Last 2 days of February!

Saturday night I had to go to work, as I think I stated in my last blog. But it was also our church's fellowship night, which is about every 2 weeks at one of the family's home. I missed the last one we had, too, cause I had to work :o(

But it's a potluck style dinner. So everybody brings something good to eat. I thought it would be cool for Jade to make a cake to bring over. She baked and frosted the cake, and we got gummy bears for her to make a design on it. She chose a cross and a fish for Jesus. I think she could have used a few more gummy bears, but she did a great job!!

Since I wasn't there... (I was slaving away at the shipyard for 10 hours... well, I wasn't slaving away but I was there....) I wanted Jade to take pictures for me. Here's the pictures you get when you have your daughter take them for you.... isn't she cute- and so serious!

Here's a close up of Beriah, who is almost 10...

Also Jeromy said these cookies were delicious, when I told Michelle, she said her daughter Tessa had made them. So this is for you Tessa:

GREAT COOKIES!!!

I wish I could have tried them, Jeromy loved them!So sunday we had church. Our pastor without naming names (Jade) talked about a girl taking a college class, and it's Intro into Western Religions. She needs to go to a Christian service- done, a Jewish service and a Muslim service- scary. He told us earlier that he would even go for support for Jade- I thought that was pretty awesome. And actually our whole family has been reading a couple of books called "Jesus and Muhammad" and the other is called "Islamic Invasion". They are fascinating. I never really knew anything about the Muslim religion.

I'm not going to get into a huge discussion about it, but I do want to make 2 points. God and the god Allah or NOT the same God. And Muslims say they believe in Jesus, He's mentioned in the Quran (Muslim version of the Bible) but he is NOT the Jesus of the Bible. It's really scary how there so many false religions out there deceiving people.

Ok, enough of that. After church, we went to Costco. We planned on going yesterday, but when we drove into the parking lot we just kept driving. It was so busy, I didn't even want to go in, either did Jeromy! So we went today. We had to get some stuff for another potluck we were having today!

Jeromy's side of the family is getting pretty big, not quite as big as our side of the family, but big enough to where it fills up a whole house. Anyway, since there are so many birthdays thru out the year, they thought they would start having potlucks every other month to celebrate 2 months of birthdays at a time!

So, if you can remember all these people... we are celebrating January and February Birthdays.

Katie-me-duh... 35!

Jeromy's aunt Diane... 52!

Jeromy's sister's husband Redd... 40!

Jeromy's nephew Cameron... 6!

Jeromy's dad Chuck...56!

Jeromy's twin niece and nephew Kaitlyn and Jacob... 3!!!

While there, Jeromy's parents showed us inside there new motor home... it was HUGE! It was like a house inside.

There was even a short flight of stairs to another room!Jeromy's dad and brother playing a little Wii bowling!We were assigned to bring the salad, I'm all over that! Love the salad stuff!We also had lasagna, french bread, pop, and chicken pasta.Here's Jeromy's sister-in-law with 2 of her 4 kids: Haley Jade and Kaitlynn...My handsome son sporting his new shoes... Kent is really starting to enjoy running. I am so proud of him, he's running about 2 miles on the treadmil now.MMmmmmm, birthday cake and cupcakes.... all of us who were having a birthday got a cupcake with a candle in it and then the whole group sang Happy Birthday to all of us. Thanks Joanne and Chuck for making it special!Oh yeah, and then there were presents! Can't have a party with out presents! Here's part of the group, you can see my cupcake with the big purple candle in it!The birthday twins Jacob and Kaitlynn got to each blow out the number 3 on the cake!My 2 favorite guys of all time... even tho they get more fun out of messing with each other!My beautiful baby girl... you think that's Jeromy giving Jade the bunny ears? Nope, Jeromy's dad!Hey how did those cute Trig kids get in there?! We just love those girls!So now, we are home, full and tired. That's a good way to be.

Now we are ready to move on to March!

MMMkayyyy....

Well, Jeromy woke me up saying it was sunny outside, so I had planned to go to our church's running club in Port Orchard that cousin Kyle is coaching. So the kids and I had a light breakfast, got our running gear on and then I opened the front door....

Outside there was gusty wind and alot of rain. So I shut the door. Sorry Kyle I just can't run in the cold wind and rain. But I did run 3 miles on my treadmil!

Also going to be working a 10 hour shift tonight. Saving every penny I can for Jade's senior year stuff. She's getting her senior pictures taken next Saturday!

Now we have to go make a quick stop into Costco... is that even possible on a Saturday? We'll see!

Amazing kids!

To that, I'm sure your answer is: DUH!!!

Anyway, Kent had a Recognition Breakfast he was invited to at his school. Kent goes to CK for 1st-3rd periods at the high school, then the other 3 classes he takes at home. So the breakfast was during his 1st period math class.

The kids got breakfast and had a guest speaker to encourage them to be the best they can be and to never give up. This is the flyer with all the kids in attendance, and Jade holding the orange paper that says Kent can get a "CK" letter to put on a Letterman's jacket. Which of course now he wants. We'll see, they are expensive, but if he really wants it.... Jeromy still has his Letterman jacket from high school for swimming accomplishments.

The next picture is Kent's certificate stating that his GPA is a 3.95.... yes, you read that right.... 3.95!!!!! They also passed out the little torch award, Kent thought it has something to do with the Olympics and going for the gold, they said that it gets stitched over the "CK" letter on the Letterman's jacket, and signifies academic achievement.

Then we have the artistic college student Jade! She has been making interesting stuff. You've seen the head sculpture she made, pretty amazing! And she's also made a wood piece. And now the teacher is wanting them to think outside the box- way out side the box. She wanted the students to pick an object from home that they could get several of and make it into an "unfamiliar" shape. Well, my chocolate loving girl chose empty pudding cups. Kinda convenient cause she needed more "empty" pudding cups to complete it... I think I want to make a twix wrapper creation... um I need some "emtpy" twix wrappers! Just kidding Jade! She still has a couple more pudding cups to hot-glue gun into place!

We also got Jade's senior pictures appt schedules for March 6th, I'm so excited! We also have her hair appt. scheduled for March 3rd! We still need to find her a couple outfits! So much fun!

I also met up with my mom today to pick the colors of fabric for the quilt she's making me called "wedding rings" it is going to look so cool!

Time to get on the treadmil and hammer out those 3 miles!

Have a great day!

Staircase at Lake Cushman....

WOW!!! The last time I went to the staircase it was almost 10 years ago. This is a really beautiful place!

We knew the weather was going to be gorgeous, and we knew we were getting Aurora this weekend, so we wanted to do something fun with the whole family outdoors. We've been brainstorming over the last couple of days. And we came up with a hike at the Staircase. And it head been about 10 years since I was last here, I went camping with my brother and my kids a few other friends.

Jeromy did go to the Men's Breakfast early this morning with Kent at our church. It's once a month. While the guys were gone, us girls packed a lunch of chicken sandwiches, chips, nu-go bars, water and chocolate pudding.

Here's the kids, with their shades ready to load up in the car to head to the Staircase...

I love waterfalls! I love rainbows more, but waterfalls are right up there!

Video of the cool water fall....

Looks like some other people had the same idea.... not too many tho....There were so many cool picture spots, I don't know how many times I said "WAIT! I gotta take a picture! Hold still!" This place really brought out the "little girl" in Jade. She kept running off the path and climbing everything. She said that nature was calling her to climb. And there's Aurora not far behind her!

There she goes climbing again...

Jade wanted to go across this log. She planned on walking across it, but it was so slippery she had to crawl across.

Here she made it to the other side telling her brother to come across...

There goes Kent...Hey- there's a big foot sighting....

We walked across this big bridge and the rushing water below was beautiful and clear...

Jeromy snapped a picture of all 5 of us, but he didn't realize that the camera was putting a shadow on his face....

After crossing the bridge there was a little path we followed. Now we are really hiking!

These trees were really weird looking, it was liking walking into another world!

There were cool little bridges to cross over along this trail...

Me and my baby....

Along the trail, they spotted a cave. Jade had to go explore...

Turns out the cave just went about 5 feet in, then it was just wall... kinda cool tho...

Jade leaving her mark for all of nature to see....

We are loving the nature (as long as I don't get dirty!)....Remember how I said Jeromy went to the men's breakfast early this morning, well, he's mentioned it to one of the guys there- Eric- that we were going to the staircase... well, on our way back from our trail, we saw Eric and his family headed in our direction! I couldn't believe we saw them. There could have been so many trails that we could have taken and missed each other! Amazing! Here's Eric, Deanna and their 2 boys!Here's Deanna and I.... she goes to the women's bible study I go to on Thursdays. Jade watches her boys along with some other kids there!

They took a picture of our family....Here's some cheese for ya.... us kissing by the waterfall, don't worry there's no video of that!All in all, we calculated we walked about 4 miles and it was awesome. I love that we were outside, all together, being active.... and it was free- priceless! These were the views of the drive out, the sun was just starting to set...Come on, are these beautiful or what???

Guess who fell alseep on the ride home? My sweet-little-cool-shades-wearin'-son Kenton...Ok, it actually took me 2 days to get that blog going. I even had to have an intervention with my mom to help me clean out some old blogs to make room for the new ones. So all that fun nature stuff was saturday, yesterday.

So sunday, today, we headed to church, with Aurora!! Afterwards, she wanted Beriah to come over for a while to play. They are so cute together!

Another gorgeous day people!!!The girls needed to make some kind of dessert for Beriah's Awana's class tonight. And she wanted to make... are you ready for this?

WORMS IN DIRT!First the girls had to dump out the chocolate pudding into the trays- dirt ya know! Then they crumbled oreo cookies to make more dirt! Then in go the worms, it really did look disgusting!Ok, I gues I should wrap this up before I blow up my computer! Enjoy the pictures, but more importantly I hope you got out there and enjoyed the weekend and thanked God for this beatiful weather we've been having!