Ugh... It's allergy and cold season!

Well... other than the coughing, scratchy, sore throat, sneezing, stuffy head, running nose, itching, red eyes and the never ending "hack, hack, hack", we're doing just dandy! I think the boys started out as allergy driven colds, and I'm thinking that I just have allergies. Charles is the only one who seems well, which is good, since he's the one who has to go to work!

In spite of our sniffles and coughing, we've been out trying to get things planted in the rain. Last Saturday, May 2nd, as a family we attended the Clackamas County Master Gardner's Spring Fair! Despite the rain alternating between drizzling and pouring, and Nathanael developing a fever during the tour of all the vendors, we had a good time. Nathanael has recently developed a keen interest in bleeding hearts (Dicentra spectabilis)

and therefore, it was his mission for the day to spend some of his saved up allowance funds on a beautiful specimen for him to plant at home. Mikael, on the other hand, had not really bothered with flowers and didn't plan on spending his money on anything like that until I just had to detour into this one little booth that had Japanese iris of a different color than what I currently have, so I bought the iris ensenata "Gypsy Queen"

and while I was paying, Mikael noticed the picture on the tag of a Dianthus "Eastern Star". Though we didn't stop and buy it then, all throughout our browsing and lunch time, all Mikael could talk about was "his dianthus." So, when we went back through and purchased everything we needed for the garden, ("we" being Mikael and I, since Charles and Nathanael went to the Suburban to get sicky-kid-Nathanael out of the rain) we also had to stop so Mikael could buy "his dianthus"

which is still in the pot and not in the ground yet!

Among the other things we purchased were garden starts of tomatoes, cucumbers (eating and pickling), peppers (hot and mild), zucchini squash, yellow crook neck squash, basil, rosemary and sage. I also purchased a flat of marigolds to plant around the garden to entice the good bugs to come and eat the bad bugs! I still have to find rhubarb, raspberries and strawberries. Then, I have to plant all our other seeds, but that will come when the garden isn't a marsh!

ah... ahh... ahchoo!

Has it really been that long?

Well, since I finally checked my blog and realized that it's been a little over 3 weeks since I've written, I decided that I better tell you all that I'm still alive and that we're all doing fine!

In brief: We traveled back to Southern Oregon the Saturday night before Easter and stayed through Monday morning, arriving in back in Gresham in time for Mikael's practice at the batting cages. Between baseball practices and games, we're pretty swamped, and then add in Wednesday morning Bible Study, Theology class and church service on Sunday, Friday School (homeschool co-op) on Friday:) and then occasional entertaining and play dates. Oh, and I forgot to mention that we're trying to get a garden in, meaning that we tilled up the sod and are trying to amend the soil, plot it out and also build 2 large raised beds and one large planter (2'x 2'x 12'), and then of course, plant it. Oh... and we're doing a bit of work on the back porch - installing a post and beam system from which we'll hang our porch swing.

I think that pretty much covers what has kept me away from my blog for the past 3 weeks. So, now a positive update. For those of you who know about our situation, you would know that it's tenuous at best. The Sandy Hatchery had lost all funding beyond June 30, 2009 and would be shutting down and we would be moving again to who knows where, yet, we know that God is sovereign and He can and will do what He chooses. It's our job to get our will in line with His and rest in His care. I'm sorry to say that I wasn't resting nearly as well as I should, but God is faithful always, especially when I can't deserve it! Tuesday of this week we found out that our funding is back and we will not be moving!!!!

In case you don't know me well enough yet, I really don't like the whole "move" thing. It just throws my life into chaos, and despite having chaos in my life at frequent intervals, I despise it.

Anyway, looks like I'll be blogging from Sandy, Oregon for a while. What a relief for me! The boys both cheered, as well, when they heard the news. Now I can garden and landscape for the long-run. The boys can make friends without fearing they will lose them shortly, and we can all heave a collective (might I add, faithless) sigh of relief.

Well, Friday School is quickly approaching and I still need to get everything loaded up, so I'll go for now, but try not to take 3 weeks to post again:)

So... my computer is starting over from 2005... Arggg....

Actually, I could go on and on and on about how in the process of trying to fix my drivers on my computer that I instead made things worse, and then about how I had to "wipe" my hard drive and start over from when I originally purchased this thing in 2005, but... I'll just skip all the part about staying up 4 nights in a row until almost 4 am working on backing up data and restoring my system and updating 4 years worth of programs.

Instead, I'll tell you that our trip to Southern Oregon was great. The weather was better than it had been predicted to be for the whole trip and everyone got to do a whole lot of nothing (very nice) and the boys also got to play, play, play!!! While we were down there we cut and wrapped and processed Nathanael's elk, put it in the freezer and brought it all home ready to eat! We also cut a load of firewood to bring home, getting our supply ready for next winter. The part about it all that made it fun is that we all caravanned out to the back of my Dad's place on 4-wheelers with trailers in tow, then as my dad fell the trees and cut them up, Charles split them, I loaded and we all trooped home. In two trips we had all that our stout, medium-sized trailer could haul home, and it was only a couple hours after we started!

The real bonus of the trip was Wednesday when Charles and I took a walk all around my old home (80 acres worth) and I related stories about the different times I did what silly things when and where. As we came down the hill towards the house at the end of our tour, I decided to stop at an outcropping of granite that overlooks the house and the small valley that my Dad's house sits in. The sun was shining, temperatures were in the high 60's to low 70's, we were warm after our walk, and we sat down on the rock to enjoy more of the sunshine. I'm not quite sure what overtook me, but I laid back... and that's the end of the story! No, but what we actually did was take a long nap on the ground in the Springtime sunshine! Occasionally we'd hear the boys yelling in the back yard as they played and we'd look down long enough to see that they were just having fun and then would drift back to sleep! It was such a blessing to just totally relax and have no demands on our time. I almost felt like I was 12 again, spending a spring day out and about, just doing whatever I wanted! And then on the way home down the hill from there, I went barefoot, and I felt just like a silly school girl again! Ooohhh.... I had a good time while down south!

Looking forward to our visit to Southern Oregon

We're getting ready to leave for the Rogue Valley for a 5 day trip. It will be our "spring break" vacation since this is the only block of time that Charles can get away from work for any length of time. We'll be visiting family and hopefully seeing a few friends too! Nathanael plans to ride his dirt bike constantly from the moment we get there until the moment we leave!


Mikael is just planning to play, and maybe shoot spinners from Grandpa Syd's back porch. "Shooting spinners" is a type of target practice where they shoot .22's at pieces of wood which have been drilled and threaded over a horizontal metal rod so that when you hit one end of any of the pieces they spin.


I'm not sure what I'm looking forward to doing since I'm still trying to realize that in just 9 hours or so we'll be leaving. I don't really have anything packed yet, though I have been working on my list of things to do and to take! I think Charles is just looking forward to some down time, and maybe a game or two of Settlers of Catan with old friends. Other than visiting with family, going to Bible Study on Wednesday night and letting the kids play, we really don't have any agenda. It's rather a relief to let the schedule go and just see what happens. Rarely do I get to do that (usually because my personality doesn't do well with that sort of approach to most things). We'll be offline until late Sunday night. No doubt, I'll have some crazy story to relate when we get back home and back online! Until then, have a green St. Patrick's Day and a Happy Spring!

Red meat - it's what's for dinner!

Nathanael is the mighty hunter in our house these days.

Many of you may know that Nathanael has been hunting for some large game lately. And as you can see, he was successful! Early this last fall, Charles was approached with the offer of letting Nathanael hunt on a land-owner preference tag at a (then) local piece of property. I think we all jumped at that chance, but Nathanael was definitely excited to have the chance to kill an elk before his dad! So, we got it all set up and then we moved just as the season opened. Nathanael had been totally bummed out about it, but we promised to make some trips back to hunt. I did not realize at the time of promising that making some trips back would mean getting up at 2:30 am and driving two and a half hours to sit and wait for enough light to get into position and wait for the elk to move up through the property. I also didn't realize just how many trips we'd make, some of which found us arriving to find the elk already moved through, not to be back that day, so we'd turn around and drive the two and a half hours back home. Thankfully, I only made the trip twice, but Charles and Nathanael made several more without me and Mikael. This last Saturday, March 14th, 2009, Charles and Nathanael headed back to the coast (we'd all just been there on Thursday morning)right into a storm front. We'd checked the weather forecast and they were looking at an inch of rain, sustained winds of 25 mph and gusts upwards of 45 mph, with temperatures in the very low 40's. With rain gear piled high in the back seat, they left at 3:45 am after I got up and made them two thermoses of homemade hot chocolate. After they arrived and parked, they got all geared up and headed up the hill... right into a group of elk which spooked and took off up over the ridge and out of bounds for this hunt! So, they decided to get settled and wait to see if there were any stragglers that might show up. After a couple hours of waiting, they figured that they had blown there only chance and headed down the hill. They walked right into another group of elk! This time, though, they saw the elk before the elk saw them and they were able to get over behind a stump before they were spotted. Charles told Nathanael to get settled, take his time and make a good shot. Nathanael got to take his time all right! They sat for about 15 minutes watching and waiting for one to really present itself, and then the elk started lining out like they were ready to head up the hill. Charles was getting a little impatient by this time and finally told Nathanael that if he didn't shoot soon, Charles would do it! So, Nathanael shot, saw her flinch and then they couldn't see what happened to her. The other elk just milled around, fed for a little while, and then moved off. At that point Charles had to go see if they could track her (in the pouring rain and not even sure that Nathanael had hit her.) But after just a bit of following tracks, then loosing them, not seeing any blood, they found her, just below the road she had been on when Nathanael shot her. He had made a good shot, right through both lungs. Then came the work of gutting, skinning and quartering her and getting her in the Bronco to bring home. All of that work was made easier by our friend from church who brought up his four-wheeler to drag her out and down to the dairy his brother owns, then they used the tractor to hoist her up as they skinned her, Nathanael helping, and then they used the sawz-all to quarter her. They were all done with that, loaded and on the road by just after 11 am!

After arriving home, more work awaited us, as the majority of the cleaning of the meat still had to be done before we left it to hang and cool out. Charles and I worked for several hours cleaning and washing down the quarters, having to work pretty intensively on the quarter that the bullet had entered and on which she had lain for a hour or so. After that was accomplished, we cleaned up, got all the dirty, bloody, wet things in the washer. Then we could finally appreciate the satisfaction of Nathanael's successful hunt.

There will be a freezer filled with meat soon (we have to take the elk with us to Southern Oregon and cut and package it there as we only have this one window for our trip south to visit family, and the elk needs to be taken care of in the next day or so). Nathanael has gained confidence, and he and Charles have strengthened that father/son bond through all of this experience. I've gained a bit more faith and trust in the Father. It seems that when I finally let go of whatever I have been holding so tightly to, and I finally place it fully in the Father's hands, that is when the blessing comes!