Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Wow, that was a Long Break!

And three years later, she discovers the blog again.  How did that happen???

Well, Facebook came along and stole some of the glory I suppose.  Suddenly I could just post pics and information for my target audience on there and 'poof' everyone who needed to could see it!

I do kind of like bing able to look back at life though.  Lets see if we can cover what has been happening since 2010.

 - I STARTED MY OWN BUSINESS - I shot a friend's son's wedding and I was hooked.  So I got a better camera, did my homework, and started shooting weddings.  I love it.  I've done families, newborns, kids, weddings, funerals, baptisms, dedications - you name it.  Its a lot of fun, although it can be stressful.




- MY TWINS FINISHED GRADE SCHOOL - We start middle school in the fall



- AS THE TRAILER TURNS - We bought a camp trailer, campd in it for 3 months then lost it to wind near Sacramento.  We came home after a miserable weekend of excavation, bought another trailer an now use it to camp in Oregon.



- WE TOOK OVER COACHING BIBLE QUIZZING AT CHURCH - We are two years in and e love the kids andthe program.  This year we took 2 kids to the WORLD QUIZ in Indianapolis.  We've met awesome people, seen amazing things, and fell in love with the project.

 
 
- WE GOT TWO NEW DOGS FOR A TOTAL OF THREE SMALL DOGS IN THE HOUSE!
 


 
 
 
- EMMA GOT CUTER - How is that even possible?
 
 
I think that should catch you up!  Welcome back!
 
 


Saturday, July 17, 2010

One more thing

So if your stomach is roughly the size of your fist, why do they even make food this size




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Linn County Fair

Last night we drove 40 miles north to the Linn County fair to see a rock group I've loved for over a decade, the Gin Blossoms.



First we watched a little bull riding.



Then we went to out seats and watched the Rembrandts play. They were most memorable for doing the theme song to the tv show 'Friends'. Finally the Gin Blossoms came out.



The lead singer is terrific as a showman. We had a lot of fun and stayed up entirely too late.
Anyone besides me like this group?
It was a great way to end a birthday.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Ahhh, the joys of summer camp...

Thisweek,the kids went to day camp at Camp Wilani.  Its a wonderful old fashioned outdoor camp - where kids takea  bus each day and learn to canoe, shoot archery, make crafts, sing goofy songs, and get good and tired and filthy.

Emma hated the first day, but as soon as she discovered the zip line on day 2, all bets were off and she was crazy about camp.  Vi had lots of friends at camp, and Jakey had some.  Overall it was a great start to summer!



Friday, June 25, 2010

A little summer water fight

Best friends teaming up to cool off and get the boys...
J looks very gotten - look at how soaked that boy is! Twin sister not far behind and still armed.

She may be small, but she is mighty. E held her own with the big kids. She was definately the smallest one there, but she wasn't the wettest!






Sunday, June 20, 2010

And home again

We made it back after a long drizzly day.



First we went geocaching. Although Emma is vertically challenged it pays off for her. She found a geocache here with no effort and long before Glenn and I even knew where to look!

Then we went walking up on top of the tunnel that the Sunset Highway goes through. We certainly got our workout today. Dropped off a big and then took the stairs back down.



You can't see completely how high it went but trust me it was a climb!
Saw Prince of Persia and then tried to get one mote
Geocache at the Portland Library but ran out of time. Guess well hit it next time.

-f Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Saturday, June 19, 2010

Welcome to Portland

For Fathers day we are off to Portland by train. We checked into the gorgeous hotel and we are about to head out into the city.










We went to OMSI and then had dinner at Todais which is Glenns favorite restaurant.
To finish off the evening we are watching Clash of the Titans in our pjs. The next door neighbors are very loud. Hopefully they won't keep this up all night.
As a bonus this is Pride Northwest Weekend. We've seen some pretty interesting people. Seems like everytime we come up here there is a parade for either a protest of a celebration. We are going to try to avoid the crowds by getting an early start in the morning. - Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:SW 3rd Ave,Portland,United States

Friday, June 11, 2010

Where or where is summer?


It is June 10 - has anyone seen summer yet? We are at a balmy 58 degrees at 1pm in the afternoon, with a decent amount of cloud cover.
So lets get caught up. We got back from Europe last month, and we've been trying to recover and get back to normal. Vi is off today on a party extravaganza - her bff's birthday is today and they are painting the town together. Luckily nothing depends on weather, so they appear to be having a blast!

So far they have been to build a bear, a pottery painting place and lunch so far. It sounds like so much fun.
Yesterday our youngest, Emma, went to her first day of kindergarten. They have a half hour where they get to walk in and visit kindergarten, meet the teacher, and prepare for fall.

Saturday, May 8, 2010

Bonjourno from Italia!

Well we made it across the pond in a more southern route than we initiially planned. We flew directly to Rome a few days late, and stayed two nights in the apartment we'd stayed at before. Then it was on to Navigator of the seas for almost 2 weeks. We saw ruins, we saw castles, we saw riots and protests, pyramids, and we all got norovirus. Quite a couple of weeks!
Now we are back in Rome, and only a few days away from re-entering reality. `
The most ironic thing? Its raining. If we didn't have shutters and cobblestones outside, I'd think we were still in Oregon from the weather. We did have glorious weather on the trip on the boat. Even Egypt, known for its hot weather, was a mere 95 degrees at the pyramids (considerably cooler than the summer temps of 120-130!
If you want the complete rundown of the trip, you can read our other site - http://powells2010europe.blogspot.com
See you back in the states soon!

Monday, April 19, 2010

Just a little update from the weekend

Ok, so I am going to be a better writer, I really am! This weekend we were supposed to fly to London (along with about what, 180,000 other people) but the big volcano put a dent in our plans! So instead, we stayed home, did some more packing and repacking, and thought about what to fill our time with. One thing that we were going to miss, was my friend K's son's second birthday party. It was ironic really - I missed his birthday while on vacaion, and his first birthday. Thought I was on a roll overall, but I finally got to go to one!
Anyway, my friend K is a WIZ at cakes, she adds a whole new level to it. Amazing woman. This is this year's cake. The sesame street characters are all made of white chocolate - she made them all, then colored them and sculpted the whole thing.
Violet with one of her pretty faces wearing the birthday boys' ribbon!
Emma was happy to finally be one of the big kids (I guess age 5 is closer to 8 than to 2 in the kid pecking order.) They had a terrific time! Here is Emma on the couch watching me.

A little detour

Hello all! I'm sorry I've been such a terrible blogger lately. We are about to embark on a big trip, which you can follow at http://powells2010europe.blogspot.com We had actually hoped we'd already be on that trip, but the nasty volcano is holding things up.
I'll be back to check in shortly. I miss blogging!

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Long time no post

Hello long lost readers. Thought it was about time to get back to the blog. Today was the twins' first piano recital. It was pretty cool to see them perform, and utterly amazing to see some of the work the other older students are doing. This one boy is composing, and oh my goodness was he fantastic. Anyway, here are the kids doing duets with their instructor. He is a fantastic piano player in his own right, with several CDs and concerts around the pacific northwest.

2009 Overall was a really hard year, and so we hunkered down and got through it. We spent a month in Portland, and I almost lost the love of my life. All worked out and now we are refocusing our priorities and concentrating on what is important.
One thing that is important to all of us is travel and photography, so we intend to pack more of that into this year. I've cut back my hours at work, and we've booked a big vacation in the spring. More on that later.
Wanna get caught up on pictures? Try http://pileofpowells.shutterfly.com I'll try to post more often as we go!

Saturday, February 7, 2009

Let the crazy weekends begin

February is the month of parties at my house. It could be considered the Powell Social Season if we had such a thing.
This weekend we have two parties, neither of which we are hosting. First up tonight is a Chinese New Years Party, followed by a birthday party for one of my girlfriends who turns 50. They are scrunched together timewise, so we'll be leaving early from one and arriving late to the other.
Next weekend is Jakey's Big 7 birthday. We have rented the science factory here in Eugene for a couple hours on Saturday. They will do a crazy experiement, and then we'll stay late and look at the new photos from the Hubble telescope.
Week after its Bounce Gymnastics for Violet. Then our first giant slumber party with 3 kids over. Wonder how I'll survive 6 kids in one house - owwww.
Pictures to come after we survive the first round of parties...

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Tuesday

Well, in rejoining the blogging world, I guess today would normally be 'Tackle it Tuesday. I'm going to take credit for work I've been doing over time, since I'm battling a thrilling case of the flu.
Trying to maintain 3 years worth of documents for tax records takes up a lot of room. We've been scanning documents at work, and it finally occurred to me that I could scan our home documents and store them much more efficiently as well.
Besides the act of scanning, there is a whole lot of shredding to get rid of 4 years worth of documents and old paper. Every few days I shred a few bags full. It feels good to haul the bags out to the trash, but boy is it a lot of work.
So although I can't give you a visual, trust me that I've shredded four 3" binders worth of paper at this point. I'm still working on it, but more to come...

Monday, February 2, 2009

Out of the mouths of Babes...

I haven't felt good all weekend, and I was having a bad morning. Violet grabbed me this morning and stuffed a piece of paper in my purse - "Open it at work". This is what I found when I got to work. Made my day so much better....

Saturday, January 31, 2009

Holiday Pictures

The kids in the snow at the lodge, Christmas Eve.
Jakey with his new light saber (I love his face, boy was he happy!)
Jacob on Uncle Darrel's shoulders
The girls after a sledding run.
May the Force Be With You! Twenty years later, Star Wars is still alive and well for our children, go figure!
Emma and the phone Santa got her
The cousins on Christmas Eve, look at how silly we dressed them with elf hats and striped Pajamas!

Catching Up

Well its the last day of January - hard to believe how fast time has flown. I can't believe I haven't posted on here in 6 weeks!
So Christmas, lets see. We had a fantastic Christmas. We drove to Sunriver and met our family in a big house in the snow. We got there on Christmas Eve, unloaded and hurriedly called the shuttle service to get a ride over to the resort. A bus comes and drives you around there, which with 11 of us made a whole lotta sense!
Anyway, we got to the lodge and walked through the snow to one of the large meeting rooms in a separate building. If you haven't had a chance to go to Sunriver before, its something else. They have lights on all the trees, reindeeer and decor out. With 18" of snow on the ground it was just gorgeous. As we were walking down the path Santa came up behind us with his wife in their golf cart (who knew?) and gave the kids candy and talked to them.
Inside the meeting hall, they had a stage erected. They also brought out hot gingerbread, brownies, apple cider, coffee and hot chocolate. After a bit they invited all the children to to front where they sang songs, acted things out and told jokes. Finally the MC did Twas the Night Before Christmas on stage, at the end of which Santa came out from the chimney. The kids were thrilled.
Probably my favorite part of the evening was the shuttle ride back. There were a ton of people waiting, so we all crammed on. Even Frosty the Snowman and Rudolf got on. My sister-in-laws and I are kinda crazy, so we started singing Christmas carols in the dark with each other. Pretty soon all the strangers joined in. We were lauhging when we forgot words, and so tickled at Emma who at times just sang her own thing.
Came home, chased the kids to bed and tried to get some sleep.
The night was interrupted several times. First time was 3am, when an 'exploration party' stealthly came down the stairs to see if they could find Santa. My brother in law caught them and chased 4 of the 5 kids up the stairs and back to their rooms. At 5am I was awakened as Emma had a bloody nose, which somehow caused an impromptu dance party to erupt in the kids loft. Got them settled down (somewhat) Sister in law had to get them again at 6:30. Finally around 8 we all got up and came down to see what Santa had brought.
Santa, in addition to burying the tree, had brought all of us Nerf Guns. This seemed to be the hit of the holiday. The house had a loft upstairs, and with 2 storys of fighting going on, we were always in some kind of nerf war.
My brotherinlaw had bought a 14 pound prime rib, which he cooked the better part of the day on the outside grill. My other brother in law is a wine guy, so he taught us about wines and brought some great ones.
The kids played in the snow for hours, and more fell each day we were there. One day we took the kids sledding on the sledding hill. Darrell (bil) went down the side that said, 'do not go this way' and took his boys. Emma discovered that she loves sledding once she got the hang of it. Vi was often airborn, but she had a great time. Jakey seemed to suffer for it, lots of whining about it but overall he loved it.
New Years Eve we stayed in. We all stayed up but J fell asleep just before midnight. The girls and I put on silly foil crowns, went out n the deck and blew horns. Before that we had a dance party in my bedroom watching Dick Clark's Rocking New Years Eve on the tv.
This month we took Emma to Portland to have another Echocardiogram done. We met with the pediatric cardiac surgeon and confirmed that Emma will have heart surgery in the summer. Still don't have a date (have to wait for them to open their calendars for summer) but we should in the next month.
Work has been crazy stressful. Budget issues, employee health crisis, lotsof stuff.
Oh, there was one great highlight. Last weekend after 2 long years, the University Theater opened. I've been doing a bit of work on the budget oversite side. Anyway, they bought the house, and invited us to come join them in their gala opening. Gosh it was terrific. The play was Around The World in 80 Days. Afterwards there was a champagne receptin in the new addition to the theater, and then we were allowed to look around. The new scene shop is huge, and so much better. The new costume shop is amazing. IT is 2100 square feet, huge windows, 'green' lights that know when the sun comes out and dim. Lots of space, lots of good work areas. We had such a wonderful time.
Ok, guess that is my six weeks in a nutshell. I'm fighting off a bit of a cold today. Gotta take our dog in for shots, then Vi goes to her bff's house before I take Jakey to go pet snakes, lizards and turtles. I guess they have a big snake you can have your pic taken with. Jakey says he is going for the small snake. I told him I'm sticking to turtles. This will probably reignite his campaign for a blue throated lizard. I'm so petted out with 2 cats and a dog, I think the lizard is a ways off....