60th Birthday Party!!

I started writing this blog last week and finished it today.

It is still hard to believe that my parents both have now turned 60.  WOW!  We had a big celebration for them last Saturday (May 21st)  and invited friends and family.  It was so nice to see everyone.

Being part of a big family definitely makes putting on a party like this a lot easier.  There was 5 of us girls to prepare the food, decorate the hall and make the day special.  Make that 6, my mom helped us with the baking, she made 3 tortes and the birthday cake.

I took on a huge project of putting together a slideshow with pictures of my parents, mostly of their married life.  They have definitely done a lot in the 40 years that they have been married.  Starting out in Calgary then moving to Wetaskiwin in the mid-70's.  There were many pictures of different vacations that they went on and lots of pictures of us kids.  It really made me realize again how important pictures are to preserve our memories.

We had a great day with friends and family and lots of food of course!!  Thank you to everyone that came out and made the day special.

Looking through all the pictures reminded me again of all that my parents did and still do for me.  Thank you mom and dad for all the wonderful memories you gave me as a kid, for everything you did for me and everything you still do for us.

Most difficult picture to take!!

God has truly a blessed our family!!

Mother's Day!

Flowers from my girls!!

I thought I would continue to share on my blog.  We are no longer on vacation but we continue to make new memories on a daily basis around here.  With six kids there is always something happening and some sort of memory that I would like to lock into my memory to cherish, as the time is so quickly slipping away.  Life seems to be passing by faster and faster each year.  I cannot believe we are already approaching summer again.

Yesterday we celebrated Mother's Day.  I feel so blessed to be a mother to my six beautiful children.  I still remember being a little girl dreaming of the day I would be a real mother and telling my dad "but I am a mommy to my dolls."  Those days seem so long ago.




In the morning we went to church and after church we took these pictures to remember the day.  I have come to realize that even though I do not like to be on pictures I need to force myself to take pictures with my kids so that they have pictures of me when they are older.

We went to my mom's house for lunch after church.  I think there was 39 of us there in total (21 kids and 18 adults).  The kids are now outnumbering the adults, not a good situation!!!   It is always a bit crazy but the weather was nice yesterday and the kids could be outside.

Mark's gift to me!

That night, the kids gave me their presents that they had made for me.  Mark surprised me with a very special gift that he had brought back from Colorado Springs.  When we lost our little Joseph, I really wanted some sort of wall hanging that expressed how special my children are to me and to remind me how blessed I am that each one is healthy.  I never could find anything and I had even looked at Focus on the Family but missed this one.  Mark did see it and bought it for me.  It is perfect, the verse on it is very special to me. (Psalm 139:13,14) When I was pregnant with the twins, I listened to a CD with the kids that had a song with this bible verse in it.  Then when we started having problems it comforted me because I knew God was in control and that He loved my little boys even more than I did.

I love my children very much and I thank God for them each day.  My greatest pray is that they will grow to have a personal relationship with our heavenly Father.

Me and My Mom!

Coffee Sweet Coffee!!

While we were on vacation, Mark and I definitely missed our Tim Horton's coffee.  We aren't big Tim Horton drinkers but we do enjoy our daily coffee at home.  When we are on the road and especially driving so much and through the night we like to have a good coffee.  In the states though it is very hard to find a good coffee place.  Whenever we could we got it from Starbucks but we found that it was very strong and bitter.

We really looked forward to our first Timmy's in Lethbridge.  I think someone could make a lot of money if they set up a Tim Horton's just after the border!!!!

We arrived home safely on Sunday night at 7:10pm, which was funny because when we left two weeks ago it was at 7:13pm.  The last part of the trip was tiring for Mark so I drove from Calgary to Wetaskiwin.  So in total I drove 3 1/2 hours out of about 70!!  I figured out we covered about 7000 km.  It is amazing what you can do in 16 days.

It is nice to be home but we are definitely planning to do something like this again.  Thank you to everyone who prayed for us.  God definitely kept His hand over us!!

We saw this big dinosaur in a little place called Milk River just across the border.  Mattias is really into dinosaurs so we thought we would stop and take a picture with this big creature!!








We thought it would be interesting to see how much stuff we actually fit in our van.  So we unpacked the whole van onto our living room floor.  Here is what it looked like.  We were just missing 3 people and two car seats on this picture!!!!

Las Vegas - April 29, 2011

We arrived into Vegas just as the sun was going down, it was beautiful.  We went to an In-N-Out! burger place.  They have good food for a reasonable price.  When we stepped out of the van we could feel that it was already a bit cooler.

After supper we found a place to stay.  It is not much to talk about, a typical motel room.  But they didn’t care that we had six kids and we could pull right up to the door and unload.  There was no free internet or free breakfast but it was a place to sleep.  We were not too far from the strip so we walked and walked and walked.  I think by the end of the evening we walked about 7 km.  Thank goodness for our stroller, the three little boys could ride and the three older kids walked the whole way.  I felt so bad, they are all little troopers because we didn’t get back to the room till midnight.

There was definitely a lot to see in Vegas and a lot of people to deal with.  We were able to see the water show at the Bellagio, which the kids really wanted to see and I got to see the Venetian Hotel.  Not sure I would take my kids back but it would be neat to go with Mark and look around a bit more.

Before we started heading north we decided to go to Hoover Dam and show the kids one of the most spectacular water dams in the US.  This was really awesome to see.

Now it is definitely time to head home:(

Five Days in Indio, California!!!! - April 24 - 29

Five days in Indio!! - April 24-29, 2011

We spent 5 beautiful days in Indio.  We all loved and enjoyed relaxing by the pool.  We again had a wonderful hotel room.  This time we had a full kitchen, so we could make our meals in the room.  The weather was great and we all were able to take home a tan.    We spent most of our time by the pool, Mattias was able to practice his swimming and even William became more brave in the water.

On Wednesday morning we went and picked up my parents from the airport in Palm Springs.  The kids were very excited, they haven’t seen my parents much in the past two months. (they were gone for a month, then we left shortly after their return)  We then were able to check out their new vacation house.  We are very excited for them (and us)  to have such a beautiful place to go for vacation.

On Thursday night we went to Palm Springs to a street fair.  This was neat to walk around and see all the different things.  So many touristy things to buy, but I have been very good on this trip to not pick up things that I will not use once I get home.  We have walked into quite a few gift shops and walked out with nothing.  I have gotten rid of a lot of stuff in the last few months in my house and realized pictures hold great value in remembering things we have experienced and they usually take up less space.  (especially when they never get developed!!)

On Friday morning we packed up and got ready to leave.  We were all very sad to leave the beautiful weather.  We are not ready to go home yet.  The kids all wanted to stay with Grammy and Grandpa.  We drove to the Cabazon Outlets and did a little shopping and had lunch before we said good-bye to my parents and headed to Las Vegas.

Here are some pictures by the pool!!!

Vegas here we come!!!

Los Angeles & Santa Monica - April 24th, 2011

Well we left Colorado Springs Saturday morning at 10 and drove for the next 24 1/2 hours to get to church in Los Angeles.  We drove through New Mexico which was very interesting, the landscape was beautiful and the houses were very different from what we are use to.  We stopped in Albuquerque at the Costco and continued on through the night.  I was very sad though because I did not get see any of Arizona in the daylight.  We drove through the night again and missed all the scenery there.  I was thinking I could probably look up some pictures on the internet of what we missed.

In the morning we woke up to beautiful sunshine and palm trees in California.  It felt so different, the weather was beautiful and finally the scenery was green.  We continued to drive and arrived in Sun Valley California (north of Hollywood and Burbank) in time to get changed and arrive at church.  We went to Grace Community Church, the pastor there is John MacArthur.  Mark and I listen to him on the radio most nights before bed.  We thought it would be special to be in his church for Easter morning.  The church was amazing, one of the largest churches we have been in.  There was about 3000 people, an unbelievable choir and an orchestra.  It felt so neat to be sitting there seeing John MacArthur preaching instead of listening to him on the radio, is was a very beautiful service.  We were so glad that we made it to his church.

After the service we went for lunch and decided to drive to the ocean.  We went to Santa Monica and walked on the 3rd Street Promenade and down the pier.  I took George and the girls down to the ocean so they could put their feet in the water.

After we left LA we drove to Indio to the resort we are going to be staying at during the week.  We are really looking forward to have a relaxing week by the pool and enjoying our last week of vacation.

Cheyenne Mountain Zoo!! - April 22, 2011

This was a very fun day for the kids.  We got to see a lot of different animals and even got a little red from the sun.  We had one scary part of our day though and thank God that it turned out fine.  

You have one guess as to who we lost.  Not Juli.  Mattias.  It was interesting because the night before Mark commented on how Mattias would be a kid we could lose easily.  He is on his own schedule, he likes to do things in his time and on his terms.  Not always easy to deal with when we have 5 other kids to deal with.  He has no fear and will talk to anybody.  But I think today he got a little scared.  We had to take an elevator up to see some more animals and I remember him getting off with us.  Then we just kept walking and came to a little area where there were otters swimming and I assumed Mattias was with Mark and Mark thought he was with me watching the otters.  We came back together to move on and noticed that we did not have Mattias.  Mark ran one way and I sent the three older kids the other direction and I stayed with the stroller praying that we would find him.  The zoo is quite big and there were a lot people there.

Mark did find him sitting on a bench with a lady, thankfully she had noticed that he was lost and thought to wait and see if someone came looking for him.  I think he was a little scared.  I just thank God we found him.

Here are a few things we did at the zoo:

the kids got to fee the giraffes, Mattias was a little afraid of the big purple tongue coming towards him to grab the lettuce

The boys got to go on a carrousel ride, this carrousel was made in the 1920’s for traveling fairs, there is only 3 of them in the country.  It even played the original music.

The best part of the zoo was the Gorillas and Orangoutangs, the kids found them very interesting.  George even got one trying to kiss him through the glass.

It was a wonderful day, the weather wasn’t too bad and the kids could burn off some energy.  

We went for supper at T.G.I Friday’s and then back to the hotel to go swimming.  It’s amazing how a simple swimming pool can be so fun for the kids.  Mattias is learning to swim quite well and again with him we really have to watch him because he has no fear and will just jump into the water thinking he can swim on his own.

Tonight we have to start packing all of our stuff.  Not an easy task when we have been at the hotel for a week and everything is unpacked.  It would be easier if we were just heading home but we are going on to California and I need to keep everything organized.

Tomorrow we leave Colorado Springs and head to California!!

This and That!! - April 21, 2011

The last days have seemed busy but nothing overly interesting to report.  We did a bit of shopping and found a few good deals.  We took the kids to Focus on the Family for the last time.

Ashley and I were able to go and watch a radio broadcast recording.  This was really neat, we got to see what goes into making their daily Focus on the Family radio broadcast.  I am now able to put faces to the people that I listen to on the radio.

We also attended an Easter service at Focus on the Family.  This was very special and even though we are on vacation, we are still able to worship with other Christians and remember what Jesus did for us on the cross.  It was very interesting, there was singing, painting and dancing.  A very beautiful service led by H.B. London.(James Dobson’s cousin)

I missed this part of the service because I was out dealing with the kids but I guess this picture was painted right on stage in about 5 minutes by 3 people. (wish I could have seen it)

We have been having supper at the hotel.  We have had pasta, hot dogs and hamburgers, and sub sandwiches and salad.  We also went to this neat restaurant for lunch called Rudy’s.  We had half a chicken, pulled pork, sausage and potato salad.  The closest we have come to a good home cooked meal all week.

Tomorrow we go to the Zoo!!

Till then.

Garden of the Gods!

A quote I saw today read, "Memories are more than just a link to the past....sometimes they're all we have that will last."  We are definitely making memories that will last us the rest of our lives.  Today we took a little hike in an area called the Garden of the Gods.  Here we saw many unique rock formations and landscapes.  The kids could run around and enjoy the outdoors.  It was so interesting to see how God created our amazing earth, here you look one way and you see large mountains and then you look the other and see beautiful plains.

We got so many great pictures that can show you the beauty we experienced today!!