It's My Birthday!

I'm not ashamed, I turned 33 today! I got to decide what we were going to do today. After seeing the forecast for 80 degrees on the coast, I thought it would be fun to be on the coast for some great weather. Well, I forgot to finish checking the weather online before we packed up the kids and left. We got to Newport and it was only 57 degrees! I should have known that this would happen. The kids were sleeping so we kept driving North in case it would be warmer, not so much, maybe 60 in Lincoln City. We went out on the beach and flew Maija's kite and dug trenches and Anika buried herself up to her tummy. We had a nice time it was just a bit chilly. We went to Mo's for dinner, of course, we ordered the clam chowder and home baked bread, yumm! I can't find my camera so I don't have any pictures. I'll try to post some when Mark gets his downloaded.

This morning started off with a quick visit from my cousin Sherilyn and her two children, Joshua and Eva. They came down to see Grandpa's and other family in the area. I wish I could have visited longer but this day was cram packed. I did get a picture of Eva, 4months and Jakob, 5months.



Mark worked early this morning after a very late night last night and then had the middle of the day off. We have had a BBQ scheduled for this day for a few weeks so he was able to be home to get ready for that. He actually had to go back to work before everyone left.

My great uncle Dave Krabill passed away on Tuesday and his funeral was today too. I took all the kids with me, Anika was so tired that she fell asleep singing in my mom's arms. He was my grandpa's last living sibling, so that generation is now gone. My grandpa and Dave married sisters so this makes me double related to all the family, yikes! I was thinking about it all this morning how it's the first stem of my family tree (of family I am able to remember, if that makes sense) to be completely gone and probably one of the last times that all this family is together even if there is a reunion sometime down the road. Dave had 42 grandchildren, 8 step grandchildren, 35 great-grandchildren, 26 step great-grandchildren and 25 step great-great grandchildren. That's a total of 135!!! As one of his grandchildren noted in the service, "He obeyed God's command to go forth and multiply."

Cider Making & Tea Party

Today the kids and I went to Grandpa & Grandma Gerig's to help make cider using all their excess apples. I don't know how many buckets we worked up but lets just say I felt like applesauce when we were done. It was a lot of fun. I think we got about 9 gallons of cider.

Now on to the tea party, Maija & Anika wanted to have a tea party yesterday so I promised that we would today (I had forgotton about the cider event). So tonight when we got home from making cider Maija reminded me about the tea party. She went out and picked blackberries for her party. I had some cookie dough in the fridge so after dinner I made some mini cookies. She was so excited, she invited her cousin Sharolyn over and they all went out to the playhouse and had a tea party. It's so nice that Mark wired the electricity out there because now they can play into the evening.

The Weekend

On Saturday we left for Clatskanie at about 9pm and got there around 11:30. Maija didn't sleep a wink the whole way and we were privileged to listen to kids music for 2 1/2 hours or there about. We were in Clatskanie overnight and went to Carol's for dinner after church. Oh, that was an interesting drive. We headed to the Lewis and Clark bridge over the Columbia and quickly noticed that it was going to be a longer drive than usual. Due to some scheduled construction, the line of cars crossing the bridge was more than a mile long and our once 20-30 minute drive took us 58 minutes, can you tell I had plenty of time to keep track of our progress. We left around 8:30pm and were home around 11. It was a pretty quick trip.






This is Jakob Wearing the same outfit and shoes that my brother, Ryan wore for his baby dedication in 1978.

Our Family

June 2008

















Maija, 4 & Anika, 2 at Clear Lake - August 2008


















Jakob - 4 months

He was 26 1/4" long 9/3/08
the carrot was 14" long.