sorry chelsea for missing your b'day. no excuse, but i'm bad at b'day's. except for ellynn's and that is because she reminds me--alot.

sorry moni, life has been really busy since i started teaching again.

mindi, your story about the melted and mashed cake decorations was a big reminder of why i quit doing cake decorating. i used to do it for everyone for their b'day's and that would be their gift from us. i quit when i had spent the day doing a cake that had about a billion stars all over it. not very demanding talent wise, just time consuming. i had just finished and was getting us all ready to go out the door for the party when i believe it was your husband that reached up on the table and pulled the whole thing off and flipped it onto the floor. all those carefully executed stars were obliveated (phoneticly spelled). what a mess. that was it i decided it was best to give it up rather than feel like i was going to beat someone and like it.
mind you this wasn't the only "incident" in my cake decorating career, just the proverbial straw. the camping trip sounded like so much fun and the drive in like heaven. there were some people this weekend that were showing movies on the side of their trailor. it looked like so much fun.

meags has filled you in on this weekend somewhat. it was so much fun. we slept under the stars every night. one night it sprinkled a little, but not much. the kids are great little campers. vim (another of wilohm's nicknames) especially loves to do dishes and will do them for hours while jack and ben play. the whole campground is grass and is right along the river so you can watch the big ol' barges go past. we used to go up to the dam and watch people go thru the locks. for a long time after 911 they wouldn't let anyone on the dam which was no fun. we didn't have time to check it out this trip to see if things have lightened up. the locks are huge. if i remember correctly the drop is 103 feet. pretty impressive.
i remember the boat trips we would take with john and hazel when we would go up the river and thru those locks. it had to be good weather and almost no wind because at the confluence of the snake and the columbia it would be rough all by itself without the wind kicking it up. there were always white caps. it was soo much fun. we would go thru ice harbor and mcnary dams--different trips. verl helped build both of those dams i believe. i know for sure he worked on one of them because he told me about it. he also helped build hanford. the big atomic plant. my first home was a trailor in a trailor park that is now part of the restricted area at hanford. jack and hank, george and barry lived there too. i can remember my 1st hair cut. hank gave it to me. mom took me over to their trailor in my stroller. i think we had moved to maxi's trailor park by the time aunt jack was born. we moved to the house on 49 south yelm right before paula was born. i can remember mom and dad (arlene and verl)painting it and dad complaining about having to patch all the nail holes from the pictures the previous owners had hung. maybe it was harder then than it is now. . . that's the house paula and joan came home to when they were 1st born. the one picture of arlene holding a new baby on the couch and she is in the black and white checked dress with the big white collar is the day paula came home from the hospital. we moved to the house on sharon when i was 10 and we changed elementry schools from westgate to fruitland. sue and debbie beecher went to fruitland also so that helped, but it was scarey. that was 5th grade for me 3rd for jack and paula must have been in kindergarten.

it was so good to see john and hazel. they are both so sharp it's amazing. they have so many fun memories of hanging out with mom and dad. did you know that hazel was mom's (arlene) sister-in-law from her 1st marriage. hazel was dell zesiger's sister. one correction with meag's blog--john will be 91 this july. he takes such good care of everything. like meags said there wasn't a speck of dust anywhere. aunt hazel is as funny as ever. they sure miss mom and dad (arlene and verl) uncle john worked as security at hanford for years after it opened. so yes the sisters are some of the "down winders" you hear about which explains a lot about us and our off spring. dad's back got so bad working construction he couldn't stand up by the time he got home. that is when he went with prudential insurance.

anyway enough for memory lane. the trip was great fun. the only other big event was last weekend when we burned one of the burn piles. did i already write about this. we had so much fun. the flames were shooting 25 ft in the air. it was so hot that the kids were laying on the ground watching the fire it was raining and we were warm. we burned all the old fitzers from cory and meagan's yard so there were these big tangles of branches that were all glowing. it was like an igloo of fire. absolutely beautiful and hot!!! that was friday night--sunday it was still smoking. i went down and put 6 potatoes wrapped in foil in the coals--mon night we had baked potatoes. well 1 burn pile down and one to go.

there is a virtual tour of our house on line somewhere i will find out where

tony and jess sorry about the hard night, but the pictures were great.

love to all le anne