1st day of school

The first day of school. Can't believe it is here. Keith off to his first day of middle school, Kelly into 2nd grade. Hard to believe. Keith only got lost once. :) Kelly got into the swing of things pretty easily. I'll have to have Keith write a post about how he's liking middle school! My kiddos are growing up to quickly!

Spirit Lake Weekend

We have have been busy! But now it's all coming to an end. School is back in and so we will settle down and get back into the routine of school and activities. Not that everything comes to a halt, but we do get a schedule back. Which I enjoy. I didn't get a chance to do a post on our Seattle trip. We had a lot of fun. Kelly walked over 17,000 steps at the Pacific Science Center. We enjoyed Underground Seattle and Pike Place Market with my sister. And then had a great dinner at Kathy and Gregs house. We celebrated Gregs 60th birthday. My how time flies. We got to go to church with Uncle Kit, Aunt Jan, and Adam. And they took us to Red Robin for lunch afterwards before we headed out of town. Thanks to everyone who helped make the trip to Seattle so much fun. I love catching up with each other. We don't do it often enough.

Last weekend we spent time with Mom, Dad and Kristin at Spirit Lake. Grandpa and Grandma Fowler joined us one day and we celebrated Dad's 60th birthday and Moms 57th birthday.
Keith and Kelly enjoyed fishing. They didn't catch any huge fish, but caught a lot of them.




We celebrated Dad and Mom's birthday. All of Mom's pictures are on her camera, so I don't have any to put on this post, but I got some great ones of Dad!


The dock at the cabin had this great springy diving board. It was so cold all weekend we didn't really use it except to escape Maddy and fish off of.

I love this picture of my Grandma and Dad. They were having a nice chat on the dock together. We really enjoyed our visit with Grandma and Grandpa. Thank for coming up guys.

The boat rides were cold. One time it even rained, but they were still fun.



Mom and Dad always impress us all with their water skiing abilities. This weekend was no exception. Of course Steve was giving Dad a hard time, trying to get him to start off the diving board! Thank goodness Dad did not give into the pressure!




Most of the weekend was spent just relaxing, laughing (till we almost wet our pants!), fishing, driving the remote control boat Dad and Mom bought, and the kids swimming. I think Kristin swam for two minutes. :) It was a really fun weekend. Thanks Mom and Dad for the great memories. We love you guys.

New Washing machine

I got a new washer! I love it. I've gone crazy washing everything in sight. I think I'm finally at a point were I have nothing left to wash. :) Maybe I could wash our sleeping bags. As you can see from the second picture we are not going to have it leak into Keith room again. Steve has a contraption set up to run straight into our drain. Hopefully we never have to test it!

Garlic Festival in Kettle Falls

Last Sunday we went with some friends of ours to China Bend Winery in Kettle Falls for a garlic festival. The advertisement for it said there would be food, arts, crafts, live music and wine tasting. It boasted about it's organic wines and foods. We asked our friends Heather and Paul Crooks to go with us. They like garlic and it had been awhile since the four of us got together without children. It turned into a three hour car ride one way. That was fine. We had great conversations and I thought the car ride went pretty quickly. As we are driving the last 21 miles to the winery, we were noticing that we did not passed a single car. Probably not a good sign. By the time we got to the winery we all needed barf bags because the road was bumpy and curvy. First we walk down the road from the parking and we come to a "Security Man" collecting $5.00 entry fee. (O.K. the magazine didn't say anything about that, but oh well) You can go to my link for Girl Power and Heather has all the photos of the day, but it was like we had walked straight back to the 60's. Tie die and dread locks everywhere. There were only two food booths, which weren't all that great and then two booths had been set up with garlic items. There was a lady doing massage and a man telling people their futures. The live music left little to be desired. All this being said, we had a great time. I know that sounds weird, but we just made the most of it. We laughed a lot, drank some good wine, (don't worry Steve didn't) and made some great memories. Steve tucked Million dollar bill tracks behind some of their posters for future events, and some kids got ahold of it and took it all over the place showing them to people. At one point Paul and Steve headed over to the Fortune Teller to see if they could witness to him. Make sure to check out Heather's blog with the pictures. We positioned ourselves in some of the pictures so we could see the Hippies in the background. :)

We decided to go to dinner on the way home and were going to stop at a Mexican place in Chewelah that Steve and I had eaten at before, but it was closed. The only other place that was open other than McDonald's was a bar and grill called the Sportsman. We were pleasantly surprised. The food was great and the man serving us was from Ephrata PA 20 minutes from where Steve grew up. That was pretty cool.

Thanks Paul and Heather for being such good sports. Next time we do something like this we'll check into it a little more. Kristin says her friend Evan could have told us it would have been like that. (His parents live in Kettle Falls.) But I don't know that I would have changed the day. We really enjoyed hanging out with you guys, and it was an experience we may never have again with some great laughs! Glad we were able to have them with you!

What a morning!

Yesterday I got a new haircut. It's very different than what I had before. I even got highlights! I think I like it. So, I was getting ready to fix my hair and was kind of excited to see how easy or not easy it was to get it to look like Jenny had it yesterday. We all know it never looks as good as the day you get it cut. Keith came into the bathroom and said he had something to show me in his bedroom. I asked what and he said he just had to show me. Keith struggles a bit with putting his thoughts into words. (Could just be a male thing) So I said I'm not going downstairs until you tell me what I'm going to see. (I was not expecting it to be what he said.) He said when he walks near his closet he sinks and it feels wet. Oh great! I head downstairs sure enough our two year old washing machine is leaking out the bottom! It's a mess! Luckily we have a carpet cleaner so I got that out and started sucking up the water. Then started to think what if it's still leaking then I'm fighting a never ending wet battle, so I called Steve, found out how to turn off the water and ran the machine on spin to make sure all the water is out. At this point I've pulled up part of the carpet and the pad is soaking. Steve may have to pull up more when he gets home. WHAT A PAIN. Why can't they make appliances like they used to? I've had a couple fridges go out in our apartments lately and they were 20 years old. I don't think the new ones we've bought will last as long. I guess I can look on the plus side. I've been wanting a front loader. :)

Made It!

I weighed in yesterday and lost 2.4 pounds. Making the total 31.8! I'm so happy. I'll write about it again when I've made my goal.

29.4 and counting...

For those who know me, I have always struggled with my weight. Last February, I decided it was time to do something about it. I wanted it to be a life time solution too. Not something I would do and then gain it all back again. So, I talked to my doctor and he said Weight Watchers. This program has been awesome. My original goal when I started was to lose 20 pounds by Aug. 1st. I have lost 29.4 pounds. Last week I didn't weigh in because I had VBS, but this Monday I will weigh and I am certain I will be over 30 pounds gone. The support I've gotten has been wonderful and the encouragement from friends and family has been a real motivator. I have been donating to Good Will, all the cloths that have become to big (I don't want an option of gaining the weight back!) and I have gone down three pants sizes. I'm not buying a bunch of new cloths yet because I still have another 20 pounds to go. But it feels so good to see my closet emptying. Lucky for me I kept some of my old smaller cloths, so I am not completely without. As I've pulled out old cloths and gotten rid of my bigger cloths it's been like getting a new wardrobe. It feels so good to be back in them. And eventually, my smaller cloths will be bigger cloths. :) I'm sharing this because I'm getting to the point that I was when I felt pretty good about myself after I had Keith, but I'm not done yet and I don't want to be satisfied until I lose at least another 20 pounds. So, this is my way of putting it out there to be held accountable. So pray for me as I continue, I'm getting close and am so excited to see the end results.