Stairclimbin'

First of all, let's just get this out of the way. This is our awesome friend Heather. She loves firemen. I do too. We spent all day cooped up with 1500 of them. It was a tough job, but someone had to do it. And we did. We rose to the occasion and did what was necessary. We took one for the team.

We can't wait to do it again. A few weeks ago we went to Seattle for the Scott Firefighter Stair Climb. We stopped in Prosser on the way and picked up Ryan and Heather. We had a blast roaming around Seattle, eating at three different restaurants in a matter of about 6 hours and trying to figure out how to use the trolley system. We are such country bumpkins, at one point the driver came out of his little booth and asked us, "You guys just along for the ride?" Apparently, we were riding in circles.

"No, sir. Just from a small town, that's all." He seemed to understand. Public transportation in Hermiston consists of hitching a ride on the bumper of a watermelon truck.The next day was

THE. BIG. DAY.

Firefighters from all over the country, plus a few from New Zealand, Australia and Germany travel to Seattle to compete in this stairclimb. The proceeds benefit the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and last I heard they were able to raise about $650,000. Thank you to all of our friends and family who opened your wallets for this great cause. Chris and Hermiston Fire as a whole was able to far surpass their fundraising goals. It's great to see that even in this tough economy people are willing to help others in need.

The day started out with a cancer patient sharing her story of survival and how she was helped and inspired by this event. Then the first group of firefighters was escorted to the starting line by the "Pipes and Drums". I'm not sure what the history is between firefighters and bagpipes, but there is a definite connection there and they love it. There is something eerie to me about the sound of bagpipes, especially when they were taking them to begin one of the toughest physical challenges of their lives. Here is Chris getting psyched up to go. I have participated in several running races, including two half marathons, and I understand the feeling of dread, excitement, apprehension, nervousness, adrenaline and let's-just-get-this-overwith-ness. He had several hours to wait until his turn, which made it hard. Too much time to fret over it isn't good.
They have to be all suited up in their turnout gear as if they were actually going into a fire. Boots, turnouts, helmet, gloves--the works. Oh yeah, and one minor thing...an airpack. Oh no, they don't get to suck regular air at will while they're climbing 69 flights of stairs and carrying 50 pounds of gear. They have to suck it through an SCBA. At the 40th floor they can change bottles for a fresh supply of air, but after that they're on their own. One guy in our group ran out of air about 5 flights before he got to the top. The funeral is next week.

Just kidding!

But you believed me for a second, didn't you?

This is Chris going through the doorway of dread that will lead him to the stairs.

69 flights of them! All of the guys from Hermiston Fire were doing this for the first time and when they were finished they all said, "That was the hardest !#$%& thing I've ever done!" Well, except for Chris. He said, "That was the hardest gosh darn diggety dad gum thing I've ever done!" Well, at least that's our story and we're sticking to it. Here's all of the guys from Hermiston Fire, with the tower in the background. Yeah, it's tall. Chris finished in 23 minutes, 52 seconds. He can't wait to do it again next year. It was an awesome experience.

Oh, one more thing...
There. That's better.

**This just in...Dana's foster daughters aren't supposed to have their pictures up in public places, so sadly I had to take them down from this post.  But trust me when I tell you that they are sooo cute and I took some really great pictures of them.  If/when the adoption happens I will gladly post hundreds of pictures of those cuties.**
So MAYBE this post is slow in coming. And MAYBE it happened like a month and a half ago. And MAYBE I'm a total slacker. But MAYBE we just had too much excitement in our lives in February and I didn't want to overload you with it all at once. I'm spoon feeding you to prevent convulsions of happiness.

You're welcome. (This is Jantzen and Alexis, who I will tell you about in a minute. Just hold your horses.)

So someone (and I won't mention any names) that we call mom/grandma turned the ripe old age of 60! Oh, heck. That's not ripe. That's down right rotten!

I'm totally cracking myself up here.

Anyways, (almost) all of us kids/grand kids met in Portland to go to a Globetrotters game together to celebrate the occasion.
I've always wanted to go to a Globetrotters game and I was pretty excited about it. But when we got there we discovered that the real show was watching the kids playing together and sharing treats with each other. They all got along so well and were just so stinking sweet!

 Clearly, Grandma was in heaven with one toddler on each leg. If only she had one more leg, she could fit them all on her lap at once. My kids have been around for 14, 10 and 6 years now. Then grandma had a little dry spell and didn't get any more grand kids for awhile. But (almost) two years ago, Jena and Nick contributed Jace to grandma's happy land. That was nice, because it took a little pressure off of me. (Thanks guys!) Then last summer Dana was given two sweet foster daughters, Aubrie (on grandma's lap)and Alexis (pictured at top). Now grandma's land is super happy and all the pressure is off of me. I'm loving it. We're crossing our fingers SUPER hard that these girls will be able to stay in our family forever. They are so darling! Dana is an awesome mommy and such a natural at it. Plus, she bought a minivan and I'm pretty sure all sales are final. tee hee
Chris is no dummy. He knows that the way to a toddler's heart is through food. He showed up with a couple of bags of popcorn and all was right with the toddler world.

 Do you think they like each other? Yeah, me neither.

Mt. Bachelor, how I love thee.

For President's Day weekend we stayed at Sunriver with the Billingsley crew and had a BLAST!! We used to make this trip every year but for some reason we missed the last couple of years. I don't know what we were thinking because we love this mountain and always have such a great time there. It's a great family friendly resort with plenty of easy runs for the kids. But what we found this year was that the kids have gotten so good at skiing that they don't really need the easy runs anymore. Some of us parents even had a hard time keeping up with our kids.

All weekend long we were amazed and pleasantly surprised at how much easier it is getting to take our kids skiing. It used to be an all day struggle trying to keep their mittens on their hands, their hats on their heads, their jackets zipped up, their skis un-crossed and smiles on their faces. Just as soon as we would accomplish that they would have to go to the bathroom. So we would trek to the lodge in our ski boots, strip them down, take them potty, try not to drop mittens in the toilet, put a fake smile on our faces and go outside to start all over again. We would take one run on the bunny hill, holding them up all the way down until our thigh muscles literally caught on fire (It's true! I have the burn holes in my ski pants to prove it!) then they would be hungry. So off to the lodge we would go again.

I know that this doesn't make skiing sound fun. But when you're teaching your kids to ski it's a different kind of fun. If you understand that your hard work will someday pay off, you will do it happily because when your whole family can hop on the ski lift and ski together it is all worth it. Words can't describe how much fun it is. Have you ever had an experience that you wish you could just bottle up and save? Where you're thinking, "I should record this so I can live it over and over." But you're having too much fun to get your camera out, plus a camera just can't do it justice anyways.

On our third day of skiing Jantzen (the youngest in our crew) was doing really well on skis and we felt like she was ready to branch out a little and try some runs other than Marshmallow and Dilly Dally Alley. If you don't know what those runs are like, let's just let the names speak for themselves. They are beginner runs and mom and dad were getting a little bored with them. So everyone headed out together to take a few runs on the other side of the mountain. Over there we found sunshine and beautiful views but no crowds. We were in heaven! It was so fun to ski with everyone together and listen to the kids' "Woo hoo" and "Woop woop" as they skied down.

Later that day Keaton took me to the summit (pictured below) and proceeded to "own me" all the way down. It's awesome to see him skiing so well, but it's a tough pill to swallow when I can't keep up with him. I still remember when he was three and Chris and I put him on tiny little skis and would push him back and forth between us while he put his hands on his knees.

Dang you Keaton anyway! Could you at least PRETEND to not be so good?
Anywhooo...that was our weekend and we've been talking about it ever since. We have vowed to not miss another year and if we do, then we're gonna punish ourselves with...with...with...well, I don't know. But we won't go easy on ourselves and it won't be pretty.

The many faces of Keaton

Not too proud to be a dork and pose with his mom's sunglasses in public. Friendly, happy-go-lucky pose at Multnomah Falls.
Down right intimidating!

Keaton is turning out to be such a fine young man. He is always willing to help around the house and I can always count on him to babysit for me when I need him.

He has such a great sense of humor, and sometimes he says things that are so funny I can't believe he made them up on his own. (I wish I had written them down!)

He recently was chosen to be in student leadership and that's been pretty exciting for him. He'll have the opportunity to travel to Eugene for a leadership conference this spring. Do you think it would be uncool to tag along?

I'm just wondering.

Better Than Wheaties

Ladies and gentlemen!

Please allow me to introduce Mrs. Thurman's 4th grade Breakfast of Champions recipient...

Carson Wrathall!Carson was honored to be chosen again (he also won in 1st grade) this year. To be honest, I really don't know why they call it the "Breakfast of Champions" because there is no breakfast to be had. It's probably another victim of budget cuts, because there used to be food, once upon a time. But it is a big honor regardless of the missing food!

There was an assembly at school and each student had their moment of fame, where the principal read a statement from their teacher telling why they were chosen. Carson's teacher wrote that he is nice to everyone, looks out for others, gets along with everybody and has a real enthusiasm for learning.

WOW!

And here's a funny little thing about that day that I would like to add, just for future embarrassment. Carson LOVES the Oregon Ducks and found it very important to have his Ducks jersey on for the assembly. The night before, he pulled it out of his dirty clothes hamper and asked me if I could have it clean by morning. I told him that I couldn't get it done in time and that maybe he could choose a different Duck shirt. I didn't notice it until I got to school for the assembly, but he pulled the precious jersey out of the laundry and wore it dirty!

Way to go, Carson! We're proud of you, even if you do wear dirty shirts to school!

Teeth and Tumbling

It's always bittersweet when my kids start losing their teeth. It's exciting to watch them grow and learn and experience new things, but it's sad to say goodbye to those baby teeth that fit so well into their mouths. The gigantic looking adult teeth are always kinda funny looking for the first few years.

How 'bout that hillbilly smile?

Jantzen had a really hard time saying goodbye to this tooth, because she was too scared to pull it. It hung there for dear life until I finally put my foot down and forced her to let me pull it. She could hardly talk, let alone eat. And let's face it. This girl can't afford to miss too many meals.
See the food on her face? I made her lick it off.

Every calorie counts, right?

Guess what else?!?

Mmm hmmm, that's right.

The girl is in tumbling classes!

Oh yeah, gonna carry on the legacy of her mother.
She loves it.

And would I be bragging if I said that she's the one the other moms always use as an example?

OK then, I'm bragging.

It's pretty awesome to hear the other moms saying to their kids, "Do it like Jantzen does."

Yes, I'm pretty proud...To say the least.
Thanks to some Wrathall genes, I think she may grow up to be small enough, too!
(Heaven knows I didn't bring any petite genes to the table!)

Notice her ribs in the picture? I told you she couldn't afford to miss any meals, and I wasn't kidding!

I told you so...

I warned you in my last post that it would probably be two months until my next post. Well, I almost made it. But SOMEBODY (Hi Kyla!) likes to harass me about not updating my blog. So here you go.

Alrightie now. Let's see what we can talk about. Well, we had Christmas. Yessirree we sure did. It was a wonderful day of relaxing, picking up scraps of wrapping paper, eating, picking up scraps of wrapping paper, napping, picking up scraps of wrapping paper, staying in our pajamas all day and picking up scraps of wrapping paper. Overall, it was a wonderful day. Before Christmas, Chris went AWOL for a day and snuck in to Best Buy and bought me something he shouldn't have. (A camera) and now I feel like a stupidhead because I don't know how to use it. But I'm having fun learning and I'll probably torture you with my attempts at photography. That is, IF I ever update my blog again.

Take this, for instance. Last night was a skate night for the kids' elementary school. (A fundraiser. Yippee! I just LOVE fundraisers!) I don't know how this picture happened and I know that there's no skill displayed in this picture, but I think it's cool. There were kids skating all around, but for some reason the only kids that really showed up were Carson and his friend Ryan. Everyone else looks like one of those ghosts in the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland, only blurry.

Here's Jantzen and her friend Morgan taking a breather. It was their first time skating and they did a great job. They reminded me of Bambi trying to walk for the first time, with their legs going in all different directions but there were no tears. Even after numerous collisions between the floor and their rear ends, they still had smiles from ear to ear. The skating rink is right around the corner from our house, so I think there may be more trips there in our future. It was fun for all of us.

And here's my double experiment. I was trying out the KitchenAid I got for Christmas AND messing with the aperture on my camera. How's that for some serious excitement? I know, I know. You may just have to walk away from my blog for a few minutes and calm yourself down. It's okay. Go ahead. I'll be here waiting when you're ready to come back.

More double experiments going on! I probably should have warned you. Homemade pasta with bad aperture experiments. A bit much? Probably.

Okay. I gotta get to bed now. Sorry for the lame post. I promise to update again soon with some real substance. Oh, who am I kidding. I'll see you in a couple of months.