Portland family get together

My grandpa O'Brien passed away in November. Because of winter and all of the people wanting to get together my family waited until last weekend to get together to celebrate his life. It is only the 2nd time I've seen my dad together with all of his siblings. I won't bore you with all of the pictures (I took @ 80.. I'll post them in a folder on my facebook account here)
We had a lot of fun visiting with all of our family. For me it always a little funny to see how much I resemble all these people who I didn't grow up knowing. It is always a little sad to know I didn't get to grow up with them. A little too much drinking and smoking for our family... but we had a good time visiting!

This is prob. my favorite of all I took,

my dad and his brother Victor

They are 11 months apart, my dad being the oldest.

Matt(my cousin), my uncle Vic, Jacob (my cousin Maria's son- and Vic's grandson), and Cory (Matt's son and Vic's grandson)

Me, Melissa, & Ray visiting

playing games

4 Generations

Melissa, Ray, Donna, Keagan, my dad, my grandma (His mom)

My dad, his siblings, his mom & her sister & all of her kids (my dad's cousins)

all of the aunt & uncles, grandma, cousins, and their kids that were there

5 generations!

all of my cousins that were there, (7 of the 11 of us were there) my aunts and Uncles and grandma

my dad and his siblings and his mom grandma pat

Vic, Judy, Ellen(in the back), Kathy, my dad- Don

and Grandma Pat O'brien

Dance pictures & recital

Melissa's dance picture June 2009

Her class
Keagan's dance picture June 2009

His all boy class

This year the dance recital was at River Ridge High school's theatre.

Wed., June 17th, 2009

It was so much nicer to go and enjoy. Michelle (their teacher) also had someone video taping it, so I didn't even worry about taping it (besides my battery was dying.. so I didn't get very many pictures)

All of the dancers

Keagan's class - he did really good!

Melissa, she is getting sooo good! ( I know I'm a little biased!)

Melissa in the more advanced class

All of the dancers again, I didn't get any of Aurora :(

Last day of school

Yeah!!!! I was soo looking forward to the last day of school! This year has been the year of driving for me! Just a little bit about my schedule, so I remember...

Get up 6:45, have Keagan get dressed (he was usually up already, he's my early bird)
7:00 Jadyn would come
If I was on the ball (50/50 chance) I would get into the shower, but I could wait until 7:30...
7:30 ish Aurora came
8:00 wake up Melissa
8:25 take Keagan and Jadyn to school,(school started at 8:45) go pick Haley, come home get Melissa and Aurora, have Melissa & Haley at school @9:00(school starts at 9:25) and be home @9:15.
If I had taken my shower, then sometimes I would run errands, get ready for preschool, do chores, etc, you know all of the "mom" things. (The time always went wayyy to fast!)
Tuesdays/Thursdays I would try to leave @ 11:25 to take Aurora to Pam's house (Thanks pam!) and she would take her to Kindergarten, so I could get to preschool, which was noon to 2:30
After preschool I would go straight to the school and get my good spot.. and wait a few minutes w/ my friend Celeste :) for Keagan and Jadyn to get out at 3:05
Go home and then Melissa would get home a little after 4:00. (Her friend Haley who we brought to school would bring her home!)
I won't go into the other dance, etc schedules...
The rest of the week I had to have Aurora at school by 12:30ish.

The kids wanted colored hair for the last day of school... what kind of mom would let them do that?! :)

Melissa and her friend Haley

They like to wear their princess crowns... A Lot!

Funny Girls!

Peak a boo!

Aurora, my sis is soo organized, she even has her in the same outfit as the first day of school!

Wow!

Keagan & Jadyn

Nice hair Keagan!

Rainier's game

Every year Lacey Elementary choir gets to sing the National Anthem at a Tacoma Rainier's game. They let you order tickets that come w/ a hot dog, drink, and chips for a pretty reasonable price. The last few years Melissa has been in the choir and we have gone to support the school. Even though neither of the kids weren't in the choir, it was fun to go and support the school. I think we had a lot more fun than we did at the Mariners game. We were a lot closer, we were there with my sis, Cindy, Aurora and Ralph, and I think they do funner things in between innings, + it is a LOT cheaper! This year it was the day before school was out, which was kind of nice, we didn't have to worry about homework... it was just the week of craziness with something every night! (I don't even know what the final score was... but we lost.. and Who were we playing? - but we did have fun!)
June 18th, 2009

Aurora having a good time!

Keagan really was having a good time, he just didn't want to have his picture taken! He was tired! It was also his field trip day to the park, so he had been playing hard all day long!

Go Lacey!

All of the kids got to run w/ Rhubarb, the Rainer's mascot, I missed getting the kids...

Tacoma got a couple of home runs.. but so did the other team..

This screen is new from last year, it was really cool, I could never get it when it said Home run..

Our choir up on the big screen

Miss and Aurora (melissa w/ her shirt that she won last year!)

Preschool graduation

I know I'm a little behind in posting this, but aren't they cute! Marie and I taught preschool this year and are going to do it again next year, we had a lot of fun and are looking forward to next year... but are ready for summer first. :)

the countdown is on to PA!

Where do I even start? The last few weeks have been crazy, so I will just randomly pick things and start posting.. sorry it might be a lot, but I want to get my blogging done before we have to start packing and getting ready for Pennsylvania! I can't believe we are leaving next Monday! We will be gone for a couple of weeks! Lots to do (mostly laundry- UGH!)

Some things We're looking forward to seeing/doing
*friends and family (check out Keagan's blog for the last cousin pic)
*hopefully there will be a good thunder/lightning storm!
*Hershey Park (although the kids are wayyyy more excited about this than I am!) Yes its true parts of the town smell like chocolate.
*good food!! they have the best Stromboli and the restaurant Friendlys, sweet Bologna, tasty cakes....
*Gettysburg
*WA DC temple/maybe WA DC, too.
*City Island
*fireflies

Me and my dad!

I have been scanning old pictures lately for my dad and my other relatives for my grandpa's memorial. I just had to post this one, it is one of my favorite pictures of my dad.. when he was sooo young and Innocent! :) He was 17 years old getting ready to go to Vietnam and then the whole world changed him.

Here are some pictures I found of my dad & me

This one is one of my favorites! My dad, Eric, and me.

Check out those pants! :)

Happy Father's Day!

First Happy Father's day to the best man I know, my husband! He is a great father! When I was growing up, I didn't have my dad around and it was always hard, I always hoped that I could have a husband that would be a wonderful father and I got my wish! See dreams come true! :) I've been scanning old pictures lately (again) and found this one of Ray & Melissa, love it! It's from 1999 when Melissa was on a soccer team.
Now I'm soo lucky, I have 3 special men in my life, my own husband, my new(er) step dad (my mom has been married 10 years now to Thom.) He is wonderful! He likes to play with my kids and is a wonderful grandpa! Here he is in the red car, we love to go on trips w/ him.

And my dad! Here is a picture of us yesterday. We went to a memorial for my grandpa's memorial

(I'll write about that more later) I don't know when I have got to spend time with my dad to celebrate Father's day since I was a little girl. He is a truck driver and out on the road a lot. My dad is very special to me, especially with every thing we have gone thru! I wrote about it here

Happy Father's Day!

Bomb shelter

One of the fun things about our house is that we have a bomb shelter. Our house was built in 1959 when they were concerned about that kind of thing. It is fun... but we don't really know what to do with a bomb shelter. You can't really put anything down there because it gets moldy fast, (I guess we could get a de-humidifier.) Also there are narrow windy stairs, so it would be hard to put anything down the stairs. In the warm weather it is nice because it is nice and cool down there. There is electricity and a bar and I think a little sink (I'll have to double check on that one) The kids like to take the little tv/dvd player down there when it is hot and watch movies. They also like to take games and go down there and play. Today Celeste and Aurora ate lunch down there... for a little while until it got too cold and Aurora was scared, it was too dark(one of the lights had burned out) and there were too many spiders/ webs.

When you come out of our back patio door you turn to the right and go down some steep stairs,
Then there is this door to the left you go in - the door to the right is the door to the basement.

Don't hold onto the handle, it falls off.. lots of spiders and spider webs!

Down the stairs and then it turns

Ahhh, cool air..and then turns again, all that white on the walls is mold growing... YUK!

The girls going back up to the back yard

The bar is to the left and the girls are in sitting on a foam puzzle,(the floor is cement) w/ the flashlight/lantern eating their lunch.

It was actually pretty dark.

I'll have to measure it sometime, it is actually pretty good size, maybe the size of a small bedroom.