Gloria's Revenge . . .

Enter At Your Own Risk. . .

Zach rigged this up in the corner of his room mostly to keep his sweet little sister out. It's connected to the door in such a way that it fires directly at the intruder when the door is pushed open. It's only a Nerf bullet, but still. . .

Tap Kids . . .

More like Tap Young-Adults but they put on a really good show. . .


Good people to work with, too. . .

Another Random 7 Post. . .

In case you were wondering, this is a pirate ship:

I love to see my kids with their heads together like this. It actually happens more often than not:

Tony and Colleen gave me some VERY useful tips and tricks for my Blackberry that have already come in very handy! Several of us spent about an hour at Rob's party the other night texting each other and messing with our phones while we were all sitting together in the living room. It was pretty hilarious! Just for the record, the birthday boy was NOT one of the texters. . .

This is the face Gloria makes when Rob tells her what the stringy thing is that's inside the shrimp she just ate:

Lucy is really good at playing catch with a basketball. She even "throws" it back:

Rob and Zach worked out the chords to "She's As Cold As Ice" and now I can't get it out of my head. . .

I ran into my favorite Aunt and Uncle in Pendleton on the way to the quiz meet! They live in Ontario and I rarely get to see them. Aunt Pat was one of those rare adults that would look into my eyes when I was a kid and actually listen to what I had to say. I'd like to be one of those people . . .

Hope For Haiti . . .

A bunch of talented kids got together tonight and raised more than a thousand dollars to help with disaster relief in Haiti. I've been feeling like anything we do over here is just a drop in the bucket to aid in the suffering over there but when people are willing to give of their time, talent and resources to help someone they've never even met, it makes an impact on more than just the recipients. It was a privilege to be a small part of that. . .

Rob. . .

Rob had a birthday over the weekend while I was out of town but we still had a chance to celebrate tonight with family. . .

(Card by McKenna. . . )

Jeanie put together a Bingo game custom designed for Rob. In place of numbers, she made squares of Rob's favorite things:

I'd say she knows him pretty well. . .

Marquee. . .

On January 2nd I blogged about losing a piece of my past. . .

. . . and shortly after that we were asked to help with a benefit to help the people that were affected the most by the fire. It will take a lot of time and energy to pull it off this weekend but somehow it seems fitting. . .

Quiz Meet Slideshow. . .

(Live For Today, Natalie Grant)

Homeward Bound. . .

Jump . . .

Road Trip. . .

Ready or Not, Here We Come. . .

Very Zen. . .

"Feng Shui is based on the Taoist vision and understanding of nature, particularly on the idea that the land is alive and filled with Chi, or energy. The ancient Chinese believed that the land's energy could either make or break the kingdom, so to speak. The theories of yin and yang, as well as the five feng shui elements, are some of the basic aspects of a feng shui analysis that come from Taoism." About.com



I'm not a believer in or even very knowledgeable of the ancient art of feng shui but today as I raked the entire arena of sand while Gloria took her 2 hour horse lesson, I felt energized rather than wearied and renewed rather than sapped by the physical labor of raking, raking, raking. . .



I'm just sayin' . . .
("A phrase that is used when someone is offended by something you said. This phrase then removes all the offensiveness of the previous statement, making it all good." Urbandictionary.com)

Swinging. . .

Pretty Girl. . .

Math. . .

Even though I enjoy math, I find myself putting off helping Zach with his Algebra II until I absolutely have to face it. Fortunately for me, he gets it most of the time and rarely asks for help. I think part of the reason I put it off is that I'm afraid that one day I won't get it. It's not that I try to make my kids think I know everything and we often find our everyday kind of answers on the Internet, but this is math. I know math! Math is my thing!

Today was one of those days that I took a deep breath and sat down to tackle a concept that Zach has been stuck on for about a week. Once we get started on this process, I always wonder why I put it off for so long. Zach and I think so much alike that when we put our heads together over a problem, we end up reaching the solution almost simultaneously. It becomes this really cool "a-ha" moment that I would totally miss out on if I didn't make the effort to dig into the far recesses of my brain. It's worth it every time. It's also a good feeling to know that math is still my thing. Well, at least until we hit Calculus. . .

Business. . .

Against my better judgement but in the spirit of posting one picture each day, this is the one and only picture I took on Tuesday. (It's not like I'm up for any blogging awards or anything. . . )

The picture does, however, lend itself well to a short update on the business. I took the picture of the box only to have proof of the damage just in case the processors inside also had dents and tape. They didn't. As far as we can tell they are in good working order. Of course, concerts are few and far between these days so it may be awhile before we actually get to use one of these in a rack!


Even though this is the down time of our business, things are good. We have enough to do to keep food on the table and it gives us a chance to re-organize after the busy summer season. We were able to completely move out of the newer building we were in before the end of the year when our lease was up, avoiding a new 4-year lease on a building that didn't really meet our needs. We moved everything related to the audio part of our business into the older building and have even (mostly) found a place for everything and are ready to conduct business there. Rob finished his shop at home and has moved the entire case company into our backyard. He spends an inordinate amount of time in there and has been able to accomplish something that should have taken much, much longer. I'm adjusting to the changes and have been working more at home myself. I actually prefer working at the office because it helps me separate work from school and family but I enjoy saving money on gas even more.


In the meantime, our summer calendar is filling up and chances are good that it will be our busiest summer yet. I feel really good about the direction the business is going and we are making some much needed changes in the way we operate. We've always been so busy just trying to stay one step ahead of disaster that we've never taken the time to get organized as a real, bonafide business. Two businesses, actually, and I have the color-coded, alphabetical, triplicated file boxes to prove it.

Happy 11th Birthday, Megan!!

If You Can't Beat 'Em, Join 'Em. . .

Quiz Practice???

I decided on a whim to have an extra little quiz practice at my house this evening. . .

It was fun but it wasn't especially productive. I'm working on a slide show to prove my point but right now I have a headache. . .

Random 7. . .

This idea of one picture a day is really working for me for the most part. It's much easier to keep up with and I'm obviously holding it loosely anyway so it's a good thing. However, I find myself with a bunch of pictures at the end of the week of things I found interesting but didn't get to (or want to) post so I'm borrowing an idea from Ryan at This is Reverb and I'm putting up my first "Random 7" post. Seven things that may or may not have a common theme and may or may not be in order. Here goes. . .

Lucy is much better after giving us quite a scare last week. We still don't know what the problem was but, more than likely, she had a pulled muscle or a sore tail. It had something to do with her back end and she favored it for a few days and has now completely recovered.

School has been going pretty well. Gloria has finally decided that books are good and she's much more motivated to work on her own. Zach spends a good chunk of his school day on quizzing but still manages to get most everything else on his list done as well. His assigned literature book right now is Pilgrim's Progress and he is not enjoying it in the least. This is what a typical school day looks like for us:

Zach received a card game called "Swap" in his stocking for Christmas and we have been playing it just about every evening before bed. It's fun and silly and can be played in 30 minutes or less. It's a fast moving game and every once in awhile someone will play a "slap" card and everyone has to slap the pile. The last person to slap the pile has to draw two cards. The object is to get rid of your cards so there is usually quite a bit of chaos when a slap card is played. Lucy hates violence of any kind and has decided that the cards are the source of our "pain". She has started to jump up to the table randomly to grab the cards out of our hands as we play. It's pretty funny but we'll have to invest in a new set of cards pretty soon. Ours are getting pretty chewed up. . .




Our next quiz meet is coming up the weekend of the 23rd. We've been working hard on Wednesdays nights in order to be ready.

I'm no photographer, I've never even pretended to be one and this picture was taken with my phone so it's really not a good photo. But I like it. . .

Rob's shop in the backyard is finished and he is working in there on a daily basis building cases. It's not as bad as I predicted in this post. . .

Rob loves to talk audio and every once in awhile he finds someone not only willing to listen but who speaks the same language. Micah runs sound for the army band and the two of them went on and on and on (and on and on and on) about all things audio. I pretended to be interested for about five minutes and then I moved on to more interesting things like checking e-mail on my Blackberry. I love my Blackberry. . .

This Random Seven thing is good for the part of my nature that needs order and closure. Sure, it's random but I can still check it off the list. . .

Reading. . .

Boots . . .

Art. . .

Random. . .

I took this picture while I was sitting in the bank drive through this afternoon. I could even see the other end of the rainbow but there were too many obstacles in the way to get a picture of it. In the few minutes it took for me to finish my transaction and pull into full view, the rainbow had completely disappeared! Guess I'll have to wait until another day for my pot of gold. . .

Colleen. . .

A slide show is kind of the same as just one picture, right?

Happy Birthday, Colleen!

Something I Don't See Very Often. . .

Cake Decorating 101 . . .

Last March the quiz team held a fundraiser to help pay for the last quiz meet of the season. They ended up making enough money with the dessert auction to pay for the last meet as well as the first meet of this year. Due to the success of that fund raiser we decided to hold another one in order to help raise funds for the last three meets of this season. Zach spent quite a bit of time last year making his masterpiece "Jesus Cake" and decided to create another cake this year with the same theme. He planned it out ahead of time and came up with something just as good:


One of the key ingredients for him was to have the center of the cake look blood-red. . .

I was skeptical about how it would work but it turned out pretty good. . .

While the cake was cooling he finalized the drawing that would serve as a model while he frosted and sculpted. . .

I mostly stood back and watched the whole thing unfold . . .

(the top off of one of the cupcakes Gloria made worked out perfectly for the nose):

I think his "Lamb of God Cake" turned out just as good as last year's "Jesus Cake"!!!

Gloria made her own contribution to the auction with these cool BSU cupcakes:

I helped a little bit with the writing but she did the rest of it herself. . .

Today at church we held the dessert auction along with a baked potato bar after church and ended up with 44 desserts to auction off!! People are always so incredibly generous when it comes to the youth at church and we ended up raising enough for the rest of the season!! Very cool. . .