Some Happenings...

We had a "work day" over at our house about a week ago so that we could clean up our garage for Camille's homecoming. Some of out friends came over to help us out, which helped it to get done faster. But with friends (especially the Minnesotans:), there will always a water fight of some sort. It always seems that it starts because of a Forsman...hmmm...I wonder if that is a coincidence?Then, when we thought all the fights were over, we were attacked be bandido's!! AI! It was quite interesting. ...then, we Stephanie and Ben got into a huge fight about who wanted to wipe down the grill and pulled out there shotguns!!! Oi Vey! Luckily, it ended peaceably...well, almost peaceably.

After those three fearsome battles, we were finally able to get back to business. Here is Jessica and Elliott finishing up the chairs.
After we had finished working, we went to the midnight showing of the Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. It was soooooo FUN! I think you should all go and see that movie! It was very fun and we love seeing how many people we can get to come with us! CRAZY!!!!! Well, I'll blog more later! BYE! ~Hope :)

Hair Day and Cookies in May

So we have been busy around our house lately. Hair cuts and grass cuts...Finlay, we have some green! All three of the boys needed a desperate hair cut, but i was only able to capture one on camera. Here is Ben getting his hair shaved off...He didn't really want to at first....But then it came to this...Which I thought looked a little to much like Alfalfa from the little rascals. :)But, not to worry, we did give him the full buzz cut. :) And here is our dear friend/adopted brother in a way Ben Wilson. We had gotten cookie dough mix (yes, i know...we didn't make this from scratch...but it was good!) and Ben, who didn't really make cookies to often, wanted to help us out by making them. Then, he got this idea to make a pizza cookie...and this is how it turned out...well, we did put frosting on it...and Ben pressed his hand into the center of it...But it was still good!
well, that's a few of the happenings at our house. All I could come up with right now. lol. I will post again very soon!!

From Weekends to Washington to Wild...

Hey Y'all. That's weird, I get back from Washington [state] and I'm speaking with a Texian accent. lol. Well, some of you may know that about two weeks ago we had about 12 extra kids over at our house as there parents were up at a Home school conference, Mache. It was fun and crazy. We had all of them in our living room and this is how it looked. Here are some of them at the table eating pancakes. It was amazing how we were able to fit them all around it! I couldn't even fit them all in this picture!!! :)Since I was playing that night at a coffee shop in Osceola, we got to do our hair. Here are Grace and Molly O'Connor, our cousins, with their hair up in what we call a "Birthday Bow." And, as I mentioned, I had gone to Washington. I actually went there with my mom on business, but it was awesome!!! I have never been on an airplane before, and it was great (except when I really had to go to the bathroom on take-off and wasn't aloud to!)! We also brought "Camille" with. But it we kind of smuggled her in! :) lol.I was totally in awe of the magnificence of the land from the plane! I cant believe that God could have created all that! But he did! Wow! It is so amazing! It was cool how there were some places full of snow and some bright green! This was a small chunk of snow that I took a picture of. Some mountains from on high. I believe that these were the Cascade Mountains or somewhere near there. We landed in SeaTac, WA at 1:30 p.m. Which was very confusing given the fact we left Minneapolis at 11a.m. and it was a 3 hour flight and it would have been 3:30p.m. when we arrived there...Man, that is really confusing! It was awesome, though! We had know idea of direction when we landed so we wouldn't have known where we were going to go, though we did have a map Jessica Wilson "hand wrote" out for us. So we went to go get our rental car once we had landed, but they wouldn't let us have one!! So we had to wait for two hours for my dad, who was in Minnesota, to get everything straightened out! It got to be sooooo long! I just sat there in mental shock thinking: "Whoa, we are going to be stranded here, in the Seattle airport, with no sense of where the highway was and no way home!!!!" I was freaked... We finally did get a car, a Minnie van actually, and headed off to Squim, WA to meet the Hines family. It was an amazing drive!! Awesome views; it was amazing how the scenery can change from lush, green hills to mush, snow hills. After we spent some time at the Hines' we went out for diner at Applebees; just mom and I. I had a Margarita, which was interesting...and Camille had a Martini. lol. :) We stayed right next to the Olympic Mountains, which was SO AWESOME!! We were lucky enough to see them at night and the morning before we left. It is usually so cloudy in WA, I didn't think we would see them! But God happened to open the sky just for us! We could actually see a couple different Mountains: Mt. Angles, Mt.Pleasant, Elk Mt., Mt. Deception and a couple others. I don't really know what these ones are, but I am pretty sure one is Mt. Angles. Squim is right on the border of CANADA, so we were able to drive right to the border and see the Canadian mountains (I don't know there names).

We left Wed. morning for Seattle, which was two hours away. It is weird how many coffee shops and espresso bars there are in WA! I mean, there had to be at least 200 between Sequim and Seattle! Seriously! Not one Bar! Here is one Coffee shop we stopped at that was made from a train.

Then, we went on a Ferry for the first time! It was really cool! We got scared at first, because when mom asked some guy who worked there how long it was going to take (we had been previously told 30 min.), he said, very seriously, "oh, about 31/2 hours...depends on the tides." Mom's face paled. Our flight left at 3p.m. and it was already 11:30a.m.!!! O dear! We were wondering what to do in that split second of panic when the man laughed and said he was joking! Oi! We were scared a good one!

Since it was our fist time on the Ferry, we, of course, had to get a picture for/with Camille. :) We actually almost left her up on the deck!!! Yikes! But mom remembered in time and went up and got her!

And our beloved GPS system that we never really got...
That was our trip to Washington [state] and back...and also our trip with watching all those kids at our house> Good Times...I'll write again soon! ~Hope

SPRING! Finally...but with spring comes...

Mud. That is what we now have. But I am not complaining, mind you. I am very happy about it all. That means summer will soon be here! Yippee! Well, we have already gotten stuck in the mud with our van. We were heading into the back field to get my brothers to go someplace and that's when we got in deep. :) It was almost funny, though. We should have known better than to do it in the first place. :)

We didn't get it out until the next morning, actually. When the ground had not yet thawed all the way. We woke up at 5am and pushed it out...it was crazy!!! Also funny, because we barely had to push it and it came out! :) Then we all went back to bed...

The boys stayed awake and tended the fire...very manly of them, I think. It was really cute.

And the infamous mud...Actually, this is not the real mud that we got stuck in. But this is mud none the less! So there! I am very happy that spring is finally here, and even though mud gets in more places than snow, I am loving it!

So everyone have a great summer and stay out of the mud.! :) well...you can play in it if you want, just keep your cars away! Hugs!~Hope:)

I don't have a camera...camera died

Hey everybody. Sorry, but I don't have any pictures this time! I did have a camera at one point...and I still do! But it has since then died. :( So sad. Ah well, than I will have to just write what we have been up to; which I don't mind doing, actually. -
We have been busy lately. Mom is keeping the house clean and schoolwork flowing. She also manages to drive us all over the place and keep her head! Dad is getting ready for all this up and coming projects, especially with the granola bars. We are so excited! Stephanie is home for a "permanent spring break," which is nice. She already has a job at a coffee shop right here in Chisago and she is loving it! We are all getting ready for Camille's return to the states. She is going to be graduating this year, so things are really exciting over here getting ready for that and her homecoming. I am keeping busy with fixing meals, cleaning, working, homework and Bible quizzing. I am really looking forward to this last one! We quiz on all of Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colosians and Philemon. I am really excited!! I am also going to be playing at a coffee shop in Osceola on the 19th. of April (starting 6pm). The place is called Uptown Espresso. Really cool place with great coffee (I am not just saying that, either!); you should all come and join me! Abbi is in Wisconsin working with our grandpa. He makes clocks out of wood, but has recently started to make wooden picture frames for this one company. He was getting a little swamped by the orders so he asked if Abbi would come and help. Cool for her! She will be up there for a week. Noah, Ben and Elliotto are just busy being boyz. They are loving the mud outside. But I must say, I don't know about the rest of Minnesota, but I am sick and tired of all of this snow! And its not even that really! More like slush, actually. Blah! I hope it rains really, really hard and just washes it all away! I am ready for flowers and grass and shorts...I am ready for SPRING!