Emily's 10th Birthday!

Emily, our youngest child turned 10 this week, on March 17th - yes, she was born on St. Patrick's Day. She is energetic and socially butterflistic. She never saw a stranger, and is a blessing to all she knows. She loves all physical activities that she has tried, loves all games, and will talk your ear off if you'll let her. She is almost always laughing or crying. She doesn't do well when there is no scheduled activity. Almost every night at the supper table, Emily has two questions; 1) "Can we have ice cream?" and 2)"So, what are we doing tonight?" I always tease her by replying to the second question with the same words every night, "We are doing it - you know, eat supper, then do the dishes, then take baths. Any more questions?"

We took this picture for a particular reason; in Janet's childhood, it was a tradition for the children's birthdays to have an old 8mm (before Super 8!) silent movie of the birthday party, and each year the child (parents did it for the babies) would hold up how many fingers, so that they would always know what year it was. We were remembering that when I took this picture, and asked Emily to hold up her fingers to show that she is ten. I made it sepia, just to look old fashioned, even though those old silent movies were Kodacolor!

Emily loves to have friends, and this year she has gotten acquainted with Amy. When they can be together, they love it, but several times a day they are online - emailing, google-talking (chat session), or on the phone. They each seem good for the other.

On her birthday, our friends, the Cruzes, (only three of them were available), came for supper and birthday cupcakes and ice cream, and of course, energetic game playing.

On March 19th, in honor of Emily's birthday, Amy, her brother Daniel, and Emily's cousins Hadassah, Sarah, and Kwani, along with Jeffrey and Jason went ice skating at an indoor rink near us. They mostly had a great time, though they pulled a few muscles. (Sorry Sarah, we failed to get you in a picture!)

J-M Homeschooler's Sculpture Day in Loveland

March 13, the Johnstown-Milliken Homeschoolers had a Sculpture Field Trip Day. It started at 8 am at Bronze Services in Loveland. It was very interesting to learn what the bronzing process involves from the artist's clay to the finished bronze product. It is quite a complicated procedure! We all have a better understanding of why a bronze statue is so expensive (valuable)! This picture was taken outside of Bronze Services. It is an elephant in progress.

Next we went to George Lundeen's studio. We got to see some of his work on display and were privileged to meet him and learn about his current projects. George is a very kind person to allow our group to interrupt his work. We appreciate all he taught us! This is the group, except for Emily, who took the picture, listening to George. Here George is explaining the use of calipers to us.

George is working on a sculpture of a man and his father.

These pictures were used to create the sculptures.

An example of George Lundeen's sculptures. He specializes in people statues.

These kids were on the early tours: Jeff, Jason, Emily, Celeste, Beth, A.J., Sydney, Brianna, and Blair.

Our friends, Tatiana and Sunshine, with George Lundeen. Tatiana missed getting in the above group picture. After this, we went to the Master's Fine Art Gallery and were joined by 3 other families who had children who were too young to go on the other parts of the field trip. We always enjoy Linda King and her explanations of the art in her gallery, especially her Christian testimony and salvation messages through the art displays. God is honored as Creator and the giver of all creativity and talents! Here Linda is telling the gospel story with the tapestry of Jesus' life.

This was a cute picture of Phoebe and "a new friend!"

This pottery is called Raku. It is a Japanese kind of pottery technique. It is made by Jan Rowen, a potter who lives in Louisville, CO. I had to buy something because of the name of the potter being mine and Rowen's name. She even spells Rowen "correctly" like we do!! The piece I bought is the large bowl in the middle of the table.

Victorian Tea Party

On Wednesday, March 12, we girls were invited to a Victorian Tea Party at Nicole Hinkle's house. We were to dress up as "Victorian" as we could and prepare a pre-1900 prose, poem, or hymn reading to share with the other guests. Our friends, the Nolts, Metiens, and Cross girls were also there. Nicole and Phoebe were our hostesses. We enjoyed various teas, cookies, the visiting, and all the readings. It was a delightful afternoon. The dress Brenda has on was a bridesmaid dress I wore 26 years ago; the dress Beth has on I made 24 years ago!!

Joan's cute hat!

The Cross Sisters: Cheri, Leah, and Erin

Nicole, Renee, and Joan

The smaller girls at the party: Amy, Emily, Jenny, and Phoebe

Erin, Jenny, Phoebe, MaryBeth, and Cheri

Phoebe serving Beth and Brenda, Erin on the left

Phoebe being her own sweet self!

Amy and Emily are really good friends.

Brenda played a hymn on her violin while I accompanied her on the piano.

Puzzling!

We have been working on putting together a few puzzles for a friend of ours who is making a huge project using puzzles. We got the first puzzle done in 2 days, and it was an 1000 piece. We have started two since then - one of animal crackers and one of a garden sort of scene. The animal crackers puzzle has a box, but is just about impossible -we think. The garden one did not come with a box, and we think some pieces are missing. At first the garden one was easy, (the edges especially), but as we continue to work on it, it is kind of puzzling!

A picture of me by the first puzzle right after it was finished: A picture of Mother, Jeff, and I working on the animal cracker puzzle: We gave up on it before completion - it was not "time efficient" for us.
A picture of me working on the garden one (Jason was across the table, working just as hard as me, but somehow he didn't get in the picture). We did not have a box or even a picture of it, so it was really difficult!

Here is the second completed puzzle; it actually had five pieces missing, but Dad Photoshopped them!

The next puzzle is of an old red mill by a river. It is going together lots faster! Check back here to see the result in a few days...

Here it is all done...

Faith Bible School

We were blessed to be able to worship our Lord with the members of the Wesleyan Bible Church in Lakewood, CO as Faith Bible School representatives were there for a school service on Thursday 06-March-2008. School president Lloyd Bley and his wife were the sponsers. The singing was truly glorious! This short clip of a portion of one song, doesn't adequately represent the beautiful singing, but I wanted to share it with you anyway.

Babysitting Lincoln

On Sunday evening, I found out that I was going to get the exciting new challenge of babysitting all day, Monday, (12 hours) for a new family in town. Their little boy, Lincoln, (age 1) needed to be taken care of, while the rest of the family went skiing in the mountains. I hadn't babysat alone before, so it was for the most part a new experience.
It was a long day, (and I was tired at the end of it) but I had fun, and was glad that I had the opportunity to do it. It was nice to be with a baby - since I am an aunt; deprived of being with my own nephew! :)
(This is the promised post of "*Newsflash* This Just In." and the reason I wasn't there to help when the family moved the new refrigerator in.)

Here is a picture of Lincoln drinking his milk.
Lincoln playing -watching and listening to his musical entertainment thingy.Lincoln playing toys.
He looks pretty tired in this picture. I was helping him crawl up and down the stairs. He thought that it was very strange that I was taking all of these pictures of him- especially this one!

*Newsflash* This just in.

Earlier this evening we bought and installed a new (3 year old, slightly used) refrigerator. Mother and Daddy have been looking for a new refrigerator, hoping this would be the year for it to happen. We got our other one when Randy was a tiny baby! That was over 22 years ago. After the installation, Mother said , "I was talking to the Lord the other night about how we needed guidance whether to buy a new refrigerator. ‘The garage refrigerator never gets cold enough in the summer and gets too cold in the winter to use very effectively. It seems sensible to replace the garage one with the indoors one, but we don’t want to use our own sense, but be guided by You, Lord. We don’t want to spend any money that we shouldn’t on this.’"

The very interesting thing about this transaction was the timing today. Daddy said, "I had finished my reports on last Friday’s work, and needed a ten-minute break to clear my mind before starting the new jobs. I checked email, and then went on Craigslist trying to find things that Tim and Brenda might need. The refrigerator ad had JUST been posted. I quickly sent the link to Mother on email. She happened to be online working on a document and noticed a new email had come. She checked the link and called the guy about the refrigerator. He was willing to have us come after work today."

Daddy also said later, "We have space restraints for our refrigerator; it has three walls around it, and a shelf above. We have had our measurements of the hole in mind while looking for a fridge. This refrigerator had the exact measurements! Another wonderful thing is that it has an icemaker! We have never had one!"

It was an amazing sight as the whole family (except Beth, post coming about this) worked to unload the food out of the old fridge, take it out of the hole, wash it, unload the new one from our truck, bring it into the house, wash it, flip the doors from left hinge to right hinge, put it into the hole, plug it in, reload the food, and take the old one outside. All this in about two hours!

We are so blessed to get just what we wanted and needed for half the price! Thank you, Lord!

This is Tim taking the new fridge up the strairs.

Dad and I putting the new fridge into the hole for it.

This is the fridge installed!

Mary Albertson and Gerrie Farrar Visited!

We were privileged to have Rowen's sister Mary, and her co-worker Gerrie Farrar for our evening meal Thursday night, 28-February. They have spent several weeks (since mid-December 2007) here in the U.S. and in Mexico with friends and family. We trust that they will have safe travel this week!

Beth's scrapbook pages

As some of you know I am really enjoying scrapbooking! I would like to share four of my favorite scrapbook pages that I have made. -Beth
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One of the pages of a very special nephew!

This is a page of pictures from Labor Day weekend when Randy and Joy and Quil came to see us. Two friends of Tim's and Bren's were also here.

The next two go together (side-by-side). These pages have the words of CHERISH THE MOMENT (a neat song by Ron Hamilton) hand written on the background. There are family pictures from May '04, Nov. '05, Dec. '06, and Nov. '07. These pages were really fun to do. (Joy gave me these backgrounds and some others for Christmas.)

Jason's new glasses

Pictures of Jason with his new glasses. He always wears them for school or reading and seems to like them ok.
You can see here that Jason is the last of all of us six children to get glasses. Here are those of us that do homeschool daily:

Alia's first tooth pulled!

This is a picture of Cindy and Alia, her daughter. We have babysat Alia since she was 15 months old. Now she is 5 1/2. (Her sister, Kara, was featured on another blog post.) Alia is in kindergarten this year, and got her first loose tooth! On Feb. 19, Janet had the honor of pulling Alia's first baby tooth. You can see Alia was happy about it!