All posts by KME

Still Summer

We need a new blog picture and theme. However, since I haven’t blogged about our time in Texas yet (where it is eternally summer, from our perspective), I figure there’s no hurry.

Today Tim has the children and will be gone until dark. Can you hear the angels singing? I have the entire day to myself. There are school books and binders spread across the dining room table. My hope is to have some sort of a school plan established by the end of the day.

Hence my time here on the blog. There’s too much pressure over in the other room – books to sort, curriculum decisions to make, a transcript of Joshua’s freshmen year to document, meals to plan.

Instead of dealing with all of that, I’d much rather think about our vacation, where it was hot and sunny and there was no talk of school allowed.

red shirts unite!

Yes, we settled on red as our theme traveling shirt this year. It was a tough battle between green and red, and one child voted for a Christmas look, combining the two favored colors. Needless to say red won.

With that said, I must get back to the table o’ responsibility that awaits me. Cheers on this Labor Day!

Kathy

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Duckabush Diary Part 2

Hello everyone, its me again! Rachel! : ) I know I’m all over the place right? Haha Sooo, I was just writing to tell everyone about our fabulous week at the Duckabush. I for one had a wonderful time. One novelty was the bikes, they were a great help! Hannah, Bethany, and I did lots of biking!

Mind you, there were only 3ish bikes, and about on average 18ish children (counting a few neighborhood hooligans) So if you wanted to use the bikes, you had to:

1. Bribe a brother
2. Keep the bikes out of sight from other competitors
3. Escape!

It was lots of fun! : )

Anyways, the bikes, golf cart rides, swimming, walking, talking, were all fun, but I think my favorite was the ping pong tournaments! The CITS (counselors in training), Hannah, Allison, and I, all participated. Oh and an occasionally a dad or two. ; ) We played games like; Round Robin, (haha even now I still want to call it Red Robin! :P) We played two on two, and one on one. But my favorite was definitively ‘Red Robin’. Because so many people could play!

CIT's gather

They pretend to be working on camp stuff, but they’re really plotting ping-pong strategies.

watch out, Alan!

An exploding ping-pong would be cool!

Another fun thing we did, was geocaching. I think my dad wrote a blog on geocaching not to long ago, but just in case you missed it, I’ll put a link! Just for you! : )

The first geocache we visited was on a cool rock mound. We had to drive up and up and up to get there. I got dizzy! haha : P

sarah's cache

Sarah picked this out of the cache just for Mom.

The second was not a real cache, but just a cool location. The Pancho, and Edgren children (except for the younger ones) braved the climb down, than up the steep rocks. I probably should have stayed, because I fell in 3 times! And if you don’t believe me, I have bruises to prove it! lol : )

gorgeous waterfall

climbing up and down

posing for mom

This waterfall was awesome! Even if I did fall in.

I just came from swim team, ahhh it was hard, but it felt sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo good to swim!! That’s one of the only things I missed during the week at the Duckabush. I love swimming! : )

dan

Dan seemed to think this water was good for swimming. Brrrr

rachel bethany and hannah

geocachers unite!

This was our LAST geocache of the day. Number 3!

Also, a super fun part of the week was driving around on the Red Blitz, I don’t really know why they call the golf cart that…. maybe they hope it will go faster with a cool name? I think that’s a good idea! Grandma and Grandpa were major nice to share the ‘Red Blitz’ with us. And, we only broke one little part of it. I thought that was pretty good, for almost two houses full of teens!

sarah and grandpa

This is my Grandpa, and of course my favorite sister. (oh wait, I only have one! haha)

hannah and rachel taking turns driving

Here, Hannah and I are pretending to drive crazy, but no worries, I’m a safe person. ; )

The rest of the week was spent playing doing, well just about anything you can think of, it was pretty amazing. We even managed to clean the house on Saturday. The girls and my mom rushed around cleaning as fast as possible, it was….. well, interesting I miss it already…… It was a GREAT week and we were all sad to go home.

I hope next year everyone can come out to the Duckabush, and have an even better time! Oh AND, I’ll be a CIT next year!! MWHAHAHA just kidding, I am excited though! : ) I think…….

Sincerely, anonymous or not so anonymous Edgren child : )

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Duckabush Diary Part 1

A look at our week on the peninsula…

fire pit time

Dear Diary,

It took us three vehicles to get out to the Duckabush. I think Mom filled up an entire car with food and suitcases. She tends to over pack. It makes her handy to have in an emergency.

The bikes were on the back of her car. Dad didn’t want to bring them, but Mom insisted. I heard her mumbling something like, “I don’t care if those bikes aren’t safe on gravel… it’s a great learning opportunity.” But I might be wrong. Mom even convinced the neighbor to “show her how to put the bike rack on” while she went inside and had some coffee. The bikes turned out to be great, and the scratches healed really quickly. I guess Mom occasionally comes up with a good idea.

the infamous bikes

Even though we were on vacation, Mom seemed to spend a lot of time in the kitchen. I don’t know what took so long. There were only 8 or 9 kids at the house for the week. Is it that hard to feed people? Sigh.

david, lizzie and emma

David, Lizzie and Emma are ready for s’mores.

Plus she kept leaving the kitchen and trying to relax on the deck (something about “it’s my vacation too, you bunch of hungry children”). One day she completely burnt a bag of popcorn. I don’t think the kitchen will ever smell the same. Another day she pretty much destroyed a frying pan while she went out to say hello to friends. What is with that?

tarah, sarah and julia

It’s important to have a pink fuzzy blanket for the fire pit.

Some moms are just not very attentive. I think she finally took the smoke alarm and disabled it.

carrying sticks to the fire

Little Daniel helped carry sticks up to the fire for roasting marshmallows.

Thankfully there was a fire pit up above the creek. No smoke alarms around and we could have s’mores. Of course, Mom said we could only have two s’mores each. Doesn’t she know we need sugar to fuel us for the week? So what if there were 16 kids (6 or 8 of them teenagers) fighting over the marshmallows? Didn’t she pack enough for unlimited s’mores?

michelle and eli

Michelle hugs Eli. He probably had 3 s’mores.

rachel and allison

Rachel had LOTS of girl time this week.

What kind of camp is this anyway?

daniel, hannah and bethany

Daniel and Hannah wonder if Bethany can catch marshmallows without using her hands.

leanne and luke

Leanne and Luke – pros at getting the little kids to roast marshmallows for them.

While we were sitting around the fire, we had our Bible chapter time. We’re in the middle of 2 Samuel right now. Nothing spices up a camp fire like a discussion of King David beating up some Philistines.

joshua and the Bible

If we could keep Joshua focused on reading the chapter, there were more s’mores for the rest of us.

timothy and jake

These look innocent, but I’m not sure….

There were also some rather violent games that took place during the week. The main injury was Bethany’s glasses. Not bad considering the crowd involved.

who's gonna win??

the competition is brutal

Timothy and Bethany were the true champions of the fierce sack race competitions. It was only when they faced each other that the trouble took place.

So diary, I don’t have time to write any more. I’ll try to come back again soon. Thanks for always being there. XOXOXO

Anonymous Edgren child

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Life is a Bowl of Cherries

Tim took the kids geocaching this morning. Thankfully he brought the camera with him. At last night’s outing we had only the pathetic pixels of my phone in which to capture the moment.

So where is Tim in this time of blogging famine?

Typing up a storm?
Writing pithy captions for the intriguing pictures he snapped along the dusty trail?
No, he is NOT!

He’s sacked out on Dough Boy, eyes closed, an empty ice cream bowl dangling from his finger tips. Dough Boy is our couch, not some random prescription drug. Just wanted to clarify. But since I couldn’t resist from plattering about what is a suboxone doctor and how such doctors are useful, in one of my blogs, that could also allude to the fact that I might not be completely clean. But I digress.

So, instead of an interesting blog on the intricacies of geocaching, we’ll have to settle for some pictures of Sarah’s outing.

Get me out of here!

Sarah and I were invited to pick cherries at a friend’s house this afternoon. Tim, with an eye on the birthdays rapidly approaching, swooped the rest of the children off for a shopping expedition. Joshua and his posse are off at a Counselor’s In Training (C.I.T.) retreat this weekend.

On our way, Sarah and I discussed fruit, both of us admitting that we don’t really care for cherries. “Let’s not tell Mrs. P,” I said to Sarah, “it might hurt her feelings.” Sarah looked puzzled, “What do we do, if she asks us?” she inquired. “How about we say, ‘They’re not my favorite.’” I suggested helpfully. Not wanting to encourage Sarah in duplicity, but hoping to teach some social skills, I had her practice.

“Let me hear you say it.”
Sarah responded haltingly, “They’re not my favorite.”
“Perfect,” I chorused.

Sure enough the first thing Karen said, as we found her down at the end of the garden, was, “Sarah, do you like cherries?”

Princess hard at work

Sarah is always ready for an adventure.

Pause
Pause
Pause

“It’s my birthday next week,” she said helpfully looking up at Karen sweetly.

Ah good, I thought, misdirection. Nothing like an adorable 6 year old to change the subject.

Big ladder - litle girl

That’s an awfully big ladder!

“How nice!” Karen responded enthusiastically. “Are you excited to try some of these cherries?” Karen is not easily distracted.

“It’s my mommy’s birthday too,” Sarah informed her, “we share a birthday.”

“Wow! That’s wonderful.”

climbing steadily UP

Sarah did not go unaccompanied up the tall ladder.

At this point, I was pretty sure Karen no longer cared about Sarah’s interest in eating cherries and was ready to direct us in actually picking them. As she handed us a bag and pointed out the low lying branches, laden with cherries, Sarah piped up cheerfully, “Cherries are not my favorite.”

“Really,” Karen said, looking at me.
“Nope, Sarah continued eagerly, “or Mommy’s. We don’t really like them.”

“Well, heh heh,” I stammered, “David and Tim love them, and I didn’t want to miss the chance to spend some time with you in your beautiful garden.” Thankfully those things were true, no misdirection needed.

Heights do not bother these two.

As it turned out, fresh Rainier cherries are delicious. We both ate handfuls of them, still managing to fill up two bags to take home with us. I went on to eat another small bowlful that evening. A cherry convert.

We even saved some for the boys, barely.

Kathy

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Haircuts for Girls

Last week I took Sarah and Rachel to get their hair cut.

sarah's before picture

Sarah definitely needs a fresh cut.

Or is it hairs cut?
Hair cuts?

keep cutting

Yikes. Do we have to work on grammar during the summer?

When I made the appointment for Rachel I mentioned Sarah getting her hair done later in July, “When I have some fresh funds in my hair cut budget,” I mumbled. The stylist heard me and generously encouraged me to bring in both girls. “I can give you a discount,” she offered kindly.

haircut, braid and pretty smile

Sarah loved her new look.

Just when I am frustrated with the constraints of a budget and the limits on my spending, I see God working. He is not limited by funds.

…for every animal of the forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills. Psalm 50:10

the path of beauty

great cut!

It’s always nice to be pampered.

Not only does the Lord hold out His hand to bless me, He uses the people around me. In the famous words of Professor Oppelbaumer, “it’s a vin, vin, vin situation.” They are rewarded in their gift of time, energy and resources, and I am honored by their kindness.

my lovely girls

A blessed mother and her precious jewels.

Kathy

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