Bring it on!

That’s what I’m talkin’ about! My youngest child is already portraying characteristics of Christ… Bare buns and all… One of the most important things to teach your child is how to serve. “Am I right or am I right? Right? Right?” (Movie?) Seriously, though, if people are prepared to serve others no matter what then everything else will work itself out!

How proud can a mother be when her own child willingly washes the dishes? I’m so proud I’m going to write her a sweet little poem.

Oh, darling dearest,
Bring it on!
You asked to wash my dishes
And I say, “Bring it on!”

You started out so selfish
Oh, darling, bring it on!
All you wanted was milk from my breasts
And again I said, “Bring it on!”

Then you got a little bigger and brought sunshine into my day
Bring it on. Bring it on!
You learned to speak and bless our souls
Darling dearest, bring it on!

And now I witness you scrubbing so hard
Oh, baby, bring it on!
Sending water all over the place
I’ll live, so bring it on!


Be like Jesus. Wash my dishes!

Some Important Information

I just wanted to make sure that I do my best at keeping everyone in the loop about what is going on in our lives... Just two things at the moment that I thought I should share with you.
1. Izzy has now come to understand the intense problem Emma has. We knew it was not good but today in the car Izzy broke Emma off and said,"Emma, don't lie!" Yikes!
2. Aiden has decided to switch career paths. Instead of being a superhero, rescue hero, spiderman, a firefighter, and a preacher he has decided to be a bear hunter! He's gonna eat the bears and the chicken inside the bears! Good luck with that!

Maybe his cousin Cal can teach him a few things...

As long as he can differentiate his sister from a bear, we'll be in good shape!

Our unique and smokey evening

Well... Last night we had to evacuate our house. We had a small thunder and lightening storm and it caught someone's land on fire nearby. We saw it smoking for a while in the distance but it got way big and there was tons of wind. That's never good. We've got it on video tape, so that's good. It was quite a strange feeling needing to take into account what we should take with us. I thought we were going to have time to pack a few sets of clothing for everybody but that wasn't the case. I ended up grabbing an extra pair of undies for myself and a set of clothes for each of the kids, toiletries which were still kind of packed up already and I managed to remember shoes for everyone. We grabbed all our pictures and our important documents, blankies and some random pillows along with Ben's laptop. That was it. Unfortunately, for Aaron and Chelan, we forgot about our bird who would have been fried, so that's sad. Anyways, we loaded into the car and started driving. Emma asked us where we were going to go and we had no clue. We thought about folks in Abilene we could stay with but was that overkill driving an hour away? We ended up pulling up to Jack and Johnnie's and knocked on the door... "We can't stay at our house...", We said. They invited us in and we hung out for a little while. Jack felt confident that it wouldn't get close to our house because the wind had died down so Ben felt like going back to the house until we really, really needed to leave. One of our neighbors were the one's who advised us to head out and Ben thought maybe we could just wait for the policemen to kick us out... we loaded into the car and back towards our house only to be stopped by a police road block which answered our questions! We stayed the night at the Lusk's and prayed for the best. We took the kids to school in the morning and headed back to our humble abode. It looked just as we left it, thankfully, and there was no remnant of fire anywhere hear our house. The crazy thing is that I drove around to see exactly where it spread and it is so much further away than it looked. We could see so much firey blazes that I can't understand how it was where it was. There is probably fire areas that I can't see from the road which might explain something... That was a first for all of us and I hope we get some rain soon...( Nobone elses houses were damaged. Emma did say that one of her friend's cows got burned up... That's sad) I cleaned a lot at the house today and put back all our picture so that's good...

A Nice Update

Well, this weekend was a nice one. We picked Emma up from school a little early and picked Aiden up from school and headed to Dallas. Ron was in town visiting Bryan and Tracey before they head to Africa next week so it was a great time to make one more trip to visit everyone. Emma and Graham have a great time being together. They laugh almost all the time. I'm pretty sure they were close to #1 on each other's summer highlights lists. We have really enjoyed getting to hang out with Bryan and Tracey and are so glad that we have been nearby during this furlough. We took the kids to a park near Bryan and Tracey's home to fish in a nice creek/pond/fountainy area (That's Bryan, his youngest son Owen, and Izzy in the picture above). I got the kids little kid fishing poles last month and this was our first experience using them with hooks on them. It worked out and nobody got hooked. Unfortunately, Isaac got a little wet when he fell in, but he survived which was good. We caught a lot of little fishies that we tossed back in. Izzy caught at least two. Most everyone caught at least one. It was very fun!

On Sunday, Ben threw up while preparing to speak and ended up having to stay home. I decided not to worry about taking my children to bible class where I would have to teach them and we ended up just going for worship. As I was putting the kids in the car another car drove into our driveway. Krista and Jason Hill popped up! I was like,"what the...?" Well, something like that... It was crazy! They popped in to see barfy Ben and then they came to church with kids and me (which they had already attended the previous hour for a bible class that Ben did not teach). Don't you see how this blogmunity ties us together? Those crazy kids thought, "Hey, we're in Abilene. Ben and Jen couldn't be too far. Surely we could find Sidney." And they did. We got to go to lunch together at Aaron Metcalf's favorite restaurant that just opened back up while Ben had toast at home. Needless to say, my weekend had a few more highlights than his...
For those of you who noticed, I bypassed the F.F.F.F. on Friday. Screw it. I blogged less once I started having to post every Friday, so I think it's in everyone's best interests that I talk about my friends on any day I please! I'll talk about you. Don't worry. It just might be on a Monday!

Out of Place

Here are some things that are just out of place. Why does the wheel chair-accessible bathroom stall at my church building have a power outlet? Is some person in a wheel chair going to need to blow dry their hair before church or something? What's up with that? My house in Gresham had two bathrooms. One had a single outlet and the other had absolutely none. I guess you know what I'll be looking out for in my next house purchase! In this house we have ceiling fans which is awesome. I do not dis ceiling fans like they do on Trading Spaces! However, they must have been an afterthought because we have ceiling light fixtures and a separate ceiling fan. Do you know what that means? Disco dance! That's right. A built-in strobe light! I wonder if anyone would want to come over for a dance party...
I have been looking forward to helping my children learn how to ride a two wheeler. I thought that since we wouldn't be living on the busy street that we used to live on I would have a better chance of my kids not getting hit by a car, or at least not running into a parked car (Ryan). Nope. who wants to ride a bike or run next to one when it's freakin' hot outside? Bikes don't belong here. Why even sell them? And besides, our bikes were in the back and the street was in the front... Inconvenient! Now I live on another freakin' gravel road. My kids are going to be retarded, I think. they're never going to learn how to ride a bike and they're never going to learn how to swim. I'm a bad parent. That's what it comes down to. At least Emma can go under water without plugging her nose... Good luck with that.

A little show and tell

I have found much enjoyment taking pictures in the last few years. I don't find it necessary to take my kids into Walmart anymore... I just thought I'd share some of the ones I've taken over the years. Each post can only have five pictures each for some reason so I posted thrice. Hope you enjoy them.





Isn't that duck scary?

Here's some more...

I did take pictures of all my children but it is a pain to have two computers with different programs and different pictures... I do have great ones of Aiden... and of Izzy...

...and last but not least

I intended for these pictures to go first so it could be more sequential but I obviously didn't know enough to do that right!





Thanks for lookin'. Peace out!

F.F.F.F. is out the window this week... How 'bout life?

Forget it. Friday's past. I'm posting something else. I wasted a lot of time trying to find a picture and I couldn't find one. Forget it!

Emma starts first grade tomorrow and she is really excited. She's gotten some new clothes, a new hair cut, and new teeth since last she stepped through school doors. Her new teacher goes to our church which is fun and so does her bus driver. This will be her first time riding the bus and she is very happy! Thankfully here it doesn't matter how close you live to the school, you can still ride the bus! I dig it!

Aiden starts pre-school on Thursday! I am making my son an honest man! (At least in this particular area. He still tries to steal things from everywhere but we're continuing to show him the path he should take...) He is very excited and I am very excited for him. He got a real cool nap bag for nap times that has a cool frog pillow. He also got some new clothes. We get to go to his school tomorrow night to see his classroom and we get to eat dinner there. He thinks that is very cool.

Izzy has taken the initiative to use the toilet and has been doing a pretty fantastic job. It's fun that she's about to be the only one at home with me. I am happy for her. She's talking really well but is definately not the chatterbox that Ella Metcalf is. I'll have to figure out how to put a sound clip on here so everyone can hear her smoker voice. It's hillarious.

Well, for all you out there that this will affect, the kids and I will not be coming to Portland. We are doing our best, though, to save up for a great vacation next summer to P-town and disneyland as well. I will only be able to see the Vartanian and Metcalf babies via pictures and it breaks my heart but thus is life sometimes...

I hope God is blessing all of you. May you look for opportunties to show Jesus and learn the comfort of being inconvienced, at times, and maybe uncomfortable. I will try to do the same...

Julia Gulia (A Friday Night Special)

This post is for my good friend Julia who thought I should write about a friend who actually exists...

I met Julia last year when Chelan and I went to MOPS together and we all sat at the same table for the year. Since then we have both volunteered to help coordinate the MOPS program with other women for this year.

Hanging out with Julia is almost like being in heaven. Don't get me wrong. The other friends I have are amazing but I have not had one such as Julia. I'm pretty sure she would not call me a scrapbooking natzi because she is in her own right a natzi herself. OH, it's divine. We get together to work on a project and she says isn't that centered? I say no and she says you're right and we love each other all the more. We've spent five minutes arguing over what color paper to print with and we think it's fun.

I will say it is a lot easier for her anal retentiveness to be present because she cares for not three, not two, but uno childo! Let's trade kids for a week and see how she handles that chaos! Booyah back to ya! It's kind of funny to see how she handles my children's volume problems... She didn't think of Braden, her son, as quiet until today!

I'm thankful for Julia. And for all you who haven't met her, she really does exist... Chelan can vouch for me. By the way, this picture is of her and her husband, Mason, but I'm not sure he exists... I did talk to some male on the phone once... Maybe that was him! I'm sure I'll meet him soon. Those air force guys are always flying somewhere...

The superhero power I would wish for Julia would be Major Multitasker Mama. She could do amazing things if only she could do more than one thing at a time! Peace out!

KIP?(It's F.F.F.F.)(That stands for Friday Fun For Friends)

Do you see the resemblance? This is our good friend. Some like to call him Kip. We like to call him Adam.

Adam is a great friend. He'll throw a ball with you (which I enjoy, of course). He'll go on a hike, run around the block, play a little baseball, eat food with you, watch t.v., get your kids really wound up, talk a while, or even do your dishes... what else is there? Besides the fact that he's on Ben's Top Funniest People List, he knows how to be serious, too.

Adam is also on a list as one of the few men I've lived with in my life, which also includes my father, my husband, and the infamous Chris McPeak. Both Adam and Chris lived with us at different times throughout our eight years of marriage. Not the whole eight years just a bit of it! So Adam lived in our garage(we stuck a bed out there for him) and sat on our couches but he also paid for cable which was nice...

Unfortunately, just as we abandoned the state he lived in, he has now abandoned the country we live in. A long distance phone call costs a little bit more now... I guess it doesn't matter too much when you don't call Uganda... We got to see him last month which was a lot of fun. He restled with the kids and we got to all sit outside on the porch like old times. It was fun. He's fun. Go, Adam, Go.

Adam, the superhero power I would wish for you is being like The Iceman on The Incredibles 'cause it's hot there in Uganda and people might really like some ice. You could also help keep food cold when you have no power and then you wouldn't have to shop as much. Or at least your servants wouldn't have to shop as much...

Keep baptizing Ugandans, dude!

Date Night

First off, for those of you who have missed previous posts you really ought to go back and check them out. I could have written about you...
Now for the rest of my viewers... Ben and I get to go on a date tonight without having to pay for babysitting. Actually, since we've moved to a town with 95 people we've actually never had to pay for babysitting. The folks here are really great and always willing to help out. So last night I was preparing the kids for our date night so they wouldn't whine and cry when it was time for Ben and I to go to a movie without them. They were very kind but Aiden replied with,"You just went on a date!"
"When did we go on a date?" I asked.
"On your Honeymoon! Are you guys gonna kiss on your date?"
"Oh yeah! "
"Gross!"
"We kiss at home too, ya know."
"Oh that's gross. Every time you kiss I'm gonna hide!"

We haven't seen Aiden since last night! He is going to have a rough life, poor soul!
I'd like to write more but I am on my way to dinner, a movie, and some makin' out!