Blessed, Honored, Pioneer

There is something to be treasured and taken to heart and used for an example of the life, times, stories and actions of the people who came before us.  People who lead the way on the trail to a new life, started a bold new way of living/thinking or doing things.  There are all kinds of pioneers.

In my church we have a special day that we celebrate pioneers.  The main ones we think of are those who left the midwest, east coast, or other countries and came over into settle the west by ox cart, handcart, walking, and boat.  They had hard struggles on those trails through rivers, winters, mountains and mud!

We have more pioneers we can think of in our lives not just these kinds of pioneers.  We have a song we sing typcially during this time of year called Come Come Ye Saints.  It reminds us of the pioneers who came before us.

Here the song I am talking about.  It struck me that pioneers of all kinds had things very hard.  Some suffered greatly for their cause and some even died for their cause.  As we struggle through our "everyday times" we ought to remember that things arent so hard.  Believe me I am no pro at that either, but it is good food for thought and a good thing to strive to be more positive about everyday situations.  I want to do better at it.

Come, come, ye saints, no toil nor labor fear;
But with joy wend your way.
Though hard to you this journey may appear,
Grace shall be as your day.
Tis better far for us to strive
Our useless cares from us to drive;
Do this, and joy your hearts will swell -
All is well! All is well!
Why should we mourn or think our lot is hard?
'Tis not so; all is right.
Why should we think to earn a great reward
If we now shun the fight?
Gird up your loins; fresh courage take.
Our God will never us forsake;
And soon we'll have this tale to tell-
All is well! All is well!
We'll find the place which God for us prepared,
Far away, in the West,
Where none shall come to hurt or make afraid;
There the saints, will be blessed.
We'll make the air, with music ring,
Shout praises to our God and King;
Above the rest these words we'll tell -
All is well! All is well!
And should we die before our journey's through,
Happy day! All is well!
We then are free from toil and sorrow, too;
With the just we shall dwell!
But if our lives are spared again
To see the Saints their rest obtain,
Oh, how we'll make this chorus swell-
All is well! All is well!



Easter Photos

We traveled home to Idaho for a week and saw family and friends.  It was fantastic to see everyone and to listen to General Conference!  We did get time to stop off at Baron Photography in town and get some pictures of the kids!

Im proud to say that my kids overall were very good during picture time and the photographer was great.  Im sure the quality of prints will be great when we get them as well.

Belated Christmas Photos

I havent really posted any pictures from Christmas and have been off on my editing lately.  I did get a chance to sit down and do a few.  These are just a few of the kids.  Here is the first present on baby's first Christmas.

 Perhaps the best present for Baby J.  Perhaps the best picture of him and a present too. (below)

 Im gonna be in trouble in years to come for posting this photo.  But she loves Tangled and her reaction is priceless!  It makes me laugh!

 Our family photo in our Christmas jamies in front of the tree and the rest of the presents.  In years past these pictures dont turn out.  It is amazing that we got everyone to smile here, especially the boys.  Perhaps it is because everyone loves jamies.

 Warning, dont let your kids play with plastic!  HAHA!  You might get contorted faces!

 Dont worry no children were harmed in the taking of these pictures!

Halloween Time

It is the time of year again where the parents stress about pumpkins, decorations, costumes and taking kids around who whine about their feet and how tired they are so they can just fight about whose candy is whose.  Isnt Halloween great?  Well, it is for me since I exercise a "toll" on the kids candy!

Here are some pictures from our Halloween with family and friends.  First stop is a week or two ago at Northwest Trek with Aunt S and Little Cousin J.

 Northwest Trek haunted bus, check out the freaky face!  I love it, who taught her how to pose?

 Ahh!  Hold me!

 Stopped in Logan to see my grandparents.  Got a 4 Generation picture!  The camera didnt take a very good shot and my son cant smile to save his life I guess.

 Back to trunk or treat with Grandma JQ

 Isnt this the cutest picture of mama and baby!

 Went trick or treating with KT, Auntie Ki, and Uncle B

 A little timid to approach this door mama helped out!

 Uncle B was laughing at Auntie Ki with this creature following her around.

Pumpkin Time

It is that time again to cut up pumpkins feel the oozing slimy feeling of the inside guts and slippery flat seeds!
We like to carve pumpkins.  Well scratch that the kids and K love to.  I on the other hand get grouchy cus i cant tape the stencil on the pumpkin exactly straight and i always mess up anyway.
It seems standard that you have to have villians on your pumpkins if they arent ghoulish in some kind of way but apparently that didnt matter in our house this year.
We did all the good guys.  Rapenzul from Tangled, Ho Ho the monkey from Ni Hao Kai Lan, and of course the Autobots sign.  Please dont ask who they are or i might just throw a hissy fit.

Pumpkin Patch People

We definitely are pumpkin patch people. We have to go every year and sometimes we go twice a year. We usually like to make it out to Black Island Farms where we are from but since we might not make it this year we went to a little local one.  Over the weekend nearly all the good pumpkins were taken.  Also with it being the Pacific Northwest there is a lot of rain which makes for rotted pumpkins.  So you had to look carefully to find some that didn't have some kind of rot.

Of course the kids wanted to just fill up the barrel with every single one they thought looked good, cute, or interesting color.  I would love to get whatever they wanted but that isn't practical.  So we put some back before we bought.

We did get a first pumpkin for our baby.  He was looking at it pretty intensely for a while.  I love the picture below because I caught some good sun flare for the first time in my life and I did it from my camera phone!  Go Me!

 

But since his was bigger and cooler color that one just had to end up as J'alee's and then baby got defaulted to this little one here.  Mom's sporting him in a pack with her killer glasses!

Baby J kept running up and down the patch screaming "pumpkins pumpkins pumpkins" all over.  Everything he said had some kind of pumpkin reference to it.  We had to take him to the potty and he was having a little trouble with #2 and he said it was hanging from a vine.  Maybe a little TMI for you, sorry but it was SOO funny for me.

J'alee just loved to be there and was looking at everyone trying to find the perfect pumpkins.  Dad wanted a Cinderella Pumpkin and there were very few there and most were all rotted out.  She was awesome and tried to help dad find a good one.  We didn't really find one but that is alright, they cost more anyway.

Here are a few more shots for you.  I didn't edit any of the images since I didn't have time.  We definitely enjoyed our little time and we got in and out of there with 10 bucks so that was a pretty good deal.  Usually things cost more than that.  It was chilling and we didn't want to do the corn maze so maybe we will do that later.  At least we know not to call 911 in the maze if we get lost though!  LOL!

Photo Narrative catch up

A lot has been happening and this smiley little boy is taking most of the time up!

 We did make it out to Bellevue for Strawberry Festival.  Which I find funny since they dont really grow strawberries in the area much anymore but it was for a historical society benefit so we are glad to help contribute.

 I went to take the garbage out on Monday morning and I found this little guy out in the bark by the flower beds.  The kids missed it but I got some good shots and they enjoyed those.  My kids love little bugs and frogs.

 While my family was in town I got to see my little sister who I hadnt seen in 4 years just about.  She just got back from Afganistan and it was so good to see her.  We did of course go up the space needle.  You gotta do that if you come to Seattle.

 Also stopped on Pike Place market and saw all the good eats there and flowers.  These peppers were cool and I hadnt seen them before.  It was very low traffic on the morning of the 4th of July right at opening.  No crowds.

 Me and my sister just below Pike Place standing in front of "the gum walls".  It is quite disgusting this was the closest I could get.

 Someone was even gracious enough to spell my name in the wall!  It wasnt me because this is too disgusting to even get close enough to take this picture more than once!

 Are any of you that know Seattle surprised that they were selling a bag that contained mary jane?  I'm not but it is definately a shot you cant miss if given the opportunity.  Now there was no drugs in it, it was just a bag from Columbia (the country).

 We did take the Argosy Harbor Cruise.  It is always a good time.  We did get to see the DoD's floating radar equipment seen here.  There is a security boat on the water there preventing anyone from getting close.  This thing checks and tracks for missles over at least 1/3 of the whole earth.  That is a lot of radar power.

 Ok Grey's Anatomy fans.  I am going to burst your bubbles right now.  You see the tall black tower on in the picture?  That is the Columbia tower.  Next to that is a tiny white tower that has a triangle top that is Smith Tower on Pioneer Square.  Just ot the right of it you can see a tiny box (in this picture it looks tiny).  That is the building they took the shots of Seattle of in order to show on the show.  Yes no McDreamy or Steamy here sorry!

 After the cruise we decided to eat at Crab Pot in I think it is Pier 56 or 57.  If you are a fan of the show Man vs Food you will know this place.  This is the place where they throw down butcher paper give you a wooden mallet, a tiny fork and a huge bib and say have at it!  Can anyone imagine my mom doing that?...Well I have proof!

 Shrimp (heads, shells and legs on), mussles, clams, snow crab and dungeness crab along with pieces of corn on the cob and potatoes.  It was delicious!

 We also went to Bellevue to the park just off downtown for the Bellevue Philharmonic's last preformance during the fireworks show.  there were little activities for the kids and booths there too.  We got the baby all ready in his fireworks jammies for his very first fireworks show!

 We all got to huddle in a little park no bigger than a church building with about 65,ooo other people.

 You can see the towers of Bellevue in the background and the stage to the right of my head.  It was fun!  The fireworks would glisten off the glass on the buildings it was neat to see them that way.

 We got to have Grandma JS with us and Auntie K.  It was so fun for them to come too!