Phew I have a organized house again!

Its been months since I knew where everything was.

Oh there's nooks and crannys that need tweaking, but the tweaking is something I do about every 6 months.  I need to re-go through the videos and get rid of what we will never watch again, and the same thing with the books.

But other then that I can walk into my closet. And I know where every piece of fabric and yarn and scrapbooking stuff that I own is.  I have a very dedicated crafting and school corner.  And it feels so good.

I even *gasp* have some empty spots for stuff as the need comes which I'm sure it will sooner then later.  LOL

I know I should post pictures.  But I'm exhausted.  LOL  So maybe I'll get up and take some tomorrow.

Or the day after.  *snicker*

Okies, so getting 8 people to cooperate with a camera...never easy.

Ironically this year I ruined two of the shots.  LOL

Sam is weird in everyone (not hardly shocking), Jamari ruined one, Rainee ruined one, Jeremiah ruined one. 

HMMM KK, Rob and Zeria are apparently saints.  *snigger*

That being said

Happy Easter from the Signor family.

Because he lives I can face tomorrow...and today.

Yesterday was a busy day.

In the morning we went for a hike, one I'd been wanting to do for several weeks.  This trail abutts our property at the ending.  But we started at the top where Rob drove and dropped us off.  He then drove around to the other end and hiked up to meet us.  The trail is about a mile mostly down-hill.   This way we didn't have to hike up.   

And yeah it sounds lazy to not just hike home.  But theres a rather full river with no bridge between us and home.  As well as no easy straight trail.  Even if we could hear our dogs bark from home.  *snicker*

Anyhow here's my grown up daughter.

My daughter that loves making a statement.

We were about 1/2 way done the hike maybe more and we'd lost sight of several of the kids.  We just assumed they'd made it to the car ahead of us.  We walked under this big log, and Zeria turned around to look at something and shriekd. 

This is what she saw.  *snicker*

Samuel had done a very very good job of hiding.  He was actually up at the edge of the log where we couldn't see him.  And stayed remarkably quiet when we passed him.

And some rather beautiful skunk cabbage we spotted.

And one of the very mossy trees.  Everything around here grows moss--even the telephone pole wires.

When we got home Rob spent the afternoon rebuilding a book-shelf, and drywalling the girls second bedroom door shut.  I don't have a picture of that, but it looks so nice.  The day before he did me a second set of shelves for my office area.  It also looks AMAZING!  When I get everything stocked I'll have to take pictures.

After that was done we colored our easter eggs.

Okay I was being weird--and I cut half of my hair off after that picture.  LOL

Look at that tongue hanging out.  Decorating eggs is SERIOUS business.

And miss Rainee who cheezes every time she sees a camera.

Busy busy day yesterday.

I did my bi-monthly grocery shopping, and a eye doctors appointment for Jeremiah.

Jeremiah was a major hoot all day long as it was just the two of us.  And he very very rarely stopped talking the whole day.

After the grocerys were unloaded and put away Rob and I headed off for our date night, and just before we pulled into the restaurant I spotted something in the water.

If you look closely theres two.  One is right next to the pillar in the water.

After dinner we decided to walk down to the breakwater and see if he was still there, he was, he had a partner.  (the second fellow)

But I found this first.

Isn't that pretty?

Any how originally we thought the sea otters were gone, but then as we got to the end of the wee harbor we found them.  They swam in the water for a long time.  We watched them eat something, and then eventually get up on the rocks and play.

By the way all of the pictures of the sea otters are taken from about 100 feet away with the telephoto at max.  That being said I was rather impressed that they came out as good as they did.

In other more silly news.  The night before we found a very vicious sort of wild-life in our river.  *snicker*

Yeah who knew that a peak-a-pom cross would like to swim.   He wanted to go with our alpha dog ricky whose 10 years old, and loves to explore.  So he did.  He swam across the river twice!  He loved it.  *silly silly dog*

So we wanted to move because.

~~Isolation

~~Lack of things for the kids to do

We chose to stay because;

~~We have 22.5 beautiful acres to live in the new spot we would have been able to *only* get 2.5 and the house would have been a piece of CRAP which would have meant several years of intense handy-man stuff in order to get it liveable.

~~We currently only have on car due to the fact that Rob is 3 miles from work--if we moved the closest house in our price range was 20 miles away.  Thus we would have to take a second car payment. 

~~We would have had to mortgage this for every penny in order to get the down--not wise in this economy.  We would have had to finish our list of handy man projects here, as well as in the new house.

~~We would have taken a pay cut due to Rob loosing his night shift differential--not good considering the added car payment, and double house mortgage.

~~We would have left our ministry of Rob preaching at this wee church, something he did NOT want to give up at all.

~~We would have had to leave our ministry to a widow in the community that we don't talk about, but means a lot to her.

~~The road that was causing some of the isolation has been fixed.

~~Staying here leaves us with considerable less debt.

~~In regards to where I want to live when I get old its here.  Its the future for my kids I worried about.

~~Next year (this fall)  Zeria and Sam will be eligible to play junior high sports--if we let them, so they have something to do with kids there age.  So the worry about providing them with stuff to do is disappearing. 

~~I hate packing, and I do all of it.  Rob will load it in the car, but I had to do it all.  I had to do all the painting, and the sanding, and ugh.  And then we'd have to do it all over in the new house.  Because what we could afford was a MAJOR fixer.  MAJOR.

~~I'd rather spend time with my family then do fix-it projects for the next 3 years.   

~~We are going to begin now putting money aside so we can afford a weekend trip to the sunshine when we get the gray skies are crap feeling.

I could go on, but you get the gist.  The pros for staying won.

Also...in three years Rob's boss will retire and Rob is slated for that job.   In two years Rob will be number one in senority in the prison as the other two nurses will retire.  Job security and senority are good.

Shelton he would have been on the bottom of the heap again.

In this economy that is not a good place to be. 

You know home looks better and better.

Rob and I have made a joint decision to not make change.

There are reasons for it, and reasons not to do it.

When it comes down to it financially staying here is smarter.

Sanity wise the stress of getting this place ready to sell or rent is insane.

And the road was fixed so were not nearly as stranded as we were.

I don't know we were just so ambivelant about the whole thing, now I know I'm quite happy right where I'm at.

Oh I'll complain bitterly in the wintertime, but winter goes away, and life moves on. 

HMMM  I think my head is spinning.

Okay I know my head is spinning!!!!!!!!!

My sister called early this morning to tell me my 16 very very soon to be 17 year old sister was in labor.

My mom called about 12:30 to tell me that it was a girl 6 pounds something.

I called my sister, my dad and then my husband to tell the news.

My husband asked me if I was sitting down--never a good question.  *snicker*

I was afraid he was going to tell me the prison was shutting down--they *are* shutting down McNeil Island in Washington.

But nope.  He was calling to tell me that Shelton called and wants to interview him on THURSDAY!

*shrieks*

Breathes.

Okay so if they hire him (which is mostly for sure)  He will start May 1st.

Its kind of funny because we had both rather decided it wasn't happening, and now I'm back to looking at houses.

The sad news is the BIG house is sold.  But I do believe God has a plan, and if this is his plan, maybe that house wasn't out of the flood zone like we were told, or there were more problems with it, etc.

So...we shall see.

I'll keep you posted.

Woo if you look outside we just might be getting day four of spring!  Its shocking, and hard to believe. 

*cheers*

We spent most of yesterday after church outside.  Two hours at the beach, an hour at the river, some time in our yard.  We all got little red rosy cheeks from the sun.  It was sooooooooo nice.

We hadn't seen the sun since October, so trust me when I say we are soaking it up!

No pictures.  *sniff, sniff*  As my camera is still missing, and KK's is out of batterys. 

Samuel found something he's very good at--that is productive.  I had my every spring battle with the himalaya's that take over my yard.  These nasty blackberrys grow everywhere.  They were quite literally up to the height of the eves on my roof behind my lilacs.  And they are ALL gone now.

Samuel pruned them down, chopped them up, and so on until every last one was beaten into submission.  Its a temporary thing as I'm sure they'll come back, but it looks so nice right now having them gone,  and better yet I didn't have to do it.  And he *volunteered* to do it, and stuck with it!  *yeah*

So now I need to decide what to do with my yard.  The two  closest flower gardens are easily maintainable.  The others are just sad, and continue to be sad.  I dismantled one small one and let the lawn have it back.  The other I really want to maintain, but its a lot of work, and it always looks AWFUL by July.  But its got a big huge stump in it that also looks awful, so I'm rather torn as to what to do.  I keep looking at it, and contemplating what to do.  No ideas yet.  

Rob finished replacing all of the skirting under our house which makes our house look MUCH bettter, and will stop the two big dogs from tearing up the place down there.   Its so nice to have that done as well

We went on our first spring adventure.  We had sunshine.  And we weren't sick!  It was necessary.  Its the second day we've seen sunshine since umm October. 

Anyhow we have been wanting to find the towns very old and lost grave yard.  After two and a half hours of searching in the woods.  Its still Lost.    But we had fun.  *snicker*

Its abutts our property which is why we're so curious.  Sides its fun to play archeologist some days.  We had a map, and some gps coordinates.  And it didn't work.

We came back home, ran into the man who had originally told us about it.  He gave us new directions.  We ate lunch, and tried again.  Still no go.  Ahh well, it was fun.

So pictures.  I'm using KK's camera.  Which isn't nearly as nice as mine.  But mine is in Olympia.  At least I'm desperately hoping that's where it is, because otherwise it was stolen out of my car while we were in Aberdeen.  I'm waiting for a email from the coach.  But she's busy, and has horrible email manners, so it  could be a couple days before I know for sure.  *growl*

Anyhow  at one point some of us were *DONE*  We'd scrambled straight up a very steep hill (pictures of that later)  So we crashed and told the others to go further and see if they could find something.  They went fur...and got losted.  *snicker*  So we entertained ourselves longer then originally intended and ended up building a fort while waiting.  hehe

I found this little pixie peering at me around an alder tree....I think we might have to keep her!

And here's our fort.  My pictures of it didn't come out totally great, but hopefully you get the point. 

So that's the angle from the "door" of the tent.  We used a tree as a brace, and a whole bunch of dead but straight alder branches as "walls"

And here they are inside it.

And the view looking up.  The trees we rested in are rather pathetic alders that are less then 15 years old.  But still pretty in the blue sky.

The losted peoples, made there way back to the main trail, which they knew where it was.  And then headed back towards the car.  And then started hollering to find us on the not so trail that they'd been on.  It was we've been told since the original wagon trail into Clallam Bay.  Its just barely a trail.  BARELY.  My dad would have been proud of us, he loved taking us on those kinds of trails.  *snicker*

After the losted were found, we had to go back down the steep steep hill we'd gone up.  We abandoned the "trail"  and just went straight down.  I loved this big mossy stump about half way down and took several pictures of it by itself, and then decided it needed a model.  So Jeremiah was volunteered, and when he got on he discovered a blue jay feather.  Major score!    Don't you love the joy on his face?

About half way down our cliff Zeria and I declared break time.  She went up the cliff twice thanks to there misadventure, so she was rather dead.  LOL

Eventually we made it down.  Okay so I did some sliding on my bottom and my pants will never be the same.  *snicker*

We walked on the main trail back to the car, and our kids managed a first.  They successfully hid from us, and actually startled Rob.  Three of them hid behind a cement barrier, and Samuel hid

way back up on the cliff/  gives you a good impression of what we climbed huh?  And that's just a very small part of what we went up.  LOL

And just to prove it *is* spring the girls found these just before we got back to the car. 

~~~~~~~~~~~

In other intresting tidbits.  Rob and I went on a date night, and after dinner decided to go for a drive.  As we drove by the Rock a huge rock that is the towns graffiti spot.  Its not a no-no- graffiti spot it is truely available to spray paint happy birthday, or I love so and so.  Its kind of fun to read.  But yesterdays graffiti was truely offensive and had been visited by a gang on vacation.

It had in HUGE words White Power.   I was not impressed.  So we detoured to a friends house who keeps spray paint for the purpose of removing any foul words placed on it, we borrowed it and did our own graffiti.  Its the first time I've spray painted that rock.  It now has a lovely brown shamrock on it.  In place of the very offensive words.