Its pretty outside.  But it is NOT warm.

I'm sitting here waiting for a call from my mom.  I'm supposed to be meeting my sister today to take her senior pictures, but I don't know what time.  *growl*

Ahh well it will work out.

I forgot to blog one of the funnies of our trip, and I want it for posterity. 

At the water falls on the way to Mount Saint Helens there was lots of lava rock.  The kids each picked a small piece to take home--not in the park yet LOL. 

They were talking about it in the car and Jeremiah said he wanted to open it up and see the inside.

Kaylin said.  "Be careful Jeremiah you crack it open and your going to burn yourself with hot laval."

She was teasing.

For the REST of the day about every 5 minutes Jeremiah worriedly asked us if he was gonna get burnt from the hot lava.

*Snort*

 

Twas a busy weekend, but we actually had a lot of fun, and paced ourselves so we didn't wear out and get exhausted.   We left the house about 8:30 on Friday morning after a relaxed breaky and Rob quickly washing the breaky dishes.

Our first stop was at Pillar Point for a bathroom stop.  And yeah that's less then 25 minutes from home.  So sue us.  *snicker*

I was in love with the sun beams on the water, and had to snap a few pictures.  This one being my favorite.

Our second stop was at Sequim Bay state park.  A respectable 2 hours from home, and about our average stop time.

The wild flowers around the bathrooms were gorgeous.  I snapped about 30, but will rather nicely only share my favorite 2.  I keep working to get a truely beautiful shot of the trillium my favorite flower.  I'm thinking I'm close to content with the above one.  *grin*

The pink one is a red current bush. 

Rob took the kids into the tunnel that goes under the highway--because what kid can resist a tunnel or cave.  And then we were on the road again.  Our next stop was a park just before Silverdale.

We ate lunch there, and the kids enjoyed playing in the playground.  From there we headed through Bremerton, and Tacoma and then reached our main goal for the day the Nisqually bird sanctuary.  We love visiting this place, and Rob had put in a request to go this weekend.

We hiked the mile loop, and found lots of cool things to look at.  We had a good laugh because we found a turtle--possibly even the same turtle on the EXACT same rock we found him a year ago when we were there.

In the same spot we found this super mongous frog.  The picture does not do its size justice, but I was very pleased with how the picture turned out as it was taken with my zoom on full and it was quite a ways away.

We also saw at least 3 Canadian goose nests, this one being the one we watched the longest.  We even got to see her eggs when she got up and checked them and then headed for a swim.

Back into the car we headed to Kelso our final destination for the night.  Its about an hour and a half past the bird sanctuary.  We got there about 3:30'ish I guess.   We were irritated however because we assumed since its the off-season we could just check into the Super 8.  We couldn't.  Three motels later we found one that had double queen beds in 2 rooms available.  *growl*  I know better then to wing it.  *dumb, dumb, dumb*  We also were frustrated because it didn't have a pool, a vital part of the plan for the weekend, but the kids got over that, and were mostly understanding--as understanding as kids who have been promised something and don't get it can be.

Friday night I spent in putting Zeria's hair in corn-rows.   It turned out very well.  Her hair is finally long enough to do it again which we are both excited about. 

Saturday was our baton meet.

And once again I was so busy watching I took only 2 pictures.  *growl*

We got back to our motel about 3 at which point Rob and I took a nap while the kids watched tv.  When we woke up we had some lovely san francisco style bread and deli meat for dinner.

Rob got restless and decided to go take the kids to a nearby park while I enjoyed a few quiet minutes in the motel, and then it was bedtime for kids.

Sunday morning we woke up and packed up and headed to KK's birthday outing a trip to Mt Saint Helens.  And God blessed us with LOVELY views of it, something which we had warned her might not happen.

Instead it was the hottest day we had all year.  It was rather bizaare up in the mountains.  70 degrees standing on top of 3 feet of snow. 

But first we stopped at a very pretty water fall about half way up to our destination.

Sunday btw was Rainee's birthday.  So the dress she's sporting is the one I made her.  I have a better picture of her in it in a bit.

We couldn't get all the way up to the Johnston observation tower, but we knew that from the outset.  We were quite happy with how high we got.  And we've not stemmed KK's love of volcanoes.  She just wants to see more now!  Gotta love unschooling.

Any how here she is at our highest spot we could get to.

Yes that's the volcano in the background.  Its prettier in the winter time.  IT covers up the devastation. 

And a close up of the mountain.

After we came down off the mountain we stopped at the visitors center at the bottom that was now open--we'd planned our day this way.  We walked around the very well done exhibits.  We'd stopped here once when KK was 3 months old, so we knew she would like it.  And watched a 15 minute on the eruption in 1980. 

KK LOVED the visitor center, and was just staring and beaming.  She's so funny.

She's into volcanos, tsunamis, dragons and turtles.  We all snicker when she gives the list, because how on earth did turtles get added in there???

Here she is touching two pyroblasted volcano bomb rocks that came out in 1980.

And of course I had to find another spring flower to photo graph.  I was obsessed with them!  It was so beautifully spring all weekend.  Anyhow that is Oregon grape that was in bloom at the visitors center.

Back on the road we headed up to Olympia where we had a late lunch at Izzy's.  This lunch was our only eat-out.  Rainee had requested a buffet restaurant for her birthday.  It took us rather a while to find it as we got off at a Tumwater exit, and they sent us to Lacey.  And we once again took a scenic route through Olympia.  And found ourselves rather delighted that while we didn't know where the buffet place was, we *did* know where we were...even if we weren't entirely sure how we'd gotten there.  *snicker*

At which point I was very very irritated that I have not programmed Dee's cell phone number into mine.  I *need* to do so.  Especially after reading her blog yesterday that she was lonesome.  Cause it would have been fun to meet her for lunch with the crazy gang--even impromptu.  So I have that on my short list to do today. 

After Olympia we decided to burn miles and actually went almost 2.5 hours without a get out of the car moment.  Most of us except daddy-driver of course took a Sunday afternoon nap.  We woke up sometime after Aberdeen and immediately started revolting about car time.  LOL

We had already promised a stop at Klaloch, but it was still a ways down the road, so I suggested a wee-hike to the worlds largest spuce tree at Lake Quinault. 

It was gorgeous.  We wanted out.  Rob agreed, and now I have sunny day pictures of it.  Cause if you remember last year when we stopped at it we got POURED on. 

But of course before we got there I had to take pictures of more spring flowers.  This time Johnny Jump-Ups.

One close up, one of bunches of them.

Then the big tree.

The kids spread out give you a good idea of how wide it truely is.

And there's how tall.

Two rather crazy girls pozing on it.  And a close-up of Rainee's birthday outfit.  Isn't it cute.  (gives myself a pat on the back.) 

Rob resting on one of its roots and enjoying the view of the tree.

When we got back to the car I asked if we could go left down the road rather then back to the highway because I remembered a falls down there that I hadn't been to since umm the fifth grade.  ROFL.

It was much prettier then I remembered.

We got out and enjoyed it.  The kids also rather enjoyed this cavish spot they found.

It was a dirt overhang that they could all fit under.  Sam wants you to believe he's holding it up with his muscles. 

We loaded back into the car and drove about 45 minutes further down and got out at the beach.  I *just* got done sharing bunches of pictures of that beach in my last blog so I'll spare you more ocean pictures.  LOL 

The kids amazingly enough let me hike on the beach ALL by myself for a long time--usually they start following me.  The feeling of awe on the  beach way down it by myself was just amazing.   As I headed back they eventually rejoined me, and giggled, and laughed.

They also did several sand experiments demonstrating what they'd learned about volcanoes and how they erupt.  Which was fun to see them put into practice there educating.

As we drove the last hour home I remarked to Rob.

Volcano, Two water falls, a hike in the woods to the largest spruce tree, a walk on the beach all in 10 hours man we are spoiled.

All in all a definite weekend to remember.

As requested a picture of sandstorm the tortoise.  Its taken while he's eating dandilion flowers.  He rather loved those!  He is a young tortoise, but very cute.  We created a rather lovely habitat for him that has river rock and sand, and gives him the ability to burrow etc.

Rainee playing at the school playground during Zeria bb practice.

Jeremiah doing the same.

Yesterday was a rather unplanned spontaneous trip to baton practice.  The coach called us on Tuesday to see if we could change days.  She wanted Thursday, but I bargained with Wednesday and that's what we did. 

It was as a result a LONG day, but not as long as this weekend, so its all good. 

Rainee had a miserable day in the afternoon evening and actually cried herself to sleep in my arms last night.  It was rather heart-breaking.  She was in pain, and miserable, and I could do very little to help her. 

On the way home from Olympia we attempted to stop at a park.  But it was FREEZING!  Two hours later we decided to just stretch our legs at Klaloch.  It was so nice we ended up staying a bit longer then that.  We stopped at a different spot where Rob and I could sit on the top of the cliff and enjoy the view, and the kids ran down a small trail and played on the beach.  I enjoyed the opportunity to take pictures from a different perspective with the kids not even aware that I was snapping them.

My favorite from an artistic point of view is this one.

A girl that plays on Zeria's bb team, and goes to church with us has taken to calling KK Narnia.  She *never* takes her cape off.  ROFL  BTW if anybody loves that cape, and is intrested in one,  I would make one for them.  I'm taking orders.  They wear well, and are fun dress-up as well.  I believe I'll be charging $20 for them, but if I can find the polar fleece for cheaper  I would drop that price.  The ones I made at Christmas were made out of felt, and I don't like them nearly as much.  The felt just pelted something fierce.  Live and learn.    Its a bummer though cause the fleece is more $$

I also rather liked this one of Samuel.

 

It looks like he's flying.  Neither of his feet are on the ground!  Oh to be young and run like that again. 

And no Zeria can NOT go to the beach without doing a cartwheel or three.

And you can't go without playing tag with the waves.

Rob had a yucky night last night with an inmate who needs some serious mental health help.  So both of us are dragging big time today.  But such is life.

I hope everyone has a great day.  Me I have a date to clean out the excursion.

Blucky!

 

I think I blogged on this one other time, but I wanted to share my tips about organizing.

I've learned a lot of survival tips about organizing, and man are they worth it.  The biggest thing I learned is its okay to pray about a spot that's alwaysa  mess.  I learned this from my SS teacher in Joyce.

I also learned don't organize everything at once.  Baby steps.

I also learned organizing doesn't just mean putting things away.  It means puttings things away in a place that makes sense so it will stay there, and you can easily get it back there after you use whatever it is.

If you have a spot in your house that's constantly a mess of course your first response is..

"My house is too small."

The second response typically is.

"I don't have enough money to fix this mess.

Both of which I say bologna too.  ROFL.

This beautiful desk of mine cost $200.  And that is the absolute MOST I've ever spent on organizing.  Of course Rob built it, but still you get my point.

I use Goodwill for organizational devices, or garage stores.  I love twenty-five cent baskets, or cool boxes.  In my bathroom I have a old plastic coke container box.  In my scrapbook section two of my boxes are clementine mandarine wooden orange boxes.  We ate the oranges I kept the colorful boxes.  LOL

But first look at the space that's messy.

What is it suppose to function as.

What typically ends up on it.

Why does it end there.

Does it have a home that isn't working somewhere else in the house.

Don't imediately clean it, just evaluate it while your doing dishes, or scrambling on errands, etc. 

I knew yesterday I needed to finally stack my material, and school stuff.  I also knew there was a bunch of other detrious mixed in with it, that I had no idea what it was. 

So I started making piles.

This is big kid books,  these are little kid books, this is bathroom stuff, this is dirty clothes.  I filled the outside garbage can full of well JUNK!  *snicker*

Now this is a trick in organizing.  YOu grab one big kid book and you take it to the big kids book shelf, and realize that needs to be straightened, and you never get back to what you were organizing first.

DON'T!!!!! 

Make a pile of big kid books. 

Yesterdays goal was to get my bedroom organized by putting the stuff in my new book shelfs.

So I stacked piles.  My kids showed up and asked if they could help--they like organizing its better then the routine chores.  LOL

So I sent them to place the little piles in the home they belonged.

"This goes in the bathroom, that goes in your room, etc."

This narrowed it down to baton costumes that needed to be replaced, Rainee's birthday gifts for Monday that were rather here and there, and I placed all in one spot.  And so on.

Now, for the most part they didn't put the piles away, they just took them to the places home.  You can do the same thing if you don't have kids.  Don't go to the book shelf and start organizing it.  That is NOT your project for today.  Just place it as neat as you can even if its on the floor beside it, until everything is out of your bedroom, and closer its true destination.

This gives you the space to organize what is SUPPOSED to be in the bedroom.

Once the little piles are carried off you can put away what's left.  Clothes to fold or hang.  Books that belong in your room, you get the picture.  And wala one space is totally organized.  You have a clean space.

Now.

STOP.

Do NOT go organize the other little piles.  You've accomplished your goal, reward yourself with some computer time, a good book, a telephone call to a friend, etc.

Enjoy the clean space.

The biggest issue of organizing is getting overwhelmed, and never getting anywhere.

You can tackle the next space another day.  Its been messy for awhile another day isn't going to kill you.  ROFL

Any how I've tackled each area of my house this way, and it is so nice to have organized spaces...spaces that truely function.

And about once every 6 months I go back to the space and fix whatever issues it has, or change it if its not working.  Get rid of stuff that isn't being used etc.

For the most part once a space is organized it doesn't mess up again.

The two exceptions to that are my computer space--it breeds paper.

And my bedroom.

I believe after the most recent purge my bedroom will stay clean.  It has space for everything that is needed in there, something it has never had since I moved in--due to me keeping craft stuff in there.  Its out of there, and that makes a huge difference.

I'm still holding my breathe in regards to the computer space due to the breeding of paper.  I'll let you know if I finally have it truely organized in 6 months. 

So I drug my butt of my computer chair so I could take a picture of my computer area.  It probably looks messy to someone, but it isn't.  LOL  Yarn on the top shelf, two shelves of fabric, Two shelves of school stuff, And KK's tortoise on the bottom.

To the left is my scrapbook stuff and my sewing machine.  Rob built that section last year.

I love this space so much.

And my view out that window?  My yard where my kids play.

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.