Wock and Woll

I'm taking a break from cleaning and organizing the house to write about our fun day yesterday!

From Blog Favorites #4

Yesterday we had a "wock and woll" or Rock and Roll party for Angela and Tori. So Tina and I hatched the idea a couple weeks ago when we were hanging out at Bagley Park while the kids played. Tori and Angela's birthdays are within a week of each other. I remember visiting Tina in the hospital about to pop/9 months prego, and meeting Tori for the first time! (o: 5 years later, we realized it would be more fun and easier to have a combined party rather than two separate ones. And the funny thing is that Tori and Angela both picked the theme. Tori wanted a dance party and Angela wanted a "Rock and Roll" party, which means the same thing to her (not a 50's rock and roll - that's just what she calls dance music. )

From Blog Favorites #4

So the girls and I turned our living room into a dance room by making it as dark as we could, hanging lots of glittery stuff and blinking Christmas lights and Tina added her brother-in-laws cool disco ball, turning colored light ball and a black light. It was awesome!

From Blog Favorites #4

From Blog Favorites #4

Our awesome DJ! (O: Taylor was lots of fun and did a great job with the little kids! And he had cool glasses!

From Blog Favorites #4

From Blog Favorites #4

From Blog Favorites #4

From Blog Favorites #4

From Blog Favorites #4

From Blog Favorites #4

"I wear my sunglasses at night. . . " Taylor passed these cool specs out for this song . . .

From Blog Favorites #4

From Blog Favorites #4

From Blog Favorites #4

From Blog Favorites #4

Y. M. C. A.!

From Blog Favorites #4

From Blog Favorites #4

Hailey getting down! It was her birthday yesterday so we celebrated her too!

From Blog Favorites #4

From Blog Favorites #4

Dear Costco, thank you for providing some super fun and delicious cupcakes and for making this party a "piece of cake" - ha ha - If we weren't moving, I probably would have made a guitar cake, but under the circumstances, these were a fabulous backup. Thanks Tina, for always having such great ideas and helping me to not make things harder on myself!

From Blog Favorites #4

From Blog Favorites #4

From Blog Favorites #4

Tori (Tina (o: ) gave Angela a picture of the two of them together in a frame that said, "Friends". It made me cry. These two have grown up together since they were babies. In fact, Sarah and Taylor, who will be 10 this year have known each other since they were babies too. Oh, how we will miss the "L" family. Thanks, Tina for a wonderful day and another of many, many fabulous memories together in Oregon. What will I do without you? Love ya lots and lots! I better stop . . .

Another Thing I'll Miss . . .

From Blog Favorites #4

The Airshow was this weekend. We LOVE the airshow. We are so lucky to have fabulous seats right in our front yard. Actually, the very best seats are on the roof of the Burton's house right around the corner! (o: On airshow weekend, the whole family and friends can be seen hanging out on their roof which faces in the perfect direction. But if you're afraid of heights like me, you can still see some pretty cool stuff from our front yard. Especially when the big jets are flying.

From Blog Favorites #4

From Blog Favorites #4

That's the roof of our house . . .

From Blog Favorites #4

This shot is my favorite, not because it is anything spectacular to look at - it's just amazing that I caught it! We were out in the yard chatting with our across the street neighbors, Don and Josie, when we heard the jet performing flying really low. Because the sound was bouncing everywhere, we were looking all over to figure out which direction it was coming from. At the very last second as the sound got more intense and the ground was shaking, I looked up and snapped a picture as fast as I could. My camera was vibrating so much I could barely hold on to it! I LOVE the awesome power of those jets it is incredible! That picture above is not zoomed in at all - that is how low it was to the ground! It was sooo cool I just screamed and cheered out loud like a little kid! It went by so fast I could not believe I got it in my viewfinder in reasonable focus!

Man I'm going to miss that! (But I'll tell you who will NOT miss that - Natalie and Angela will not miss the terror thinking that a plane is going to crash right into our house.) Maybe we could tell our Utah realtor that we would like a home that is right next door to an annual airshow. I wonder if we could pull that off?

More Pics of the Par-Tay

From Blog Favorites #4

From Blog Favorites #4

From Blog Favorites #4

At one of the carnival games, the kids could win a ticket to get a goldfish. Sarah was ecstatic when she won. Natalie and Angela ended up winning fishies too ...

From Blog Favorites #4

So we came home with Odette (Angela's), Bubble (Sarah's) and I am spacing Natalie's fishy name at the moment. Poor little Bubble wasn't looking too fabulous when we got them home and put them all in a vase together. She wasn't swimming like the other two as well. We warned the girls that carnival goldfish don't usually live very long. The next morning Bubble looked a little better to us, but when we came home from church, Bubble was dead. )o: Sarah was heartbroken. It was pretty sad. We flushed Bubble because we thought she would like that better than the garbage can. Sarah wrote the message, "I will miss you Bubble" on a piece of toilet paper and flushed it down after her. Poor thing. She shed some tears for a while after.

From Blog Favorites #4

On the ride home from the party, which was in Vernonia - I couldn't help but snap some pictures out the window. We live in such a beautiful place. It really is just breathtaking. We live right on the edge of town and get to drive by this beautiful open farmland every day. I will miss the scenery here soooo much. I love Oregon.

From Blog Favorites #4

From Blog Favorites #4

Earl's* Farewell Work Party

From Blog Favorites #4

Check out this amazing party Intel threw for Earl* yesterday! It was something else! We felt so honored that they would fork out so much money just to show Earl* how much they appreciated his hard work. (o: Okay, so maybe it was a party for everyone, but it was a pretty amazing party - they had tons of food, snow cones, clowns, a swimming pool, music, a HUGE slip and slide going down a big hill (see video), tons of inflatables, Rockband, a petting zoo, climbing wall, carnival games, all kinds of competitions (sandcastle building, dodgeball, outdoorsman, basketball, etc.), there were races up the big hill to win Xboxes, and every half hour or so Ed (the incredible party planner) would call up all dads, all kids, etc. and hand out fleece jackets, stuffed animals, etc. I have never been to anything like it. We had a blast! I was telling our friends there that now that we're leaving, we're getting to enjoy some of the perks of working for Intel. Nah - there have been lots of other perks, but when you have a ton of money like Intel - you sure can throw a party! It was the perfect finale. I will miss a lot of those perks.

From Blog Favorites #4

Every guest at the party got a bag of goodies including these silly cups. Not practical at all and Michelle and I imagined the local landfills being chock full of these things in a week or two. But for now we'll eat, drink out of these ridiculous cups and be merry!

From Blog Favorites #4

Shannon holding one of her kids' stuffed animals. They called all the kids up and just handed out stuffed animals to them! Not all of them were quite this big - Jacob was lucky! (o:

From Blog Favorites #4

A cute clown that had lots of good jokes to tell like, "Why do you have to be careful when it rains cats and dogs? You might step in a poodle!" There were some even better ones, but I can't ever remember jokes very well. She was cute.

From Blog Favorites #4

The Intel dome tent had giant Rockband setups inside, there was mini golf, giant basketball and the girls loved the inflatables. Although, Sarah opted out of the bounce house - she's getting old! She didn't have much interest in it.

From Blog Favorites #4

It was not the warmest day, so I thought the girls were a little crazy for still wanting to swim. It was practically empty when they first got in. But it warmed up when the sun came out and they had a great time. Soon the pool was full of kids. This was the girls' favorite part of the whole party!

From Blog Favorites #4

From Blog Favorites #4

Natalie and Lydia loved swimming together.

From Blog Favorites #4

Mark thought Earl* looked to dry sitting by the pool in his swimsuit. (O:

From Blog Favorites #4

A petting zoo? Natalie was in heaven. Right after I took this when Nat was still facing me, the llama turned it's head toward me knocking her in the head with it's chin. It was a soft bump so it was pretty funny.

From Blog Favorites #4

From Blog Favorites #4

My Hero

From Blog Favorites #4

Super cat! Duh duh duh dum de dum!

I know I often complain about something Twilight has done, but I really do like having her in our family. She is a stinker, but she keeps us laughing and we love her. Today I appreciated her even more than ever when she saved me.

I was in the shower and could see her in the bathroom playing with something. It took me a minute to figure out it was a big, huge ugly spider. She was tossing it around, biting it to pick it up and tossing it some more. She loves spiders and I was so grateful she hunted this one down - it was disgusting. She started walking away and it got up out of it's "play dead" instinctive move. So I called her over to get it again. I couldn't get out with shampoo in my hair and the spider was going to get away. If that happened, I wouldn't be able to sleep at night. Luckily, she came back and hunted down the creature again. I cheered her on through the shower door.

She kept it occupied until I could get out and smash and flush it. Thank you Twilight!! You saved the day. I hate spiders and I am so happy to have a spider hunter to protect me!

Sunday Dinner

From Blog Favorites August/September

When our friends, the Bowdens heard we were leaving, they were so sweet and had us over at their new beautiful home for dinner. It was so much fun to visit and we all wished we would have done that more! Tiffany's BBQ chicken and chocolate cake were amazing, but the company was even better. The kids had a great time playing in the beautiful backyard on the play structure while we visited.

Tiffany and Scott are so great and we have quite a history with them. We were in the same BYU ward as newlyweds 11 years ago! It was so fun when we moved into the Dawson Creek ward and got to know them even better. I got to work with Tiffany in relief society planning enrichment nights and have grown to love and admire her kindness to everyone. She is such a sweetheart! I don't know if we will ever be lucky enough to be in their ward again in the future, but we will look forward to staying in touch with these good friends. (o:

From Blog Favorites August/September

From Blog Favorites August/September

From Blog Favorites August/September

I just had to get a picture of the amazing food storage shelving in the garage. I LOVE it! I'll file it away for an idea for the new house!

"Norm!"

Does anyone remember the 80's show that comes from? The photo should help - it's from Cheers. And the theme song from that show was in my head yesterday, "Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name . . . and they're always glad you came . . ."

I am feeling so sentimental about EVERYTHING this week. The airshow that happens every year at this time (right by our house - it's so cool!!), our yard, getting my hair cut by a close friend, Hagg Lake, the library, the Portland temple, my neighborhood, the gorgeous trees on Brookwood road, the family I did wedding pictures for yesterday that I just love, and every single friend and neighbor I've seen this week. Everything I do and everyone I see right now reminds me of what I will be missing and moving away from. It makes my heart ache. I am ultra sensitive and trying to soak up every good feeling and moment here while I can. I LOVE it here. On the other hand, the feelings I have are more humongous feelings of gratitude, not regret for our decision. I feel good about the way things are going, but I am appreciating every little thing about Oregon and know I will miss it all when we are gone.

I am grateful to have made so many close and wonderful connections out here. As we stood in the front yard yesterday talking to friends and waving to neighbors and friends walking or driving by, my friend Tina's son said, "You know everyone." Well, not really, but it seemed like a plethora of people we knew happened to walk or drive by yesterday. I think I am just more keenly aware of each and every association right now. After shooting at the Maurer's reception last night, Bill* and I were talking on the driveway when Brian and Randie walked by. We sat and talked and laughed with them for quite a while. It was so great. They have been wonderful friends and I am a better person for having known them. That's how I feel about all my wonderful friends here. I am a better person for every association I have had here in Oregon and I will be grateful FOREVER for the blessing of being here so I could have these deep friendships and life lessons from such good people.

So now we move from a place where everyone (not really) knows our name and hopefully is glad that we came. (o: That sounded TOTALLY cheesy, forgive me. Lookout - there's more coming...

In Oregon, for those of you who have seen it and know what I'm talking about, everything grows. The plentiful moisture and temperate climate make the most beautiful trees, shrubs and flowers grow. Even if you don't do anything, stuff just grows and grows here spontaneously. (Not fun when it comes to keeping up with the tons of weeds.) Like the beautiful vegetation here, I am forever grateful for the amazing growth I have experienced personally in the northwest. (Hey I'm not done being cheesy - give me my moment.) I have grown like a weed. (o: I tried to "bloom where I was planted" and in this gorgeous place it wasn't hard. I hope I can do okay in the Utah desert and not wilt too much. I know my family will be a huge source of strength and look forward to so many things about living closer to them.

Okay - that is the end of my deep thoughts for today . . . aren't you glad? (o:

Big News: Going Home??

From Blog Favorites #4

I love this face - it kind of seems appropriate for how I feel. A little shocked, surprised, scared. . . read on . . .

After 10 years of living here in Oregon, we are going back to Utah. I can't believe I am typing those words! It feels weird to say we're going back home because Oregon feels like home to us now. Our hearts are torn, but we know this is the right decision for our family.

So when I've told close friends and relatives this week, after the shock, we get the following questions: why? what? where? when?

So here you go . . .

Why? - The short answer: Family. When we moved here 10 years ago, we planned to come back home after Frank* got a couple years of experience. Then it turned into 5 years, 7 years . . . you get the idea. There are just not many companies in Utah looking for the high tech skills Frank* has gained at Intel. There is one company that had some potential that we had applied at a few times before, but most were entry level engineering jobs. Not a good fit. However, in May an opening for an experienced engineer was posted on their website. At the same time, a good friend contacted Frank* and told him that his manager was moving from Oregon to Utah to work there. He told his manager about Frank* and put in a good word for him. A first of many coincidences that we believe were evidence of a miracle in the works for our family.

Long story short: Frank* interviewed and had a great experience when we went on our vacation to Utah, we got a good offer two weeks later and after agonizing about leaving our Oregon friends, school, neighborhood, trees and beaches we decided that this move was a huge blessing for our family that we couldn't pass up.

What? This is an opportunity to be close to almost every member of both of our families. We've lived 1,000 miles away for nearly our whole marriage, raised all our kids here on our own. It was an experience I will always be grateful for and I believe made us stronger. Now we will get to enjoy things that we could only imagine: grandparents at recitals, Sunday dinners, seeing my cousins, watching football games together, etc. etc. And Frank* may actually get to enjoy sleeping all night, going on vacation without working, having hobbies, etc.

Where? The job is in West Jordan, so we'll be living somewhere not too far from there. (I'm not posting the company name because I am weird and paranoid about listing specifics on the internet. But shoot me an e-mail and I'll tell you. (o: )

When? Well, Frank's* last day of work here is mid-September. He will start at his new job end of Sept./beginning of Oct. I still can't believe I'm even saying all this. This is just crazy!

We have a lot of hurdles to cross on this adventure, but I feel at peace about it all and know it will work out. Top of the list: selling the house, finding a good school and neighborhood, making friends (Ugh - I hate being the newbie) . . . the last few days have been heartbreaking as we have told our close friends the news. We hope that those of you among our Oregon family will know how much we love you and consider you such a wonderful gift in our lives. The experiences and friendships that we have made here will be a part of who we are forever and I hope that the friendships will continue as we keep in touch, look forward to visits (when you come to Utah and we come to Oregon) and remember all the wonderful times together.

My dad said this would probably be a harder decision to come back than it was to move out here in the first place. He was right. I have cried my eyes out a lot this week. But I know it is best for us and I'm excited for this new adventure. I plan to keep my blog updated so we can keep friends and family informed of the events in our families' life this next little bit.

Love to you all!

Hagg Lake

From Blog Favorites #4

One of the perks of Ned* being in the bishopric is that I get to tag along for some of the bigger activities and enjoy time with the youth. The Hagg Lake tradition began two years ago and is always full of laughter, mud flinging, water fights and making good memories together. I was so grateful to be a part of it for the 3rd annual event. (o:

From Blog Favorites #4

My girls loved playing with the big kids! They love being with the young women and a part of all the fun. They loved playing with Brother Matteson, Sister Morris and taking a boat ride with bishop Melanson. We just love our ward so much. This was a wonderful and bittersweet night - more on that later . . .

From Blog Favorites #4

From Blog Favorites #4

I love this one of Sarah and Natalie in the background. (O:

From Blog Favorites #4

Angela getting a ride out in the water with Tony. I feel kind of lame for not coming in a swimsuit so I was grateful for everyone that played with my girls.

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Kaitlyn and Jordan are double trouble.

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Kaylynn, my photography buff buddy. She is amazing and I love talking photography with her! I couldn't resist getting a shot of her in action. (o:

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Hagg Lake is gorgeous - I wish I got more pictures of the scenery! (Did I just wish I got more pictures?)

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Ned* wasn't getting to stay dry just because he didn't dress for the water! Bishop and Tony were VERY gracious and allowed Ned* to remove all his affects before the dunking. It was a little anticlimactic, but very much appreciated!

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Some of the audience; Lizzy, Sarah and Heather

From Blog Favorites #4

Heidi, Natalie and Kayla

From Blog Favorites #4

Real men can get away with wearing princess towels!

**Funny story: Remember the post about our visit to Hagg Lake with the Fotheringhams back in June? On that night, Ned* was having fun throwing a disc out in a field with Sarah and Lizzy - if I remember right he was trying to get the disc on some deer we saw. (o: Well, the disc got lost in all the tall weeds and he couldn't find it. I guess he was curious last night about it and looked around and he FOUND it! Two months later! How funny is that? Unfortunately, all that time sitting in the sun warped it so it didn't work and he ended up throwing it away anyway, but it's still a good story. (o: