The David Whitemarsh Family

In Progress

2009-08-17T19:57:00.000-07:00

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Our lives have been crazy
So I haven't updated our blog in a really long time!!! HAHA!!!

We've moved, changed jobs, had almost the entire summer of mom home with 4 kids, and it just hasn't been way up high on my list of priorities. Sorry to those who count on our blog to keep up with the Whitemarsh family happenings. I promise I will try to get some updates soon so that you have proof that we are still alive and kicking!!! Here is our new information to get you through till the update:

David and Ruth Whitemarsh
5532 NW English Hill Ct.
Bremerton, WA 98312

Home 360-204-5744
Ruth Cell 360-850-8881
David Cell 360-850-8887

Ruth email: scrappyruth12@hotmail.com
David email: dwhitemarsh@hotmail.com

Also, our email address has changed. In the process of moving and changing utilities I lost ALL of your email addresses! :o( Would you PLEASE contact me with your information so that I don't lose you?! Thanks so much! Love to all...Ruth

Julianne Hough

2009-03-28T19:36:00.001-07:00

Scotlyn and I went last night to see Julianne Hough live in concert. For those who don't know, Julianne Hough is an American professional ballroom dancer and country music singer. She is most-widely known for being a two-time winner of ABC's Dancing with the Stars. She earned a Creative Arts Primetime Emmy nomination in 2007 for choreography. ABC's 20/20 called her one of the "very best dancers on the planet."[1] Julianne's brother, Derek Hough, is also on Dancing with the Stars and is a one-time winner himself. Hough was signed to Mercury Nashville Records in December 2007. Her self-titled debut album was released May 20, 2008, debuting at #1 on the Billboard Country Album chart and #3 on the Billboard 200. (As taken from Wikipedia!)

Anyway, she came to Astoria and performed at the Liberty Theater, http://www.liberty-theater.org/ , a great place to see any performance because of the intimacy of the venue.

Scotlyn and I have watched Julianne on DWTS for the last several seasons, and listen to her on the radio. We were both excited to get to see her in person! Scotlyn got a new outfit and we did her hair and she was adorable and ready to go! All seating was general admission and we found a pretty good spot about halfway back and almost in the middle. The singer who opened for her is local - and I'm PRETTY sure I've seen her before when I sang karaoke with a couple of friends!

Julianne was incredibly entertaining, she sings great live (which isn't always the case!) and has SO much energy! She's TEENY TINY - she looks small on tv, but in person - WOW! and SO pretty. Scotlyn and I got to go up to the front of the theater and stand at the stage. Really fun and a great experience for Scotlyn. She sang to the kids and gave them high 5's and stuff.

We heard that she was going to be signing autographs for a little while after the show, so we had a t-shirt, publicity photo, and our ticket stubs and waited in line. She was SO sweet and gave Scotlyn and me both hugs. She signed all our stuff and let me take a picture of her with Scotlyn!

Scotlyn spent the next couple of hours thanking David and me profusely for taking her to the concert. I think it was a success!!!

The year in review...

2009-03-16T09:07:00.000-07:00

Here is a fabulous video David made of our family's goings on in 2008. Enjoy!!! (You will need to pause the music on the playlist [scroll down on the left of the blog] before you play the video or you will hear both songs at the same time!)

We did NOT fall off the face of the earth!!!

2009-03-12T09:08:00.000-07:00

Hello to all! I can't believe I haven't updated since before Christmas...wow! I'm not gonna throw out a bunch of excuses, life just gets busy sometimes and in my rare spare time I've chosen to do other things! Sorry! I am happy, though, to hear that some of you have been checking back and waiting for new posts - somebody actually reads my blog! YAAAAAY!!! So here is a long awaited, abridged update on our family. (With lots of pictures, of course!)

A couple weeks before Christmas we went to Ilwaco, a cute little fishing town about 15 minutes away, and enjoyed the "Christmas Crab Pot Lighting"! They made an enormous Christmas tree out of hundreds of crab pots decorated with lights, buoys, etc. and kept it lit there until Christmas. Gotta love a coastal town! I especially enjoyed it since I'm goofy and really into that sort of thing! We wandered over to the docks to wait for the boat parade that was supposed to happen afterward and found Santa in a little bookshop. The girls had fun talking to him and each got a little giftbag with toys and candy. Very cool! It was too cold and late, so we left before the boat parade...maybe next year!

Christmas was good. Spent it in Tacoma with our families - we all got sick again like the last Christmas we were home 4 years ago. Lovely! But overall, good. And we had snow which was great!

Megan with Princess Belle.

Sweet little book worm!

The girls in their Christmas P.J.'s in front of my mom's tree.

Nice smile, Meg!

Beautiful, Lindsay!

My 3 men. The loves of my life! Dad, David, and my stepdad, Joe.

Savannah finished potty training (YAYAYAYAYAYAY!) and the reward she chose was to go to Chuck E. Cheese's. Her favorite! We're so proud of her! She also (in the last 2 weeks) gave up her pacifier with no complaints whatsoever - we were SHOCKED! Now, for Megan's thumb...

Our backyard after a nice snowfall.

And the front!

We rang in the New Year at home with some friends. It was low key, but fun!

David and I celebrated our 11th wedding anniversary in January. We waited a couple of weeks to go to dinner to celebrate since only 2 days prior David had an emergency appendectomy!!! Scary, but all went well and he healed quite quickly. Good job, David! I finished my scrapbook room... and cut Savannah's hair.

In February we celebrated Savannah's 3rd and Megan's 6th birthdays. This is Savannah's cake. For those of you who don't know, she's a Mickey Mouse FREAK!!!And she's scared of fire (which is fine with me!) so David and Meg blew out her candles for her!Our lovely ladies: Lindsay, Megan (nice face again!), Savannah, and ScotlynGrandma Jana and Grandpa Joe came to celebrate a couple weeks later. Thanks for making the trip! It was wonderful having you there.Yep, that's my family! Still crazy after all these years!

The girls' schools put on a hoedown and we were able to attend as a family - minus Savannah - as my mom and stepdad where in town and they stayed home with the little escape artist! We had a great time. Scotlyn made a large relief map of the state of Oregon for school and we all went to the grand showing of the maps at her school as a family. We also went to a meeting that night to find out about the field trip Scotlyn gets to go on in May to central Oregon! 3 days and 2 nights - she's not real keen on going at this point...send us good vibes!

Look! My girls are as anal and OCD as David and I! Genetics are a wonderful thing!

Not a lot to share so far this month. See - I wasn't really all that behind!!! David has started working the occasional Saturday at an office in Longview, WA (about an hour away) to make extra $. Love my dedicated, hard working man! The girls are doing GREAT in school - conferences this week and they are all performing above grade level in everything! Yes, they get their genius from me... haha! :o)

So that's about it - if I think of anything major that I forgot I'll add it ASAP. And I'll try not to go so long in between posts again! Hope this finds you all well - enjoy!

Our Winter Wonderland

2008-12-22T09:10:00.000-08:00

Hello all! I have fun pictures to share of our fun in the snow over this last week. This area usually doesn't see a lot of the white stuff, and everyone in the area is in awe of how much it has snowed here and the fact that it doesn't seem to want to stop! We are traveling with caution and trying to enjoy the beauty knowing that it will probably all melt in the next few days. I hear that the weather's been similar in much of the country and hope you are all warm, cozy, and dry wherever you live!

I also want to let everyone know that we love you with all our hearts and souls, however, we will not be sending Christmas cards this year due to the cost, stress, and time involved. With just moving a few weeks ago and the rest of our busy lives causing constant interruption, this has just become too difficult for now. I do hope to have a family newsletter together sometime in the near future and will send it out as soon as I get the chance. Please just continue to check our blog for photos and updates for the time being. Thanks for your understanding!!!

As I said, it's been snowing for days now and the girls are loving it! They have played with new friends in our neighborhood and made a snowman with daddy a couple of nights ago. Also, we had a couple of visitors a few days back. Just after it first snowed, Scotlyn saw 2 deer in our backyard. We all ran to the bedroom window and watched in wonder as the deer scoured our backyard for something to eat. They munched on the shrubs for a bit and then wandered off to their next destination. It was so beautiful! I've said it before and I'll say it again, "We LOVE it here!!!"

We are very grateful for our Saviour, Jesus Christ, and the blessings he has provided for our family. We love you all and pray that you have a safe, warm and happy holiday season! The Whitemarshes

David and the girls with "Frosty". Megan was inside the house because a dog came into the yard and scared her!

We triple-dog dared Savannah. No, she didn't get stuck! ;o)

Our beautiful new home in a winter wonderland!

Scotlyn sledding with friends in our neighborhood.

Meg tries to catch flakes on her tongue.

Beautiful Scotlyn.

Our deer friends.

The girls watch the deer out our bedroom window.

Trying out the rhody bush!

Inside the new house

2008-12-14T22:57:00.001-08:00

It's been awhile but I'm back. Moving is a pain in general, but add the holidays to the mix and WOW!!! But hopefully the majority of the tough stuff is done and things seem to be starting to get back to normal. Just have a minute, but wanted to share with you some pix of the INSIDE of our new house. These were taken last week when we were even LESS moved in so you will see boxes and such in them, but bear with us! Hope you enjoy and are having a great holiday season! Ruth

The dining room - Thanksgiving day

Scotlyn, Lindsay, and Megan's closet

Megan's bed in the shared room

Scotlyn's bed in the same room

Scotlyn and Lindsay's beds

The kitchen

The family room - there's a living room, too, but we don't have any furniture for it!

2008-12-04T00:13:00.001-08:00

Christmas Cartridge Giveaway!!
Help me get the word out! Re-post this post onto your blog, then leave me a comment with your email address, and you will be entered to win this FREE CRICUT CARTRIDGE. You only have two weeks, so don't procrastinate!
Check out TheScrapbookingCricut.com!

Posted by geraff at 3:32 PM

The big news: Our New House

2008-11-05T12:16:00.000-08:00

So for those of you who don't already know by now, our big news is that we're moving (again!). We've been trying to find ways to save money and get out of debt (cuz there's a lot now!) and so a couple of weeks ago I decided to look in the local paper for rentals. I didn't really expect to find much because when we got here a few months ago, there were only 2 three bedroom homes for rent in the whole area. We took the more expensive of the 2 because it was actually in town (the other one was about 20 minutes outside of town) and we figured by the time you factor in time on the road, gas, and wear and tear on the cars we would end up spending just as much on the cheaper house. Did that just make sense?! Anyway, I looked and you won't believe what I found!
There is this neighborhood that we knew about and thought "someday when we can afford it, we'd love to live there." It's just a great place. It's not on the hill so the HUGE 1/2 acre yard is flat. There are a lot of couples our age there meaning that there are a lot of kids in our kids' age range as well. It's quiet with lots of places for our kids to ride their bikes and be perfectly safe. There are common areas behind a bunch of the houses where the kids all congregate to play. We're talking big enough an area for them to play baseball if they wanted! Plus, all the houses are newer and nicer than a lot of them on the hill. I'm not trying to be snobby, but MANY of the houses on the hill are really old and need so much work. There are newer houses mixed in all over the place, but they all cost too much cuz they're newer and most are really small due to the fact that they had to squeeze them in between two existing houses! The point is, we already knew we liked the neighborhood. So imagine my surprise and excitement when there was a house in the neighborhood that was for rent!
I read about it and thought it would be perfect. The only problems were that it was only $50 a month less than what we're paying now. Not really enough to justify moving. Also, they said no pets. But, I looked again the following week and there it was, still advertised and the rent had gone down $100 a month! I took the initiative and called the owner to see if maybe they would let us have Marmalade there and if they'd take $50 less a month than the advertisement (so that it would knock $200/month off what we're currently paying). By golly it worked!!! ;o) (I just said "by golly!" Wow. Anyway, I talked to David when he got home and I was so excited I was coming out of my skin! He, being less emotional and more level-headed than I, said we would look into it before we got too excited. Whatever!
Super long story shorter, we saw the house and it's fabulous! We gave them a rental application and waited by the phone for a few days. Then we got bad news. They have been trying to sell this house for the past 2 years with no luck. Just as we applied to rent it, someone called them who was interested in buying it. :o( He said he would show it to them and let us know the next week if they got an offer or not. It turns out, not! So we get to live there!!! We are moving in the week of Thanksgiving and I'm not even really bothered by that cuz I'm so excited about moving!
Here is the quick overview of the house. I know this is getting really long but promise there are pix at the end to make it more intersting! It's a 4 bedroom, 2.5 bath home with a 3 car garage. It has a living, dining, and family room as well as an eat-in kitchen. A beautiful staircase in the middle of the house winding around the the second floor. The bedrooms are SO much bigger than in our current house and so are the closets. The girl's bedrooms even have walk-in closets! there are lots of other great closets and storage areas, too. The master bath has a jetted tub, lots of counter space, and 2 sinks! YEAH! Room to breath! Also, of course, a stall shower. The kitchen has an island and I'm sure there's more that I'm forgetting. I'm just so stoked!
I'll shut up now and share pix with you. We don't have access to the house yet so these are just of the outside. I'll send inside pix as soon as I can! Enjoy! Ruth Obviously the front of the house! It was just painted outside a year ago. Good news in case we do love it there and decide to buy it!The front. I love this super high front entrance. I think it looks elegant.Another shot showing how high it goes!The side gate to the backyard.Our back lawn. The owner apparently used to have a gorgeous yard here that won some awards. Sadly, the last renters didn't take care of it so now it needs to be nursed back to health. I'll try! Plus, there's a garden plot as well as an apple, pear, cherry, and plum tree. And grapes growing on the gazebo. Nice! She said you have to be careful, though, cuz the deer like to walk through and eat the garden!Another shot of the backyard with the view of Wallooskee river and Young's Bay. So pretty! And then the back of the house. There is a deck on the left side of the picture that would be great for a picnic table or for the girls to perform! The gazebo is covered with ivy and grape vines and used to have a hot tub in it. They said it's still all wired and all you have to do is set a new one in there. That's probably not going to happen anytime soon! But, there's a bar and stools in there now and I think it looks like a great place for David to stay dry to barbeque any time of year and for the girls to sit to have picnics. I can't wait!

My latest scrapbook page

2008-11-01T14:41:00.000-07:00

Hello all! I just wanted to take a second to post my latest scrapbook page. I haven't added anything new to my scrapbook.com site in awhile and need to get going on that, but for now you can see this page right here! I'm really happy with how it turned out. Hope you enjoy it too! Ruth

By the way, our big exciting news is NOT that I am pregnant!!! Our big exciting news is that we are moving to a much bigger house with a much bigger yard! I'll give you all the details in a post coming soon... I can't believe you even thought such a thing!!! ;o)

Vegas, baby!

2008-10-30T18:52:00.000-07:00

As many of you know, David and I recently had the opportunity to go to Las Vegas, NV for an optometry conference. The office paid for David's whole trip and if I wanted to join him, we just had to pay for my plane ticket. We decided to go ahead and splurge on that so that we could go together and have a little fun! David's dad drove down to our house and stayed with the girls Thurs - Sun and did a GREAT job taking care of them and getting them to the various places they needed to be. Thanks Bruce!!!

David only had 4 classes he had to go to (continuing education stuff) and the rest of the time we could do whatever we wanted! There was a party sponsored by Marchon (one of the big optometry companies that supplies all sorts of things and wants the doctors to spend lots of money buying their stuff) that the staff said was really fun to go to, but otherwise we were free as birds!

Day 1: We got there mid afternoon on Thursday and checked into our room at the Harrah's Hotel Resort and Casino. We even got a room with a king sized bed! We don't even have one of those at HOME! :) After we dropped our things off at our room and changed, we grabbed a quick bite to eat (just fast food) and headed over to the Flamingo to see the Blue Man Group. They're those guys with the blue heads and no expressions that bang on pipes to make music...anyway, it was a cool show and we had a great time.

We wandered around the casino a little after the show and then went to Denny's to get a treat. David had a root beer float and I had a chocolate shake. MMMMMmmmm! Then we were exhausted so we went back to our room. Aren't we so exciting?! I took a bath in the tiny, uncomfortable tub and we watched tv and then went to sleep.

Day 2: David had signed up before the conference for the classes he wanted and then found out when we got there that all his classes but 1 were already full. He got up early and went to check in and find out what other classes he could get into for the weekend and I slept! He came back having registered for some new classes and we went over to Denny's again for breakfast. David's boss, Dr. Thorsen, also brought his wife and she and I had planned on going shopping for a bit while our guys were in classes. David ended up spending some time alone since his schedule changed, but he said he didn't mind! So, Andrea and I got into their rental car and drove down the strip to the Miracle Mile Mall in the Planet Hollywood Hotel. We had a great time shopping, talking, and eating! My favorite things! I got some souviners and when we got tired we headed back to our hotel to lay by the pool and read. How many hours had I gone at that point without somebody whining, "mooooommmmmmyyyyy"! Not nearly enough. ;o)

David met us by the pool when he was done and we went back up to the room to change for dinner (fast food again!) and get ready for the Marchon party. I got all "Vegased Up" (that just means sequins for me!) and we headed over to the party at the Flamingo. It was really something! They had free drinks (alcoholic or non) and a buffet and live music - sung by real Vegas celebrity impersonators! It was all in the pool area in back of the casino and was this meandering pathway of trees and flowers and pools here and there. It was really cool. There were these acrobat girls inside these huge clear inflatable balls floating on the water doing amazing poses and somersaults and stuff. We stayed for a few hours and socialized with the office staff and with the Thorsens and then excused ourselves at around 11 to go to bed. MAN we're LAME!

Day 3: David had his last couple of classes first thing in the morning and so I just slept until I felt like waking up. Ahhhhh...heaven! I got ready and he finished and came by the room to get me and we just went exploring. We had lunch at Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville Cafe and drank REAL (virgin) margaritas! :) We went shopping and saw all the amazing high end stores by designers that I like to read about in People Magazine. I drooled over Tiffany's and Van Cleef and Arpels and tried on $800 shoes in the Christian Louboutin store - OH YES I DID!!!!!! It was SO much fun! And thank you David for being so patient and letting me look and whine!

Then we got on the monorail and went to the other end of the strip to the Luxor. We decided to go see the BODY exhibit that's there right now. It's been traveling all over for several years, but we hadn't seen it yet. It was fascinating. It's all cadavers - some put together, some taken apart - that have been preserved without formaldehyde so that you can see what your body looks like on the inside and how everything works. It really was interesting. Then we just kinda walked from one casino to the next looking at everything and trying to comprehend why some many people come here and just throw their money away. Whatever. If I'm going to put my money into a machine and never see it again, that machine had better at LEAST spit out a candy bar in return! ;o) We took lots of pix and just had fun walking and talking and holding hands and not trying to interpret toddler-talk!

We thought we'd stay up late this night since it was our last night in Vegas, but exhaustion once again took over and we were in bed before midnight! We had to fly home the next day and so we packed all our stuff and tried to get one last, uninterrupted, good night's sleep before heading back to reality!

It was a great trip. Everything went well at home and we were, of course, thrilled to see the girls when we got back. Grandpa was even still alive! :) We had a such a good time and look forward to doing something similar next year!

Here is the pretend Arc d'triumph. I got a picture of the pretend Eiffel Tower, too, but since it was night they didn't turn out very well.

For those who may not already know, my VERY favorite "candy bar" type snack is M&M's. Dark M&M's. Love them. Eat them all the time. And now I am roly-poly like an M&M. I will continue to eat them. Did I mention I love them?!

Here is a shot from a couple blocks away of the FOUR STORY M&M store they have in Vegas. That's right, ladies and gentlemen, FOUR STORIES!!!! I thought I'd died and gone to heaven!

Lady me holding Lady Liberty in front of the New York New York.

Crossing the bridge into New York.

Usually you can't get the whole New York skyline in one shot but I have mad skills! ;o)

There are lions living in the MGM Grand and they have a place where you can go underneath their lair and look up through plexi-glass to see them. They were sleeping. Poor lions - I bet they'd rather be taking a nap somewhere in Africa instead.

Hey my friends in Memphis! Did you see Elvis in town while I was gone? No? That's cuz he was in VEGAS BABY!!! Dealing poker, too.

Enjoying my yummy raspberry (virgin) margarita. I ate some AWESOME shrimp creole, too.

Look who's playing at the Flamingo! Those Mormons are everywhere...even Las Vegas! ;o)

Cher is there right now, too. Some of her famous Bob Mackie "barely there" costumes were on display. Lots of beads, but not much else!

Here I am poolside with Andrea Thorsen. Holla, girlfriend!!!

Here is where we stayed. What is that guy supposed to be doing?

This is a restaurant I saw in one of the hotels. David's middle name really is Burke for those who aren't in on that little joke...

It's a blue man. And he's...you guessed it: BLUE!!! And it's a little creepy that thing they do with their eyes...

Waiting for the Blue Men to start. I love you baby!

Hope you enjoyed the post and the pix. Stay tuned for our big, exciting news coming soon... ;o)

Our Little Pumpkin

2008-10-23T21:16:00.000-07:00

Do you want to know why taking pictures is such an important thing? I'll tell you why. Savannah is driving me INSANE! She is by far the toughest 2 year old we've had. She gets into EVERYTHING, she yells "NO" at us, she whines and cries for things she wants. I'm seriously ready to sell her on the black market!!! However, then I go through my pictures and I find THIS. Makes me remember that she won't always be 2. Maybe I can make it a little bit longer before I decide for sure to sell her... ;o)

Seriously, how could you stay mad at that little face?! And Oh MY GOSH - those big blue eyes KILL me! LOVE that little turkey.... uh, pumpkin!

Blast from the Past Part II

2008-10-16T08:27:00.001-07:00

All right. Here's the moment you've all been waiting for. The pix from the 80's...and a few from the early 90's (same thing!) I've got bangs a mile high, I've got makeup on in colors they never should have made in the first place. Oh! And don't forget those Glamour Shots!!! Gotta love those!

So, enjoy. Have some laughs at my expense. But, while you're laughing at my hair and makeup and clothes - be sure to notice that I was skinny! ;o)

Sorry, but some of these pix may be a bit hard to see. Some of them were wallet size and some were 4x6 which, when scanned, transfers to tiny! If you try to make them larger, you lose all quality in the picture, so I kept them small. Don't worry, though, the good ones are bigger! ;o)
Here I am at graduation. Notice I had to wear my cap way back on my head so that it wouldn't squish my bangs. We couldn't have THAT!

This is a photograph I had taken at a local photography studio that I gave my parents for Christmas one year. My hair was loooooong - and this was just a few years after I had a FOOT cut off of it!

Ok, sorry to do this to you, Rob, but first of all, I KNOW you don't read my blog, and second of all I was NOT going to crop you out of this fantastic picture of my bangs because, frankly, your mullet deserves some laughs, too!!!!! Love ya!
My senior prom. This is with Rob again. He was my boyfriend for a LONG time. Also, this was taken during my inactive period so please excuse the immodesty of my dress. Gotta love the "dyed to match" shoes, though! Hey, Kristen, that's Pompeii Purple OPI polish on those nails! HOLLA!
And so we have the Glamour Shots. These were my senior photos. WOW! Look at the HAIR!!!
Another Glamour Shot. Like the George Michael hat?! Same nail color (it's my favorite!!!).

Ninth grade. Turquoise eye shadow? SERIOUSLY? I'm not even going to comment on this one....

Hope you enjoyed this little trip down memory lane. You should be able to stop laughing within the next 6 hours! ;o)

The Puyallup Fair

2008-10-13T08:38:00.000-07:00

Hello to all! I know my posts have been few and far between, but I'm ALMOST caught up and then I'll try to stay current (ha ha ha!)

In September (the 6th to be exact) we did something that we haven't been able to do for years! We went to the Puyallup Fair! (That's pyoo-ALL-up for those who aren't from these here parts!) Anyway, the Fair, as it's called around here, has been a yearly tradition in my family as well as many families in the Western Washington area. Here is a little snippet I found on the Fair website:

The Puyallup Fair (officially known as the Western Washington Fair) is the largest single attraction held annually in the state of Washington. The Fair continually ranks in the top ten largest fairs in the world. The Western Washington Fair Association hosts two annual events, the 17-day Puyallup Fair every September, and the four-day Puyallup Spring Fair every April.
Situated south of Seattle and east of Tacoma in the shadow of majestic Mount Rainier, the Fair & Events Center comprises 169+ acres, with buildings and land valued at more than $54 million. The facilities are available for rent during the year, making the grounds a valuable community resource. A staff of 55 works year-round. Over 1,900+ employees are hired each September during the Puyallup Fair.

So, basically, it's a big deal around here! (Local schools give kids a partial day off to attend. When I was little it was a whole day!) Since we have lived elsewhere for the last 6 years, it's been awhile since we were able to go and we've missed it. Sorry, but the Midsouth Fair is NOT an acceptable alternative!

We made a weekend of it because Lindsay's birthday was the next day. We enjoyed time with family, played at the fair, and had a family get-together Sunday after church for Lindsay's birthday. Here are some of the pix David and I took while we were at the Fair.

All four girls on a bale of hay. You probably already figured that out! ;o)
The girls with a Washington State Patrol officer (lovingly referred to as a "WASP" by locals!). Every year they have a large display (a whole building full) of information and photos about what they do. Fun for us and GREAT for the kids. We were able to grill them on safety and "stranger danger" and not to be scared of people in uniform and not to hide in a fire, etc. This kind officer let us take a picture with him. He was standing by another regular part of their display. Every year they display a vehicle that has been destroyed by a drunk driver to show what can happen. FABULOUS visual for the girls. We walked around the SUV and pointed out to them what things USED to be. It was amazing the power that must have been involved in that crash. There was a carseat in the back (the baby wasn't in it when this happened) and it was still mostly intact - a great lesson in sitting in carseats and boosters as well as always wearing a seatbelt! Unfortunately, the innocent driver of the SUV (a WASP himself) was killed in the crash. There was a small memorial set up for him. DON'T DRINK AND DRIVE.
Lindsay trying to be tall!
Scotlyn gets a foot massage (not really, it wasn't on!).
Scotlyn enjoying the merry-go-round. Savannah is serious about this stuff!
Megan and Lindsay. Posers!

Fair security...watch your p's and q's!

The "junk chime". A huge collection of junk all soldered together. In an attached bucket there are a bunch of sticks so the kids can hit it and make all sorts of noise! Loud, but it keeps them busy for awhile! My mom has made something similar to have in her back yard for when the grandkids come over. They love it!
All the girls got their faces (Lindsay chose her arm) painted and glittered for FREE!!! Here is Scotlyn's ladybug.
I remember going on this ride when I was little! Megan and Savannah enjoyed the quiet, gentle canoe ride around the grass and through the teepees. Lindsay and Scotlyn pouted on the sidelines because they were too big to ride! :o)

MMMMM... greasy, overpriced fair food!
Lindsay was chosen to be the beautiful assistant for this magician's show!

The girls on the kiddie rollercoaster. This was when Scotlyn and I were on the REAL ;o) rollercoaster (a wooden roller coaster still holding a spot in the world top 10 for a 63 degree descent!) so I didn't see it. As you can see, Lindsay and Megan had a great time. He said Savannah loved it too, but it's hard to tell here!
They got to see a real marionette show...
...and Pinocchio came to visit Megan!

Uh oh! Look out! They may have learned to drive in Memphis! ;o)

Have a fabulous day and take care of you! Ruth

Our love for Mrs. Maynard

2008-10-12T19:24:00.000-07:00

Lindsay with her Kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Maynard, in December of 2007.

You may or may not have noticed, but Lindsay is ALWAYS wearing her purple Mrs. Maynard's Munchkins shirt. This was her class t-shirt for kindergarten and she LOVES it!!! It has a couple holes in it and I'm sure more than a couple stains, but as soon as it's washed, folded and back in her drawer it's the first one she grabs to wear again. I'm sure this is in no small part to the fact that her Kindergarten teacher holds a special place in her heart. They had a special bond and I know that it made Lindsay's transition to school much easier than it might otherwise have been.

The point of all this - aside from sharing with you what a great teacher and friend Mrs. Maynard is (HOLLA Candace!) is to share with you the back story about the following pix. I talked to Mrs. Maynard awhile back and she had noticed that Lindsay was wearing that shirt ALL the time. Because she is so totally awesome (okay - I'm a product of the 80's!) she bought THIS year's Mrs. Maynard's Munchkins shirt for her and sent it to her!!! I was aware that it was coming, so when it arrived I let Lindsay meet the UPS man. She saw that it had her name on it but didn't notice who it was from. I got the camera ready and let her have at it...she was THRILLED!!! She squealed and knew immediately that it was the new shirt from this year. She said, "it's BLUE this year!" She's already worn it to school and is eagerly awaiting wearing it again this week.

Candace Maynard, you are the best! We LOVE you!!!

The First Day of School

2008-09-25T09:34:00.000-07:00

Yeah! I'm finally up to the first day of school. Only about 4 more events to go until I'm caught up! Oh, yeah, and before that will happen David and I are going to Las Vegas for an optometry conference so then I'll take lots of pictures and be behind again. Oh, well!

Here are pictures of the girls on their first day of school. Scotlyn is in 4th grade now, Lindsay in 1st and Megan started Kindergarten. MAN, I'm getting old! ;o) Enjoy their cute little mugs!
Here's Scotlyn! We were very fortunate that both Scotlyn and Lindsay's backpacks were still in great shape after being used all last year. I threw them in the washing machine and they came out almost like new! That saved us quite a few bucks - backpacks are unreasonably expensive in my opinion! Anyway, I was happy because this whole being a doctor thing hasn't exactly made us immediately rich! ;o) Someday, though - look out Donald Trump!
Lindsay was so excited I could hardly get her to look at the camera!
Megan outside Captain Robert Gray Elementary. I think I mentioned before that the girls go to 3 different schools because of the way things are set up out here. Scotlyn goes to Lewis & Clark Elem. which takes all the 4-6th graders in the area. Lindsay goes to John Jacob Astor Elem. which is the 1st-3rd graders (and the school where they filmed Kindergarten Cop with Arnold Schwarzenegger!). And then all the kindergarteners go to Gray.
She was SO thrilled to be going to school! She is in the afternoon kindergarten class (I got so spoiled in Memphis where Scotlyn and Lindsay had all day kindergarten!) so she goes just before lunch and then comes home when the other girls do. She even rides 2 buses to get home. The first one takes her from Gray to L&C where Scotlyn is and then they get on the same bus together and ride home. Works out well! I'll post again soon. I've got the Puyallup Fair to share as well as those elusive 80's pix I know you all can't wait to see! :) Later, Ruth

Blast From the Past Part I

2008-09-24T16:25:00.000-07:00

These are some of the many pix that came from my dad's house. You know how all my kids look like David? Well, there is ONE who is a bit reminiscent of me, especially when I was little. I'll let YOU decide!

YEAH! My genes WERE involved somewhere in the making of these four little girls - besides just my squinty eyes! ;o)

David's diploma

2008-09-21T09:44:00.000-07:00

Thought you might enjoy seeing this. I know I do!!! ;o)

Paton Family Reunion

2008-09-08T12:40:00.000-07:00

This is my tall, thin, blonde, gorgeous LITTLE sister. Nope folks, genetics are not fair but it is what it is!!! ;o) I was SOOOO excited to get to see her again. Here's the story...

Near the beginning of August, my sister and her husband and kids, as well as my brother and then, of course, the six of us, met in Tacoma with my parents and we were all together for the first time in I'm not sure how long...maybe since my wedding?! It was so great to see everyone and to laugh and joke like the good 'ol days! My brother and his wife (who was unable to attend) live in Colorado and my sister and her husband live in Ohio - in fact, they've been married for awhile now and we had still never even met Jeremy! Life stinks when it takes you all over the map to live and doesn't leave you with enough money to get back to each other very often! I was able to go up for the whole week to be with my family and David came up Friday after work and had to leave Sunday night to be back to work on Monday.

We had a fabulous time. We ate SO much awesome food (thanks, parents!) and laughed until I almost peed! :) Jeanine and I went through boxes upon boxes of old pictures that have been sitting in my dad's garage for years and found many wonderful treasures...yes, the big bang pictures are coming soon and I'm not talking about the cosmic theory! Anyway, it was fun to reminisce and wonder what old friends are doing now and wondering why our mom let us out of the house wearing some of the things we wore! WOW!

Kade (my sister's son) had his birthday while they were here so his dad threw a huge BBQ party for him that was tons of fun. One day Jeanine, Jeremy, Kade, and Ryen drove down with dad and Chris to our little town so that we could show them around here. Of course that meant going to the ocean, too! Can't do that enough! It was just a marvelous time and wonderful to be near family again. I'll let my pix do the rest of the talking...

K, I'll just tell you right now that these got all out of order and the computer's giving me nothing but fits trying to rearrange so I'm giving up and you'll just have to look at them this way. Sorry! This is at the beach - my sister and her husband went for a romantic walk in the sand and my stepmom and I played with all the kids for awhile. This is me helping Ryen fly a kite.
Savannah shows Ryen how it's done!

This is at a family get together at my mom's house. Her backyard is perfect for entertaining!
See, David WAS there! That's my dad, David, and my stepdad, Joe, at Kade's birthday party.
Here's my crazy step-family. They fit right in, don't they?!
Ok, this is a little better. That's my dad, Chris, Ariel, Brett, and Luke.

Savannah walking out to the water.

Jeanine and Jeremy coming back from their walk - the fog was really moving in!!!!

See! We may not look alike, but you can tell she's really my sister by the camera in front of her face! KIN!
Jeremy and Ryen checking out some waves.
Meg, Lindsay, Scotlyn, and Kade are trying to jump over the waves...good luck!
Chris with Ryen. SO cute!
Ryen flies the kite by herself! You go girl!

Jeremy grilled some AWESOME steaks for us one night. Jeanine pretended she was helping! ;o)
Ryen and Savannah became fast friends. You can see how the tall gene is only in my sister's blood - Ryen is actually 1 month and 1 day YOUNGER than Savannah! Scotlyn and Kade climbed driftwood at the beach.
Running out to enjoy the water.

My mom has this fantastic garden in her backyard. Here is a peapod she grew her very own self - and Scotlyn helped plant earlier in the summer!
For better or worse (sometimes both!) this is my family (minus David - he wasn't here yet!). From left to right: Jeremy, Jeanine, my brother Kenny standing behind, my mom Jana, my dad Ken, and me!
Kade and Scotlyn are good buddies and always pick up right where they left off even though they don't see each other for long intervals in between. Here they are being silly at my mom's house. Kade is 11 months older than Scotlyn.

Oooooh, Jeanine! DENIED!!!!

Lindsay on the slide during Kade's birthday party. That's all folks! Hopefully it won't be so long before I can post again! Hugs, Ruth

Tuell-McKee Funeral Home

2008-08-19T15:46:00.000-07:00

You've all heard about it, and now you'll finally get to see it! (unless of course you lived here at some point and have already seen it!) However, I believe most of the people who read this blog are far away and have never had the pleasure.

David and I took the girls to see the old homestead a few weeks ago when we were in Tacoma. This is the funeral home we lived in for 2 years. When we moved in as caretakers, Scotlyn was only 9 months. We had Lindsay while we lived there and finally decided to call it quits when Scotlyn started saying "night-night" to the "residents"! (Oh, yeah. And David was starting school in Bellingham 2 hours away, so I guess that's part of the reason we left!)

Our duties included answering phones after hours (all night long and 24 hours on the weekends), cleaning the whole business area (the entire downstairs [chapel, offices, family room, urn display, caskets] had to be dusted, vacuumed, and occasionally oiled (cuz it was old and therefore it was REAL wood!)) It was a large area overall, but we got pretty good at it! We also had to clean the prep room. That's where they "prep" the bodies for viewing and/or burial. They clean, embalm, set the facial features, and every once in a while, there would be an autopsy preformed there instead of the medical examiners' office. Those smell truly awful, but it's totally interesting, too!

Anyway, there were things we didn't like about living there, but for the most part it was a great experience. Our compensation for all that we did was this fabulous, huge apartment upstairs above the funeral home. Our rent & utilities (except phone and cable) were paid in full. The entire upstairs of the funeral home minus the room on the far right end were ours for FREE! One downside was that the girls had to be extremely quiet during business hours - especially if there was a visitation or a service going on. Also, the "backyard" was an enormous parking lot and the "front yard" was the front of a business that didn't benefit from having the children playing on the lawn - and it was on a very busy Tacoma street!

So, please enjoy these pictures from our family's past and be glad that YOUR house doesn't smell like formaldehyde!!! ;o)
Here is the front of the building on 6th St. in Tacoma. It was built in the early 1900's. All the windows across the top floor are our apartment except for the one on the far right. That was the casket display room. It had a second entrance and stairway, so it wasnt directly connected by a door or anything to our space. That would have been fun, huh?! It was beautifully designed with built in shelves on either side of the living room, an arched entrance to the formal dining area and built in storage and curios in the dining room itself. AND a little door in the wall in our bedroom so that when the business phone in the hallway rang in the middle of the night we could reach through the door and get it without having to run through the house!
That is the front door used for business to get into the main part of the funeral home. If you went in the front door and immediately turned left, there was an office and through that office you could go through another door to get to our apartment. We also had our own private front entrance which you will see in a minute.
There's our front door. Inside it had a small entryway and then went up a BILLION steep stairs to get to our apartment up top. Really great that over the period of time we were there we had not one but TWO crawlers - YIKES! Thank goodness for baby gates!

Blasts from the past..

2008-08-14T11:11:00.000-07:00

We've had several comments on our blog in the last month or so from people from our pasts with whom we've lost touch. We would love to be in contact again. If you feel the same, (and we're awesome people so I'm sure you do) please leave us a way to get back in touch with you. Thanks, Ruth

And speaking of blasts from the past, my sister and I went through boxes upon boxes of old photos of us growing up and if you're really lucky you might get to see some of them soon on this very blog! Don't miss out - we're talking the 80's here!!! :)

Saturday's Events

2008-07-27T21:13:00.000-07:00

I was so excited on Saturday to get to go to Portland and meet one of my friends from Memphis! Shauna came to Oregon to visit with her sister in Redmond (about 5 hours from us) and we decided to meet in Portland cuz it's in the middle(ish) between our 2 towns. Also, Portland is a decent-sized city and has some great malls and other things to do.

We met at 10 at the Temple (good place to meet, right?!) and after hugs and introductions headed toward the Clackamus Town Center. This is a big, two-story mall in town with lots of great shops - not to mention See's Candies. Oh, how I missed See's Candies!!! They came to the mall near us in Memphis ONE Christmas season while I lived there and I bought 2 boxes of chocolate hoping it would last me awhile. It didn't. :( I was so excited about See's that I had to go in and buy a custom box of chocolates for myself. Sorry, kids, this is NOT for you!

We shopped around for awhile and all three of us got great purses (ok - Shauna's sister got 3 and I'm super jealous!) and then headed outside the mall to Macaroni Grill for lunch. YUM! Shauna bought my lunch as a belated birthday gift. Thanks, Shauna!!!

We shopped some more after that and then decided to call it a day as we all had long drives back home. I had such a great time with them and loved getting to see my "long-lost friend" and meet her super fun sister! Here are a couple pix: Shauna and me with the Portland LDS Temple in the background.
A closer shot. Shauna may look like she's flashing a gang sign, but actually she's just trying to get Randi to take the picture. However, as you can see, Randi was already taking the picture! :)

While I was having my fun in Portland, David and the girls went to Long Beach (just a few blocks past his office there, actually) to enjoy the Sandcastle Contest they were having this weekend. Pretty much everything was free: admission, hot dogs, entertainment. Our kind of event! They had a great time and saw some fabulous creations. Unfortunately, there was a mix up between us about the cameras (I accidentally took the wrong one) so he didn't have a memory card in the one he had. That meant he could only take 9 pictures! DUMB! He did get some good ones, though, and I'll share them with you now! Enjoy, Ruth This was the best one he got pictures of and keep in mind that he could only take 9 pictures, so he chose wisely! This is The Hard Sand Cafe group from Seattle working on their tribute to Indiana Jones. The picture is small, I know, but look at the snake's face. He has Indy's hat on and a rope around his neck. They used kelp for a whip! Pretty clever, right Lora?! :)
Pretty amazing, huh?! That skeleton is depicting Indy inside the snake! AHHHH!
There. On the right side mid-picture you can see the head of the snake that swallowed Indy and now it's wearing his hat! The nerve of reptiles these days! ;o)
A lot of people brought kites to fly that day. I'm excited to go to the kite festival next month. I'll be sure I have a memory card in my camera!
And our cutie-patootie girls making their own sandcastles. Aren't you impressed by the skill and determination. Ok, maybe just the determination! Then, David took them all home and threw them in the tub!

A Rite of Passage

2008-07-27T21:03:00.001-07:00

Megan has been scared to death to take the training wheels off her bike. Any time it's even mentioned she bursts into tears and runs to her room or cries to us that she NEVER wants the training wheels off her bike. So, a couple of evenings ago, David and I were upstairs and the girls were playing outside. Megan came into the house and up the stairs in full Xtreme Sport regalia and annouced, "I'm ready!!!" We weren't gonna miss out on that chance! David went right down and took the t-wheels off of her bike and they went back and forth on our street. Our street is perfect for this type of thing because it's one of the few in town that is level (town on a hill, remember?!) and we live on a dead end so there's hardly any traffic.

She did really well and David even let go a couple of times for just an instant and she kept on going! Not quite there all the way, yet, but baby, she's gettin' there! Daddy taking her training wheels off. Now she asks everyday if we'll help her practice!
Ready to go...I THINK! :)
Off to a wobbly start...
Almost to the end, then back. Repeat as often as necessary!

MEMORY LANE

2008-07-26T19:56:00.000-07:00

You've been tagged! But I thought this would be fun!!

Here are the directions:
1. As you comment on my blog, leave one memory that you and I had together. It doesn't matter if you knew me a little or a lot, anything you remember! If you don't have a blog acct. and can't leave a comment, please leave your memory of us in my email. I'll email you back or leave my memory of you in my comments.
2. Next, re-post these instructions on your blog and see how many people leave a memory about you. It's actually pretty funny to see the responses. If you leave a memory about me, I'll assume you're playing the game and I'll come to your blog and leave one about you. If you don't want to play on your blog, or if you don't have a blog, I'll, again, leave my memory of you in my comments.

Thanks in advance for playing along!!! Ruth

Business Cards

2008-07-24T09:37:00.000-07:00

David got his business cards! Thought you might like to see them. They say "DR." on them! So cool! He worked really really hard and long for those two letters. Now - if we could just get some of these student loans paid off... ;op The top part is the front of the card and the bottom is of the back of the card.

Update on David's licenses...

2008-07-23T08:17:00.001-07:00

Just a quick note for those who don't already know. After 3 long, paycheckless months, David is now finally licensed to practice in both Washington and Oregon!!!! Hooray! He has received both licenses and has been praticing in both states since last week. He is doing well and the staff has even been nice to him! :) Just wanted to let you know. Ruth

Look who's in the local paper!

2008-07-22T10:06:00.000-07:00

Stop the presses!!! This just in: there's a new doctor in town and everyone deserves to know about it! David was interviewed by The Chinook Observer, a local newspaper, and got a whole story printed about his arrival! They even put his graduation picture in there! I'm not sure if you can read the article or not, but it basically just tells about him and mentions me and the girls, then has a couple quotes from him and talks about the practice (good advertising!). We are SO STINKIN' PROUD of him! Love you, David!

#1's Party/Baseball Game Fun!

2008-07-21T14:17:00.000-07:00

Hey! We were able to go home over the weekend to see family, have 1's birthday party that we had to postpone from before, and see a Tacoma Rainiers baseball game. We had a fabulous time! We had the party at my mom's house in Tacoma. She has this great, fenced in backyard and is quickly able to set up lots of activities to keep the kids busy. Great for me cuz it meant I didn't have to worry about party games! She had horseshoes, a ring toss, croquet, a little swimming pool, and a "junk chime". The kids had a blast! There were my 4 girls as well as my sister's son who we rarely get to see and one of David's brothers' 2 daughters. Also David's dad (his mom had to work), my mom and stepdad, and my dad and stepmom! The sun was out, my stepdad bbq'd hot dogs and we all ate and visited and had the best time! I made a cake for her and my mom made homemade baked beans, a fruit tray, and jello salad. And, of course, you can't have a bbq or a party without chips! :)
#1 got some very nice gifts but I think she had a lot more fun playing with her long-lost cousins! It's SO nice to live near family again! Love y'all in Memphis, but not sad I'm here! ;o)
We were also able to go to a Tacoma Rainiers game with my dad and stepmom. Some friends of theirs invited them to go and they told them that we were going to be in town. They said no problem and got tickets for all of us, too!!! It was so fun! The only downside was that the game started right around #4's naptime and so she was kind of a pain throughout but we dealt with it! At least we didn't have to try to keep her quiet like church! Now THAT'S a chore! The Rainiers won against Tuscon 10-6! Go Rainiers! And, for those of you who may not know, the Tacoma Rainiers are the farm team for the Seattle Mariners. Maybe someday soon some of those guys we saw play will be Major League stars!
As usual, here are pix of our happenings! Enjoy! Ruth
The kids play in the pool at the party. 3 of those are my kids, the boy is our nephew, Kade, and the girl on the far right is our niece, Jalin.

2, 3, and 4 playing the junk chime that my mom made. Jalin is playing with them.
That's me walking out of the house with the cake as we all started singing Happy Birthday. My mom, Jana, is in the flag shirt (My 9 year old wanted a "Patriotic Themed" birthday party!) and in the front corner is David's dad, Bruce.
The birthday girl ready for her cake and ice-cream. My mom stuck the jester hat on her to celebrate. Our nephew, Kade, put it on later and did a pretty funny dance for my video camera. Love you to pieces, Kade!
She got a Webkinz cat from Grandma and Grandpa Paton. Very cool!
All the kids at the party. I've decided that if some creepy guy really wanted to know my kids' names it wouldn't really be all that tough to figure it out. It's not like their vital records are sealed, or that you couldn't go to my scrapbook website and see their names all over my scrapbook pages! Anyway, I guess from here on out I'm going to just call them by their names. So here is the roll call for the above picture: Savannah, Kade, Lindsay, Jalin, Megan (above), Scotlyn, and Aubrey. There it is. Them's my babies!

My stepmom, Chris, me, and my mom playing croquet.
Croquet is a tough game which requires deep concentration... ;o)
My stepdad, Joe, playing with Savannah and Megan. They sure love being able to see their grandparents more!
This is obviously at the baseball game. Cheney Stadium is located in Tacoma and is home to the Rainiers. Before the Rainiers we had the Tigers here who were the farm team for the Oakland A's. We're happier with our own team in our yard!
My stepmom, Chris, with Megan and my dad, Ken, behind her. So much fun. So much love!

Scotlyn took this picture of David and me. Not too shabby, huh?!
Megan wearing Grandma Chris's straw hat.
After the game, they let the kids go out on the field and run the bases! My girls were so excited! David ran with Savannah so she wouldn't run off in the wrong direction! In the center of this picture in the turquoise shirt is Scotlyn, behind her in the white is Lindsay, and lagging back in the pink shirt is Megan.
David runs with Savannah on his shoulders and Megan is right in front of them.

All 4 girls make it back to mom. Ummm, who's that boy? We don't have boys. David is the lone boy in our family and we don't need any more trying to sneak in! Go away, boy! :)

Tapiola Park

2008-07-14T10:26:00.000-07:00

I wanted to show you guys pictures of the park we have just down the hill from our house. There are actually a couple of parks within walking distance of our house, but this one is especially cool and you'll know why when you see the pictures. This is where we played for #1's birthday a couple of days ago. It is a mini-replica of Astoria. The playground covers a very large area compared to other playgrounds I've seen and it has this intricate collection of activities for kids of all ages. I just love it! If you come visit I'll take you there... ;o)

A lighthouse the kids can climb up into.
A replica of the Flavel House. This is an historic victorian-style house in town that has been turned into a museum.
Pilot boat like down on the river. The big cargo ships that come up the river from the ocean need pilot boats to lead them through the most dangerous part of the water just at the mouth of the Columbia. Hundreds of ships have wrecked in that area. The huge Columbia River is flowing out, the Pacific Ocean is flowing in and out, the tides and currents are tremendous, and all of this is changing the topography of the ocean/river floor on a regular basis. And then add fog. Most ships that "wreck" just run aground in the middle of the river somewhere because suddenly it's not deep enough anymore! Most of the time, they are able to pull the ships out and get them floating again but it's still a lengthy and expensive process that everyone tries to avoid! Hooray for pilot boats!

This is a big sandbox with this "backhoe" kind of toy in it. I'm pretty sure this represents the docks and the loading and unloading on the big ships.

There is a trolley that runs all along the waterfront. This is a big fishing town so you can see the fishing boat in the background with the big salmon next to it.
Just a shot across the park from just past the center point. It goes on forever and there are so many places for the kids to climb! Ruth R., your boys would be in heaven!
The entrance to the toddler play area. Lots of toys, still, but all on a smaller scale for the little ones. And completely enclosed except for this one door. Hooray!Here's #4 on the swing in the tot area. You know you're jealous cuz YOU want to swing and look out at the bay at the same time!!!
Representing all the Victorian-style homes in town.
The Astoria-Megler bridge. Fortunately, this one isn't 4 miles long like the real one!

#4 practicing her tightrope skills! I'm about ready to send her to the circus! ;o)And #1 learning to do the monkey bars. Yes, I do see the irony in this as well. Since it was her birthday I'm going to leave it alone! :)

2008-07-12T20:01:00.001-07:00

HAPPY 9TH BIRTHDAY!!! WE LOVE YOU!

Happy 4th of July!

2008-07-06T20:16:00.001-07:00

Hope you all had a happy and injury-free 4th! Here were our PLANS for our 4th of July weekend:

Drive home Thursday afternoon to stay with Grandma and Grandpa DuBois' for the weekend

Get up Friday morning to go to the waterfront in Tacoma to see the Tallships (they have a much larger display than Ilwaco!)

BBQ @ Grandma and Grandpa Whitemarsh's

Fireworks @ Uncle Bryan and Aunt Shannon's with ALL the rest of the Whitemarsh clan for the first time in I don't know how many years. ALL the brothers, ALL the daughters-in-law, ALL the grandkids

Saturday afternoon 1's 9th birthday party @ Grandma and Grandpa DuBois' with outdoor games, the kiddie pool, patriotic decorations (that's what she asked for - pretty easy this time of year!) a cake with sparklers instead of candles - the works!

And then driving home sometime later that night or the next day and feeling happily exhausted for a couple days thereafter!

This is what we actually DID:

We stayed home and had to cancel EVERYTHING on the above list cuz Mom, Dad, and 4 all had a ridiculously nasty and long-lasting stomach bug and literally could not go more than about 10 feet from the toilet for several days. NICE.

Timing is everything. Well, we've spent the last couple of days feeling exhausted, but not so happily! Whatever! David (who was feeling a little better by the 4th) bought some fireworks for the girls so that they wouldn't completely miss out on everything that day. Pretty pitiful fireworks, but better than nothing! They seemed to enjoy them. I was able to pull myself to an upright position and take a few pix before needing to go lay back down. It really wasn't very fun! :( Here are some fun shots for you to enjoy. Later!

David and 3 check out the loot. This is what $20 gets you at Fred Meyer. Woo Hoo.1 shows off her sparkler skills.
2 looking like her usual Independence Day self. She HATES fireworks. She knew what we were doing and I was shocked that she decided to stay outside. She got in the truck with the other girls and I thought "hey! Maybe this year will be different!" Not a chance. The first time something made noise she covered her ears, burst into tears, and made David come get her out of the truck so that she could run into the house and watch from the windows. She did get a little braver and come to the front door towards the end, though!
1 and 3 from their vantage point - out of the way in the back of daddy's truck. 4 went inside with 2. She was fine until her sister started crying and then she decided that maybe there was something to be scared of. Thanks big sis! 1 and 3 trying to make the smoke go away. Good luck, girls!
LOOK! She came OUT! And she's HOLDING something!!!! It's a MIRACLE! ;o)

And, of course, if big sis does it then it must now be ok. Ahhhh....

Some more Disney fun...

2008-07-06T20:16:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to share with you some of the fun pix we had taken when we were at Disneyland. I don't know how many of you have been recently, but I hadn't been for a LONG while - like I said in my earlier post. Anyway, they now have photographers all over the park. Strategically placed in areas where people tend to want pictures of themselves and previously had to either ask a perfect stranger to take it for them, or not all be in the picture at one time. Now you can get this little card (like a credit card) and the Disney photographer scans your number into their camera and takes your pictures. Each time you get to one of these spots you give them your card and all the images taken during your stay get saved to that card number. Then, when you're ready, you go to their booth and give them your card. They stick it in their computer and it brings up all your pictures and you can choose to have them printed or not. Or, you can do what we did and buy the CD with all the pictures on it. This also buys you the rights to the pictures so that you can do whatever you like with them thereafter. You can print as many as you like and even publish them to things like, oh I don't know, BLOGS perhaps?! The other unique thing is that they digitally enhance a couple of the pictures. They had us pose a certain way, but didn't tell us why - we just had to wait until we saw the pix! They turned out pretty fun I think! What do you think?! Hey, look! Here we are just inside of Disney's California Adventure and out of the ground pops Stitch from Lilo and Stitch! He's a destructive little critter, isn't he?!
This one's a little harder to see cuz it's so tiny on the blog, but if you look very closely in our hands you can see Tinker Bell! Another one of the photographers took a picture like this in a different location in the park, but I don't think it turned out as well.

No digital enhancement on this one. Just thought it was a cute picture! Hope you enjoyed! Ruth

Flying Kites at Long Beach

2008-06-30T10:49:00.001-07:00

Long Beach, WA is one of the best places in the world to fly kites. David saw kid kites at Fred Meyer the other day for $2.50 and thought we should pick some up and take the girls. We found a great spot at the beach and put the kites together and they practically flew themselves! 3 told us that her kite was "too strong"! All you had to do was hold the kite above your head and let go - the wind did the rest. When taking pix, I didn't even have to coax them to smile, I just had to convince them to stay in one spot for a second! We had a really fun evening together - all for only ten bucks!Walking out to find the perfect spot...

On their own!
4 flying her kite BY HERSELF!!!
1 walking away with her kite close behind.
4 again. She looks so tiny on that big beach with that big sky!
3 with her kite. She eventually got the hang of it and didn't worry that the kite was going to pull her off the ground!
Daddy with 4. LOVE this picture!

4's response when I asked her "where's the ocean?"
2 looking up at her kite.
1 with seafoam on her foot. GROSS!!!

Some Random Pix...

2008-06-30T10:41:00.000-07:00

Watching TV on the couch with the big girls.I like to call this one "A Gaggle of Gulls"!
We saw 2 miniature horses pulling carts when we went to the beach last week! Yes, they are full grown. One was named Rocket, and this one pictured was named Pippen.
This one isn't done justice when made this small. You can email me to request a larger version if you want to see detail :) This is a distant outcropping of rocks and land with a lighthouse sitting atop. Can you see the lighthouse?!
I got to spend a couple of days last week with my mom to celebrate my birthday and got this pic on the way home. The sun was setting over the ocean and it was SO beautiful! I look forward to standing on the beach at sunset/rise sometime and getting some fabulous pictures!

Another peek inside

2008-06-21T17:28:00.000-07:00

Hey! I've taken and compressed some more pix of the inside of our new house and wanted to share. After these, all that's really left is the master bedroom, and the downstairs room. I should probably take a couple of our "backyard" too cuz that's good for a chuckle! Enjoy! Ruth The view from the dining area to the living room. Like David's new TV?! Happy Graduation! (Thanks mom and dad!) I'm hoping to get some sort of large plant or indoor tree (maybe a ficus?) to put to the left of the fireplace. It seems like it would make it feel homier and cover some of those cords running from the HONKIN' tv!
From the hallway to the living room. Gas fireplace, berber carpet and stained bamboo floor.
Looking the other direction from the eating area. LOVE all the light that comes in the windows!
From the living room into the eating area and kitchen.
The main bathroom.2's bed. This room is SO stinkin' small! The girls' beds are both against the walls and you can see how close they still are to each other. It's a huge blessing that we got these beds when we lived in Memphis. They have drawers underneath that the girls are able to use as "dressers" cuz as you can see from the other pix of their room - there's no where else to put clothes! Also, 1 and 2 are sharing a room now.
AWWWW. It's so nice when they actually LIKE each other! :)
From their doorway. Looking at 1's bed across the way.

Standing between their beds looking toward their door and into the hall.

This is 3 and 4's room. This room is narrower but longer so there wasn't room FOR SURE to put the other beds in here (the drawers wouldn't have been able to open!) but there is a little room beyond the beds for some toys. Which is also nice cuz this house doesn't have any extra room for a play area! Did you see that 4 is in a BIG GIRL BED?! WOW!
The dresser had to go in their closet. AND David had to take the closet doors off for the dresser drawers to open.
It works!

I just want to reiterate that I am WELL AWARE of how beautiful the house is. We are so very blessed to have a wonderful place to live and to have as much space as we do. I love the details in the way the house is decorated and I love our neighborhood. I'm just SAYING that it's REALLY tight with 6 of us living here and maybe eventually my doctor husband can buy me some huge house with 10 bedrooms! I'm just SAYING! ;0) Love our house. (It's actually pretty easy to keep clean!) Ruth

The Portland Temple

2008-06-20T13:25:00.000-07:00

We were blessed to be able to see some of our friends from our days in Bellingham a couple of weeks ago. They now reside in a town near Portland and have a son who just graduated from high school. They were having a small get-together and sent us a note and we thought it'd be fun to go and see them since we aren't so far a way anymore! It was great being able to see them and catch up a bit. Their one and only daughter used to babysit for our girls regularly and now she's getting MARRIED! Wow! We weren't gone THAT long, were we?! :)

Anyway, the point is, we stopped off at the Portland Temple on the way to their house as our girls had never seen it and it's always nice for any of us to be able to look at the beauty of the Lord's temples up close! It's such a beautiful and serene place to be. Quiet and thought-provoking. For those of you who are not members of the LDS church, you are welcome to click on the link on the left of my blog. That is a site made specifically for those with questions about the church. I promise no missionaries are going to knock on your door just because you clicked on it. They might knock on your door cuz God sent them, but not because you clicked on the link! :) Anyway, anyone is welcome to reverently spend time on the temple grounds and like I said, we wanted to take the kids.

I was trying to get some nice pictures of them to maybe hang on the wall, but they weren't really all cooperating at the same time. I did get some good ones here and there, though, and if you look at the one with all of them in a row side by side you can see a bride and groom right above 4's head under the trees! They had either just gotten married or were about to do so and were having their pictures taken! The girls (especially 2 and 3) thought that was SO cool! Anyway, enjoy the pix of the girls and the temple! Ruth
Do you see the bride and groom? Look REALLY hard...
I'm pretty sure that 2 and 3 are old enough to comply when I say "smile and look at ME" but maybe not.
So pretty. I got a couple good ones of her. The girls really enjoyed this little reflection pool to the side of the temple.
She was cold. Hence the folded arms. At least she's looking this time, though! Cutie pie! And now she's looking, too! Hooray!
She would NOT look at me and make anything other than a grumpy face! This one turned out cute of her not having anything to do with the camera!
OOOOH! Do you see what I did? I could be a photographer for Home and Garden magazine or something! :)

The grounds are so lush with trees I had a hard time finding a place where I could be back far enough to take a picture of the entire side. I love the shape. I'll have to try again the next time we go back!

Just a quick one...

2008-06-20T09:06:00.000-07:00

I had just a second to sit down here and check my messages and decided I had JUST enough time to throw in an absoulutely AWESOME picture I took yesterday. David is out of town and I'm trying to keep 4 little girls entertained and we were running out of interesting things at home. I am fortunate to now be living by the largest entertainment on the face of the earth - THE OCEAN! So, last night at about 7:30 we all grabbed towels and sandals and headed off. I'll post later about the whole experience cuz there were several fun things that happened and some fun pix. HOWEVER, I go this ONE picture that I am SO EXCITED about! I have to post it now and hope that you all take a look. I'll probably end up giving it a place of prominence on my blog at some point cuz I love it so much, but for now I'll just put it in a post. And, now that I've talked it up so much it'll probably be a let down once you see it but I hope you find the joy in it that I do! Later, Ruth

The Astoria Column

2008-06-19T16:00:00.000-07:00

Have a few minutes while the baby is sleeping to post about taking 1 and 2 up to the Astoria Column after we saw the tallships. The Column is located at the highest point of Astoria and overlooks the Columbia River, Youngs Bay, Lewis and Clark River, and out into the Pacific Ocean. I was able to see this beautiful area when I visited here with my mom several months ago when all of this was just a minute possibility. But here we are! The girls were excited to see it up close (you can see the column from all over Astoria since it's up so high. Even from across the river in WA and especially at night when it's all lit up!) and were disappointed that they weren't able to climb up inside. I heard that it was closed for now but not sure why... Anyway, the wind was howling and it was ever-so-cold but they loved being way up there! Here's a link to find out more about the column: http://www.astoriacolumn.org/ Check it out cuz there's also a great picture of it at night!

Here are my pix of it. Be sure to check out my link on the left side of the blog to the Wikipedia info on Astoria, OR! Later, y'all!

The girls in front of the column. The pictures engraved around the outside of the column are a chronological depiction of the history of the Astoria area. A view of the Astoria Megler bridge from up on high. That's the one that I keep showing you that goes over the river to WA. The next closest bridge to cross over the stateline is almost to Longview (over an hour away!). David is hoping and praying that this bridge is never out when he has to be at the Long Beach office! That could make for a LONG commute! :)
2 freezing her buns off above the bridge. And then they were ready to go home!

Seven Interesting Facts About ME

2008-06-18T10:33:00.000-07:00

Yes, Ruth R., I'm finally getting around to playing the game you "tagged" me for a LONG time ago. I actually had to look through your blog archives to see when you tagged me and discovered it was the beginning of March! Well, we all know that things have been a bit busy in our household lately. So cut me some slack! Just consider it "building anticipation"!

So what I'm supposed to do, I guess, is share 7 interesting but little known facts about myself. I'm not sure how interesting these are, but they're all I've got! Here goes:

FACT #1: I was in TWO, that's right, TWO pageants when I was a child! I participated in the Miss Washington National Pre-Teen Pageant when I was 8 and again when I was 12. I was in the top 10 in the talent division for both pageants, top 10 overall in the second one, and received a trophy for "Best Thank You Letter" to my sponsors for the first one. I had a great time doing it and appreciate my awesome parents for letting me know that I was there to have fun and it didn't matter if I won or not. You are the greatest!

FACT #2: I was a 911 operator and police dispatcher in Rexburg, ID. OK, so Rexburg isn't exactly a thriving metropolis of gangs or anything like that, but that doesn't mean I was allowed to sleep on the job! Police work means rotating shifts: I started on all days, moved to all nights, and eventually got the notorious "half days, half nights" shift. ICK! Did I mention I was also in my first trimester of my first pregnancy so between working all hours and wanting to barf all hours, there weren't a whole lot of hours left for sleeping! I enjoyed the job, though. And understand why it's such a difficult and stressful job for those in bigger cities who do it.

FACT #3: I have played the flute since I was 9 and even got to travel to Europe to do so! My parents got me started on private lessons a year before our elementary school would allow me to play in their band which gave me a nice head start. I continued with private lessons almost all the way through high school. I belonged to the Tacoma Youth Symphony Association for several years in Junior High. I was invited to audition for a group from the south Puget Sound region made up of exceptional musicians from all different schools in the area. I made first chair, and was the soloist and the one and only piccolo for the Tacoma Wind Ensemble. We practiced together for several months in preparation to tour France, Italy, Austria, West Germany, and Monaco. We were there a month and had some of the most amazing experiences of my lifetime. We were able to play in some extraordinary locations and the people there were extremely friendly. It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life - totally wasted on a punk 16 year old! If only I could repeat the trip now that I'm so much more mature... ;0)

FACT #4: Believe it or not, I have NEVER broken a bone. (knock on wood!) In fact, I had never even had stictches until I had to have an exploratory laproscopic surgery when I was a teenager - and that only required ONE stitch in my belly button! I guess it helps that I never played any sports. There are plenty of other ways to break bones, though. Such as...

FACT #5: I used to be a member of the SCCA (Sports Car Club of America) and volunteered as a turn worker during my late teens and early twenties. I flagged, pushed racecars off the track, checked for debris, rescued drivers, put out fires, and communicated with the main tower. The SCCA has sanctioned races all over the country. I stuck to my region which mainly included Portland International Raceway and Seattle International Raceway (now called Pacific Raceways) You can check this link for more info and history: www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Raceways

Occasionally, we would add an airport or other type of track, but for the most part I worked at these two locations. What a rush - and I've seen some famous people. Being on the edge of a racetrack at 7 in the morning with the sun shining and the steam coming off the track, or add light drizzle adding a bit of extra slickness just for fun...mmmm! I definitely had several close calls - but still no broken bones! (I'm gonna knock on wood again, just to be safe!)

Here I am (the skinny girl on the left!) with my dad and sister one morning before a race a LONG time ago!!! I think I was probably about 20 when this was taken. Yikes!

WARNING! THE NEXT ONE IS NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART - OR STOMACH!

FACT #6: I have a phobia of vomit. Yup, it's true. Embarrassing, but true. Let me just tell you something that you should avoid if you have this type of phobia: HAVING CHILDREN! Seriously, all I have to do is THINK about it and my heart starts racing. If anyone says they are sick or might be: panic. If I HEAR one of the girls let out one of those big, nasty burps: PANIC! I shake, my face goes pale, my heart races and pounds like it's trying to escape from my chest. If someone in my family is sick - vomiting or diarrhea - I literally will not eat anything for an extended period of time out of fear that I will get it and have something in my stomach to regurgitate. So how was I pregnant all those times and managed morning sickness? NOT VERY WELL!!! Especially with 3 and 4. I was sick with both of them every morning for the whole 9 months. Now maybe you understand why I'm so cranky...I mean why I WAS so cranky! :)

FACT #7: Okay - we're down to the last one. I had written down a list of 6 ideas to share a while back, but now I can't find them anymore cuz it's been so long! Maybe fact 7 should be that I'm so disorganized...but that's not little known! It seems like David had helped me come up with some interesting stuff to share with you, but now I'm at the end and at a loss...

I guess a little known fact among those to whom I'm NOT related who may be reading this is that I took Scottish Highland dance lessons. The year after I graduated from high school (thank goodness!) they began a new program at the Puyallup School District requiring graduating seniors to do a "Senior Project". While I was blessed to escape this particular torture (I only had to write what we called a "mega paper" consisting of 15 pages of stuff on something!), my poor, younger, prettier, skinnier sister had to participate. She chose to embrace our Scottish heritage and to learn to dance as only the Scottish Highlanders can! My parents, being the supportive, clever people they are, told me that if I wanted to join her in the lessons then they would pay for it. OK! And it was REALLY fun! Not to mention a GREAT workout! :) I had calves of steel for awhile after that!

If you are picturing Riverdance, by the way, you can stop right now. That's not the same. That would be IRISH dancing. This is SCOTTISH dancing - ya know, like with swords and stuff! I don't have a link for you right now to show you what I'm talking about, but I'm sure if you are handy with Google you can figure it out yourself! And, yes, Jeanine graduated! Hooray!

So, there it is. Some of it makes me laugh, some makes me cringe, but that's me for better or for worse! I guess when I look at it I kinda feel like I'm not all that exciting. It's really all a matter of opinion. And a little creative editing... ;0)

The Tall Ships at Ilwaco

2008-06-09T11:16:00.000-07:00

Hello again! I'm finally finding a little more time to add bits and pieces to our blog and it feels good! I'm thankful for all the friendships I have made over the last 4 years as well as those I've had for much longer! I love you all and miss those of you who are now far away. I hope you are doing well and will stay in touch. I would hate to lose any of you!

On Friday, 1, 2, and I had the chance to go to a nearby town called Ilwaco (Ill-wahcoh). It is this adorable little town not far over the river from us on the coast of Washington. Most of the towns out by where we are can be classified to me as "adorable little towns" and this one certainly meets that criteria! We went that particular day because the Tall Ships were coming into town. For those who are not familiar with Tall Ships, they are the traditionally rigged sailing vessels. Not the type of sailboat you would generally see today, but true ships with gaff rigging and the sort. Here's a link to the Wikipedia information about the Lady Washington: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_washington . She is the ship with which I am most familiar. My mom has friends who have crewed on her and worked hard to make her what she is today! She was recently seen in the movie "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl". Cool, huh?! Anyway, these sailing vessels are pretty amazing and having a love of the sea as I do makes them all the more appealing! The Lady Washington was scheduled to be there and I thought the girls would think it was cool to see them. 4 has a cold and I didn't want her out in the cold and RAIN - yep, rain. Can you believe it?! :) Since David needed to stay home with her, I left 3 with him also as I was nervous about having to keep track of three little girls on the dock!

We got there actually a while before the "Lady" (as she is often known) arrived and found a fun little bookstore with a resident dog which the girls loved! I found a couple of books and we chatted a bit with the owner who was very knowledgeable about all things nautical. She was also a fan of the t.v. show "Deadliest Catch" which those of you closest to me know that I am a fanatic! We had a good time while waiting for our ship to come in. ;0)

When she did, we were able to stand right there and watch her dock. So fun! The girls were appropriately impressed and I was glad I brought them with me. We didn't get to board her - they were going to let people do that Saturday and Sunday, but we got to talk to some of the crew and the girls asked some great questions. And, of course, I got some great pictures! I won't bore you with any more details of our day - just say that it was a fun experience and for once the girls weren't asking the whole day when we were going home! In fact, when I asked them if they were ready to go, they both said "no, we want to stay!" even in the rain! We'll make little sailors out of them yet!!! 1 and 2 in front of the Lady Washington. They are wearing ponchos to stay dry-ER! So cute!
Full shot of The Lady. Isn't she beautiful?!
Crab/lobster pots we saw on the docks when we were walking around. I LOVE this place!

The Big Vacation!

2008-06-05T20:46:00.000-07:00

I think I have all the pix that are worth posting to tell the story of our trip to Disneyland, California Adventure, and Universal Studios Hollywood. I plan to let the pictures tell the story with just a bit of narration on my part. However, for those of you don't know and are wondering where the girls are - THEY DIDN'T COME!!! David and I didn't get a honeymoon, we recently celebrated our 10 year anniversary, and he just graduated from optometry school. WE NEEDED A BREAK!!! We felt it was a well earned, well deserved break from the world, from reality, and, yes, from our beautiful babies. They were sent to stay with assorted grandparents and we left for a week to be together - alone. Or, as alone as you can be with hundreds and hundreds of other people!!! Now - sit back and enjoy, laugh, and maybe feel a little twinge of childhood...

Really? Do I have to say anything about this one?!
Love you, cheezball!
That's right, baby! I'm feelin' the magic!
The first ride we went on. They've added Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) now and he looks SO real! It was super cool! I don't think I mentioned before that it has been approximately 21 years since I've been to Disneyland and David has NEVER been! It truly was like being a child again - but with NO bedtime! :)

Gotta love that everything is shaped like Mickey!
Ahhh...to be a princess. What a life - just swimming around... I don't know that I really want a starfish stuck to my head, though!

There is this awesome Jedi Training Academy thing that they didn't have the last time I was there. We planned our lunch around it one day so that we could get really good seats and watch it! It was really fun to see all these characters I've seen HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of times (love you David!) come to life in front of me. And, none of the characters in this place EVER leave their character. They are ON all the time. Darth Maul would not stop looking at me like he was going to bite me and it made me giggle! That still didn't throw him off, though! He just stayed in character through the whole thing and eventually totally creeped me out! Especially his eyes...

This is more like it! I belong with the good guys! The Jedi were much friendlier.
Then David got caught by some Storm Troopers. Or Clones, or whatever they're called now...

2's favorite princess, Aurora, better known as Sleeping Beauty. That was her castle you saw earlier!
Hey! We remember them! We actually saw them in person a couple days later, but I only got a picture of them walking away. Not quick enough with my camera!
We had dinner at the Blue Bayou restaurant. It's located IN the Pirates of the Caribbean ride! The food was amazing! (so were the prices!) It was really fun and romantic.
Awww...who doesn't love Pluto?!

Before the river raft ride...And after!
Just a moment at California Adventure in front of Bear Rock.
David lined this one up perfectly, don't you think?!
This is the most horrible ride ever created. Don't go on it. EVER.

On the pirate island. It used to be Tom Sawyer Island. David was being attacked by...his own arm?!
Ok. It's Disneyland. You can't NOT do the Teacups!!! :) We rode Dumbo, too!
With Cinderella. She and Ariel are my favorites and I was so excited to get a picture with them!
This is one of my favorite pix of the whole trip! We were preparing for a perfectly normal picture like all the rest and then Goofy just jumbled us all up and we were laughing so hard! It is a truly genuine, happy photo!
Love you, Mickey Mouse!

K, do I need to explain THAT one?!

This is from the War of the Worlds set. I have a great picture of part of the plane, too, but I just accidently erased it and I'm not putting it back on! If you want to see it, you'll have to come visit! :)
Whoville from "The Grinch".
King Kong. This is pretty sad, actually. This has been here for a million years or more ;) and just this week it burned down. There was a big fire at Universal for those who haven't heard and King Kong was destroyed along with a bunch of other things. We were able to see it just in time. SO sad!
Ok - happy again! We got to meet Shrek! And he didn't even smell bad!!!David is a HUGE Simpson's fan for those who are unaware. He has been anticipating the opening of this ride for awhile. Unfortunately, it wasn't scheduled to open until the Monday AFTER we were there. We thought we'd go check it out to see the outside just for fun...AND THEY WERE LETTING PEOPLE ON!!!!!! They were in the process of testing out the ride and there were signs that said "this ride may work intermittently" and "not all aspects of this ride may be functioning" but we were so excited to be able to try it out!!! It was TRULY worth it! SUCH a fun ride! And, at least when we were on, everything worked just fine. It was so fun!

And here we are with the Simpson family themselves. Where's Maggie? Maybe with a babysitter...

We also got a tour of downtown Hollywood. The Walk of Fame, a couple stars' homes, etc. This is the Kodak theatre where they've had the Academy Awards. WOW! Where's my red carpet?

Thanks for stickin' it out all the way! Hope you enjoyed! Later, Ruth

INSIDE the new house

2008-06-05T20:03:00.000-07:00

I finally got a little bit of the house unpacked and spruced up enough to put on the blog! I'm SO not showing you anything messy with boxes all over! :) Here are two views of the kitchen and one of the dining room. I will add more pix of other parts of the house as I get it looking presentable! I also have about a million pix of our trip to Disneyland waiting to be compressed so that I can blog about that and show you our HUGE smiles! For now, enjoy! Ruth

"Our" new house

2008-06-02T20:29:00.000-07:00

I wanted to post some pix of the house we're renting here in Astoria. It is a gorgeous, almost brand new home with 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms. It has all the most recent styles and modern interior and appliances. I love it in almost every way - except it's WAY too small for our family! The ad in the paper said 1800 sq ft which should be plenty for us for now, but I think that number was being QUITE generous! We haven't been able to fit in this house as well as we fit in our Memphis house and we aren't even done unpacking yet! And our Memphis house was 1592 sq ft. Maybe it's just because this house is laid out so differently from the other one, but I can't believe that would make this much difference. Anyway, like I said, fortunately the house is beautiful and new so everything works well and is pretty fancy! I just have to keep reminding myself that this is temporary and eventually we will be able to buy a house that works better for our family. SOMEDAY..... :)

So, sorry for that big pity party I just had for myself! Things are good and we are very blessed. Here are a couple of pix I took today of the house and view. Enjoy! Ruth

The front of our new home. We don't have a backyard to speak of. All of Astoria goes up a steep hill and most houses have little or no backyard. Kinda a bummer, but that's just the way it is here! We do, however, have a nice deck with sliding glass going out from the dining room and the master bedroom. I'll add those pix to my blog when I add pix of the inside of the house.
This is the view looking straight out off of our front porch. The view from the living room and girls' bedroom windows is better because it's up higher but I didn't want to have the glare from the glass! The water you see in the distance is Young's Bay.
This is the view off to the left when looking out from our front porch. The water you see there is Lewis and Clark River. All of this water is connected to the end of the Columbia River which is the border between Washington and Oregon. Then all of that empties into the Pacific Ocean just a couple miles farther out. You can see the ocean from Astoria, just not from our house.

David's Graduation

2008-05-28T22:17:00.000-07:00

Well, things are finally starting to settle down a bit here and while I wait for David to get back from buying the girls new bicycles (long story - tell ya later...) I thought I'd sit down and at least pound out a bit about David's graduation from Southern College of Optometry.

Let me just begin by saying how long a road this has been. One filled with many hills and potholes, as well as a few great reststops and some fabulous people along the way. I am SO proud of my amazing husband and the hard work and (seemingly) endless time he has devoted to this degree. Throughout the entire 8 years he has been in school, he has continually been a loving, involved father, a spectacular and attentive husband, and a pretty darn good student as well! Believe it or not, I did not know until I looked at my program AT GRADUATION that he was graduating Cum Laude. WOW! I didn't even graduate from HIGH SCHOOL with honors, let alone GO to college and here he is with an insane wife and FOUR young children recieving his doctorate CUM LAUDE!!! Way to go, David!

The night before graduation was an awards banquet that we attended. David's parents came out to Memphis for David's graduation and were able to go with us to the banquet. There was assigned seating which would normally put me off a bit, but we were extra lucky and our dinner companions were our close friends Lee and Ruth Robertson and their parents! That worked out great! During the presentation of the awards, we were all pleasantly surprised when David was recognized as a recipient of the "Who's Who in American Colleges and Universities" award. That was pretty exciting - although it would have been even better if that was one of the awards that came with a $1000 prize! :) Anyway, it was a fun night (they even had babysitters for the girls!) and we had a good time and a nice dinner.

The next day was graduation. We moved out of our house almost a week before this and were staying with our friends, the Gibbons. David was finishing packing the van because we were leaving Memphis immediately after graduation and while doing so noticed some sort of fluid leaking from the bottom of the van. LOVELY! We had JUST taken it in 2 weeks prior to have the entire thing checked over to avoid just such a problem. We spent $800 on 4 new tires, oil, filter, air conditioning charge, alignment, and a bunch of other stuff. So, now here we are just hours before graduation and driving across the country and our van is leaking. David scrambled to get the van back in where we had just taken it and to secure another ride for us all to the graduation ceremony. We borrowed our friends, the Schauerhamer's, van (thanks so much - you are AWESOME!) and made it just in time!

The graduation ceremony was fabulous, the guest speaker was a very accomplished actor, singer, athlete who had spent his entire life blind. Very inspiring. Of course, the actual reading of the names took forever, but eventually they announced "Dr. David Burke Whitemarsh"! I cried and smiled so hard my cheeks hurt! SO SO SO proud of him! He received his blank piece of rolled up paper and that was that! We took lots of pictures outside afterward and just basked in the glory of the knowledge that he was done - and that we were just beginning...

That's as far as I'm going to go tonight. I'll attach some pix for you of graduation day. I hope everyone is doing great and look forward to hearing from you soon! Hugs to everyone, Ruth

David with 1 after the ceremony.

Dr. and Mrs. David B. Whitemarsh!

David with 2. She said she wouldn't smile because she didn't want to move. She wanted to "go live with Mrs. Maynard" (her kindergarten teacher) Thanks Candace!!! ;)

David and 3. Now that's more like it!

David with 4. Oh my gosh, I think this picture is so stinkin' cute!

We're Here!

2008-05-26T12:17:00.000-07:00

Hello! I know it's been awhile, but we've been in moving out/vacationing/moving in mode! We are now settling into our new little home in Astoria, OR. So far, we love it here! The town is adorable, the people are SO friendly, and definitely most important, we're home and near family!!! Hooray! There were times I never thought it would happen. I'll start posting pictures as soon as I get a chance. I can't wait to share with you how beautiful it is here, as well as pix from our awesome trip to Disneyland!

Unfortunately, in the process of moving and disconnecting all our services, we lost our email account and therefore all of the email addresses for our friends and family. I will be contacting people as I can to collect this information once again, but there are some of you whose phone numbers I don't have either. Therefore, if you are reading this, even if you know that I have your phone number, would you please give me a call or send me a note or something with your email so that I don't lose track of people?! I would appreciate that so much!

I hope you are all doing well. I will give a better update soon with pix and details of the area. For now, so long! Ruth

NEWS FLASH!!!

2008-04-17T18:42:00.001-07:00

I am pleased to announce that after MUCH prayer, worry, stress, consideration, phone conversations, headaches, crying (not so much David, more me!), and more prayer, David has received a firm offer (and accepted it) and is now ready to become the newest member of the Coastal Eye Care team!!! He has a JOB! (Okay - he's had jobs for years, but this one is as a DOCTOR with a paycheck that can actually get us through a day or two!) We are SO proud of him and how hard he has worked for so many years. We are all thrilled to see all that hard work pay off and pray that after all this he loves what he is doing!

So, now for details. He will be working at two different offices - one of them 2 days a week and one of them the other 3 days a week. We aren't sure which days he'll be where yet. The offices are located in Long Beach, Washington and Seaside, OR. We think we will probably end up in a town called Astoria, OR because it's about halfway in between, but for now we're just scrambling to find a rental anywhere around there! The doctor who owns the practice is Darren Thorsen, O.D. and he and David really seem to get along well. I think it's a great thing that they seem to have a similar sense of humor and stuff, and mentioned "yin and yang" but David says he thinks they are more like "yin and yin"! Hope that's not a problem!

We believe David will start his optometric responsibilities in mid-June which gives us a little time to try to find a place to park ourselves and get to know the area. We are appreciative to Dr. Thorsen for this timetable because David will not have his license yet and will be working under Dr. Thorsen's for the time being until national board scores are posted and he is able to get licensed in both Oregon and Washington. Until then, we may end up in the Tacoma/Puyallup area with family for a little bit because the girls need to finish up school somewhere.

We are getting everything packed here at the house in anticipation of moving out next Saturday. We will have new carpet installed for the new owners and then stay with our friends, the Gibbons, until David graduates May 2. We plan to have dinner with his parents after graduation that night and then hit the road!!! I'm so excited and so not looking forward to driving across the country! At least we get to visit the Hadlocks and David's brother Dan and his wife, Andrea on the way home. That should help give us something to look forward to each day even when we are exhausted and tired of listening to "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse" on the DVD player for the 4 millionth time! :)

I'm ready for some sleep (all the packing and stress has kinda worn me out!) so I'm headed off to bed. Be sure to check out the fun pictures at the top of this post of the banner I commissioned for David that is now hanging on the front of our house. Thanks again for you help with that, mom! Also, if you have time and the mood strikes, check out the link at the top left of my blog that takes you to the website for David's new offices. There are even pictures of Dr. Thorsen and the offices. Maybe David's picture will be on there soon! I'm also adding a link to a great website for the area that we're moving. Who's coming to visit us at the beach first?! :)

Love to all, Ruth

Still no real news...

2008-03-31T17:59:00.000-07:00

Hello again to all. Well, we are now officially 30 days away from graduation and still are unsure of exactly where we are going. No at all stressful! David has 2 great private practice leads and several commercial practices who would love to have him, but we are holding out for the ideal situation and hoping that we don't miss something in the meantime. There is a fabulous offer for a private practice on the coast - EVERYTHING we could hope to have right out of school and more...however, it's on the coast. That's about 3 hours from home for those of you not from our neck of the woods. Not the end of the world, 3 hours wouldn't kill us especially for the perks that go with this job. The kicker is that there is also a private practice in downtown Puyallup (the town where we grew up and where most of our family still is) that is also interested in David. The problem with THAT is that they haven't offered him a job - yet. They keep sounding incredibly interested and we keep hoping they will call with some great offer, but so far nadda. We hope we won't have to wait much longer and that either the Puyallup office will make their move or we will have to give an answer to the office on the coast and that will force the other one out of hiding for better or for worse. Anyway, hopefully we'll know within the next 2 weeks cuz we need to find a place to live!!!

And in other news...some of this month's activities for us have included:

Visiting the zoo
David had to chauffeur some people in the funeral home limosine and brought it home for awhile!
It snowed enough to play in! 4 has never seen it before and had such a great time!
Visiting the Children's Museum of Memphis
Participating in an Easter egg hunt at Megan's Preschool
Coloring Easter eggs at home
Enjoying our own Easter egg hunt
Celebrating the resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ

I will try to update again as soon as we know more about our future! Enjoy the pictures! Ruth

3 on Easter morning

1 on Easter morning

All 4 happy little sunshiny faces Easter morning - right 2? HAPPY?!!!
4 showing her sunshiny happy face Easter morning.

Those are some SWEET looking eggs!
The Easter Bunny has to put a few right out in the open for 4 to find - plenty of them were well hidden for the older kids, I assure you!
Don't fall down, Humpty Dumpty!
Cheeks full of chocolate - which she later threw up. Lovely.

At least SOME of the girls were happy!

3 with her preschool teachers Mrs. Phillips and Mrs. Strehlau. 2 was in their class last year and we LOVE them!
2 with her basket after the 6yo hunt at the Easter party.
3 gets her face painted. HEY! That tickles!

1 with a beautiful chartreuse egg for Grandma Jana!

The panda was actually out and awake at the zoo!!! 1 looks on in wonder!
With some friends in the Northwest Passage exhibit. Pretty soon we'll LIVE in the NW and won't need to visit exhibits to get a taste of home!!!
Daddy brought home the limo which is always a big treat!
Hey, he looks like someone who rocks the cradle of love, wouldn't you say?!
Snow - mmmm...delicious!

Caveat...

2008-02-26T09:33:00.000-08:00

Before you read the next post I just wanted to mention that it was giving me fits trying to create it the way I wanted it to look (I told you I didn't know what I was doing!) Anyway, a couple of the picture captions are next to the wrong pictures near the end. I'm sure you can figure them out, but I got really frustrated trying to fix it and finally gave up! Good luck and good reading! Ruth

The Month of February...

2008-02-26T08:47:00.000-08:00

This month has been rather eventful considering it's the shortest of the year (even with that extra day thrown in this year!) Here are the highlights:

All the tornado fun
4 turned 2
Valentine's Day (and all the parties that go with it!)
We FINALLY had 2's 6th birthday party (her actual day was Sept. 7!)
1 did a report on Jupiter
David went to interview (11 of them to be exact!) for jobs in WA - more about that later.

So here are some pictures of the highlights of our month, as well as a few extra pix just thrown in for good measure! Hope you enjoy! Ruth

Here is 1 working on her replica of Jupiter. She also made a pamphlet with information on our biggest planet and both projects turned out really nicely! Now we just sit and wait for a grade...

2 with our cat, Marmalade. Nope, Marmalade is NOT orange!

I walked in one evening to find 3 fast asleep on her bed in this position. Hee hee!

The safest place in our house during a tornado is this tiny little bathroom. We squeezed all 6 of us in here with our emergency kit for much longer than I ever hope to again!

4's Birthday cake that I made for her. For those of you who don't know, she is a Mickey Mouse FANATIC! I'm really happy with how it turned out! And she must have liked it, too, cuz she ate this whole huge piece!

2 during her birthday party. It was a Diego party by her choice, but she and her sisters all decided to wear party dresses and she had a princess crown. Whatever! :)

2 and 1 before school on Valentine's Day. So cute!

I just have 1 word for this picture:

HI-LAR-I-OUS!!!

Swinging at the park. One of her favorite things to do!

A HUGE Blessing from Above...

2008-02-12T17:38:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned in my last post...we sold our house! So, here's the story in a nutshell:

David called the funeral home where he has worked weekends since we moved here to let them know that he would only continue to work through the end of February. The gentleman he spoke with is the partner to the owner and reminded David that David Keller (the owner) was also a licensed realtor. We talked about it with one another and decided that we would at least have him come over and look at the house and give us some advice and go from there.

He called David the Thursday night that he left for Dallas for his conference to let him know that he had a potential buyer who would like to see the house Monday. We hadn't even met with him yet to show him the house and get an idea about a price range and figure out what we needed to fix, etc. However, the market being what it is right now, we didn't want to pass up any opportunity to show the house and get the word out.

On the negative side, the house was not even CLOSE to ready to show AND David was out of town all weekend AND I was home alone with 4 kids AND I was struggling with a major emotional down and the timing was just really bad!!! That being what it was, I did what I could before David got back and Sunday afternoon we went crazy with what was left. I took the kids and left the house Monday afternoon thinking, "That was a huge waste of time and stress. There is no way the FIRST people to look at our house ESPECIALLY when it isn't ready to be shown are going to make an offer." I couldn't have been more wrong!

We got a call from our realtor that evening saying that the people wanted to make an offer on the house for $10,000 MORE than we thought we would list it for!!!! Can you believe THAT?!

AND they didn't need to be in the house until April which meant that we wouldn't have to find an apartment for the few months between now and May 2 when David graduates. Could not be more perfect!

Our realtor asked if he could put a sign in our yard anyway to advertise for him and I told him he could do pretty much whatever he wants! :) He is our hero!

So, like I said - that's it in a nutshell. We still have inspections and appraisals and all that good stuff, but we KNOW that God had His hand in all this and that it is a major blessing. (Maybe cuz David accepted the Elder's Quorum President calling?!)

David leaves tomorrow to interview in WA for what will hopefully turn out to be as great an experience! We leave Memphis in 78 days...but who's counting?! Ruth

The Latest News

2008-02-04T18:37:00.000-08:00

Hello to all! Well, as usual, it has taken me awhile to get back to this and add the latest but I'll do my best to update you. The biggest news is that WE SOLD OUR HOUSE!!! I'll give you the details in another post soon, but just know that we are very grateful for this blessing and can't wait to get back the the Northwest! Unfortunately, David has to finish school and graduate first so that won't be until early May but it IS happening!!!

4 was diagnosed on January 1st (Happy New Year!) with pneumonia AGAIN. She was pretty miserable, but since going through all of this less than a year ago, mom was pretty sure of what was going on this time and we caught it before her lung collapsed. She is doing much better now!

1 and mommy played in the makeup and that did NOT help 1 look younger! What a beautiful young lady she's turned into. She was ordered to take the makeup OFF before going out of the house! :)

4 had her first ponytails. She was pretty upset that I made her stay still for it and cried, but when I told her she had piggytails and they were pretty she ran to the mirror, smiled, and left them alone for the rest of the day. We may have another little diva on our hands!

And last, but not least, David and I celebrated our 10 year anniversary on January 23! We celebrated at Olive Garden since that was where we had our first date and also where David proposed. We enjoyed ourselves and our evening out - and then the next day David left town for a contact lens conference in Dallas!!! It's ok - he really does love me! Well, even though he's leaving town again for Valentine's Day to go to WA and interview for jobs! I forgive him cuz I know he's just trying to get his family back home where we belong - Memphis does NOT fit that description! :)

Hope you are well and you enjoy this post as well as the pix! Ruth

Four Gorgeous Girls

2008-01-14T08:11:00.000-08:00

2 in the Gibbons's backyard.

4 with a double dose of pacifiers!

1 looking WAY too grown up for my taste!

3 not getting her way. Everyone together now, Awwwww....

Yup. Still too grown up!

Well, I haven't been as good as I had planned about keeping up our blog for those who live far away. Part of the problem has been that our computer is dying! Yikes - hopefully it can hold out for another 6 months or more - I had to do the mad "back up all the picture files" dash the other day so that I wouldn't lose over 2 years of photos if the thing decides to completely crash! Oh, the stress (especially since that's 4's entire life thus far!) Of course, I've printed and scrapbooked a lot of them, but not nearly even half and I don't want to lose them!

Anyway, here is a quick update for those who are interested. Most exciting (at least, for me!) is that David started his LAST externship and will be graduating in less than 4 months!!! We are nervous and excited and stressed! His externship site is PERFECT in his words. He is thrilled with the situation, especially for it being his last one. There are 2 doctors in a private practice and they basically just consider David a 3rd doc. He has his own patients scheduled, he sees them, treats them, and unless they need a written RX, he sends them out the door!!! If he has any questions, the docs are good about answering them and not making him feel stupid. And if THEY don't know the answer, they tell him that and they all figure it out together. None of that "I know everything" kind of mentality. He's really enjoying it. Now he just needs to find a REAL job that PAYS!!!! :) He does have a couple of leads and is planning a trip to WA and OR in February. We'll keep you posted on how all that goes!

The girls are well. Not much new. 1 is becoming quite the little lady! 1 and 2 had grown out their bangs, but too often don't want me to put anything in their hair and I got tired of hair in their face, so I cut bangs again last night. I'm not sure I love how they look. Kinda liked it better away from their faces but if they won't let me pull it back, this is the only way to keep it out of their eyes! 3 was "Star of the Day" on Friday in her class. She got to do all the jobs (door holder, light helper, weather helper, etc.) and wear a crown and have her picture taken. She thought she was the cat's meow! I'm working on potty-training 4. SO MUCH FUN!!! I'll keep you posted. She acts like she's ready, but we'll see.

We got a family picture with a missionary friend of ours last night so you can see everyone as updated as possible!

So long for now. Enjoy the pix!

Thanksgiving and a little help from her sister...

2007-12-08T16:43:00.000-08:00

I realize that I haven't shared much with those of you who aren't here (you lucky ducks!) how our Thanksgiving went. We got together with 3 other families in our ward (with whom we are friends anyway) and a couple of single gentlemen from the ward who have no family in the area. Since there were going to be so many of us, we decided to have it at the ward building. It turned out really nicely! We made food assignments and there was PLENTY to eat, everything was delicious, and the kids had the whole building (minus the chapel, of course!) to run around and play. Our friends, the James family, have been in the south much longer than we and they knew how to cook a southern turkey dinner - DEEP FRIED!!! I was interested to try it but wasn't expecting much. Boy was I wrong!!! It was really good! Thanks, Cullen, for making that awesome turkey for us! We also had deep fried pork butt roast which was amazing as well. I made mashed potatoes (mommy style!), candied yams, hot spiced punch, and David made pumpkin pie dessert squares. I've included a picture of the tables in the cultural hall waiting for the feast to really get started!

The next little tidbit is from a couple of weeks ago when I went out to get the mail. The girls were home from school already and they had gone outside to play. I found 1 & 2 out there holding hands so that 1 could rollerblade without falling down. It's nice to have a sister to lean on in times like that!!! I sure love those little turkeys!

Bathtime!

2007-12-07T11:15:00.001-08:00

2 & 4 in the bathtub a few nights ago. They are such good buddies!

Our sweet girls (Random photos)

2007-12-07T07:38:00.000-08:00

Just some random (but cute!) pix of the girls a few days ago when we met 1 & 2 at the bus stop. They sure do get along awfully well - MOST of the time!!!

A New Tradition

2007-12-06T11:39:00.000-08:00

So, it has become the tradition in our family over the last couple of years to build Christmas and Halloween gingerbread houses, display them, and then when we no longer need them to smash them to smithereens with a shovel on our driveway!!! While the rest of us truly enjoy the smashing part, 2 is extremely distraught by the whole thing! We have done it several times now and she still raises a huge stink every time we go outside and grab the shovel. We have to talk her into it as she cries and complains about wanting to keep it "forever" cuz it's so "pretty"! Anyway, here are some pictures of her immense mood swing from crying to truly "getting into the spirit" of smashing the living ginger out of our Halloween house!

A visit from Grandma Lora

2007-12-05T16:13:00.000-08:00

As many of the Whitemarsh family already knows, Grandma Lora was able to come visit with us a couple of weekends ago. We had a fabulous time and crammed a LOT of stuff in a short 2 days! Here are a couple of highlights... We spent Saturday evening downtown seeing some of the sights and went to the Peabody Hotel to see the resident ducks. They swim in the lobby fountain and every evening at 5 pm the "Duck Master" takes them down the red carpet to the elevator and up to the roof where they sleep. They reverse the process each morning at 11. We had heard about how cool it was, but hadn't had the chance to see it until now. It was really fun and we got GREAT seats (right in front of the carpet where the ducks shake the water off their feathers!) We also were able to have a fun horse-drawn carriage ride around town and ate on Beale St. We listened to live blues music and had so much fun!!! We miss you already, grandma!

A good argument for NOT giving blood...

2007-12-04T14:50:00.000-08:00

David is a wonderful guy who gives blood just about every time the van comes to his school. His last experience, however, was not so pleasant. The guy had a really hard time finding his vein (I'll let you imagine that one on your own!), and then when he finally did and finished "collecting" what he needed, he put a gauze pad on with some pressure as would be expected. BUT, when he lifted it to check if David was done bleeding, he quickly slammed it back down and ran to get a cold compress. NOT a good sign! David was eventually allowed to leave, but the next day he felt sick and had a headache all day (we still don't know if that is at all related, but it IS rather coincidental!) That evening when he got home from school, he changed into his casual clothes and when he sat in the chair across from me and put his arm up behind his head I saw the damage! These photos are 2 and 3 days after the blood draw and it actually got worse than this before it got better. Poor David! What a dedicated helper to all mankind!

I'm new to this!

2007-12-04T14:34:00.000-08:00

Hello all! Well, I guess we're finally joining the 21st century. It just seems like it will be so much easier to update our family and friends all over the country by having a blog and just letting you check it when you feel like it! So, please bear with me while I get used to how to do this - no laughing and pointing! We hope you enjoy! Ruth