Gotcha Day 2012

Gotcha Day

For Gotcha Day (the day when the girls officially were ours, Feb 14) we try to go camping.... well cabining.  We ended up not ever getting to this last year and heard about it ALL year long. So this year we made a point of doing it as close as we could to Gotcha Day.

Torrential rains and heavy winds made us question our sanity.  But everyone had a great time!!

This is where we go cabining, Zions Camp.  Zion's Camp is a church property about 1 1/2 hours away.

We tried the "family cabin" this year.  It was more of a hotel-type feel as they had a kitchen (though no oven :(  ), a bathroom and baseboard heaters.  We are use to making fires to keep warm and cooking in a fire pit.  The jury is still out with me which I like better.

Oh, yeah, they even had toys.

Keith takes a nap.  He has been running ragged with work, the house and chasing kids.

Kristina spent most of her time reading or sitting by the heaters drying her pants.

They have lots of fun outside toys at Zion's Camp.

It's A Lake

Pre-House-- 21 January 2012

Since the concrete people came today I took pictures of the yard yesterday.  Instead of boring you all to tears with a bunch of photos that will be hard to tell where they are taken from, I will take pictures from 5 same spots each time something major is done.  This is my list of spots.  And a beautiful picture by our resident artist, Elijah.

I'll take one or two pictures in each spot and any others that I take I will put after those.  That way if you want to follow the progress you can look at the first pictures and be done.  If you are a glutton for punishment you can continue on and see the rest of the pictures.

Out the back door

From the corner of the house

Sorry for all the junk.  To the left are our water barrels, the right are the drainage pipes we will put in.  The blue buckets we have been using for concrete, rocks and dirt.

From the First Fruit Tree

From the Second Fruit Tree

From Chinook Street

Where Do They Get This Stuff?!?!

I was working on the computer when Elijah yelled from the other room, "Mom, come here, I made something for you."  This is a common occurance with all the kids.  I made my way in there and this is what he gave me.

Can you guess what it is??

Here it is closed.

Elija modelling it.

It is a makeup compact.  I don't even own one of these.  Where did he get the idea?  I spent a couple days putting on lipstick for him.  :)

Snowmaggedon 2012

The kids just get settled back in school and along comes SNOWMAGGEDON 2012!!

Of course, everything shuts down here when there is snow as the infrastructure isn't able to handle snow.  Because we usually only have one good snowfall a year and it usually only lasts a day or two, it is easy to understand why towns and counties don't fork out money and space to store more equipment.

Besides. it is nice to have some more time home with the kids and Keith!

The first day was hardly over a skiff.  But the kids had fun anyway and spent most of the day outside.

Jonas (and various others at different times) filled wheelbarrow loads of snow to haul where he needed it to make a fort.

Alina's snowman, before he fell victim to a snowball fight.

Luckily, we had some ready made hills that are versatile and double as snow runs.

Tessa loved the snow.  She explored it all over, sniffed it and licked it.  Then came in and shivered for an hour and a half.

But then we got dumped on, Big time.    Over night it snowed 12 inches.  That is the most snow I've seen here, ever.

Alina's snow dog.

Luckily, we have our supply of hot chocolate and Keith worked from home.  We hunkered down and sat by the fire.  Ok, I did, mostly.  The kids spent a lot of time outside.  Getting cold and wet and then coming in to have hot chocolate or warm up near the fire.

Jonas made himself a snow shield with gold duct tape.

Miriam making a square snowman for Ryah.  Ryah was not to excited about the snow...

well, she was excited, until she went out into it. She spent most of her time indoors.

This is clean compared to what it usually was.  Usually there was more boots, coats, gloves, socks and snow. 

But that is ok, I can deal with a little extra cleaning to have my kids home.

Loved the extra week off to spend with my kids and Keith!!