The cousins were in town, so we met them at Big Al's to celebrate Grace's 12th birthday, with some bowling and arcade madness. There's nothing like cousin time!
Nate had all the luck! He won not one, but two jackpots of 500 tickets on one game! Just like Vegas, baby!
Some very tasty birthday to cake to celebrate the sweetest 12 year old girl that I know.
About 24 hours ago Christopher pulled his tooth out, and Nate was feeling a little bit bummed that it wasn't his tooth. He was determined to have it out before bedtime on Sunday night~ and he did.
When he started having some worries, a $10.00 incentive helped to motivate. It worked.
This is what you should be looking for.
It was our turn to work in the Snack Shack for the baseball league, and both boys were really excited to help. Nate took the first shift, and he happily stocked and replenished the chips, filled the gummy worm jar, counted out licorice, and practiced his money skills by making change for his customer's orders.
This call wasn't like the usual talking to Grandaddy, Nana, or Aunt Leann in Florida. It wasn't like talking to G'ma in Salem, or the cousins in Seattle.
Finally...some baseball weather in Portland! Chris and Nate woke up excited today because they were actually going to have a game...and not only a baseball game, but a soccer game following it. A mixed-double-header!
Chris up to bat.
Nate getting ready to bat. This boy takes his baseball serious.
As soon as the baseball game was over, we ran home, changed out of baseball gear, and put on last Fall's soccer uniforms. The boys were asked to come back and fill in for some absences on their old team, and they were happy to help.
Nate was excited to see me before the performance!
His big moment.
Celebrating with a bowl of stone soup after the performance. Don't those glasses make him look scholarly?
A round of hoops on the blacktop (with Chris, in red) after school....
It was opening day for the Wilshire-Riverside baseball league. My baseball lovin' boys were giddy with anticipation, especially since this year they've stepped and are no longer t-ballers~they now play on Farm League.
The morning started off with a little bit of sunshine, but as the last few teams were running the bases, it started to rain. Still, it was a fun event filled with patriotism, community, and lots of cute boys in baseball uniforms.
The first game of the season was played today. All was going well for about the first 5 innings, and then there was a crazy downpour of rain and hail, the pitching machine quit working, and everyone was frozen. The game was called and we went home and defrosted.
Today is our 8th wedding anniversary. I was thinking back to when we met, and I realized that I had never written down our ‘story’. So, in celebration of 8 years together, it’s time to put it in writing so that Chris and Nate will be able to tell their kids someday. It finally doesn’t bother me to tell how we met, but believe me, we both hated to tell people what brought us together. What were the odds of meeting your spouse totally randomly via the computer? I remember the day well, because it was exactly two weeks after 9/11. I was teaching first grade, and had actually come home a bit early that day because I just wasn’t feeling good. The beginning of the school year is always very stressful, plus for the 2 weeks prior everyone wondered what was going to happen with our world. I had just bought myself an I-Mac computer (the big blue bubble kind) so I could check email at home. I logged on to AOL.
On the other side of the country, Dan was at home, continuing his job search. 9 months prior he had visited Oregon to visit his college buddy, Carrington, and fell in love with the city of Portland, and all that the Pacific NW has to offer. He returned to Tampa, Florida, and had decided that he was definitely going to move west, too. The planning started for this move across country, but the first priority would be for him to find a job. With the new-fangled thing called the 'internet,' Dan could research companies and search online. But job hunting (while on the opposite side of the country) in the high end construction field was not easy, especially while our country was in crisis---nobody was hiring or even willing to talk. Dan was networking with whomever he could, because you just never know.
Someone that he had been in contact with had given him a lead~ he needed to get in touch with a woman Kathy at the Inskeep Foundation…she’s a teacher. That’s all the information that he had to go off of, but he was going to track her down and network with her .
I was online/checking email at home when an instant message popped up. In that little box was some message from a screen name of ‘burnsfood’. He had done a search for ‘kathy’ and ‘teacher’…of course, my profile popped up because I am ‘kathy’ and a ‘teacher’. He asked if I by chance worked at this foundation. I said no, wrong Kathy. He told me that he was planning to move to Portland soon, and was job-hunting/networking. His words seemed nice enough, so we had a little exchange. He asked a few things about Portland.
The next day we could see that each other were online again at the same time. More I.M.’s were exchanged, and more personality came out. We would occasionally check in online, and from that little text box in the lower right hand corner of the screen, a relationship was blooming. We sent each other pictures of ourselves (this was of course, before there was social networking like Facebook) Even today, when I hear the greeting sound on AOL I go right back to those typewritten conversations back in 2001. You have to remember, online dating was just barely happening, and at that point only the ‘weird people’ would admit to looking for or finding for love on the computer.
Well, communicating without the spoken word can only happen so long. Dan eventually asked if he could have my phone number, and give me a call so that we could talk. After the first time we talked, I knew that he was the real deal. He was planning a trip in the next month to do some interviewing….we would get to meet each other in person.
Dan came to Portland for several days in early November to follow-up with some interviews, etc. and we met. We had such a great time together. Since we had spoken almost each day for almost a month prior to when we actually met, we felt like we already knew each other quite well. When he left to fly back to Tampa, I knew in my gut that this was the person that I was going to get married to. I think he knew, too. He spent the next month doing his final prep/wrapping up things in Tampa in order to get ready to move across the country.
Dan loaded up his Jeep Cherokee and headed out west in December. He had a room waiting for him at his friend Alex’s house. He settled into the life of an Oregonian, and life was good. He found a job, we moved in together, and a wedding proposal happened on the one year anniversary of the day we met face-to-face. (November 4th) We then got married the following March 22, 2003 at McMenamins Grand Lodge with a small group of about 40 of our closest friends and family.
We always laugh that he may not have found the other Kathy, but he did find the right Kathy.
We spent the weekend at Carrington/Christine/Sydney/Ole's vacation getaway house near Parkdale. It was tons of fun, and the weather cooperated on Saturday, too.
Work before play! Everyone got busy chopping firewood.
For some reason, this picture would only load sideways, but it shows Christopher on the newly installed zip-line that had us zipping through the air between two trees that were 125 feet apart.
Nate gets some love (high five and a kiss at the same time!) from Bailey, their awesome dog.
Dinner time!
Looking down over the evening action. If you look closely, you will see two blurry whizzes going by. That's Nate and Chris on the plasma cars. 
As we were finishing dinner, we heard the distant rumble of the Mt. Hood Railroad cruising by on it's dinner cruise. It was time to bundle up again and go to the tracks to place lots of coins down. We knew that the train had to come back by later in the evening.
Nate inspects his coin loot. Mission accomplished! He successfully smashed some pennies, dimes, eco-carwash tokens. Below, Christopher rides the zip-line. We're thankful for the fun weekend, and for great friends with really cool vacation homes. :) 
Today was Chris and Nate's first piano recital at Ethos. (hip-hip-hooray for Ethos!)
Nate sees his name in the program~I guess it's official that he will be performing!
I can't believe that Chris and Nate are 7! They had their birthday party today with a few friends and it was a really fun time. The party's theme was Minute To Win It, based on the t.v. show. These boys love competition and challenges, so this party theme was right up their alley.
They each invited 3 friends, and there was tons of energy! If you have not seen this show on t.v., the premise of the game is that the activity has to be completed within a minute, in order to win it. The first challenge of the party was Separation Anxiety. They each had to separate 30 m&m's by color into 6 separate cups. High pressure, for sure!
Challenge number two was called What a Racket. In this challenge, each contender had to move a tennis ball into the center of the tennis racket and have it sit there without moving for 3 seconds. Only one boy successfully did this challenge. Way to go, Erik!
Challenge number 3 was Bobble Head. Each boy had to reach 60 steps with the pedometer that was attached to their head. Lots of movement with this one!! (and sore necks)
Breakfast Scramble was challenge number 4. Each boy had to assemble the front of a cereal box that was cut into 12 pieces. High pressure with all those eyes watching!
A real crowd pleaser was Suck It Up. Each boy had to move 7 m&m's into a cup by sucking and attaching it to a straw. We had to trade out m&m's after a few rounds because 7 year old boys make lots of saliva. Yuck.
After all of these action packed challenges, the boys were ready for some food and celebratory cupcakes. On the menu: cheese pizza and Cheetos. Perfect for 7 year olds. 
Nate makes his wish.
Time to unwrap some birthday gifts.
All the boys. Sam, Agustin, Erik, Aidan, Aidan, Tyree, Nate and Chris.
We wrapped up the party with the show stealer~The Dizzy Mummy challenge. In this game each team of 2 boys had 1 minute to wrap a whole roll of toilet paper around a spinning boy. Christopher outdid himself on this one. Keep in mind, that he had just eaten pizza, cheetos, and a cupcake with frosting as red as blood. It was a bit too much and I'm really surprised that he didn't puke. Watch the video below to see it start to get ugly.
He may be smaller....but he's tougher.
Boy-0-boy was this one ever touted as the biggest snow that would ever hit Portland! For the past 3 days everyone was waiting in anticipation of this mega event. I can't say that it lived up to the hype, but I can say that it sure was nice having all of the schools closed for a snow day....which meant we were all able to stay home and enjoy the snow before it melted away a few hours later.
Harry is a Snow Bengal, after all....so we let him out to see if his native instincts would kick in. Not so much~he wanted to get back into the warm house.
