Sydney's 4th Birthday

Sydney's Birthday was slightly chaotic from the start but it turned out really well. We were supposed to meet at Esther Short park but as it turned out, about 3,000 other people were already crammed into that park. That is exactly why I called ahead to make sure this was a good weekend to have it there. I think I talked to the wrong person. Oh well, we made it over to Marshall Park and everything worked out just great. The kids had a nice time playing on the huge playground while the adults enjoyed the shade on a hot day!

Can't believe little Sydney is already 4!

VBX with Cousins

Vacation Bible School was definitely Extreme this year! We got to have our cousins Sierra (10) and Kian (3) stay with us for a whole week and enjoy VBX together. The kids had a blast! The theme was POWER LAB, there were lots of experiments, great Bible stories and lots of awesome music. I think we had 260 kids attend this year. Kian and Sydney are in the second picture and in the third picture Sierra had her picture taken with the craziest guy there Jesse Atwood. In the last picture is Noel and her two good friends Chrissy and Savanna.

The winner for MVP for the week though was hands-down, GRAMMY (Ben's mom). She came over every morning at 7:30am and got breakfast going while I got the 4 kids ready. We had to be out the door by 8:15am. YIKES! She then stayed and cleaned up which was so nice. My family alone can cause a tornado in less than 10 minutes......4 kids, you guessed it............total disaster zone. A lot of work.........but a lot of memories too! The picture of Grammy at the top sums up how we were both feeling by the end of each day!

More artwork!

Here is some more art work. At the top is my first try at a mural......it's on our wall at home. Second picture is a mural that I did for my cousin Blake for his 15th birthday. It's in his room. We photo copied a picture off an album cover and put it onto a transparency and then I was able to paint over the image with black acrylic paints (thanks for the advice Denise). I really like how it turned out. It was a lot of fun.

The third photo is of one of the paintings that I completed in my art class. I was able to show it at the art show but it has a home..........our living room.

The fourth photo is of the second painting that I sold at the art show. yeah! That's one of my classmates in the picture. My art work will be in the studio for about 2 more weeks so we'll see what happens.

Meanwhile, in between children, dinner, showering, exercising and working on church stuff I am painting away!

Ch ch ch ch ch changes...................

Wow, so much has changed from the
"I'm in a band" entry. To make a long story short, the traveling worship band (or so I thought) ended up morphing into a band that would write and perform songs in local clubs and venues. It was very fun and cool to be writing songs and being in a band with Ben. So to make the long story short........I ended up realizing that singing in a band and making music was not what I woke up thinking about. I enjoyed it but felt as though I was going to keep the rest of the band back because my passion didn't match theirs. So, it's looking like a new lead singer has been found so look forward to some great music coming soon. Ben and I still hope to do something low-key together so we'll see where that goes.

In other news I have started taking an art class from a girl I went to high school with. She is having all the students do an art exhibit for emerging artists at a local yoga studio in town. I entered about 7 or 8 pieces in and she helped me price them (way higher than I would've thought). They were all pieces that we have hanging in our house. Noel and daddy helped me name all of them which was a relief to me because that is not my forte. I just got news yesterday that one of my pieces sold! My first one! It was the one that Noel named "lonely meadow." I am still in complete shock but am very excited about pursuing a heavier interest in this. I have a new series of paintings started already so, I'll keep you posted!

Ace of Cakes anyone?

So, one of our favorite family shows is Ace of Cakes. Seen it? It's amazing what they can do with cake. We all enjoy seeing what Duff and the gang are going to come up with. They mostly work on fondant cakes. Needless to say the show inspired me to try my hand at it. I first attempted Annabelle's soccer cake above with homemade fondant. It tasted pretty good but was a bit greasy and harder to work with so for Noel's birthday I tried the store bought stuff (not cheap). It tasted.....well, let's just say it looked pretty but you didn't want to eat it. It was very fun to work with and Noel loved it. She actually designed the cake herself with the little curly bobs on top. The castle cake in the middle was for Leah's 7th birthday! Love this pink and princess phase. I'm glad I finally gave into it all. I plan on making something fun for Sydney's birthday this summer. She says she wants the same cake as last year. I am going to try and talk her into something else.

Cousins.....

We have been having a great time the last few months hanging out with cousins. Mom's and Dad's need breaks.........and cousins like to be together. We have had several slumber party's complete with movies and popcorn, playing dress-up, and also playing with our new favorite activity - "the treasure box." The treasure box is an idea that I borrowed from BSF which is a big tub full of rice and beans and all sorts of treasures like gold coins, rings, frogs, and all sorts of other miniatures. The kids can dig and sift for treasures and then record their findings. It keeps them occupied for quite a bit of time.

Also pictured above is the annual Easter Egg Hunt at Aunt Denise and Uncle Curtis's house. The kids look forward to that every year and have a great time with my cousins' kids.

Busy, busy, busy!

The New Year has already begun with a BUSY start. Life is good though. We are doing some extra planning at church for Easter this year. Every year we come up with cool ideas but never seem to see them realized, so this year we started early and have had a lot of extra meetings.

Ben and I are also part of a Worship band that is starting called the Separation State. It is a band that will be leading worship for teen events, conferences and whatever else comes up. We will basically have a set list of about 20 songs or so. Some original and some current worship songs. We will try and play 4-5 times per year as all of us have families and jobs already. It's exciting though. We had band pictures taken and everything. We actually rented a room in the Ace Hotel in downtown Portland and hired this amazing photographer. When we get the photos back I'll make sure and share them with you. So, all this is being done, hurried and put together for a possible show at Nampa First Church in April. Hopefully we will get it. A lot of work has been done in a short amount of time. We recorded a song (which you can hear on the Separation State's MySpace page), put together a MySpace page (Go Ben and Kevin), got photos taken and come up with lots of song ideas.