To catch up...

I've posted some pictures I've been holding on to for a little bit, and I think we're all caught up on events around our house.

A few more tidbits though - Jason and I have decided to start playing tennis. We bought rackets a few days ago (the $20 Walmart ones for now!) and are just waiting for a dry day to use them. I have really enjoyed my tennis class and I guess I've made it sound fun because it was Jason's idea for us to play together. We had planned to play Saturday, but Jason had a neck/headache that kept him in bed all day - so we'll just have to reschedule!

My final exams start this Thursday. I am nervous, but really believe that the best way to deal with being scared or nervous about something is to prepare for it; so that's what I plan on doing this week. I have finally gotten caught up with work and will not feel so torn about spending time with that as much - at least through Friday or Saturday of this week. So this week, I'll be nerdy, bookworm Robyn, aiming for good grades on my finals!

On a sad note - I learned today that a young lady in my health class died over the weekend in a car accident. It has really been on my mind since I learned it this morning for a couple of reasons. The young lady had some trouble in her life, and a mission group I'm in actually helped her at Christmas time last year. I did not know it was her at the time - I just knew it was a young lady in trouble that needed help giving her kids Christmas.

Also, she was 27 years old. She was in class with me Friday morning and sometime that afternoon she was driving - to home, to pick up her kids, to the grocery store - I don't know. But another driver crossed the center lane and hit her head on. She leaves 2 small children, which I helped buy Christmas presents for a few months ago. I actually was in a discussion group with her one time and we talked about our kids in the 5 minutes we were in groups. Her children are both younger than my kids, as she was younger than me.

I guess I have just been struck by how fleeting life is, and reminded that we are not guaranteed tomorrow. She was a nice girl that I barely knew, and had only one 5 minute conversation with, but it could have been me or any of my friends... life is so precious.

To end on a happy note - ya'll look at the flower pictures Jason took of the kids. He took them the last 2 times I've been in class at night. I think they are beautiful, and he is really becoming a talented artist with a camera!!

Ballerina Kathryn

Unfortunately, this dress will not last the season - Kathryn is too tall for it. She did not like the idea of packing it up, but agreed once we told her we would take her picture in it.

Some Awana pictures

Our ever dwindling group, taken the first week back in the outrageously expensively renovated sanctuary....the kids were very excited.

Weird visitor

This was on the stoop - seen on my way to take out the trash the other night, and of course Jason had to get the camera out. We get a lot of toads around, but this is the first frog we've seen.

Pictures by Jason

End of the semester

This week is the last week of my first semester back in college; next week final exams begin. I am so glad the semester is ending. It has been very hard, and I'm looking forward to having a bit of time to just relax. Today, I had to give a presentation in health, which counts as a test grade, I think. Take a look, if you want - nothing spectacular, but maybe you'll learn something :)



I had the above mentioned presentation today, 2 tests this Wednesday, then next week - 1 exam next Thursday, 2 on Friday and 1 the following Monday. Then I'M DONE!!! I'm going to forget for just a week or so that there are another 2 semesters to go before I finish with my associate's degree and then another 4 for my bachelor's.... right now the important thing is summer is almost here and I am SO ready for it! I worked hard in school (if you can believe it, I have a chance to get a 4.0 this semester....let's hope final exams go well!), now I plan to play hard in my summer!

Julian's creation

Julian made this tonight on his own, following the directions in his K'nex box... so smart!

(BTW - I took several pictures, and when he saw one, he realized the smoke was blowing the wrong way from the smokestack and fixed it so I could take another picture!)

Spring

We don't have much in the way of flowers yet; I am anxiously waiting for some color in our yard. Our irises have started to bloom, though, and have not been affected by the frosts of yesterday and this morning. I love these flowers - they are so "fancy" when you look at them closely, but also because they were given to us by Jason's grandma. Most of the growing things I have have been given to me, which makes them even more beautiful - in my mind anyway. I love Spring - every week brings new surprises of what may be coming out of the ground - everything's new.... again.

Pictures from Saturday

Pictures from Easter

Jason took these at Grandma Knight's house.

Another quick one...

Kathryn and I painted our new mailbox post today. We primed it together yesterday and now it is finished. Didn't she do a good job?

A quick update

This week is a doozy at school, so no pictures or anything :) but I wanted to let everyone know that Julian got his report card, and he made the "A" honor roll - for the 3rd time this year!! He was very proud of himself, and of course I'm proud of him too.

Julian's party

The weather was okay for Julian's party - definitely not great, but okay. The kids were able to play on the playground a bit between periods of rain. I'm afraid the rain, among other things, kept a lot of the invited guests away, so it was a small crowd. In spite of the weather, etc. Julian had a good time, and that is the important thing....This will definitely be the last outside party we plan (:

Julian

Julian's 8th birthday is this Saturday. I may not have time between now and then for this, so it'll just have to be a bit early, but you don't mind do you??? (;

I can't believe my baby is turning 8. Time really does fly, and some of these pictures seem so long ago. At the same time, it seems like yesterday I had that little baby in my arms.

When your kids are babies people tell you "enjoy every stage, they won't be kids forever", "blink and they'll be grown". Well, I have begun to get a taste of this. As fast as these 8 years have gone, I really can imagine that before I know it, Julian will be going on his first date or starting college or graduating college. It's scary and makes me sad that his need for Jason and I is changing. But at the same time, there is a lot of joy in seeing him grow into such a special person! So here is a look at the last 8 years... you almost forget they started that small, don't you?? Enjoy!

A request ...

Would you please join me in asking God for good weather this Saturday?? I'm not asking for all day - just between noon and 2:30 ish :) Seriously - please pray with me...I want Julian to have a good party this weekend!

A tribute to an "old friend"

"Old Friend" may be stretching a bit, at least on my part, but Jason's '69 Plymouth Satellite has been a fixture at our home for 8 years now. Recently, for various reasons, Jason decided it was time to sell. He did so successfully (and pretty darn quickly!) using craig's list and today is the day of the hand off. While I was never truly fond of the car, I know Jason was, and I know he'll miss it ...

I guess it's ok for a big, loud, stinky blue boat :)

Update on the egg drop

Jason let me know that I needed to post an update on Julian's egg, so to let everyone know, he was SUCCESSFUL! The egg did not break when dropped. It was the school janitors that dropped the contraptions, not the teachers, and not all were successful. Julian said one student's egg broke and got all over - somehow the goo escaped the baggie they were supposed to put the egg in. So, consider yourselves updated. :)

Bike riding

We spent a little time this morning biking. First we took a walk with Julian riding around our neighborhood and Kathryn and I walking. Then I just sat at the end of the driveway while they rode back and forth from one house over on one side to 2 houses over on the other side (and since I was just sitting there, of course I had to take pictures!). I kept a cautious eye out to make sure no cars snuck up on them - constantly afraid one of us would miss an upcoming car. And I lamented the fact that we don't have a safer flat place for them to ride. Worry over my kids - I wonder, does that ever go away? I guess it probably doesn't.

Diabetes alert

Could you have type 2 diabetes and not know it? This is a quick test to take to see if you are at risk (it took me about 30 seconds to answer the questions)....

Diabetes Risk Test

Hiking at Hanging Rock

Today, we took our first "family hike" day trip. Jason and I went hiking last year and fell in love with it. We have been saying ever since then that we wanted to go back. Since last week was my spring break and this week starts the kids' spring break, this was the perfect day.

We visited the Hanging Rock State Park. If you have not been, I really suggest you go; it was wonderful. I'm going to have to ask forgiveness ahead of time - I fear I'm going to be a little long-winded with this. :)

We started with the Hanging Rock trail, which is 2.4 miles round trip and is rated as moderate in difficulty. Our thought was that we could go up that trail and be finished and ready to go to one of the waterfall areas for lunch - well! - what I didn't anticipate was the kids being fascinated with EVERYTHING! Sticks, rocks, dirt, sand, trees...EVERYTHING. It was so fun to watch. We ended up taking about 90 minutes to finish the trail. And we were ready for the end when it came! It was definitely hard - especially for little Kathryn with her shorter legs. But both kids were troopers and I am very proud of them for their effort today.

Next we followed the Lower Cascades Trail which ends at an amazing waterfall. It is only 6/10ths of a mile round trip and is rated as easy (although it was not what I would call "easy"). "The Cascade Creek tumbles 120 feet through a series of falls." It was breathtaking to come down the trail, not knowing what to expect, and have the landscape open up to this...AWEsome waterfall. We spent quite a while there, taking pictures, letting the kids splash in the water, just watching the water fall. There was only one negative there - Kathryn's foot slipped crossing the water and her foot got soaked. She panicked a little and, well, freaked out. It only lasted a minute while I reassured her it was only water and we had dry socks (but not shoes) for her in the car. She does not like discomfort of any kind...I am actually VERY surprised she liked hiking as much as she did.

Then we followed the Upper Cascades Trail to another waterfall, which is 4/10ths of a mile round trip and "easy". It was very pretty, but not as majestic as the Lower Cascades. AND, we ran into a teenage couple that was...well, not wanting to be disturbed. They ended up leaving shortly after we got there. I'm not quite sure why they chose that particular spot, but I'm glad they felt the need to leave when we arrived. :) We explored a bit and took some pictures and then moved on.

Finally, we went down the Window Falls/Hidden Falls trail, which is 1.2 miles round trip. By this point, we were exhausted, but not knowing when we will go back, I really did not want to miss anything. We were pretty tired, as I said, so we actually drove from the entrance to the Upper Cascades trail to the restrooms (halfway across the parking lot) to the Window Falls trail on the other side of the parking lot. I'm not proud of it - BUT I didn't want to waste any steps, not knowing what was coming up on our last trail....and I'm glad we did, because it took everything we had to make it back to our car! We didn't spend much time at these falls, because they were much busier than the others. We took our pictures and moved on; we only saw the Window falls from a distance. It was pretty crowded and we were pretty tired, so we just decided to call it a day instead of going all the way down the trail to the falls.

I am super-excited that our kids loved hiking. This is definitely something we plan to do regularly now that we know they can keep up and enjoy it. They were in wonderful spirits all the way to the end and Julian was pretty upset when it was time to leave. Kathryn was pooped and kept telling us how tired she was. I felt so bad - I was actually physically too tired to pick her up and carry her to the car. So she "sucked it up" and just kept walking until we got to the end. So strong!

What a wonderful day for our family. We are so tired, but it was SO worth it. I can't wait until we can take another hike together!

Egg Drop

Julian's homework assignment was to create something that will keep an egg from breaking when dropped from the top of the school, so here is what he created:

1: The box

2: The styrofoam (molded around the egg)

3: Cotton balls glued to the inside of the box

4: Place styrofoam mold inside the cotton-balled box

5: Cushy foam (decorated, of course)

6: And finally, a parachute

Let's hope our little egg stays in one piece!

Evan, Julian and Kathryn

From Saturday night when Evan spent the night...Julian and Evan together:

and Kathryn doing her own thing off by herself. :)

And the winners are...

Kathryn came in 3rd (out of 6) in the Cubbies....

And Julian came in 2nd (out of 4) in the Sparks group.

Everything went really well, and it was a lot of fun. There were 5 racers we had registered that didn't come, but overall it was wonderful. And what no one will know until tomorrow when we announce our Design winners - Julian came in 1st for design and Kathryn came in 2nd. They really did have very cool cars.

Who will the winner be???

Today is our annual Awana Grand Prix at the church. We do it a little different than other churches - since we don't move forward to regional "official" Awana competitions, every clubber can compete - even Cubbies. I can't wait to see how the kids' cars do. Each year we've gotten better (and by we, of course I mean Jason) at the doing the wheels and stuff, and Julian did a great job painting his Titanic....he loves the Titanic. So, here are their cars: