Shelby's 14th Birthday...

When Mark and I met, Shelby was two, still a baby! As we've built our life together...added more children, blended the children we had into a family...moved to different homes as Mark has gotten new orders...started and finished degrees...and just lived our life together, time has kept ticking....so NOW, Shelby is 14!!! I do not know where the time has gone. It has flown by all too fast. She has gone from a little girl with big scared eyes...to a confident, beautiful, TALL girl who knows what is going on. She has figured out that what she has been told all her life about her father and what the REALITY is are two different things. She is seeing the truth for herself and the wonderful thing is that we have not had to say one thing. Never a bad word about her mother or grandparents. EVER. Only support and praise and encouragement for her life with them and joy and love shown to her when she is here. Such a long, hard road for someone so young. I only hope that we can somehow be given the wisdom to keep taking the high road knowing in our hearts that in the long run, this is the best gift we can ever give to her.
Anyways, we celebrated her being in this world with a cake and bowling (how ELSE do you celebrate a birthday?!). Mark took her shopping to the mall for her gift...she IS after all a 14 year old girl and we don't dare pick out something for her as we just don't have 'style' don't you know! hahaha....
I hope you enjoy the pictures as much as we enjoyed the day!

Hugs
Jaye




Shelbys cake was DELICIOUS....it was a cookies n' cream cake from Cold Stone Creamery! YUMMO!






Mark and his first baby..who isn't a baby anymore!




Yes, this is actually a picture of me! Just to PROVE I am still around! haha





Shelby and Paige. They are non stop giggling and laughing and fooling around the whole time they are together! Sisters.....





Ben and Lilly picking their balls...




The picture looks 'smoky'. This was because it was 'fireball bowling' night...they turned on the black lights and disco lights and turned off the overhead lights so everything we wore 'glowed'. Way cool!

Titles

As the title of my post indicates, I have discovered (FINALLY) how to put titles on all of my posts! So I am going back and putting a title on each of them, which could take awhile! So bear with me, and rejoice that I am not a complete dork and figured this out! ;)
Hugs
Jaye

Spring.....Almost!

The past week has been sunny and warm. Paige,Shelby and I have been wearing our capri's. The daffodils and tulips have poked through the ground and many are actually in bloom. Easter was rainy, but still sunny at times and warm.

Then we woke up this morning to snow. Several inches in fact! (which isn't too impressive to our WI readers who are saying INCHES? Try FEET!) It has snowed off and on all day. This is actually fairly normal for WA state. We get this odd little 'snow flurry' in mid March and THAT is our winter. What is odd this year is that we've had snow off and on and in good amounts since before Thanksgiving. So we are all ready for the snow to leave and the Capri weather to come back!

Hugs
Jaye

Easter Eggs

Today we coloured our Easter eggs...I usually blow out the eggs and we keep them forever, but I have done this for too many years and we now have too many eggs! This year we did the good old fashioned hard boiled eggs, which on Monday will get turned into egg salad-YUMMY!



The PERFECT pink!!




This is SERIOUS business!

Happy St.Paddy's Day!!

As usual, Paige went all out for St. Paddys day. She even requested Green eggs for breakfast! Ben also wore a green shirt and a green bowler hat, but didn't stay still long enough for a picture!

Cool Dude...

Ben thought he was cool eating his chicken noodle soup lounging on the counter! Boys!!!

D.I. did terrific!!!

In October, Paige was invited to join a D.I. team (D.I. stands for Destination Imagination). D.I. is a science based problem solving program. Each team of 7 or less (boys,girls or mixed teams) are given two challenges. One is called 'instant challenge' wherein they are given a random assortment of items (paperclips,paper, etc ) and asked to build something specific with these items....usually its a structure that doesn't fall etc....the other challenge is one the team picks..they have a choice of one of five topics and they work on this for five months before they go to regionals...
So...last Saturday about 60 teams met at the local high school to compete for spots in the State finals. This was Paiges teams FIRST time doing D.I and therefore obviously their first time at competition. While they did not win a spot in State (THANK GOD!!!), their team DID win the Da Vinci Award for Overall Best Creativity!!! Not bad for a first time team to take this award over all the other teams!!!
Below are two pictures of the winners....three of the team members didn't come back for the awards ceremony, which was too bad because they missed the chance to shine in front of their peers!!
Way to go Paige,Twila,Ursula,Sarah,AJ and Danielle!!!
Next year (when we are more experienced and more prepared), we go to State??

Spring has sprung!

Do you know what that is? That is SPRING people!! Yes, spring has sprung here in WA state! Yesterday I went out onto the back patio and cleared away the leaf mulch that was covering all the plants in the retaining wall garden. Ok...that sounds SO Martha Stewarty...making you think I took the time last fall to baby my plants and cover them with a special mulch to protect them through the winter...nope..I just left them alone and the leaves just piled up on them over the fall! :)

Anyways...when I removed the mulch, there were all these green shoots coming from my perennials! YAY!!!! The days are sunny and actually considered 'warm'...the nights are still cold enough that we have frost in the mornings, but that is gone by 10 am or so. Today I am going to head down to the bottom acre and check my 'bulb garden' to see if any daffodils/tulips/hyacinths are up! If they are, I'll post some pictures to make all those living in Wisconsin have some hope that some day...SOME DAY the snow will melt! :)

Hugs to all,
Jaye

P.J's and Jumprope

The kids had a fun day at school on Thursday. Not only was it Pajama day (who wouldn't like to wear their jammies to school?!) but it was the annual "Jump Rope For Heart" fund raiser as well. After school got out (Thursday is early release in our district, so school was out at 1:45) the kids went to the gym, in their jammies, and jumped rope for heart! They were each in a group that rotated through various jump rope centers that each featured a different game. The kids had a ball and got lots of exercise!

Today Paige is at school again (yes, it's Saturday!) with her D.I (Destination Imagination) team getting ready for competition in three weeks! D.I is a science based curriculum that is focused on free thinking and imagination. The kids are given various problems and challenges that they must solve within a certain time. The solutions are only limited by your imagination and creativity! This is a program that is offered to kids who excel at school and who need 'enrichment'...which suits Paige to a T who was recently tested and is classified as 'borderline gifted'. She doesn't quite meet the districts requirements for the gifted program (she missed the level requirement by a mere few points!), but the school scrambles to get her into programs and such that will keep her challenged as her regular classroom curriculum is WAY to easy and 'boring' to her!
Ben is with Mark today signing up for T ball. We told him he needed to decide on his sport and he was vacillating between soccer and T-ball but eventually decided that he enjoyed T-ball so much last year that he wanted to keep it going again this year. Paige has cheer sign ups next week!

Enjoy the pictures of the kids in their jammies jumping rope!

Hugs to all,
Jaye



Paige getting ready to 'jump in'....




Ben getting ready to run into the 'jump area'...