10 years ago!

What a fun group of kids we had for Joy School! Melissa, Maleah, and Brooklyn, Hayden, Andrew, and Brett.

I can't believe this was 10 years ago! Melissa & Adam graduating. (Adam is my "baby" brother). Melissa was almost 5, now almost 15. Yikes!

Rainers game

Every year the Lacey Elementary choir gets to sing the National Anthem at one of the Rainer's games. It is one of the things we like to go support. Keagan joined choir this year so he could sing at the game.
Ray & Melissa love baseball. Keagan & I tolerate it, but it is fun to be at Cheney stadium. (I like it better than the Mariner's games). This year it poured on the way there! When we got there it stopped raining for a little bit... long enough for the kids to sing their song. (Yay)! And then it started raining again! You can see on the scoreboard, it is 7:44 and the 7:00 game still hasn't started.

So we got to see Rhubarb the Rainer Moose...

See a couple of airplanes fly really close by...

See the kids sing...

We saw them uncover the field and

then cover it back up about 1/2 hour later.

Waiting

and waiting.

And then they finally called the game at 8:15 or so. So we got to see the kids sing, saw Rhubarb, eat our hot dogs(they came with the tickets), watch baseball on the big screen(they had the Mariner game on the big screen), and then go home. The good thing is because it was called a rain out, we get free tickets to a game of our choice. We just have to come up sometime when we want to go to a game anytime except the 4th of July game. I think we'll pick a nice day in the summer. Maybe a Friday night with fireworks.

preschoolers

Here is my preschool class that I teach with one of my friends Marie. This day we went to the bus barn for a field trip and got to ride the bus! Fun times!
I love teaching preschool. Where else could you have a part time job that works into your children's school schedule and do such fun things like: playdough, paint, singing, shaving cream, go on field trips, etc, etc.
They are constantly saying cute things, too. One of the cutest I heard a few weeks ago was this little conversation.
One of the boys, "I'll be the dad" Then one of the girls promptly said, "I'll be the honey!"
Another thing about this group of kids is that this year all of the kids are lds, we didn't plan it that way, it just happened. Anyways, at play time they were playing with the food and one of them said "WAIT! we for forgot to have prayer. They all promptly stopped, folded their arms, and bowed their heads, until someone said Amen. Too cute!

Lots of new blogs

In the next few days I'm going to try to catch up with my blogging. So now I'm accountable. I taught a lesson last Sunday in Young Women's (church girls 16 & 17 years old) about the importance of writing in your journals and decided I needed to be better at this too. Luckily I take pictures of everything so I can remember what happens in my life or mostly remember.

I couldn't believe when I looked at my blog it has been a couple of months since I have posted anything. When I was looking at the calendar this week it is as crazy as ever, but we don't have anything planned this weekend.. maybe I shouldn't say that too soon.. I looked back over the calendar and I don't think that we have had a "free" Saturday since mid February, maybe that is why I haven't found time to blog. I'm looking forward to staying home!

I'm going to try to post my blogs on their original dates, so you might have to scroll back to read them.. if you want to. :)

Vancouver BC Temple

Ever since I heard about a Temple being built in Vancouver BC I was excited and wanted to have our family go up for the open house. I love that the kids can go in the temple and see and feel the spirit of the temple. We got to go to the Tri-Cities Temple open house a few years ago, but the kids were too little to remember much about it. I also got to see the Portland Temple open house when I was a youth and it left a lasting impression on me. (Click here if you want to know more about temples) This is what we planned our mini vacation around -

The weather was beautiful for us!
And the temple is gorgeous!!!

Moroni

At first I didn't like this picture, we were goofing around, but then my sister told me, look at the picture, you can tell how much he loves you when he looks at you, after 17 1/2 years! That made me feel good that she noticed it and then I liked the picture. That's better! ;)

My sis Cindy and her daughter Aurora

The flowers were gorgeous too!

My mom & Thom

Cousins!

And Keagan being his usual silly self!

It was very nice we got there on the first day of the open house and didn't have to wait in any lines! We waited for Ray to get off work and drive up to Birch Bay, so we got a late start, but we made it!

My sister and the girls

What was very cool was that we went the first day it was open and the next weekend the youth in our ward got to go. They had to meet at the church at 5:30 a.m.! And they willingly did it. We had to give them notarized permission slips and copies of birth certificates to go, but it was well worth it!! I only heard good comments from our youth and I know they enjoyed going. Another great thing about Melissa having been there the week before - When the youth went there were a lot of people and they didn't have tour guides in every room like they did with us, so Melissa had heard what they were telling us the week before and she could share that with the others. Here are the Lacey 2ND ward youth a week later at the temple.

Vancouver Canada

After we were done seeing the Temple grounds and open house we went looking for the Olympic cauldron. Vancouver is such a beautiful city. The sun was getting ready to set so you can't see the mountains as well with the camera settings, but it was gorgeous! All of couldn't keep commenting on how beautiful it was.

We had directions to get to the cauldron... but still got lost. At least this time is was Grandpa Thom we were following and he was the one getting lost. We stopped at a gas station to ask for directions. The man was so nice there, he came out and drew us a map and told us which way to go. He told us it was funny hearing our accents. That made us all laugh (later not in front of him..)

When we going to the cauldron we went through a bad section of town. It was really sad. I have never seen so many homeless people in my life. They were lined up 3 & 4 rows deep along block after block. It was very humbling! There were police every half block or so. A little scary, but I'm glad we got to see that so we know and can appreciate how much we have!

It was a little strange, we were driving along in the "homeless" section of town and then all of a sudden... we arrived in a nice part of downtown. I even asked the rest of the family, was there some invisible line that we don't know about, or is it just me? Weird, not even a kind of inbetween, just from scary homeless part of town to BAM nice part of city!

It was sooo cool to see the Olympic cauldron for the Vancouver Winter Olympics!

You can't see it because it is so dark, but across the water are some of the skiing venues for the Olympics. The blurry spot in the middle is a gas station.. a gas station in the middle of the water, with nothing around.

We love teasing Melissa about these 2 pictures. On the computer we go back and forth between them really fast so it makes look like shes going back and forth from these 2 faces.

Birch Bay, WA

For Spring Break we went up to Birch Bay WA, which is just a few miles from the Canadian border. We got to stay at really cool condos with Cindy & Aurora & my mom & thom. My mom has timeshares with Trendwest. We have gotten to stay with them few times and they are always a lot of fun! This was the view from the top floor by the elevator.

Of course the most important part.. it had a heated pool. It was pretty cool, 1/2 of it was inside, 1/2 outside. Still to cold for me to go in... but you know how kids and pools are.

Aurora having a great time!

This is our view from the deck, looking out the front.

Birch Bay really is beautiful!

Here is back view, we can kind of see the pool and look there is our van.

We got to stay 2 nights(Thursday/Friday) and go up to the Vancouver Temple open house and see where the Olympics were and see the Peace Arch Park. I will blog those later.