Still Partying

I started this update a LONG time ago and forgot to finish and post it!

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We had a day off from birthday stuff on Sunday, but today I picked up Kelby’s friends Taylor and Larissa to go to the church pool. We are having a little sleep over for Kelby’s birthday. It is an easy party with these girls. They swan from 1:00 to 3:00 or so. I think they’ll all sleep well! We ate hotdogs for dinner and had ice cream sundaes for the “cake”.

We watched Marley & Me. It was a sad movie. I really liked it, but it had a few adult themes that was a bit inappropriate for the kids. I turned if off a couple times when I was worried about the content. Oops. The next day we went rollerskating together.

 

Real Birthday

Saturday was Kelby’s real birthday. I made her Swedish pancakes for breakfast, but I don’t know how to make them very well. They tasted okay, but didn’t look pretty.

Then we let Kelby open her presents from mom, Mike and I, and Gigi & Papa. She was excited to get some money. I think she wants to buy herself a gerbil in the near future. I told her she had to earn the money to prove she could handle the responsibility. Mom surprised her with a stuffed horse she had been admiring at the toy store in Fairhaven. Mike and I got her a fancy mp3 player. It is just like mine and she is excited it will even play movies. It is so easy to use. She’ll get lots of use out of it, but I hope that she won’t be playing the movie all the time. (I’ll only put one on at a time. I told her I would remove the movie as a consequence if I had to.)

We had the hardest time figuring out something to do that day. We talked about riding the ferry, but it was too complicated to find a time and boat to ride.

We ended up going out to Washington Park in Anacortes. The weather was perfect. The girls like the playground there and also enjoyed the beach for a few minutes.

    

Because another blogging friend of mine posted pictures of their trip to an ice cream shop on Fir Island, we decided to make that part of our adventure. They serve up HUGE ice cream cones on tasty homemade waffle cones. We couldn’t eat all our ice cream. In the end we decided they are just TOO big. Now we are on the look out for an ice cream place with medium cones at a cheap price! Any suggestions?!

   

That afternoon and evening I was so exhausted. I just kept falling asleep. My mom was there and I just couldn’t get myself to stay awake! I think that my life had been going, going, going up until that point and when I got a chance to just relax…out I went!

We had to take Mom to the airport on Sunday morning. It was a short, but busy visit. We all loved it and will miss her!

Kelby’s Ten Years Old!

Here we are celebrating Kelby’s 10th birthday. Though we celebrated as we would for any of our kids, it was a real milestone and an opportunity to reflect on the miracle that her life is.

Can you believe that this little girl…

Is a survivor of four bouts of cancer..three relapses of a high-risk childhood cancer? She has baffled the doctors and amazed us all. Can you believe that she is now ten years old and becoming a little lady?

Kelby At Ten Years Old

Loves: horses, swimming, drawing, play with friends, rollerblading, running races, fishing

Reads: Fire Within, Ice Fire, Garfield comic books

Friends: Taylor and Larissa

Foods: pizza, hotdogs, double cheese burgers from McDonalds, chicken nuggets

Kelby is a really well behaved little girl. She flies under the radar at school and doesn’t cause too much trouble. She brought her grades up through 4th grade and ended the year with all A’s! She holds a lot of emotions inside, but she runs surprisingly deep. I’m so very proud of the girl she is. It is really pretty easy to be her mommy. The next two years are sure to bring us a lot of changes, but I pray that we grow even closer together through the pre-teen years.

Family Birthday at the Pool

To celebrate Kelby’s birthday I had the family meet at the church pool for lunch and water fun. When we woke up in the morning, we weren’t sure that the weather was going to be good enough. We waited and waited and watched the clouds slowly thin and leave us with some blue sky.

We had lunch and cake first and we kept it outside of the pool area. That worked out perfectly because the kids will swim in any weather, but it’s the getting in and out that makes them cold. Once they were in they could stay in. The weather turned out to be perfect!

Here is a crazy monkey climbing Tegan.

We couldn’t get the candles to stay lit in the breeze. The wind helped Kelby blow out her candles!

Everyone rushed through eating lunch and cake and opening presents so they could get in the pool quick.

The biggest surprise of the day was that Grampa George went and got a swimsuit so he could jump in the pool with all his grandkids. They LOVED having him in there! He was constantly crowded by giddie girls as they took turns riding him around in the pool.

After the fun in the sun, mom, the girls and I decided to go out to the Sakuma Brothers Farm and pick some strawberries. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with all those berries now, but it was another fun adventure! At the end of the the day the girls were tired out (me too!) Mom and them watched the movie Bolt while Mike and I went shopping to find a gift for Kelby.

Mom Comes for a Visit

On Wednesday we went up to pick up my mom at the airport. We only had to go to Bellingham and not to Seattle. You gotta love Allegiant Airlines for that!

The weather was a little rainy, but we decided to drive into Fairhaven and take her around there. We found a Mexican restaurant there to eat lunch. I wouldn’t recommend it though. It was called Dos Padres. The food was okay, but it wasn’t authentic like our favorite restaurants in Skagit Valley. We should have guessed because I noticed right away that none of the workers were Mexican.

We shopped through all the fun shops there and even caught the Fairhaven Farmer’s Market. We drove over to Boulevard Park so the girls could look for crabs and play at the playground. Mom bought me a coffee at Woods there. It was a perfect afternoon. The weather cleared up just in time for us to hang outside without getting drenched.

I had a meeting that night, but Mike wanted to take the girls to run in the “All Comer’s Track Meet” in Burlington. It is a meet that happens every Wednesday for six weeks in a row. The girls enjoy the races and feel so proud of themselves. My mom got to see them run.

On Thursday mom took us out to lunch at my favorite Chinese restaurant. I LOVE the Mongolian beef at the China Wok. We end up going there whenever my mom comes to town.

 

We also had to do a little shopping all around to prepare for Kelby’s birthday party the next day.

We made a cake that night and Kelby decorated it herself. She wanted a lemon cake, so we made something lemony out of lemon pudding and a yellow cake mix frosted with lemon cream cheese frosting. It turned out pretty yummy!

Summer Fun

One fun adventure we had together was riding our bikes over to the store. At least we got out of the house for a little while. The weather was off and on rainy those first few days of summer.

On Tuesday we were planning to go to the church pool and then found out it was closed that day! Oops, then I was in trouble because the girls were so disappointed. We went out to ice cream instead and over to the water attraction at a near by park. Luckily It was good enough for them!

Memorial for Carolyn Lohman

I’m  sorry I’m publishing so many posts today. I’m trying to catch up on all that has been going on for us this last week or so. There has been so much and I didn’t want to miss anything or force it into one long post.

On Saturday morning Mike went over and ran another race. This was the Berry-Dairy days race. We usually go watch Michael, but this time I took the girls over to the church to print out some last minute pages for a scrapbook. I have been working on this scrapbook for over a year now with Gramma and Grampa Lohman. It was a labor of love and I was finally able to finish it in time for the memorial service. It is a digital scrapbook and this album shows the pages.

View Full Album

That morning we met the family at the graveside for a service. After that we had to run to the church because Michael had to set up the slideshow he created for the church service. It was a beautiful ceremony and reception. Lots of nice things were said about Gramma Lohman. We will all miss her.

We spent the rest of Saturday at Debbie and George’s house with the family celebrating Gramma and the legacy of her large and happy family.

This is a picture of Mike’s cousin, Nathaniel, who we have all been praying for so long. He had a heart transplant months ago and is doing amazingly well!

This is Mike’s Grampa and his uncles, Gary and Dan.

Great Gramma loved hats and so do these girls. They found all the hats decorating the room and tried them on.

Camping for Naomi’s Birthday

The next day after our busy last day of school, we got to take a short camping trip. Heather, Derek, Emma, and Naomi were already up at Rasar State Park which is only a short 20 minutes away. We got there at about 11:00.

I flooded the trailer because we hooked it up to the campground water without a pressure regulator on my hose. Note to self: buy a pressure regulator before next camping trip!

For some reason the girls love to make balls of sand whenever possible. This was on a sand bar on the Skagit River.

Heather had fun crafts for the kids to do and yummy food for us to eat. She made it real easy for me to bring the girls up to camp. Mike couldn’t come with us because he had to work.

This is Kelby and Ranger, Derek’s police dog.

Naomi’s birthday “cake” was pudding with bananas and Nilla Wafers. Yum!

We had a great time playing ball, riding bikes and scooters, and sitting by the campfire.

I was surprised when we woke up to rain the next morning! The weather was supposed to be good, but it wasn’t meant to be. We had planned to stay until that evening, but decided to break camp and head home. The girls would have been happy to play in the rain, but the grown ups weren’t really up for it.

I’m glad we were able to be back because we ended up taking dinner over to Great Grampa Clyde because he wanted Mike to help him with the computer. It was a nice visit!