Christopher

I have been watching my nephew for the last two weeks. My sister has been in Italy with her husband and her two older daughters. I told her about a week ago that I would post some pictures on my blog of Christopher. We have had a fun but very busy time.

The week before last when the weather was nicer we went to Otter Beach. It's an outdoor swimming pool in Corvallis. Christopher loved it! We plan on going again this week before he leaves.

Jumping in at his swim lessons. He loves swimming!






Christopher is making ice cream in these pictures. This was an activity we did for achievement day.

We went to the Corvallis Knights $1000.00 dash for cash. Christopher was a little weary of the Knight at first but Daniel helped him figure out that he was a pretty cool guy. Christopher kept saying, "I don't want to see that baseball Knight guy anymore." I told him that it was just a regular guy with a giant head on for a costume that he could take off whenever he wanted to. After that he seemed fine.

We went clam digging in Newport on Saturday as part of our fourth of July weekend. The weather was beautiful!

This was a long walk down to the area we went clam digging. Christopher was a trooper on the way down and walked the whole way. The way back was a little different. By that time he was tired so Daniel put him on his shoulders.

Later that evening we did some fireworks in front of our house.

Happy Fourth of July mom, dad, Alex, and Lauren! Come home safe to me.

A Little Father's Day Gift

This picture is a little disturbing to me.....

....but not as much as this one! For Father's Day this year Isaiah really wanted to get Daniel a BB gun. They have both been talking about it for a long time but I have been dragging my feet on it. I decided it would be okay since Isaiah is going to cub camp this summer and apparently they shoot BB guns every day.


I am so glad that I have a husband that I can trust 100% with Isaiah's safety. He doesn't always show it on the outside, but every time we have done something potentially dangerous, Daniel is always the one to show and teach Isaiah the safety rules first. Thank goodness for that!

For family home evening the next night we decided to make targets for our activity. This had absolutely nothing to do with the lesson, but Daniel and Isaiah were pretty excited to see how good of a shot they were. Isaiah's target is on the left. He made points for each area on the target. My target is on the right. The bulls eye on mine is a credit card. If I hit my bulls eye I got to use it. No such luck for me though:)

It was hard to tell with the cardboard from far away. Daniel actually almost hit the bulls eye on the first shot! Isaiah and I were a different story. I found most of my bullets lodged into the fence behind the box.

Isaiah doing his happy dance after emptying a round:)

Consumer report: Good buy!

Next target: Pop cans.

Another Baptism!

There were five kids born in the same year in our family. Stephan was the second to be baptized. I am sad that I didn't get any of Connor:( Stephan is my third the the oldest sister Debora's, son. He asked me to give a talk on the Holy Ghost. I felt pretty special because we have a big family and there were a lot to choose from. He is such a sweet boy. He was so reverent and seemed as if he was taking it all in.

Afterwards was a whole different story! We have some goofy boys in our family.



















I finally got them calmed down for a good picture. Now I can say that we have some very handsome boys in our family as well!



















Isaiah, Ethan, Claire, and Evelyn waiting patiently for the baptism to start. Can you guess you the family clown is? She is always doing and saying things that crack me up.

This all happened the day after my little sister was sealed in the temple. Major thank you's to my mom for hosting both gatherings to follow in her home. She is always so willing to do what she can so we can all get together and enjoy these kinds of experiences. I am so grateful for my amazing family!



I stole this picture from my sister's blog of the whole family. I know it is small but I think you can click on the image to view it larger.....if you want:)

Family Time!

It has been a crazy two weeks! Two weeks ago my sweet little sister was sealed in the temple to her husband Daniel. Unfortunately I did not take one single picture of these two together on that day. Like I said it was a crazy time. My ENTIRE family was in town for several family events we had going on. That means 8 families with 22 kids which equals total chaos. Of course we did have a blast. We started the trip off with a sisters night out in a hotel. Nothing fancy just a Marriot Residence Inn stay on 185th in Hillsboro. We just wanted one night to play games and hang out and talk. The picture above was taken at about 1 in the morning. We were all getting a little loopy at this point which is why we started playing Indian Poker. My little sis posted the whole night. If you would like to view click here: http://monicavrtiska.blogspot.com/



The rest of these pictures are in no particular order. They are just pictures of my beautiful nieces and nephew that I love so much. From left to right: Claire 6, Ethan 7, Kate 3, Evelyn 7, and Isaiah 7.


This is my sister Mindy's little girl Kate. She is just about the cutest little thing. My mom says she looks exactly like me when I was her age so of course she melts my heart. She has the softest little voice and she is so lovable.
Left to right: Isaiah 7, Evelyn 7, Ethan 7, and Jack 5. They are all sitting on grandpa and grandma's bed playing. Growing up this is where you could often find my sisters and me as well. We loved being in my parents bed and I think it is so funny that now our children love it as well. Maybe it's because they have always had a water bed and kids think that's fun??

Here are some of the little ones. From left to right: Jeffrey 3, Christopher 4, Jarem 4, Joshua 3, Jack 5, and Dallin 5.

Isaiah playing a little soccer with his cousin Ethan.

Uncle Adam wrestling with all the kids. This is definitely a favorite with all the little boys and thankfully there were no tears this time.

Little Kate trying to pick up uncle Daniel. She loves him!

Highlight of the sisters night; trying to get our husbands to pose for a picture. I love how they all have there arms folded.

Getting a little more comfortable....

...maybe a little too comfortable for our cop Rich!

Now in complete submission to their wives whining. "Puleaaaaze do a pyramid for us!!" What a bunch of sweeties!

After a long day of running from place to place, eating, and playing, the kids were all a little tired which equals silliness.

Teenagers. Gotta love them. I do!

Sweet little Christopher adding his silly face.

Bear with me I have two more weeks of extended family posting to go!

We decided to head out and go fishing for Memorial Day weekend. We went about 40 miles east looking for a fishing hole along the South Santiam River. The Salmon were swimming upstream so it was supposed to be a great time to go. We found a great spot but unfortunately it was already occupied by some locals. The told us of another hole right down the path but we would most likely only catch trout. (I don't think any of us were really thinking we would ever catch salmon anyway. We headed down the path and there was this huge fallen tree in the way. I went first and crossed right over it. Isaiah went next but he decided he wanted to walk down it. Just as Daniel was saying, "Careful bud it might be a little..." and whoosh right off the log Isaiah went down the bank and right into the river. I saw it all out of the corner of my eye and two thoughts quickly crossed my mind. The first was I hope he didn't land on any rocks and the second was I am SO glad he is on swim team and becoming a stronger swimmer. He climbed right out and was fine but then started to cry because of the shock of it all, (I'm sure the water was just a tad cold as well:).

Here he is shivering a bit from the cold.

Daniel gave him his long sleeve shirts to wear. At first he was not too excited about looking like he was wearing a dress, but I think he felt much better once he was out of his wet clothes.

Now he has a fishing pole in his hand and ready to go!

We love Daniel! He always gets us all set up before he starts fishing. I mention this in my blog because I know that he really thinks we should be able to do this ourselves but he also knows I like it when he does it for me:) What a sweetheart huh?

After a few hours of fishing and catching nil, Daniel took a little nap. The sun was shining and it was so quiet and peaceful where we were.

Isaiah was happy to get to listen to my ipod. Not a privilege he gets very often.

I think I slept the longest out there. I love to fish but after an hour of not a single nibble I was done. I must say I had quite a nice nap. Isaiah and Daniel fished the whole time.

I was very impressed with Isaiah this trip. We got there at about 9am and left around 3pm. He never complained once about being bored and he even started fixing his own snags and tangles!

Great trip, no fish. Better luck nect time kiddo. Mom and dad just need to figure out what we are doing out there!

Camera's Back!

I am so glad to have my camera back! I found that I didn't take as many pictures as I had thought on Easter. It was a great weekend in Bend. We stopped at Foster Lake on our way. Daniel was pretty adamant about finding a new place to fish along the way and Isaiah agreed. As you can see by the gray clouds in the background, I wasn't too excited to get out and fish. It did turn out to be a success however, and I was glad we stopped.

I tried to get Isaiah to keep his coat on but as you can see it found a place on the rocks beside him. (Others who have boys may agree with me. I have decided that coats are something boys drag along with them because their mothers insist. They don't quite understand why they have them but they know the sooner they take the coat the faster they can get out the door. Poor coat however, rarely gets to fulfill it's purpose. They are merely drug along only to be plopped on the ground at the destination of boy. In many sad cases coat is left on playground, bus, or park bench of the last destination of boy, many times never to be seen again by family).

You cannot see the wind in the pictures but it was blowing. My hands were freezing (I was fishing myself. I never want to stop but as soon as I am out there my competitive side overtakes me. It is me against the fish. I have not caught one yet, but I know that once I do I will feel more guilt than victorious, but this still does not stop me from trying).

I decided I was cold enough and I told everyone they had one more cast. Then we heard, "I got one dad, I got one!" I did not react right away. We hear this many times while fishing. Isaiah feels a tug and thinks he has caught a fish. We rush over, camera ready, net ready, only to find he has snagged the bottom of the lake, river, stream, etc. This time he really did have one! We were so excited for him. I didn't make it over in time to get a picture of the fish. Isaiah was holding it and it squirmed out of his hands and back to freedom. It was a successful stop, cold weather and all.

Pink cheeked boys waiting patiently for Jarem to get some eggs before they darted off. There was still snow on the ground in Bend.

There off!

Thanks Debora for always being such a great host. We love coming to visit!

I played basketball until about 10:30 tonight and now I can't sleep. We have such a fun group of girls that get together and play basketball at the church every Tuesday night. I have had a blast playing with them. Tonight only 7 girls showed up but six of us were from second ward so we were pretty impressed with ourselves. I LOVE basketball and I love getting the extra exercise but I really look forward to the laughs and fun we have. It makes me feel like I am 16 again. It only takes me a few times up and down the court to remind me that I AM MOST DEFINITELY NOT!!

I am so bummed I am not able to post my Easter pictures. We went to my sisters house in Bend for Easter and GC weekend. We had such a good time. My sister and I planned this nice great meal for Sunday. Daniel and Hodge put on fun Easter egg hunts for the kids in the back yard. They still have snow over there so we stayed close to home. Anyway I bought this nice $50 organic ham and made one of my favorite desserts. It's a mint ice cream pie with Oreo cookie crust. Yum! I didn't get to enjoy any of it! Sunday morning we were all watching General Conference and I started to feel a little sick. I made it through the whole session but immediately got in bed after that. I slept on and off, only waking up when I felt like I was going to vomit but never could. That is the worst state of sick to me. Just feeling like crud waiting to throw up and get it over with. Well about 6 or 7 hours later I still hadn't thrown up. I did wake up every now and then to hear the happy voices of everyone enjoying Easter dinner. I was so bummed to have missed out. Then it came time to go. I still felt bad and still hadn't thrown up. Daniel came in to ask what I needed him to pack. I am a horrible sick person. When I feel like that all I want to do is lye there and NOT MOVE, and now Daniel is expecting me to get in the car and drive for 3 hours! Seriously though what other option did we have? Daniel packed our things, and gathered "just in case she throws up materials" for the road. It consisted of two gallon zip lock bags and paper towels. I'm sorry if I am disgusting anyone here. Now here I am sick AND grumpy headed for home. About 30 minutes down the road it came. I told Daniel to pull over but thankfully we had the zip lock bags because our car floor would have been toast. I hate throwing up but even worse I hate throwing up when people can see or hear me. Apparently I don't mind blogging about it though. Well I felt much better afterwards but we still had two and half hours to go.
When we got to the pass there was snow, which would slow us down at least another half hour. Then we come across this SUV facing toward us on our side of the road in the ditch. At least two cars passed by in front of us and possibly more before that. I couldn't believe no one was stopping! Daniel and I pulled over to see what we could do, well what he could do since I was basically lifeless in the passenger seat. It was a young mom with a toddler. To make a long story short, with the assistance of another man with a big truck and a tow, they got her out of there. I was glad we could help but man was I glad to get home. What should have been a 3 hour trip tops, ended up taking 5 hours.
Oh yeah back to why I don't have any pictures. Daniel forgot to pack our camera when we left Bend so it's his fault:)

Well I guess I will try and get some sleep now. Happy Cinco de Mayo everyone!!