I am so tired of moving!

Well, we painted the living room and the hearth and I love it much better than the icky color the realtor had us paint it to try to sell it! And we have the TV in the Living Room now so we are actually using the room rather than having it be a "walk thru room". We will put the condo up for lease by the end of the month. We only have Dad's tools to move now!

Your pictures are all back up on the wall and that makes us most happy!You wouldn't believe the difference in the storage room. We whitewashed the walls, and painted the floor a nice garage floor grey. All the junk is gone and the food storage and such is all neatly organized. I LOVE this room now!

Becky's room is the cleanest downstairs and is the new guest room with the blow up queen mattress and Grandma Ball's dresser.
Jenni's room will be my sewing and craft room.
Kevin's room is the kids toy room. I love this room. Lori's room will also be a guest room when we get all the books put away.

Come see us now!

Lori and Addie visited us!

Cute little Addie came to see us early this month. I am just now having time to download my pictures to tell you about it! And I finally have internet so I can post them! More pictures of their trip can be seen here on my Picasa album. Well, Addie is as cute as ever, and a whole 4 months old now. We went to the Clark Co Fair Grounds for a dog obedience show, where the dogs go thru tunnels, up and down ramps, under and over jumps and we loved it! And Addie loved her Grandma and Grandpa!

She got to take a nice bath in the big kitchen sink, but she is nearly too big for it herself! Sure is nice being home and having a deep kitchen sink and a wonderful kitchen!
We had so much fun over the long weekend with Lori and Addie and the Burkmans. Becky, Kyle and their kidlets came over too for dinner one night and we had a great dinner. Did I mention that I am so happy to be back in my big, old house? Nice to have room to have folks over and to entertain. Hope they come back soon!

White Water Rafting Rocks!

Today is our 29th wedding anniversary and we decided to celebrate several weeks ago.

Now don't laugh too hard at our picture! We had to wear wetsuits for our adventure. Dad and I celebrated by taking advantage of a gift certificate that my Motor Team at work had given me more than a year ago. We had tried to use it summer '07, but it didn't work out, so I decided we had to make it work this year. It was for Skamania Lodge, up the Gorge in Stevenson, about where the Bridge of the Gods is, but on the WA side. We had a wonderful night in a King Suite, paid dinner and breakfast; the dinner was amazing in the lodge dining hall. We had seats next to the large windows and watched the sun set on the Gorge. On Monday, we went to the Zoo Raft place, thanks to the gift certificate package, and went on a 4 hour raft trip down the White Salmon River. It was awesome! Our guide, Ben, has been doing this for many years.

At first it was a lazy float, then we hit quite a few Class 3 and 4 rapids and had some fun. Ben would turn the boat around let us "surf" the rapids upstream! Then another lazy stretch and more 3 and 4 rapids. Then we had a decision to make, did we want to take on the Class 5 rapid aka Huse Waterfall?? Yep, the waterfall.

Dad and I both voted yes, of course, while others in our boat decided to portage around. Dad was placed in the center of the boat and has on the red helmet, and I am the one in the front right as you look at the pictures.

And where is mom you ask? Going for a big bath! Take a big gulp of air and hold it hoping you don't need to breath while you are still under!

Keep looking for Dad's red helmet! Mom is under water way longer and you can't see me!

Now that was a RUSH! That was so much fun! We plan on going next summer and perhaps doing the day trip down the Klickitat, or perhaps this trip again.

Thank goodness for self bailing boats. Couldn't have tried that and succeeded in our old rubber raft. Wow, did we have fun!

It's true, we are moving home!

It is really true, we took 2216 off the market today and it feels good to have it really be ours again. We have the townhouse/condo listed on the MLS www.brokerdirectmls.com/111132 and hope to be able to sell it, although we aren't holding out great hope. It is in the much better price range and it has a VIEW like very few other properties. I also have it on Craigslist and Zillow and our 2 "ex" realtors are helping to look for folks and spread the word.

We plan on moving home sometimes around Labor Day. I start work tomorrow so, we will see with Dad and I both working how much our bodies and minds can handle. I hurt already from moving boxes and painting and woke up to painful arthritis hands last night. Ugh... but we are excited to go home and put things away differently, like we would like, have LOTS of space, and to enjoy a DARK bedroom in the morning when we want to sleep.

And we have LOTS of room for you to come visit us!

The Clark Co Fair

We had a great time on a very HOT day at the Fair. Becky and I had not been in at least 5 years and going with children always make the fair more fun. We saw everything! Drew love the HUGE rooster, Katie loved the goats and Dylan just loved being there. Fat Baby, just loved keeping cool in the spray mist! It was a great day and Grandma got her caramel apple while the grandkids got cotton candy. Katie wanted to take my picture and told me to make a face, so... here are the rest of the photos... http://picasaweb.google.com/hightechmom/ClarkCoFair

Wii Fit is making us fit!

Dad and I adore our Wii Fit. We exercise nearly daily with it and are getting more coordinated and strong. Or so it says... :) And I love it when it tells me that my Wii Fit age is 36, 37 and 40 and then tells me what a young body I have!

Dad is REALLY good at the soccer activity and has several 550 perfect scores to prove it. He also is very good at the downhill skiing, having very fast times - about 24 seconds. I, however, am very good at the dance aerobics, the tightrope walk, and the rolling bubble down the stream. I can't seem to get the hang of the snowboarding yet, keep missing one or two gates each time! I can now ski jump very successfully too!

Another thing we really enjoy is playing Mario Kart with Misha and Amy! We are well matched and have so much fun racing each other! What a fun toy.

Houston July 2008

We sure had a great time visiting Jenni and Kevin and their families! It was plenty hot there and humid, and we are so thankful for air conditioning, makes it all very nice. Love those grandchildren! And great to hear that Kevin and Candace have a new arrival for Feb 09!

We love J and K's new house, it is terrific, and Lucy, well, I just adore her. She LOVES to run upstairs in the morning and find my bed and "play" by nuzzling my hand, or snuggling. We are buds. Ashley and I bonded over "pink toes". She hadn't had nail polish so I polished her toes and mine for our sandals and she was so happy and excited to have pink toes! Daniel is so sweet and cuddly and his smiles melt my heart. Jeremy is still very into his Thomas trains ( as is Ashley!) and drew me a very detailed Thomas picture and one of his house with all the rooms. Jonathan reads so very well, it was so cute to listen to him master these big words in the scriptures each night at scripture reading/prayer time.