Leahs' drawer

Why do we think our kids need all kinds of expensive toys and things to keep them entertained? There are all kinds of toys for kids of all ages around our house. (Probably due to the fact that there are kids of all ages running around our house!) Our youngest, Leah, plays with (and chews on) a lot of them. Even ones that are meant for older kids. However, her favorite spot to play, and favorite things to play with, are not in her or her sisters room, or are they even toys!

She likes to climb into a drawer in the kitchen and play with all the dishes in it.

Now this drawer contains all the plastic kids bowls, plates, and utensils. They are in that drawer for a reason. It was planned that way as a good distraction for her while mommy is in the kitchen cooking and such. We did that for the other kids when they were little too. It was fun for them to have a drawer that contains items that they will not get in trouble for playing with.

All the other girls were content to just play with the dishes, make a mess on the floor for mommy to clean up and move on. It kept them from getting into drawers that contained more hazardous items. Leah has taken it a step further.

She is not content to just play with the contents of the drawer. She feels the need to get into the drawer with the dishes. The drawer does seem to be strong enough to hold her up at this time, but we will have to watch as she grows.

I was wondering if she just wanted to see what it was like to be a dish in a drawer, but she keeps going back on a regular basis. I sometimes wonder what is going through her mind when she is doing the things she does.

She once tried to use the other drawers as a ladder to get to the counter top. She would have made it, but we spotted her in time to stop her. Something about a 1 year old on top of a counter playing with steak knives, glasses, and who knows what else, did not seem like a good idea at the time.

Now she seems content to just hang out in the drawer playing with all its contents. She does look pretty cute doing it!

Now to all you parents of little kids out there that are thinking, "I'm never letting my kid go eat at there house! That kid is walking and slobbering over all the dishes that they are going to put food on and feed the kids!" don't worry. We almost always wash them before putting them away.

So there is no need to spend any money on all those expensive gadgets and toys that are out there to entertain your children. They can get hours of enjoyment out of simple household items. Now if I can just get the other 3 to be content with stuff like this we would be set!

Sarah is 1096!

That's right, Sarah, our 3rd daughter is 1096 days old today! To all the mathematically challenged out there, that is 3 years! A couple of years ago, Emma came to me and asked how may days old I was. I told her that I was 39 years old. But she asked again, how may days old are you? So I thought I would make a spreadsheet that does that calculation for her. Now she can look at any time and see exactly how many days old everyone in the family is. As of today, I am 14,949 days old! That makes me sound reallllllly old!
But now Sarah is turning 3. We had no worries of forgetting that her birthday was coming, because her older sisters told her it was coming about 2 months ago. So everyday since, she has told us (multiple times per day) that it is her birthday! It is finally here and I just hope that she doesn't keep telling us that it is her birthday once it is passed. If you ask her how old she is, she will hold up 3 fingers and tell you "I this many!"

Cute little thing, isn't she!

First Snow of the Season

The year started off with strange weather patterns, so why should it stop now. We had multiple days of single digit temps at the end of last year. Then, there was no snow all winter long! But, once Spring rolled around we got hit with snow, as my post back in April showed. Then we had an unusually wet June and the first 80 degree day was the latest in the year that it ever happened. Now we are into fall and it seems like it has been normal, but I am not sure I can remember what normal is around here. Then I went up into the mountains on October 25 and found snow already! There was a trace of snow at about 3100 feet elevation. These pictures are from up at about 3600 feet. There was 4 inches of fresh snow on the road.

The leaves are not even all fallen off yet.

Nothing like fresh snow to play in!

Now we have to wait and see what the rest of the fall and winter weather will bring.

Carpenter Mountain Lookout

CARPENTER MOUNTAIN LOOKOUT

Elevation: 5349 feet
Built: 1934, renovated 1995
Trail: 1.0, moderate
Staffing: Currently staffed by McKenzie R.D.
Rental status: non-rental
Geocache: GCGJQR

It was October 23, 2010 and a small crew of adventurous geocachers were taking part in Pablo Macs Mystery Geocache Adventure #1. The mystery was he would not tell us where we were going until the night before. This adventure took us up into the Cascade mountains northeast of Springfield, Oregon in the McKenzie river watershed. Our goal was to hike to the Carpenter Mountain lookout and find the geocache hidden there. This lookout, is situated atop a basalt plug, and offers an impressive view of the McKenzie River Valley and Wolf Rock (an exposed monolith). The Cascade Crest, Mt. Jefferson & Three Fingered Jack, the Three Sisters, and Mt. Washington are also within view from the lookout if the weather decides to let you see them. On this day, we expected to get rained on. Thankfully, although the weather was windy and cold, it did not rain at all during our trek. We parked at the trail head and our GPS receivers showed us being only 0.49 miles from the cache located at the top of the hill. However, the trail wandered around the mountain and covered a little more than 1.25 miles from the trucks to the top. The views from the lookout made the tough hike up the trail worth it. Here are a few of the pictures I was able to get during our trek.

These first few pics are just a couple hundred yards up the trail from the parking area.

Everyone is making it up so far.

Here was one of the first viewpoints along the trail.

Here the trail came out of the trees to cross this meadow.

There is our destination. This is the first spot along the trail that we could see the lookout itself. It looks like we are pretty close.

But, we were not as close as the last pic showed. Now you know what a "Basalt Plug" is. It is that big rock the lookout is sitting on.

A little closer still.

We found it! Our names are on the geocache log. The cache is just below the lookout down where some trees can actually grow and hide it. With that mission accomplished it was time to get up to the very top and enjoy the view.

This was one of the main views that I wanted to see on this hike. This is Wolf Rock. Wolf Rock is recognized as Oregon's largest monolith. This was the plug of an old volcano that has eroded away to the hard core. The rock towers 900 to 1000 feet above the surrounding area. I really wanted to see Wolf Rock from here because last summer, Pablo Mac and I climbed it to find the geocache on the top of it and we could see Carpenter Mountain lookout, as well and many other peaks, from there. I was excited to be able to see where we had climbed from this vantage point.

We spent about 45 minutes up on top at the lookout taking in the views and enjoying all Gods creation. Here is a picture of the crew with Wolf Rock in the background.

I had to throw in a couple more close-ups of Wolf Rock. If you want to get the Wolf Rock geocache, it is right there on that highest point in the middle of this picture!

This is not the route Pablo Mac and I took last year!

This adventure was not a physically challenging as climbing Wolf Rock was, but it was every bit as enjoyable and worth the effort. I had a great time with great friends and am looking forward to our next great adventure.

Sunday Morning Breakfast

Here is our breakfast from last Sunday. There are 2 extra plates because Emma and Riah each had a friend over to spend the night Saturday. (Yep, that meant it was me, my wife and 6 girls in the house for a full day and overnight! As if I am not outnumbered enough already! What was I thinking?)
So I got up and made breakfast for everyone that day. You can use up a lot of food in a hurry when feeding this many people! Here was the menu:

4 cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons baking powder
4 teaspoons sugar
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
pinch of salt
1 cup butter
2 cups milk
(okay, that is the ingredients to the homemade drop biscuits I made. I did not make them eat that list of stuff separately!)
10 scrambled eggs
6 sausage patties chopped and in the eggs
Raspberry jelly
Strawberry jelly

It seemed like a lot of food when making it, but when it was all dished up, it barely fed everyone!
I thought a double batch of biscuits and 10 eggs was enough, but I was still quite hungry afterwards. I guess next time I will cook a little more. I don't know if I can afford all the food it takes to feed all these people around here!

New hair styles!?

Here is what happens when you let your 6 year old make her own hairstyle!

If anyone needs a new do, she is more than willing to help you find a new style!

She works cheap.

Here is another view to show you she does not skimp, but gets all the hair involved.

Even with wild hair like this she is still pretty cute with all those freckles!!

Okay, before you turn me in for being a bad parent, she did this to her hair for a reason. It was crazy hair night at her Awana club meeting and she wanted to have the craziest hair! I did not see the other kids hair, but I am sure this had to be in the top 5. I would say that she would not normally go out in public like this, but she probably would. She does not usually pay much attention to her hair. I am sure that will probably change in the next few years!

Shoes!?!???!!

Okay, I know one of the big stereotypes of women is that they all like shoes. I also know that I am severely outnumbered by people of the female gender in this household.(5 to 1 for those of you who do not know our family.) However, only 1 of those aforementioned females is over the age of nine, one of the others just started walking and wearing shoes, and 1 other spends all her time running around with no shoes because she cannot find any shoes to put on her feet. Then, every time I actually notice what shoes the 6 year old and 9 year old have on, which admittedly does not happen very often because I am not female (yes, I know, another stereotype, it just happens to be true this time), they are wearing the same pair of $10.00 Crocs that they wear everywhere! So you would not think that our family would have a problem with excessive shoes laying around, or even a problem with where to store our shoes.

Well, I wish that were the case! My wife recently told me that it was time to get the boxes of clothes out of the attic so she could put away summer clothes and non-fitting clothes and restock the girls closet with clothes that fit and were for the right season. No problem. Then she said she was also going to have the girls bring out every pair of shoes that existed in the house and go through those as well. Great, sounds good to me! I did not know how many pairs of shoes our girls had accumulated over the last couple years. It does not seem possible. When I got home today, here is what I found in the living room!

There are shoes everywhere!! Big shoes, little shoes, medium shoes, work shoes, play shoes, black shoes, white shoes, running shoes, boots, blue shoes, snow shoes, fuzzy shoes, smooth shoes, flip-flops, crocs, sandals, pink shoes, baby shoes, walking shoes, clean shoes, dirty shoes, shoes with holes, shoes with Velcro, shoes with laces, shoes with buckles, shoes, shoes, none of them my shoes!!! I was going to count them, but I ran out of fingers and I didn't want to take my shoes off to use my toes because I might not ever find my boots again!
I know what you are thinking, "He must have a good paying job to have a wife who stays home with the kids and can still afford all those shoes!" That would not be true though. Most of the shoes have been hand me downs from other families. We do occasionally buy shoes when we need to, but we always look for deals. The scary part is most of the hand-me-downs came from 1 family, from 1 of their daughters!! What does their shoe closet look like!

I think we will be getting rid of a lot of these shoes, since there is not enough days in the year to wear them all, even if each daughter wore a different pair everyday! I think we have plenty of shoes. Maybe I will start a shoe store! Anyone need some shoes for kids? Just don't tell the shoe store, they won't want the competition.

Has it really been that long since my last post?

Where did the time go? It was April since I last posted on my blog, but it does not seem like it was that long ago. Probably because we never really had a summer. My last post was about it snowing in April when it was to be Spring. Normally we would expect to have a couple months of warm and dry weather as a summer. It never showed up and since it has started raining and getting cooler already, I do not think it is going to.

We had a very busy summer, although we did not do half of the things that we thought we were going to do because other things kept coming up. Not that that was all bad. The things that came up were all good, just not what we had planned. The weather was also a deterrent to some of the things we wanted to do.

At our old church in Corvallis, I had always helped on the BBQ team during the summer. It was always a lot of fun cooking burgers and chicken for the body every Sunday. Now we are going to church in Lebanon and as the summer approached, at least according to the calender not the weather, my wife and I were asked to take over the BBQ ministry for the pastor. We accepted and had a whole new BBQ team experience than before. In Corvallis, all I had to do was show up, set up, cook what was here and clean up. Now we had to do all that plus a lot more. We made it through and had a lot of fun doing it. We are looking forward to serving the church in this way every summer.

Only 1 trip to Paisley this summer. Just could never find the time to get away. It was a good relaxing weekend.

Instead of our, what was turning into an annual vacation trip to Sunriver, we took a vacation over the 4th of July, spending a day at Mount Saint Helens, camped 3 days at Rainier NP, then 4 days in the Seattle area. We all had a lot of fun.

We survived all the kids birthdays with only 1 more to go this year. Hard to believe how old and big the girls are getting. Sarah has started talking and Leah is walking/running all over the place, not to mention climbing on everything like a little monkey. Emma has all kinds of big plans for projects all the time, she is quite creative. Riah is always there to help out and wants to do everything Emma does.
Brooke and I were able to get away to a church leadership conference with about 20 others from Lebanon Calvary Chapel in late September. There was great teaching and great fellowship for 2 days. Followed by a late night drive home so I could be back to work at 0630 the next morning.

I know there was a lot of other things that went on or we did since my last post, but it went so fast it is just a big blur and I cannot think of anything else specific to write about.

It is now deer season. I do not plan to put very much effort, or any for that matter, into actually hunting deer. But, I did buy a tag and I put the rifle in the truck every morning when I go to work. I even remembered to grab some bullets after about the 4th day of the season. So if there are any gawkers that happen to step out in front of me when I am out in the woods, I will be ready to put some more meat in the freezer. I am not counting on it though, as I have not seen a buck during deer season is several years! Oh well, I should get an elk in January again.

I think it is time to end this rambling post. Stay tuned, all 1 of you that might actually be reading this, and I will post something more interesting when I get inspired and have time.