THE SEQUOIAS

SEQUOIA NATIONAL PARK
I have always been one to enjoy nature, and I am glad to have this beautiful world to share with my children. As a child I spent my summers here in Washington with my grandparents and they took me to all sorts of beautiful national monuments, deserts, and parks up and down Washington, Oregon and California. This was a park I had yet to see, so I was glad John and I got to experience it together.
I grew to have a great appreciation for the beauty that man cannot make. I hope to teach my kids the importance of taking care of this world and taking pride in what has been created for us to enjoy.
If you ever get a chance to see the Sequoia's for yourself, I would strongly suggest to spend the day in their beauty. And if you have already seen them, you know the feeling you get when you stand in their presents.


My kiddos on a fallen SEQUOIA, these trees are amazing!











A giant pine cone we found at the park. I think it is just beautiful, where else are you going to see such a wonderful piece of nature...


The view from the forest floor, the trees remind me that I am just a small being in this world.

The Mohlman Clan

Well today after church I had the privilege of heading down to the Edmonds Marina and sharing an afternoon of fun with the Mohlman Family. I grew up with the Mohlman's kids, and in a weird twist of fate my husband went to school with Shawn and Teri, the two oldest of Marian & Dave's five. Anyway, it was a total hoot! I left feeling like they had the coolest family ever! Just like I felt when I was a kid!

What I remember about Lane- who spent a lot of time with Denae and me, playing really what ever we wanted to, he would play school with us and be the teacher, or help us build a fort out of free doors from North City lumber,{ I wonder what my grandpa ever did with all those doors we brought home?} he would even play dress up with us in my grandparents old clothes.
I remember when Shawn and his wife met and were married, I remember thinking how neat it was that his wife's name is Shawna. Now they are Shawn & Shawna..

I can remember when Teri met her husband in Australia, and he courted her even after she came home, with the sending of many long stem red roses.

Denae and I spent long lazy summers together as kids, I remember buying bathing suits for a few cents at Saint Vincent De Pauls, where my grandmother worked, so we wouldn't have to wait for our used ones to dry before we could run through the sprinkler again, and I remember us making mini pizzas out of english muffins and serving them to each other like we worked in a restaurant.

I can recall JoLynn going out to eat on a Friday night with her girlfriends at Red Robbin, and eating her leftovers in the morning at he breakfast table. I remember thinking how cool of a restaurant she was telling Denae and me about, and that "no, we couldn't eat her fries" haha.

I remember, Marian & Dave dancing in the living room to slow songs when he would come home from work, and oh I wanted to be like that one day, and them taking weekend getaways- just the two of them. {smart people they are}. I was grateful for the always warm welcome I received as a little girl in their homes and their lives. It was my pleasure to take their family photos for them, and I hope they are pleased with the outcome. Thank you Mohlmans for showing me a great example of family and love to live by, when I was a little girl to again today.

The Camping Mom

Every year for our kids Birthdays they get to choose an experience. In years past it has been a new zoo, or riding the ducks in downtown, going to Champs racing or seeing an Imax. It just has to be something we haven't done before that we can all enjoy to some extent. Of course we don't always dig some of the things that the other ones choose, but then again, it's not our Birthday! This year Jordan wanted to go camping with her friends, so long story short, it was going to be me and the girls in a K.O.A kamping kabin. Well I couldn't find one that would sleep 6 so we went with plan B- the woods. Which meant that now John was roped into going with us, because somebody had to set up the tent, cook and tear down camp; and it wasn't going to be ME! O.K it wasn't nearly as bad as drop camping, because it was a State park, but it wasn't comfy camping, where you have a pool and showers and you can stay up latter and be noisy. The park rangers came by to tell us that our whispers were carrying through the woods and we needed to let the animals sleep. Now you can just imagine telling this little 'sleepy animals' story to a bunch of 12 year olds, so when they mentioned that most forest animals don't sleep at night and that there weren't any other campers staying near us, the ranger didn't really have a leg to stand on.
So our adventure was a lesson in patience, and that if I was ever to have twin girls my life would NEVER be quite again. The girls sang, danced, called boys to yell at them about how stupid they are, ran around on the ferry like crazy people, and did a whole lot of giggling!
Something I was really excited about was using "The Malocm Van" as it's referred among our friends. It seats 15, so the girls sat in the WAY back and I could hardly hear them squealing. I was so glad that they had a good time! She wants to do this again next year, (but in a K.O.A) and we look forward to spending time with her and her friends and watching them all grow up and form life long bonds.

jordan, kenedee, hanna & chelsey on the ferry

hanna & chelsea roll to get the air out of the mattress

I'm glad Jordan enjoys spending time with me, I feel like we are more friends than mother daughter sometimes. And for that I am grateful.

VIVA LAS VEGAS

Las Vegas Rocked!

• We stayed up till 4am!
• Went to the M&M store, it is huge!
• Saw everything we could!
• The coca cola store was awesome too! They have everything coca cola you can think of!
• Walked 10 miles on the first day - then we discovered the Deuce - a.k.a tourist transportation.
• The temp. was 110-112! I love HOT!!!

Our first day we saw the dolphins at the Mirage hotel, they were so cute & so close to us!

Us at one of many hotels! This bench is made of pad locks and bottle tops! Weird! Ate at the Buffets, ate at the Buffets, then ate at some more Buffets!!! Yummmo! Treasure Island had the best buffet, we thought. We had to try all of the desserts. Here we have mini pecan pie, pink cherry cupcake, lemon meringue pie, chocolate gellato, triple choc. cupcake, mini cherry pie, carrot cupcake & angel food cake with fresh berries. We were so full from dinner that we just had a few bites of each, which was really hard because they were SO good!!!
We had thought of getting married again- by Elvis this time, but we decided to just have our picture taken under the little white wedding chapel arch. It was fun to just be the two of us for a while. In all the time John & I have been ' John & Torrie' {close to 10 years} we have been alone for 8 days in Hawaii in 2001, 8 days in the Bahamas in 2005, and now 3 days in Vegas. I was so thrilled to have this time with my hubby to reconnect, talk to each other {without kids interrupting} and just catch up on life. I was glad to see that we still have the same dreams, goals and aspirations for our life together. We really needed this time together to catch our breath and enjoy a new experience.

• Saw the treasure island pirate show
• Watched the Bilagio fountain, music and lights show! It was very romantic.
• Went to the Fremont light show, we just saw the tail end of it though.
• John won big at black jack! Congrats to him!

My sweet sweet husband surprised me with a spontaneous trip to Sin city with less than 48 hours of notice!

And he wasn't going to even give me that much!

I was booking a scrap class for Jordan when he said " you have to stop signing the kids up for things!"

I asked why, which Idon't think I'll do next time, any way, he says "you'll be in Vegas! we leave on Tuesday! I took care of everything."

Well he did! All my nanny families were taken care of, our kids were taken care of, I was taken care of!

What a great Husband!

SPONTANEOUS WEEKEND

Friday Night Comes Around.

5:30 wife started to think up a plan

"Why don't we get out of town tonight?" wife says to husband over the phone

' What has she got cooked up?' he must think...{ yet knows better than to argue with wife}

"I know! Silverwood in Idaho!"

"I'll call and get a hotel, pack the stuff and we'll keep it a secret!" wife says with enthusiasm

"It's a plan! I'll head home now and we can leave when you get off work at 6:30" husband rushes home

Wife sends kids to grandma and grandpas house across the street, to secretly put bags in the car.

PLAN WORKS!

Kids have no idea, they think mom wants to go for a drive and are overjoyed at the fact that they get to watch a movie for the ride.

12:30 comes around, family pulls into hotel in Spokane , two kids are asleep in the back

8:30am Saturday morning rolls around- kids want to swim at hotel, mom wants to keep driving, kids pout

10:30 family passes by small water slide park, kids want to stop and play- mom says no, she wants to keep driving, kids cry, they think they are in Chelan

Kids get over it and continue to watch the movie

Family drives up to Silverwood parking lot

Mom takes pictures of excited kids!

Kids have a Great Time!

Parents have a Great time!

Everyone is Happy!

Everyone is tuckered out...

What a GREAT weekend!

happy 12th birthday jordan

I made these cup cake ice cream cones

and brought them into her class on

Monday to celebrate!

We figured this was as close to having her birthday

in school as we were going to get.

I made mint flavored cake to bake in the cones,

then frosted them with dark chocolate frosting,

and topped them with green mint chips!

YummO!

She was the star of the show passing these babies out!

All of her classmates thought we brought in ice cream cones,

till she handed them a cone full of cake!

What fun we had!

I'm glad that she invited me to make this special

treat for her class and share in her day!

Thanks Bug!

I love You!

~Mudda~

My crazy kids

~All four of our kids have such different personalities~

If you look, you can see just how different they are.

~Alex~ our oldest, 13 - he likes to be different than others, yet wants to be sure he isn't too different. He had his face painted as Shrek. He still enjoys acting like a young kid, ie- watch Saturday morning cartoons, Disney movies and playing games. But he feels like he needs to be 'older' and do 'grown up things', such as watch real people movies, order off the 'grown up' menu and have soda with dinner. Little does he know that we would trade being a 'real grown up' just about any time with him. So any how, him getting his face painted as Shrek was of no surprise to me, as I was glad to see a little piece of our little boy emerge, even if it was just for a few hours. I'm glad that he is sure enough of himself to get his face made up, and choose something that makes him happy.

~Shilo~ She is our 'baby' for now at 3, I love that she chose to have her face painted as one of her favorite animals- a kitty. I thought that she really did look like a cat! She LOVES all sorts of cats- tigers, cheetahs, leopards but her most favorite of all is a lion! She would love to have her face painted every day as a cat of some sort if I was talented in any way at face painting. She will prance around for hours in different lion and kitty costumes we have around the house, and then stay in the outfits and pretend she is the mommy lion to all her toy animals. I love that she has such a great imagination!

~Chastin~is our 7 year old little angel. It was a little surprising to me that he wanted to have his face painted, because he tends to be a little shy and not want to draw attention to himself. He loves Star Wars! He can often be found on our trampoline in the back playing light saber fights with Shilo or dressing up as Darth Vader. So for him to get made up as something kind of unrealistic and sort of scary, was right on the money! When Chastin entered Kindergarten he learned how to group things into tens, so one day he comes home from school and goes right to his room to start grouping his Star Wars guys into tens; a little while later, he emerges with the count at 163 guys! Well I thought that couldn't possibly be right! How could he have that many? ( I wondered if they even made that many- they do.) So any how, he too loves when he gets his face painted and is always reluctant to have it washed off before bed.

~Jordan~our almost 12 year old, two days left of being eleven. Her choice of face decoration describes her perfectly! Nothing really consistent, just a bunch of random pictures to show her creative side. The girl is talented, anything she really tries comes out well. She is a beautiful writer, can draw pretty well, and always has some creative project in mind to do. She likes things a little different than the other girls her age, which would be why she chose the spider web, she is an animal lover at heart, which would be the reason for the penguin. The only thing about Jordan's choice of pictures that surprised me was that there are no bright colors, she always has some new idea of how we should paint her room. Sometimes these ideas include glow in the dark paint or random stripes all over the walls and sometimes she wants some type of nature mural on the walls. Her new favorite word is random, so guess everything on her face was a sign of that...She was the only child that kept going back for more little 'random touches', as she called them.

That's all, I just wanted to share a little about my kids, because I just think they're great!