Retirement

I took a little blogging hiatus. There have been many things that have kept me away from the computer lately but I will tell about them in a later post. If there is anyone out there that still looks at my blog from time to time you may have to bear with me for a little while. I use my blog as part of my scrap booking and journal so I will be going back a little bit to get caught up. My wonderful mother was able to retire after 24 years of working full time. During those years she also raised 8 kids and those 8 kids produced 26 grandchildren. My sister's and I have been waiting for this day for a long time. We wanted to make this event as special as possible to her so we decided to surprise her with a weekend at a cabin in Hood River. The surprise was that all 8 of her daughters would be there. We had one fly in from Arizona, one from Idaho, and one from Colorado. We told my mom that we had all pitched in and were giving her and my dad this weekend away as our retirement present to her. Then we all made arrangements to be able to get away for the weekend and sneak up there to surprise her. My sisters and I are all kids at heart when we get together so the whole event was really a blast. We loved sneaking around Hood River waiting for my parents to get to the cabin and of course we loved sneaking into the cabin to surprise my mom. Below is some video I caught of the initial surprise. (Brace yourself. You are about to hear 9 women squealing in delight).

Right away we had to take a picture along the stairway. We have plenty of these shots from our younger years. Maybe they were Brady Bunch inspired??

A few of us ventured out into the snow for a play day. There was a long sled run right along the cabin. My sister Bridget and I were the first to try it out. Bridget won the craziest mom award. She had no fear.

Michele ventured out onto the deck with baby Isabelle to watch.


Debora also got in on the action. (Not pictured is my sister Lindsey who finally came out to play with us. She was the most scared which surprised us all because she is the toughest of us all. We decided that was okay this time since she had just had a baby less than a month prior).

The area around the cabin was beautiful so some of us decided to go for a walk.

We started off in the light and walked a long way up the mountain. It started to get dark and we all decided that maybe it wasn't the best idea to have walked so far into the mountain with just five women. We made it back safely though.

I have some really fun videos of us sledding but I can't get them to load onto this blog. :( We had such a good time and many of us have had the chance to spend more time with our mom since her retirement.

Happy Halloween and Thanksgiving!

In my attempt to get caught up on my posting I am combining Halloween and Thanksgiving. We have already had so much fun this holiday season! We have been able to spend a lot of time with family and friends.

We took Isaiah and his friend to the OSU Homecoming parade and bonfire. We had a lot of fun even though the bonfire took FOREVER to get going.
In between Halloween and Thanksgiving this little sweetheart was born. My older sister Lindsey had her 5th child Isabelle Dawn Ordyna. I happened to be in town so I got to see her in the hospital. My sister invited us to Thanksgiving at her house so we could help out since she had just had a baby.

The kids watching Swiss Family Robinson while the adults were busy cooking.

It was a feast. We had way too much food. We ate for three days straight. What a holiday!

Uncle Daniel at the kids table

After all our feasting Daniel and I took the kids on a walk to the duck pond. These boys love trying to catch things.

We had a great weekend and we were glad to spend it with the Ordyna's