House Full again!!

Our friends, Joe and Jennifer Germain with 7 kids, arrived safely after their long flight from Davao, Philippines to Alaska. We picked them up in Anchorage on Tuesday and came home with a bus full! We had driven up on Monday so that we could load up on groceries at Costco, then stayed overnight at my sister and brother-in-laws house in Palmer. We had a fun evening with Charlie and Kristen, catching up with them and getting to enjoy their company. We picked up the Germains in the afternoon...it was so much fun to greet them at the airport and watch our kids immediately pick up where they left off. We all went to lunch and then a quick stop at Walmart before our drive home. The kids finished out their long journey well and seemed to just enjoy the long ride home. We put on a story for everyone to listen to and that kept them somewhat occupied for hours.

We arrived at our house at 9:30 and of course with the long days of light, who would be ready for bed? So the kids ran and played outside while we unloaded the groceries that needed to go in the freezer and then made a light dinner before bed. The kids all settled down in bed well and we enjoyed a quiet evening of catching up with Joe and Jenn.

We have spent the rest of the week just hanging out around the house...unpacking, putting things away, chatting, watching kids play, cooking, baking, doing laundry, and more... It has been enjoyable just to relax and let the kids run and play.

We celebrated Meghan's birthday yesterday, although her birthday was June 10...close enough to still celebrate!! Meghan is now 4 and all girlie...her and Alyssum have so much fun playing dolls. Alyssum was laughing and laughing today as Meghan was the mom and kept saying, "Now sweetie...."!!

We are looking forward to the time we have together over the next couple months....

Kids Night Out

All kids like to go for a bus ride...right? Well last week our bus that we use when the Germains are here got fixed (it hadn't been running for quite awhile), so we decided to invite a few kids for a night out. We drove around town and picked up 13 kids plus we had our own 6...to make a bus full of 19 kids! We picked up nieces and nephews and friends whom we had called ahead of time. The kids were all so excited to be picked up in the bus and to have a night out (the parents were excited to have a quiet night at home)!! Our first stop was McDonalds for ice cream, but their ice cream machine was being cleaned and wouldn't be ready for 20 minutes. So we loaded back up in the bus and headed for Bishops Beach. It had been very windy so wasn't sure if the beach would be cold, but the wind seemed to calm down for the evening and the kids had fun in the sand and water...of course!! After shoes and socks were sufficiently wet it was time to go back to McDonalds...21 ice cream cones for our large crowd. Then it was back to the bus for the return route of dropping everyone off. We all agreed that we couldn't have found a better way to spend our evening!!

Birds

We have had so much fun watching our bird feeder host lots of guests recently! We always have plenty of pine siskins and a few nuthatches, but recently we have also had pine grosbeaks and a few redpolls as well. It has been fun to identify the different types of birds and observe them as the greedily snatch the seed from the feeder. We have observed that some are neater eaters than others and some pitch the food everywhere. If you click on the bird's name it will take you to a page that identifies each bird.

Baptism

Ann Marie decided to make a public commitment to Jesus Christ by going into the waters of baptism. Ann Marie was very nervous, but did a great job! She even had to wait in the baptismal for several long minutes while Mom was still downstairs getting the younger kids to come up to watch!! The first picture is Ann Marie and Aaron (the youth pastor and her cousin) waiting, and the second is the expression Steve caught on her face just before going under!!

The Chef

Tyler is our chef, at least it seems to be working out that way! He is always wanting to try to cook new things or wants to be given the opportunity to attempt to bake something on his own. When Tyler was pre-school age he would help me make bread except he wasn't interested in just helping me put cups of flour in my bowl, he wanted his own bowl! So we would put little bits of yeast, sugar, flour, water, etc. in his bowl and amazingly he always made a wonderful small loaf of bread. Now Tyler has moved on to bigger and better works of art in the kitchen...he can mix up two loaves of bread for our family and do most of it on his own without any help...he loves to mix up cookies or a cake...and of course pancakes for breakfast or helping out at any meal is great fun.

Well, the other day Tyler got this idea that he wanted to make up his own recipe for soup. He wanted to make it just one serving so that he could cook it up in his small camping dishes that he had gotten for his birthday last year. His plan was to be able to cook it over the fire outside. For the trial run of his recipe we decided to try it over the stove inside...

Here is Tyler's recipe:

Simple Soup (serves 1 person)
1 cup water
1/2 tsp. salt
half tomato chopped (or about 1/3 can tomatoes)
1/4lb hamburger or cubed meat, cooked
chopped chives
1 beef bouillon cube
1/4 tsp. pepper
a small handful frozen corn
pinch garlic
1/8 tsp. basil
Simmer until done.

After Tyler made his soup, he ate it for dinner and we all tried a spoonful, he then decided he could add more ingredients to his soup. He did a great job and enjoyed the results!