I am wife to a magnificent man and mother to five wonderful children. Three of my children were born in the Northwest and two were born thousands of miles away in Liberia, West Africa. Birthplace is no matter, all of my children were born in my heart. This is our journey.

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Girls with guitars

She has wanted to play the guitar for a long time.


We had given her a child size guitar for her birthday several years back but she had long outgrown it.


Recently she had mentioned that she would really like a full size guitar to learn on. She thought maybe her younger brother could enjoy the small guitar.

So when we purchased a storage unit and found a nice guitar inside we knew we would be making one ten year old girl very happy. Steve replaced the strings, tuned it and away they went. Music to our ears.

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Almost Wordless Wednesday - Summer Edition

 (Persuing personal interests.)

 (Making strawberry jam.)

(Summer library reading program.) 

(Summer sunset as seen from the backyard.)

Monday, June 20, 2011

CUHRAZY!!!

That would be a description of my life right now. We always look forward to summer but it doesn't mean less work, just different work. I like the change of scenery but we have filled our plates for this month. First we finished up school but I am still doing some correcting for olders who were working towards a specific goal. Next is the tent trailer clean-up we are working on so we can sell it. (Yay! New school books!) The garden is in and growing be it slow. The Pacific Northwest hasn't been so great for gardening the last few years. We are hopeful this year will be better than last.

We are now the proud owners of two bunnies for a certain ten year old girl. Thumper and Chubby are the names they came with and they need supplies and attention. So far, said ten year has been doing a fantastic job of taking care of most of this on her own. Her and daddy are building a double hutch as they are a boy and girl and well...let's just say we are happy with just two bunnies.

The biggest venture we are working on currently is that of storage auctions. Have you ever seen Storage Wars or Auction Hunters? They are two favorite shows around here and we are doing something similar. We purchased our first two units last week and are sorting through and selling contents. Not an easy task my friends but fun so far. The jury is still out on whether or not this is a worthwhile venture for us. We intend to go to one more auction, have a garage sale and see where the bottom line ends up before deciding to continue. I would like to say that it is not glamorous by any stretch of the imagination but Steve and I love auctions and we are enjoying doing something like this together. We make a pretty good bidding team.

My laptop, which has all of my pics on it, seems to have bit the dust. My tech guy is hoping to recover my info so I can post some pictures of our adventures again.

Off to scrub the trailer. Makes me tired just thinking about it.

Thursday, June 2, 2011

New digs

We purchased a tent trailer almost three years ago. It sleeps ten and has served us really well. The fact that we are a family of seven means that finding hotels that will sleep all of us in one room is difficult. The two drawbacks to the tent trailer have been 1) no bathroom and 2) set-up has become difficult after Steve's shoulder injury and surgery.


We only used the trailer once last year and decided it was time to upgrade. The fold out bed feature worked for us but putting the roof up and down did not.


Enter the hybrid trailer. It also sleeps ten people but it has a bathroom AND the beds pop down instead of sliding out. Perfect!!!


Due to the size of the beds we will be able to still sleep all seven of us on the three pop-out beds and leave the table and sofa set up to use daily.


Each bed area has a curtain to close it off making nap times easier.


The fridge is bigger than the one we had in our tent trailer and the kitchen will be perfect for making camping meals.


We found this trailer used but it looks new. Also, being a hybrid means it is only 22 1/2 feet long for easy towing but 29 feet long when extended making for lots of room for all of us. Score!!!

We can't wait to take it out camping very soon. We also have a trip planned to Canada for a family reunion this summer. The comforts of home while seeing some of God's amazing handiwork on the road, how perfect is that? Also, we are fans of not having very much in the Blazer with us while we drive. Can. Not. Wait.
(We haven't moved, these pictures were taken before we purchased the trailer.)