite a bit of swelling above her kneecap and wanted x-rays to rule out the possibility of a broken bone or chip.

So our adventure now sent us over to St Francis hospital for x-rays. Once there, they put her in a wheelchair and had someone pushing her around.

That novelty wore off pretty quickly because as ANYONE who has been to a hospital knows that they pretty much rush you to the next place and then you play the waiting game. I was so extremely grateful for my friend Amie who had asked me earlier if I wanted Ben to come play with her boys while I went to the Dr. I can only imagine the joy that would have come with having him there for as long as we were there. THANK YOU Amie!

Really - doesn't everyone want pictures online of them in a hospital gown?

The xrays are back and there is nothing broken, but if she still can not put any weight on it by next Monday the Dr. wants to schedule an MRI for her to be sure she hadn't torn her ligaments. She is on crutches for the next 2-3 weeks

1, 2, cha cha cha

2009-02-16T00:01:00.000-08:00

Last weekend Sarah had another dance competition. This was the 2nd dance compeition in 3 weeks, and like a horrible parent, I had forgotten to bring a camera to the last one - so made sure I had one this time. Her and her partner Jonah Jepson dance both the cha cha and the waltz and did a great job. Good job guys!

Both Michelle Sirrine and Laura Walsh also danced as a performance. They did such a good job. I got a picture of Michelle, but none of the ones of Laura showed up. Her dance was so fast all my pictures were blurry. Here is Michelle in her "Dancing In The Rain" routine.
This is how Zach watched the whole thing. Lucky boy loves the all day dance competition......

Thank you Mario! But our Princess is in another Bakery.

2009-02-15T00:01:00.001-08:00

I can’t help but notice that our blog is leaning heavily towards tales of baked goods over the past several days. This will be the last one for a while I promise. I just thought this was a fun one.

The boys for their birthday parties this year decided that they didn’t want to have a run-of-the-mill Costco cake, they wanted instead to put Valerie’s skills to the test and requested something Nintendo themed.

Our boys kind of have one-track minds. Eat, sleep, play video games (rinse and repeat). If we allowed it, they would run the Wii and/or DS nonstop. Mario games are particularly popular in our home.

Valerie decided that it would be a lot of fun if she took a couple of elements from the Mario games and made two really cool cakes for the boys.

First we had Josh’s plump red mushroom. As anyone knows, Mario eats the red mushroom and gets bigger. Birthday… getting bigger… I don’t know, there is an object lesson there somewhere.

Here is how Josh’s cake turned out…

Next came Ben’s cake he wanted to be the green mushroom which is of course the highly prized 1up mushroom. Eat the green and you get an extra life. Again… object lesson.

Here is how Ben’s cake turned out…

Super cool! In our home this constitutes a major baking coup. They shall be transported more carefully than the cupcake cones.

Cupcakes vs. Physics (Hint: Physics Wins!)

2009-02-14T00:01:00.002-08:00

The ice-cream cone cupcakes I brought to playgroup were so fun the other day that I thought I would make and bring the same to Joshua’s class at school on his birthday/Valentine's Day party. I carefully baked the strawberry cake mix, added my pink frosting and got them all covered in sugary bling ready to go the school.

In the van however, Murphy's Law caught up with me and after a couple of turns and a bump or two, the bling was gone and I was left to walk into the classroom with this…

Lest I look like and incompetent mother, I explained to the teacher that this mess was once beautiful.

I’m not sure she believed me.

The kids didn’t care and devoured them all the same.

Birthday Boy Cupcakes

2009-02-14T00:01:00.001-08:00

For Ben's playgroup this week we had a couple little ones with birthdays so we decided to let them frost and decorate cupcakes. They had a lot of fun and made a nice yummy mess.

Happy Birthday Benjamin Marius

2009-02-13T00:01:00.000-08:00

Another day, another birthday in the VanderHoeven household. After Joshua, we had a pretty long break in our family without another baby. 7 years and 1 day after Josh was born, we were so blessed to have Benjamin Marius join our family. We were so happy to have another new boy join us. On my side of the family he was 8th grandchild born, and number 30 on Jeff's side of the family. He was such a light in our family after a really hard previous year.

So today we celebrate Ben's 3rd birthday. In a short 3 years he has grown into such a fun little toddler. He has so much fun with his brothers and sister even though he is a pretty stereotypical pesky little brother a lot of the time. There is never a dull moment in our lives with him and we wouldn't want it any other way.

Return of the Prodigal Son!

2009-02-12T13:56:00.001-08:00

I know this isn't our normal blog-fodder but I can't help myself.

If the reports are true, Ken Griffey Jr. is headed back to Seattle.

Although it probably isn't a great baseball move and I don't want to be excited, I can't help but be thrilled.

We love the Mariners and he was the greatest we every saw. It will be fun to relive some of that this year and share the past with the kids who don't remember it as he comes back one more time. He was center-stage for the one and only time sports has moved me to tears...

It will be great to have one last run before they hang his number 24 in the rafters where it belongs.

GO MARINERS!

Happy Birthday Joshua Anthony!

2009-02-12T00:01:00.000-08:00

Wow - a second child into double digits.

10 years ago today we were so blessed to welcome Joshua Anthony into our family. He was our first boy, and by far my easiest labor. He was 7 lbs 11 oz and born in Kirkland Washington. As is our family tradition we had a nice crowd out in the waiting area all there to meet him. He is also our only child that Jeff's mom was able to be there to welcome. He was lucky enough to have both his grandmothers there for him.

He is our constant comedian and wonderful to have in our family. Here are some pictures I found that shows his personality.

Trouble brewing

2009-02-11T22:19:00.001-08:00

This is Zachary and Chris and Cat's son Logan this past weekend. Logan is about 6 weeks older than Zach and we are pretty excited for the two of them to be great friends very soon. While we kind of always joke about all the lack of baby girls on Jeff's side of the family, really, all these little boys are going to be a force to be reconed with as toddlers, teenagers, and once they are all out as missionaries at the same. Right now there are going to be 8 that are 3 and under - all boys.

This makes me so happy!!

2009-02-11T08:23:00.001-08:00

After the last few weeks - see post here - http://vanderhoeven.blogspot.com/2009/01/vanderhoeven-garage-exposed.html

it is so wonderful to walk into this in our house and see this again.........aaaaahhhh!!!!!!!

A Drafty Zach Update

2009-02-11T00:01:00.000-08:00

Here’s another in my short series of blogs posts frozen in time drafts that were never actually published to our blog. Valerie had even written this post already but had just never published it. This goes back to the second week in January...

This past week we have been so busy I have so much to catch up on.

Zach has had a few days now where he thinks he is hungry every hour. One evening I decided to try and see if he was ready for some rice cereal. Since he has never taken a bottle, I decided to just try it made a little thicker and feed him with a spoon. Somewhere I have a pipe dream, about avoiding bottles as long as possible. We dug out the ghost bib that my nephew Andrew had picked out just for Zach and decided to try it. You can see from this picture he was totally interested to begin with.

We decided to try and video tape the first spoonful. In a house the size of mine, a nice quiet video just doesn't always happen. We have Ben on one side, not wanting to lose out on any attention. On the other side, we have Josh with his new video camera he got for Christmas shining a horrible light in his eyes. This is not the best video ever, but it definitely shows his reaction to the rice cereal.

This was the picture about 5 minutes later. We were trying to figure out if he was just faking it to keep from having more cereal put in his mouth.

Also this past week we have also discovered toys and is working hark on rolling over.

Another Birthday!

2009-02-10T15:06:00.000-08:00

Happy Birthday Karen!

Congratulation on another year.

We love you!

A Drafty Five Mile Lake

2009-02-09T00:01:00.000-08:00

Here’s another in my short series of blogs posts frozen in time drafts that were never actually published to our blog.

This one is going back to August 5th of 2008 when I took my Cub Scouts for an evening of swimming at Five Mile Lake in Federal Way. Valerie and Benjamin came along too. Of course the only kids I took pictures of were my own.

It looks like we have the whole lake to ourselves but there really were many more boys swimming there.

Looking back at the pictures from that evening really makes me long for summer. I seriously can’t wait for it to get warm and sunny outside again so we can come back out of hibernation.

I LOVE SUMMER!

A Drafty Thanksgiving

2009-02-08T00:01:00.000-08:00

I was just looking at our blog from behind the scenes and realized there are several drafts of posts backlogged that were never apparently fully written or actually published to the actual blog. This is one of those half-baked entries.

We we wouldn’t want to leave out anything so here we go with…

THANKSGIVING 2008!

So we’re a couple of months late. Big deal.

We celebrated this year at the Sirrine division of the family’s home in Bonney Lake.

The point I guess is that yes, we did celebrate Thanksgiving. See there are even pictures to prove it.

As I recall, I made one of the family’s turkeys this year. I smoked it on my Webber Grill. It was scrumptious as I recall. I was going to blog preparing the turkey as well, complete with instructions but that is a blog post that never even made it out of the camera.

We had a lot of people as usual and plenty to eat too.

I also remember sitting down to watch the Seattle Seahawks play the Dallas Cowboys on TV before eating. The Seahawks got killed but now in retrospect, I take solace in knowing that the Cowboys didn’t do anything special either.

Yakima + Yakima + Yakima

2009-02-07T00:01:00.000-08:00

…and back to Yakima again.

We had the opportunity to go to Yakima again last weekend. That is officially our third trip over there since Christmas and will probably be out last trip there for a while.

Note to family living in Yakima: For our convenience, we request that you please move closer to our home. Thank you for your cooperation in this matter.

With little Kayli Button having been born just a few weeks ago, this trip was of course to attend her baby blessing (similar-in-age-and-signigicance-but-not-in-ordinance to a Christening for any non-Mormon who might happen upon this blog).

The dog gave us that "not again!" look as we filled his bowl at home nice and full and headed out the door for the weekend. This time we didn’t leave until Saturday morning and detoured down to Lacey first so Valerie could visit her grandmother who is very ill in the hospital there before we left town.

The drive over was uneventful which is a good thing when crossing the pass through the mountains this time of the year.

Having learned the lesson from our prior less-than-enjoyable drive over, all kids were set up with their own headphones and device to connect to them to hopefully keep them from eachothers throats. While Zach just slept, Sarah had the iPod working, Joshua of course had his Nintendo DS, Benjamin was running his portable DVD player watching Peter Pan. Valerie (not a child) had her laptop and I had the road in front of me.

We all enjoyed a lovely trip with nobody speaking a word to anyone else. Nirvana.

Since nobody had yet killed anyone, by the time we got to Ellensburg, we decided to take the scenic route to Yakima from there by going through the Yakima River Canyon and stopping of course for a cache or two along the route. It is always a beautiful drive through the canyon there and there is different scenery to look at througout the year.

There had been recent floods on the river in the canyon that had pushed huge frozen block of ice up out of the river and onto the edges of the road which were really cool to look at. It was so neat that we repeated the route on the way home to take a couple of pictures.

We were at the Button home that evening to celebrate a family birthday as well. Little Annika Urvina was turning 1-year-old. We remembered her being born on Superbowl Sunday a year ago. It will always be easy to remember when her birthday is coming.

After we had some cake to celebrate, we all headed to Miner’s a Yakima must-visit food joint for dinner. Yummy but expensive for burgers.

That evening, our family stayed at a hotel in Union Gap. Much to the delight of our kids, there was an indoor pool. Woo Hoo!!! The little pool there made the weekend seem like a mini-vacation. I stayed with the three older kids in the pool until the manager finally had to close the pool down for the evening at 10PM.

The next morning we had to get up to be at the church by 9AM but I woke Sarah and Josh a bit earlier still to sneak down ot the pool for a quick morning swim at about 6:00 before we had to get ready. I love swimming in the morning. It has been a bit of a tradition with the kids and me. We always get up very early in a hotel and swim in the pool before anyone else gets up.

Besides it is fun making people eat their continental breakfasts while watching you do belly-flops.
The blessing at church was very nice too although with the Button family in the circle with me I felt a little like a portly Muggsy Bogues on a team of Manute Bols...

...yes, as a matter of fact I am related by marriage. Why do you ask?

Still though Kayli was a sweetie and we were glad to be there for her.

We of course did line up for some obligitory pictures after the meeting.

After church it was off to Dave’s parent’s home where we had a very nice lunch/dinner before we wandered our way back home again of course finding a few more geocaches along the way. This time the kids were exhausted and slept most of the way which was fine by me.

Hooray - It's a Recorder Concert!

2009-02-06T09:34:00.000-08:00

I like to believe that there is a special little place in heaven set aside for all those parents who go to things like the 4th grade recorder concert. If there is, we have earned a few acres of our own by now.

Bonus points if you can do this with a 2-year-old on your lap and still stay for all 15 songs.

Joshua kept things interesting for us by on the way out the door by showing us that a recorder could also be played by blowing with your nose.

We got to hear the whole nose-version of the concert all the way home in the van. I liked that recital much better.

That reminds me... can a recorder be run through the dishwasher?

"School for me too - YES!"

2009-02-06T08:28:00.000-08:00

This past week Ben had a fun milestone. We have enrolled him in a home preschool. A friend of mine in our ward who is a stay at home mom and has just opened a preschool. She is just getting started and asked us about enrolling Ben. While he is not quite 3 yet (one more week) we thought it might be a fun thing for him to do. He really gets bummed watching Josh and Sarah get on the bus and wants to go too - so now he has school on Tuesday and Thursday for a couple hours each day. I took some pictures of him when he first got there, and somehow they ended up in camera la la land. So I only have one of him reading a book. He was really excited to see "new books" to read and instantly sat down with one to read.

He had so much fun on Thursday - the group went for a treasure hunt. They were learning about the numbers 2 and 5 and went for a walk down the street to look for those number and see how many they could find. He was so excited to tell me how they sang "hup, two, three, four" while on their treasure hunt.

4 Months

2009-02-02T09:17:00.000-08:00

This is a little late, but Zach's big news (other than he can roll to his stomach like no one else) is that he is a big 4 months old now. He is starting to be so much fun and it is so sweet to see his face light up so much whenever he sees one of us.

We went to the doctor this week and he is now 14 lbs 10 oz. Seems his growth is slowing down a little bit - he is now in the 50th percentile for height, weight, and head size. This is down from 75% 2 months ago.

I know Jeff already used this picture, but I had really taken it for his 4 month post, and everytime I see it, it makes me smile so I am using it again anyways.

Catch up with Josh

2009-01-30T08:46:00.001-08:00

I feel like I have gotten so far behind in posting what is going on - we have had a couple busy weeks. Having our living room look like it does hasn't helped - and kind of constantly makes me feel like I will never get caught up. Hopefully this week is a little slower and we can get some more of that done.

This past week Josh was our busy one.

In addition to all the other things going on, it was time for the Blue and Gold dinner for scouts. Josh has earned his Bear badge and recieved it at the pack meeting. He will be turning 10 in the next couple weeks and will be moving up to Webelos then. He will be in Jeff's group and he is really excited about that.

The theme for the Blue and Gold dinner this year was the Olympics. Each boy needed to bring a cake decorated in the theme, that the boys helped with. Josh wanted to do something with the Olympic Rings.

Jeff voted we go this route (courtesy of one of my favorite blogs - http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/

But since everyone knows that scouts is as much about the boys as it is what the moms can do, there was no way that was showing up under my name. This is what we ended up with. I am fully aware that USUALLY the Olympic Rings interlock - and I had every intention of these interlocking, but once we started frosting, it just didn't work out that way. But as you can see, we did get Best Olympic Theme, so I am happy with that.

He also had a big month long reading project due. This was due the day after the Blue and Gold dinner. So of course, he started working on it AFTER the Blue and Gold dinner. He chose to do his report on the book Captain Underpants. I find it kind of amusing that the first google image that came up for it is from a school that is showing a listing of banned books. (For encouraging bad behaviors in children). Having a child that I already have to fight with to get him to read, I like finding books that he actually WANTS to read, rather than HAS to read. He had to go a presentation in front of the class and had a couple different options such as a diorama, dressing as the character (which I really tried for, but it was voted down as too embarrassing), or creating a cereal box based on the main character. This was our cereal box -

Doesn't everyone want Marshmallow Underpants in their cereal?

He was happy with the final result - and now I think his schedule can calm down this week after his Recorder concert........hahaha...

VanderHoeven Garage - EXPOSED!!!

2009-01-27T12:01:00.000-08:00

Sounds like a National Enquirer headline.

Anyhow, we give up. If you must, you may gaze your prying eyes on the secret shame that was our garage.

Believe it or not this actually looked much worse in person. Thankfully the picture of Christ hung safely high on the wall.

The garage is now spotless.

Our normally only used for home-teachers/kids-keep-your-toys-out living room on the other hand could use a little tidying up.

But the living room at least will be cleaned quickly as this can’t stay this way. The neighbors can see in the windows when they drive by.

Now go ahead and cast your stones. One requirement for commenting on this blog post is to share a shameful domestic secret of your own. Bonus points for a link to pics.

Get Your Roll On!

2009-01-27T10:03:00.000-08:00

Somebody figured out the fine art of rolling over yesterday...

He couldn't have been happier.

A new world of possibilities awaits.

Go Zach!

Cleaning the Garage (Pictures Omitted)

2009-01-26T15:09:00.001-08:00

What a lousy weekend we had this week.

With spring quickly on the way (knock on wood) and our calendar seeming to get fuller and fuller by the day, this past Saturday seemed by default to fit as the best possible day in the next couple of months to do some cleaning in the garage.

I know that cleaning the garage doesn’t seem like a big deal or anything. Everyone does it right? Well, our garage was special on an epic scale. This had been a project that had been neglected for quite some time. We have done many, many “straightening of the garage” projects, in which stacks of crud that have fallen over are put back into tidy stacks of crud but that wasn’t at all what we had in mind this time around. We actually wanted to CLEAN the garage.

Our living quarters is normally very tidy but through a lot of neglect and just kind of chucking stuff in there, the garage was just absolutely, completely out of hand. I took a couple of “before” pictures but they are just too embarrassing to post here. Just imagine this scene without the seagulls…

…although the seagulls surely would have been in there too if it hadn’t been for the closed garage door. Thankfully very few people had a glimpse into what things had started to look like in there. (We thank the Buttons in advance for not sharing their comments or witness testimony.)

A few years back, we had invested heavily in mass quantities of Rubbermaid type containers in an effort to neaten things up. This was a great idea in theory but in reality, we had stuffed a bunch of things that we really didn’t need any more into those containers and stacked them back in there.

This time around, we actually pulled all of those containers back into the house where each and every one will be reviewed and scrutinized before it makes it back out to the garage. We are sick of storing stuff just for the sake of storing it.

By Saturday evening, the garage was quite nice. I could see concrete floor everywhere I looked. What a beautiful site! I had taken a trip to the dump, realizing how amazing it is how much stuff can fit in a van when you take the seats out and we had taken another full load to the D.I. as well.

Of course with the garage now clean, the living room and dining room are stacked floor to ceiling with the Rubbermaid totes I had mentioned earlier. We will spend out free time in the next week weeding through those and hopefully placing a lot less back in the garage then we took out.

On Sunday evening, we did enjoy sorting through some of the things in there bins though. We found photo albums that have not been seen in forever and have also found loads of toys that we are trying not to let the boys spot before we can get rid of them again. We are trying to find the right balance between sentimentality and practicality. At the moment, the scale is leaning very heavily towards practicality. I think we sorted through like five bins yesterday and ended up with only one bin of stuff total that is being kept.

Last night Valerie also had a sad time sorting through Sarah’s old baby clothes that have been packed away for the past 10 years. I think she was a little sad that she only gets to buy boy clothes now and maybe even sadder about the ugly stuff that was available back in the mid-90’s. Winnie the Pooh sweatshirts and acid-washed baby jeans? Yuck. She did pick out a few of the cuter things that meant something to her but the rest were quickly gone.

Deseret Industries better get some shelf space cleared out. We have a lot of stuff on the way.

Heck on Wheels!

2009-01-19T14:00:00.000-08:00

I used to love going skating when I was a little kid. I still remember when I was very little and my family had just moved to Federal Way, WA back in early 1975, we used to frequently go roller skating at an Old-School Federal Way Icon that has long since vanished, the Bavarian themed Federal Way Skate Center...

Unfortunately that was back in the days either before everything was dangerous or people cared about inconveniences like personal safety. Eventually time caught up with the place and someone recognized that idea of having a skating rink on the second floor of a building was fire hazard. Even though there was a possibility of a potentially hilarious fire, the building had to be closed and was eventually demolished.

The next skating rink to spring up in Federal Way was Pattison’s West. I’m not sure exactly when that came to be but that place has been there at least since I was in Junior High School and remains in place today. That was all a long time ago but was I still remember heading there with friends occasionally on a Friday or Saturday night and having a blast either skating or playing Pole Position which, with skates on was no easy task.

It is possible (however unlikely) that I am out of touch but to me it seems that skating since then has kind of gone in an X-Games/In-line direction since then and doing laps in rink is one of those activities like bowling that seems to have faded away somewhat for the kids today (those darned whippersnappers!). There seem to be less and less places to do this.

On occasion however, while visiting the army base to the south of us, Ft. Lewis, with my sister’s family, we will drive past the skating rink that still exists on base there. Last time we were in the area, the kids always looking to get out of shopping, asked if we might take them skating sometime and we promised that we would “next time” we were on base.

That brings us to this past Saturday, when another shopping outing was planned to Ft. Lewis and the kids remembered this promise and asked me to take them to the skating rink while mom went looking at shoes and clothes with the rest of the ladies.

Taking the kids skating was a wonderful idea. The kids had a fantastic time zipping in laps around in circles and good old-fashioned 4-wheel rental skates. Sweet! Then even had skates that fit little Ben and no sooner was the Velcro fastened on his skates then he too took off onto the skate floor.

The skates that Ben used were I guess specially for toddlers since the wheels barely turned or didn’t turn at all. Still though, he happily stomped off in his skates walking like a happy little Herman Munster trying to keep up with his brother, sister and beloved cousin, Michelle. He was so cute in those tiny little skates…

Awwwww!

This was all great right up to the point where I decided to put on some skates myself. I figured it had been what, only like 20 years since I have skated but I could surely still school my own kids.

I quickly learned that the years have been unkind to me. Gravity, like global warming seems to have gotten to be a more serious problem than when I was little. I used to go skating, fall to the floor now while trying some nifty trick or another and spring right back up to take back off again. Now when I fall, it is like someone has cut down a mighty redwood as I come crashing to the ground branches breaking all around.

While kids zip over and all around me, I would lie on the ground doing a damage assessment for several minutes and only get up when I’m sure nothing has broken or dislocated. It was while lying on the floor at one point that I looked around and discovered that I was just about the only one skating over the age of 18. Most parents were content to sit on the benches around the edges of the rink and read books (yawn). Surely I’m not one of them yet.

Momentum also seems to have been a problem for me. I used to be able to stop on a dime. Now I stop when I hit a wall.

The kids too had their share of slips and falls but of course they didn’t care. They just laughed, got up and went around again.

It was really fun to watch the kids living the good life and maybe even live a little vicariously through them as they requested songs from the rink DJ, ate sugary snacks and did the hokey pokey just like it used to be when I was their ages. I know that they had a great time too since when we got home, both Sarah and Joshua requested that their next birthday parties be at the skating rink.

Maybe we will have to consider taking the kids skating a little more often. I’m still not bringing a book though.

NO NO! YES YES!

2009-01-16T09:41:00.000-08:00

Little Benjamin like most other two year olds just loves to be read to. It isn’t uncommon for Ben, when things are winding down for the evening to go to the bookshelf in his room, pick a book out and ask us to read it to him. This is a great way to end the day and it is fun to look at the pictures together and watch him soak up ideas and information. Sometimes though you have to watch out for exactly what is being soaked up.

That brings me to one of Ben’s and my personal favorites in his library, a book called “No No Yes Yes” by Leslie Patricelli. It is a very simple board book with fun simple illustrations showing things that a toddler Ben’s age should be doing and should not be doing. For example No No! to pulling the cat’s tail, Yes Yes! to petting the cat kindly.

On one page we learn of the things a toddler should be doing in the most famous of toddler playgrounds, the toilet. As we see, there are certain things that should be done with a toilet…

… and certain things that should not.

Unfortunately, I think that when we last read this book to Ben he mixed up column “A” with column “B”. He is a repeat offender in this department.

A few weeks ago, the toilet in our kids’ bathroom upstairs suddenly stopped flushing. This is NEVER EVER EVER a good sign. This wasn’t just a clogged toilet; this was an immovably clogged toilet. It was like a cork pushed into the top of a wine bottle and then super-glued in place. We lined the children up for interrogation where Benjamin freely admitted that the reason that the toilet wouldn’t flush is that his duck was in there, just like in his book…

NO NO!

We placed a moratorium on the use of that toilet until it could be fixed. Unfortunately though the moratorium didn’t take. Apparently at some point, some child had come in in the middle of the night at some point and had forgotten that new rule. How can I say this delicately… they dropped a major deuce right into the non-flusher and then let it sit not daring to tell us that it was there until weeks later.

Fast forward to earlier this week. We had Valerie’s cousin Angelina Wilde coming over to stay with us for a day or two while she was in town to take her nursing exams. Valerie insisted that this bathroom be functional again before we had company over. I tried to tell Valerie that cousins don’t count as company but that argument couldn’t gain any traction. It seems there is some unwritten law that when any visitor is coming over to the house, all plumbing must be operating in peak form. It was time to fix the toilet.

Toilet work is never fun and this time it was even worse because of the “present” that had been left behind. Valerie and I donned our bio-hazard suits and I’ll spare you the details of our ordeal at that point. It is enough to say that I may not eat with my bare hands for a several months.

After much work and contortion, this toilet still wasn’t flowing in the least. Next came one of me least favorite things to do. I removed the toilet from the floor. This is always a nasty job since you have to mess with that icky hole in the floor and there is that NASTY wax ring that you need to scrape off and replace every time.

It seems that Mr. Ducky was also well-hidden when approached from the exit of the toilet. I shoved all kinds of stuff up there to see if I could jar him loose but it was of no use.

I decided to take the whole toilet out onto our front porch hoping the neighbors were in bed and there wrestled with it further. I tried shoving a running hose up the backside of the commode hoping that a brisk enema might do the trick. Still nothing.

I hope I remember this night when I’m tempted to drink out of that hose while doing yard work next summer.

The kids really wanted to watch all the fun and excitement but Valerie gave the sage advice “I’d stay away from dad right now if I were you”. That is the best idea I had heard all day. Since Ben was already convicted in this crime and I was getting very willing to punish anyone else in my vicinity for the more serious deuce-dropping offense.

Finally my frustration got to the tipping point where the cost of a new toilet was less than the value of the adventure I was having. The last and my favorite tool in the arsenal was a good old fashioned claw hammer. Goodbye fair toilet…

…and hello Mr. Poo-duck.

That felt much better. I ended up smashing the whole thing into tiny little chunks that could fit into our garbage can and I felt my spirit returning with each blow.

Then it was off to Lowes where I quickly found and purchased a new “Toilet to Go” brand by Crane Plumbing complete toilet kit complete with seat and everything for the kids’ bathroom. It might as well have been called “El-Cheapo “ since I made this selection simply by walking down the aisle until I saw the cheapest possible commode I could buy. I think the lid and seat were made by Tupperware.

By skimping on the toilet, I figured that It would be easier for me to decide to replace it when Zac gets old enough to start flushing his toys. This is now the third toilet that we have used in that bathroom since we have been in our house.

Toilet #1: 1999 – 2001
Toilet #2: 2001 – 2008
Toilet #3: 2008 - ?

Thankfully for the health and safety of our children, the install of “Toilet to Go” went very smoothly and life and it’s by-products are flowing freely once more.