Believe it or not...

There have been some exciting things I haven't written about. Well, Miss Amber has been sick ALL week. It started Monday night her turning down chocolate covered strawberries! Her tummy hurt. And you can imagine (or not) what that lead to Tuesday morning. She stayed home from school. Wedneday she went in around 3rd period because she just can't get too far behind in work but she was dragging. She wanted to go to Honors night. We were rather surprised that she was invited. Which means you're getting an award but you don't know what. Once there she received awards for her participation in 2 honor bands and a letter (like in sports) for the role of Sister Berta in the Sound of Music. And we left after that since she still wasn't feeling very good, her name wasn't on the program anywhere else and there was a long night of awards ahead.

Well, we should have stayed!! We found out yesterday that Amber was/IS the recipient of..............

STUDENT OF THE YEAR

IN

PERFORMING ARTS

Shock!!! Surprise!! We're SO, SO proud of her!!!

She stayed home again Friday since she (and me too) was up off and on all night coughing her head off. None of the cough syrups were working for her. So we got into the doctor and little missy has bronchitis!!! She's on her antibiotic and he gave us a codine cough syrup and we ALL slept rather nicely last night.

Now, I'm not ready for Iron Chef (my plating stinks!) but here's Rob's birthday dessert he asked me to make. Molten Chocolate Cake and Mallard's vanilla ice cream. I added the raspberries for color. Well, and they smelled so good at the store I couldn't resist. It tasted MUCH better than it looks.

And THIS is my newest favorite picture of Lizzie!! You can so tell she loves her Daddy.

Look who is having a birthday today!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ROB!!!!

My sweet Aunt Bernice

On Sunday night our family learned from my cousin Miles, that his Mom, my Aunt Bernice, passed away on Saturday. Today was the funeral and I so wanted to be there. My thoughts all week have been thinking of her. I have so many memories of her and my Uncle David (yes, David is named after my Uncle and Grandpa, his Dad) and the summers that our family would spend a few weeks with them. I realized that this was the last time we actually saw each other. Look, I only have 2 kids!!!

Now that's not to say that we didn't talk on the phone many times over the years. Every year my Aunt's Christmas card was the first card I would receive. It's been a tradition as long as I can remember.

I can just imagine the wonderful reunion that these 3 are having right now. My Uncle David (my Mom's brother), my Mom, and Aunt Bernice.

Aunt Bernice ~ you will be miss!!

Our 5 day weekend

Warning: Long post ahead :D

We are still recovering from our trip to Oregon. It was fun filled and also relaxing.

After we dropped Amber off at Pacific University we headed off to Lake Oswego just outside of Portland to check into our hotel. We headed over to the LDS Portland Temple which was literally a half a mile from our hotel.

Note to self - my arms are too short for "self-portrait" camera shots :D

Isn't he a cutie?

It started to rain on us so under the covered area we went. You'd think I was squeezing him by the look on his face. But that's David for you! Mr. Overexaggeration!!

Finally a good shot

The landscaping is so beautiful!

A night shot

We took a trip to the Portland Zoo! Again it decided to rain off and on while we were there. I'm glad I had the umbrella tucked away in the back of the Pilot. A lot of the animals were tucked away under trees and inside caves to stay dry.
Zebra

Penguin

This was one very friendly sea lion

Look Frodo ~ an elephant!

Snuggly hippos

A very playful polar bear. You almost think they are harmless, playful creatures watching him playing with his ball. That is until he decides to swim by you and you get a close up look at those paws of his.

And this little guy gets the best photo of the day award for cuteness factor. David says we "need" to get a baby Bobcat. Umm, sure!

During our off time the boys went to the hotel gym and exercised a bit and then went swimming. Me? I took my scrapbooking things and had some fun. We watched movies at night and just had fun being together.

Amber's concert was amazing! We've been to this particular honor band 2 times for Robert and 2 times with Tabitha and now with Amber. It's one of the most prestegious in the Northwest. This was it's 60th year anniversary. This girl sure did stand out with her basson playing to her conductor as well as the organizer of the event. She wowed them! And was just this short (finger close together) of being offered a scholarship to attend Pacific University. Being a basson player, and a good one will really be a benefit to her in getting scholarships. We are so proud of her too. She auditioned for parts and received 1st Bassoon AND 1st chair!! For a sophmore that's a pretty impressive accomplishment! Hooray for Amber!!

Here's Amber with her guest conductor, Anthony Maiello.

The choir guest conductor was retired Mormon Tabernacle Choir director, Craig Jessop.

We are so glad to be home. We just crash yesterday after church (where Amber & Tabitha did a musical number at church) taking naps off and on all day. Today we just caught up on things around the house and did laundry. Back to school tomorrow! And the dishwasher is getting fixed!! Woohoo!!! The pump is starting to go out and our normally quiet dishwasher is anything but quiet. It was only 3 weeks out of warranty but Kitchenaid is honoring the warranty and replacing the pump at no cost so we only have to pay the labor. Very happy about that one! Off to start the week!

I'm on a roll!!!

Three days straight writing on the blog!! WOW!! I guess my little brain is working overtime and I just needed to share a thought I read here today.

We've all had those days where we wish we had stayed in bed and vow to never touch an electrical appliance again because we WILL destroy it! And when we get that "I can't handle any more" attitude, here was the advice this authors husband gave her. LOVE IT!!!

“You don’t have to handle it,” my husband replied. “There’s no rule book somewhere that says you have to go through life handling everything. Just muddle. I’ve been muddling for years and no one can tell the difference.” Muddle, I thought. I think I can muddle. Now every time I’m feeling overwhelmed, I remember my husband’s timely advice. Frankly, I’ve been muddling ever since and so far no one can tell the difference, just like he promised.

I realized God loves us like that. No matter how big the mess or mistake we’ve made, God provides us with a Savior to help us clean it up. That is the essence of muddling. Muddling is not mediocrity. Muddling allows us to stop keeping up appearances or worrying that we’ll never measure up. Muddling is accepting our humanness and inadequacies. Muddling is realizing there are some messes only Christ can clean up. And muddling is seeing our worth through God’s eyes and never giving up hope that things will work out.

And for Jessica who is having a terrible time with a teething/clinging baby ~ "This too shall pass". What a blessing Lizzie does have to cling to you instead of being in daycare. We LOVE you guys for struggling to make that work. And just keep saying "It's a good thing she's cute!!!" That got me through a lot!!

Here's some Lizzie eye candy from the wedding. One of my favorite shots Cassie snatched!!!

Playing games

So one of our favorite Sunday family activities (besides taking a nap) after church is playing games!! I just recently took 6 hours to clean out the game cabinet upstairs. I didn't snap a before shot ~ too emarrassed. Let's just say that the doors couldn't close because blankets and things were just shoved in any old which way. Brace yourselves Robert & Jessica ~ here's the after:
Gotta love Spacebags!!!
Here's what's in the wicker baskets

All our cards!!

Top row are all decks we've bought at Disneyland over the years. The cross stitch case is something my Mom made since she was an avid bridge player. It reminds me of her EVERY TIME I see it! I miss her TONS!!

So I literally went throught EVERY game and made sure all the pieces were there. I counted ALL the decks of cards to make sure they all were there. If ANY piece was missing, out it went. And then those games that you just outgrow. I mean, HELLO, we still had picture alphabet flashcards in there!! :D We have a BIG pile for Deseret Industries.

So that was the background for what I am thinking today. I wrote down some of the games that we haven't played for a long time and we weren't sure if we wanted to keep them. One of them was called Buzz Word. Now this is a rather new game (a few years old) but no one but me could remember playing it (and I liked it). So on the list it went for us to play and we played it last night. Note for future game - make sure to divided into teams that all the "knowledge" isn't on one team. MINE!!!! Baahhaaa!! Really, me, Rob and Amber were one team and Tabitha, Josh & David were there other. Let's just say there was some smelly, skunking action going on and I'm not talking about Amber's gas. It was REALLY bad last night. Sorry, TMI ;D There were clues given that Josh & Tab had the strangest, clueless looks on their faces and Rob & I were just jumping out of our seats. For example ~ the Buzz word is Book. Which means the word book has to be IN the answer. The clue: "Hawaii 5-O phrase" Answer: "Book 'em Danno". Oh the looks of stunned amazment we got because we got that answer. I think we are going to have to play this game more just to learn some of these phrases, etc that our kids just don't hear.

Here's a link that my friend, Jan from sunny Florida shared. I've always like this Billy Joel song but it's great that someone actually took the time to put pictures to the lyrics. Some of the things were before my time too so it was nice to see what was being sung about.
http://home.uchicago.edu/~yli5/Flash/Fire

Movie AND Customer Service

So we went to the Colossus theater up in Langley, BC to see (what else?)

It was SO good!!! I wouldn't recommend it for younger kids though. Especially if you have kids that get scared easily. There's a lot more fighting and death in this one than in the first. It did keep us pulled in and David on the edge of his seat. I'm going to have to go read the book as I don't remember this one. Both Rob & David said a few things were added that weren't in the book but they enjoyed the movie. And Reepacheep is so darn cute!!!!!

Now to the customer service. During the movie the film stopped! Just stopped and the lights came on. It only took them less than 5 minutes to get the film going again and it didn't seem that we missed much, if any of the movie. But on the way out the door a manager was standing there with complimentary tickets!! Did they HAVE to do that? No! But will we return to Colossus for another time where we have to pay? YES!!!! But for now we have 4 FREE tickets that we just have to find another movie to go see within 2 weeks. Well, that's easy. Rob and I will go see Indiana Jones!! I'm sure the kids will want to see Prince Caspian again.

Amber's bedroom

So we FINALLY got around to taking pictures of Amber's room. That's weird to say since it's always been "the girls room". Now we never had any luck finding a new headboard that she liked (that wasn't over the budgeted amount) so we are planning on making a canopy swag (from the same material as the curtains) over her bed. We still have the pictures to put up on the walls but we are alomst done. Amber did a lot of the painting herself. We even painted the base boards and the door. She wanted to be creative on her closest door and I "let" her do that all by herself. I love the new bedspread she picked out too. It's just so perky in here now. She just LOVES it!! And she tends to keep it neater too!!

Another May birthday!

Well I have no baby pictures of Jessica (I should work on that for next year) but I do have some other pictures that I'm sure she hasn't seen yet.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JESSICA!!!!

WE LOVE YOU!

Look who is turning 16!!!!

I'm not sure exactly how this happened SO fast, but our 3rd baby is 16 years old!! She has her first date tomorrow night. It's with her Daddy :D An Anderson family tradition! We keep telling her that she can't have a date until Robert takes her out too. She thinks we're kidding! HA!

Happy Birthday baby!!!

Twice in one day!

Talk about scary!!! This is the Starbucks that both Rob & I go to. We meet there for lunch sometimes for a hot chocolate. Rob goes there more than I do since it's right near his office. We've sat in those seats before!! Read about the accident here. So far no other reports on the status of those injured.

Again, you truly never know...

My brain hurts!!

Way too much thinking, I think. I'm still reeling from the death of Terry Mathews. People have asked me why in particular has his death affected me so strongly. He wasn't a super good friend. Just someone that if we saw at the mall we'd stop and say "HI" and make small talk. He was someone I've had the privledge of working with at church in various capacities. I've mostly worked with his wife, Keeley. They both are marvelous, gentle, kind hearted people.

The funeral was yesterday and last night I just could not get my mind off of Keeley. Here I was snuggling with my husband in bed and she wasn't able to with hers. I know how I feel just when Rob goes away for a week on business trips ~ the nights are very difficult and long for me. But Rob comes home. Terry will not be coming back to this earthly home for Keeley. My heart aches for her and her 2 children. He truly was an example to how to live life.

So everyone be a bit kinder. Be a bit more understanding. Be a bit more tolerant. Show more gratitude. Show more compassion. Show more love. Because you never know...

Terry R. Mathews

Terry R. Mathews of Bellingham, WA, passed away on Wednesday, April 30, 2008. He was 50, born on May 16, 1957, in Provo, UT, to Melba (Moosman) and Gerald Mathews. He graduated from Brigham Young University in 1982 with a degree in Recreation Management. Terry was a Bellingham resident for 25 years. He worked for the U. S. Postal Service for over 20 years. He was an avid sportsman and especially enjoyed golfing and fishing. He loved the Mariners and all BYU sports. He also loved his nightly dish of ice cream, as did his faithful companion, Yogi. He was a gifted pianist and played the organ in church. Terry was a devoted member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, serving as a Bishop for five years and in many other leadership responsibilities. He especially loved to work with the youth. As a young man he served as a church missionary in Sapporo Japan for 2 years. Terry was preceded in death by his parents, brother Merrill Lynn Mathews, and father-in-law Keith Miles. He is survived by Keeley, his wife of 25 years; son Devin, daughter Karly; brother Ken (Dana) Mathews; sister Diana (Don) Stuver; brother-in-law Tally (Vicki) Miles; mother-in-law LeOla Miles; and numerous nieces and nephews. In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to St. Joseph's Cancer Center in honor of his mother and other loved ones who have fought or are fighting cancer.

A few of the things we've been doing...

...since our last post.

An evening walk on the trail



Yes! David was being a goofus! Can't you tell from that look on his face? Very classic David face!





We HAD to stop to play at the city park




Rob & I drove down to Mt. Vernon to see the tulips. Because of the cold weather and SNOW this years season is running about 2 weeks later than usual so there were quite a few of the fields that hadn't opened yet. But we caught a few.








We then drove to a neighboring town, La Conner to just play tourist and walk around. Cute little place but with VERY touristy prices. I just thought these were too funny!
No crabby patties here!


When's the last time you saw something like this outside of Frontierland at Disneyland?

And we also have a new member of the family. A BIG Anderson family welcome to Blacky Jr.!!

You are never too old for Build-A-Bear!


Um, can we order these jammies in MY size? A pirate puppy!

And last but certainly not least ~ our spring tradition with a different twist

This is using Rob's homemade, literally from the bean chocolate. Sorry, these are all gone. They were heavenly. You heard the choir singing right?!?!

Amber also had her spring concert last night and of course it was wonderful!!! She had a piano solo during one of the band songs and shocked the audience with her mad piano skills :O) She did awesome!!!