Jackson is 4 years old!

How can it be? And yet, here are his 4 fingers to prove it:

He was counting down the days for about a week. "Is it my birthday yet?"
"No, not yet," until finally the day came. After church, we headed down to Grandma and Grandpa's for the big celebration. He had such a fun day. Grandma and Grandpa, Omi, Uncle Scott and Aunt Lynn, Uncle John, Aunt Jennifer and Uncle Matt, and cousins TJ and Tony were all there! What fun.

Look at all those presents! He was thoroughly spoiled! Some of the highlights include lots of trucks and a new toy electric guitar. He also got some clothes and new jammies, which he really was excited about, which is kinda funny for a 4 year old boy.
After all that excitement, here he was on the way home.

This morning, he immediately put on one of his new winter outfits from Grandma. Nevermind that it's not winter yet. :-)
"Now I have cammo pants just like the big kids".
What a blessing Jackson is to our family. God is good!

Lots of stuff, and Happy Birthday to Danny

Life has been crazy busy. Let's see, last Friday we went to the H's house and had a great time as usual. Here are some of the goofy kids dressed up:

Saturday we decided to be crazy and drive all the way to Yosemite for a picnic. Really. We're impulsive like that some times. :-)
This whole week has been focused on getting carpet (our free pretty much brand new carpet from my brother's house) laid in the bedrooms. First of course we had to get everything out of those crowded bedrooms. So that took Monday - Wednesday, then Thursday they laid the carpet, and in the afternoon and all day today we put everything back. Danny took every single bed apart and he and Nick did most of the heavy stuff. The girls and littles and I did all the smaller stuff and sorted and hauled away stuff, etc. The girls and I also sponge painted their room on Wednesday, which ended up looking like this: (By the way, if you click on the above picture, it will enlarge, and you can see some horses Samantha drew. Pretty good, huh? I'm impressed because I can't even draw a stick figure right.)
:-)

Sooooo life has been crazy busy. It will be actually nice to get back to school next week, and be on a schedule, and stay home more. This has been a very busy summer! But it's very nice to have pretty, new carpet and clean decluttered (as much as possible with 9 people in the house) bedrooms. Yea!
And today my baby boy, my first born, is 20! We had pizza with Colette, and then the kids played games, and then we had cake and ice cream, and now they are playing games again. I love how the big kids aren't too cool to hang out with the younger ones.
So that's why I haven't blogged in a while, and why I haven't hardly even sat down for days, and now I can relax and breathe a little. Tomorrow some of the bigger ones and Ralph are going to a karate tournament. I think Danny has entered 3 or 4 events again. I, on the other hand, am gonna stay home, be lazy, watch tv, and eat bonbons........
Yeah, sure I will.

22 Years of Wedded Bliss

25 years ago, I met Ralph. He was 19 and I was 15, and he didn't know I was alive. My sister Jennifer was going out with his best friend, Mike. After Jenn broke up with Mike, I figured I wouldn't see Ralph anymore.

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24 years ago, Ralph and Mike came into Carl's Jr. where I worked, and Ralph suddenly noticed that I was, indeed, alive, and we had our first date. It was a double date with Mike and some girl, and I don't remember the movie we saw, but I do remember that I had to quickly break up with my current boyfriend so I could go out on the date. (I was getting ready to anyways, ok,? :-) The other obstacle was that my dad thought Ralph was a "rowdy" (maybe that's why I liked him?) and almost didn't let me go. But Mom smoothed things over and the date was ok'd.
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About 23 years ago, Ralph got me a ring. (And, no, I don't have any cute and romantic proposal story to tell. Ralph's just not that kinda guy, and that's ok.)
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And 22 years ago today, we said "I do". It's been a good 22 years, and I wouldn't change a thing. (Except maybe that extreme fighting stuff he likes to watch? Yuk!)
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So, what did we do for our anniversary? A romantic candlit dinner for two, perhaps? Oh, no, not for us. We spent our anniversary taking 8 kids (our 7 plus our semi-adopted daughter, Colette) to the county fair and then out to pizza. Now that's what I call an anniversary party. I mean it, too. Just being a family, hanging out, it's my idea of fun. Jackson had his first "motorcycle ride", and he thought that was pretty cool. There was no one in line, and so the ride went on and on and on, so Jack was pretty impressed. Toward the end, he finally figured out he wasn't really steering, and you could tell that burst his bubble a little, because up to that point, he was really intent on making sure he was steering right. He wouldn't even wave to us; he didn't want to crash.
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The little kids (and the biggest guy, who had been up since 2:30 this morning--he had to work a few hours this morning--) are tucked into bed. The big ones are sitting at my kitchen table playing a really old game called Mille Bornes with Colette, and life is good.
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I didn't take any pictures at the fair, since I was too lazy to carry the camera around, so I'll leave you with a couple of pictures from last night's Friday night pizza. (And yes, that means we had pizza 2 nights in a row...)Nick made these jalepeno poppers (all by himself) from peppers we grew out on our little deck garden. They were delicious, too.

Prayer request

Please pray for my dad, who fell off a ladder (and then the ladder and the tree branch he was cutting fell on him) and is very sore. I don't know if he ever heard the results of the x-rays, but they didn't think anything was broken. I would guess if something was broken, he would have heard by now. My mom just recently got back on her feet a little, and now this.
My poor dad, he is such a good guy, and I really hate to see him suffer, cause I love him so much. So I'm just asking for some prayer for him to heal quickly and the pain to go away. Thanks to anyone who prays.

My parents sold their motor home and gave us their campground membership, which was very nice of them. We are sorta used to rustic camping, but maybe we can get used to all the amenities. :-)
So this weekend, we went to Snowflower resort. We had alot of fun and some new adventures. Let's see, we played in the lake, swam in the pool, played pool and table football in the lodge, and then there were the paddle boats. That was an adventure....
We had to rent 3 paddleboats (2 Two-man, 1 Four-man), plus a one man kayake to fit us all. We had to wait a few minutes for one of the Two-man paddle boats, so Ralph and I let the kids get started while we waited for the last paddleboat. We saw the paddle boat slowly making it's way to the dock. When the man and his son got out, the man said something about being careful because it was leaking "a little". But that it should be ok. So fine, Ralph and I got in the paddle boat, and realized that the reason the paddle boat was returning to the dock so slowly, was because that is the only speed it could do. Hmm, well, ok, we'll just take it easy. We told the kids they could go and do whatever, don't wait for us, Ralph didn't want to take that slow thing to the other side of the lake anyway. Then we noticed the slow but steady stream of water coming in. Well, maybe we'll just float a while....I guess we maybe floated a bit farther from the dock then we meant to. Ralph decided this thing was taking on too much water, we better head back. So we started to head back, but this thing really didn't move very fast. We were paddling with all our might by hardly moving at all. I was laughing, but Ralph was NOT. He was worried the thing was gonna sink. And while he wasn't worried about drowning, he didn't want his wallet and shoes soaked. So I decided to get more serious and help paddle harder. By this time, the thing was sitting in the water so low, that it was taking on little bits of water over the top, in addition to the place it was taking in water down below (through the gears or something). Ralph was in charge of steering the thing, and he was keeping us close to shore in case the thing went down. Which was fine until we got too close to shore and hit a stump and got a little stuck for a minute. We got unstuck and around the stump, and kept paddling for that dock. Poor Ralph, his side was really taking on the water and his, well, seat was even getting wet. We finally made it back, and Ralph could finally relax. I thought the whole thing was funny, but Ralph was not amused. (As a side note, I think it's kinda cool how we can get upset over different things. That way one of us is calm when the other one isn't. Like when there is blood or broken bones, Ralph is the calm one. When there is a boat about to sink or yellow jackets about to eat through our bathroom ceiling, I am the calm one. Cool how God works that out.) While we waited for the kids to finish up, we sat on the dock and listened to a teenager (or so) explain to his mom all the benefits of medical marijuana. Such an enlightening conversation.
This morning we played in the lake some more, and the 2 older boys went on a little hike. Then it was time for lunch and heading for home. It was a short but fun weekend. I was gonna post some pictures, but my camera isn't cooperating, and so I think I will head for bed. I didn't really get any good pictures anyway.