The County Fair

It's that time of year again--the fair is in town. We told the kids that since we have taken them to Disneyland AND Six Flags this year, we are not shelling out money for fair rides. Julianne and Elisa decided to use their own money to buy a bracelet that allowed them unlimited rides. Caleb opted to go swimming with his friends.

Brad was working, so we three girls headed to the fair. When we arrived, the girls made a bee line for a ride that is new this year: the Super Shot. After being harnessed into the chair, it raises veeeeeeery slowly to a height of 100 feet. There is a little awning of sorts, so the rider can not see how far from the top they are. Once it reaches the top, it suddenly drops the rider and allows them to free-fall almost to the bottom, where it quickly slows down and then stops. The girls loved it! In fact they immediately went on it again. Take a look:


Julianne spent the day taking Elisa on the rides while I got to do something I've never done before: visit the exhibits at my own leisurely pace. I had such a good time looking at the exhibits, letting a little calf suck on my fingers, and petting a Grand Champion pig that the son of one of my host families raised.

I met up with the girls several time through the day to watch them go on rides, tour the horse barns, watch them go on rides, buy them some food, and watch them go on more rides. It was a full day, but they had a blast and still were not ready when I insisted we leave at 10:00 p.m.

Seven and Sweet

My baby is seven! How did this happen? Much to our surprise, she did not want to have a birthday party; she wanted to do something special with the family. We started celebrating on Saturday when we went to Coos Bay and let her make all the decisions. First we went to lunch at Saphires Mongolian Grill. We told our server that it was Elisa's birthday, so they sang to her and let her choose one of their fondue desserts. It was delicious and there was plenty for all of us: Granny Smith apples with a chocolate-caramel sauce and chopped peanuts. Mmmmmmmmm.......


After lunch we went to see Ratatouille, which was a darling movie about a rat that can cook. The movie was funny, entertaining, and wonderful--even if it did endear us to a rat. The movie was great, but even better was the fact that we were all together watching it.

After the movie, Elisa used her birthday money to do some shopping at Walmart, and by then it was time to head home.

Sunday was her real birthday, and she wanted to keep right on celebrating! She asked to go out to dinner and we reminded her we had gone out the day before. She said, "That was my birthday lunch. This is my birthday dinner...." I guess we are pushovers because we took her to dinner. You only turn seven once, right?

The best garden we've ever had...

It seems that each summer Dad Owens sends photos of his beautiful garden and remarks that it's the best one yet. We decided to get started on the family tradition, and we're giving ourselves plenty of room to grow. Nonetheless, we are quite pleased with our single tomato plant (the currently has 16 tomatoes) and are really looking forward to sinking our teeth into a nice, ripe, red tomato.

Swim lessons: The Grand Finale

Today was the last day of swim lessons and all I can say is WOW! Caleb is amazing in the water now, and he's decided he wants to be a lifeguard when he's old enough. The pool manager is happy about that!

Elisa has had her first experience working toward a goal. As part of her swim lessons each day, she has had to jump off the diving board and swim back to the side. However, when we've gone during public swim time, the lifeguards wouldn't let her be in the deep end of the pool until she could pass "the test". The test is swimming the width of the pool using the crawl stroke. I was disappointed to hear this, because she was nowhere near able to swim that far. When she first learned about this rule, she cried and cried because all she wanted to do was go off the diving board. The lifeguards were firm, and wouldn't even let her be in the deep end with me.

I told her that I understood her disappointment, but that she should use it to motivate her to work hard and learn to swim all the way across. She has been swimming every chance she got, and last night we went to Family Night Swim at the North Bend pool, where she was able to be in the deep end. She jumped of the diving board over and over, and even did the rope swing and loved it. She just loves jumping into the deep water!

Today, near the end of her last lesson, she told her teacher she wanted to swim across the pool so she'd be allowed to jump off the diving board during public swim. They let her try, and she did it!!! And let me tell you, she was one proud, excited little girl when she got out of the pool. She said, "Everytime I got a little tired, I just thought, 'I want to go off the diving board.....I want to go off the diving board...' and I kept on swimming."

1...2....3....GO!!!

What's more fun than going swimming with your friends in the summer?

The Deep End

My handy-dandy new camera allows me to record short videos. Here's a good view of Elisa's progress at swimming lessons, recorded this morning.

Some guard dog

Real intimidating, huh? Oh well...I guess even a ferocious guard dog needs a break once in awhile.

Little Fishies

Caleb and Elisa reached the end of their first week of swimming lessons, and they surpassed my wildest imaginations of what they would accomplish.

Elisa can swim quite well underwater, and she continues to work on her crawl stroke and back stroke. On Thursday her instructors took her (and her classmate) to the deep end of the pool using a kickboard. After they got the feel of swimming in deep water, they got to try jumping off the diving board holding a noodle. (Click here if you don't know what a noodle is.) After several jumps with the noodle, the kid got to jump in solo--with no flotation device. When they came to the surface, the instructor would hand them a kick board to use to get to the side of the pool. Elisa looooooved jumping off the diving board and could hardly wait to try it again on Friday. After several jumps, I suggested she try swimming to the side of the pool without a kickboard. She tried--and succeeded--and was thrilled!

Caleb is past "kiddie" swim lessons. He is doing real swim strokes, and doing them quite impressively! In fact, he's done so well that his teacher decided to bump him up a level. Yet despite his strong swimming skills, he was nervous about going into the deep end, but he knew it was coming. The teacher finally had him go off the diving board. The first time he jumped off hesitatingly...squatting down at the end of the board and sort of stepping into the water. The next time was with more confidence, and now he has become unstoppable! I took him to the afternoon open swim and he jumped off the diving board 23 times. This set of lessons has definitely been worth every penny!

Our little Smarty-Pants

We all know the kids are smart, but now we have more proof. Homeschooled kids are required to take a standardized test every few years, and this was the year for Julianne and Caleb. We got their test scores back and they both did great!

The test covered several aspects of language (vocabulary, grammar, etc.) and math. Their scores were given on a percentile (not a percentage), which means the score shows how they did in comparsion to national standards.

Caleb scored in the 81st percentile, meaning he did better than 81% of all kids that took the test. He scored at grade level in one section and above grade level in the rest of the test.

Julianne did AWESOME. She scored in the 99th percentile, which is the highest score available! For one section of the test it lists her at grade level 11, and for all the other sections it lists grade level 12+.

They were both glowing when they got their results and we are very proud of them. I am not a fan of standardized tests and wouldn't test the kids if it weren't required....but it sure is nice when they do well. :-)

As I was saying..

Last night at church, someone asked me what we are up to. I replied that June was busy seeing off the exchange students--especially Igor--and then with our trip to San Francisco. August will bring the arrival of next year's students, so for now we are taking it easy.

The scheduling part of my brain had apparently fallen asleep, because today was clear evidence that July is not a slow month. All three kids started swim lessons today. Juilanne wanted to take private lessons, so hers are bright and early at 8:00. She likes her teacher and the first lesson went well. Whew.

After her lesson, she has just enough time to change clothes and get ready to head to the blueberry fields where she is earning some extra money again this year. She loves it, but they .certainly put in long days.

Right after Julianne leaves, it is time to take Caleb and Elisa to their lessons. We decided to do group lessons because 1) they are cheaper and 2) they run for 2 weeks (private lessons are 1 week). I took the kids to their "group" lessons and was pleasanly surprised to find that Caleb is the only one in his group, and Elisa's group only has 2 kids, but also has 2 teachers. This was one of those nice little unexpected blessings that the Lord gives "just because".

Caleb and Elisa both impressed me with swimming skills I didn't know they had, so I think these lessons will benefit them greatly. They changed into dry clothes and I took them directly to day camp. Child Evangelism Fellowship runs a free day camp one week each summer. This is the first year Elisa has been old enough and she loves it!

While they were at camp, I ran into Coos Bay and worked at the radio station. I returned just in time to pick them up.

Julianne got home right at dinner time, had a quick bite and then headed up to do the "farm chores" for some friends of ours that are on vacation. The rabbits' hose burst and the fish's filter broke, so Brad had to go help her with some repairs.

Bedtime is finally within reach and I am ready!

Our weekend

In the interest of keeping this blog going, I am posting again even though I still don't have any new pictures to upload. I lost my old camera in San Francisco while we were in Chinatown. I don't know if I set it down (which doesn't seem likely) or if someone snagged it out of my purse, but either way it is gone. The camera wasn't working properly and I'd been saying I was going to get a new one, so losing the camera wasn't so upsetting. However, there were some great pictures of the kids in SF on the camera, and I was disappointed to lose those.


Anyway... I got a new camera in California as my early birthday present. I absolutely love it! It is easy to use and takes great pictures. I haven't uploaded the software to my laptop yet, so I can't upload pictures from the camera to the laptop to the blog. I will get to this soon.


We had a fun day yesterday at the annual dog show in Bandon. The dogs are so beautiful and so well groomed, and we thought it was particularly nice to pet so many dogs and have NO doggy smell on our hands! A whippet took Best in Show, in case you were curious.

Today after church we rushed home for a quick lunch, then returned to the church to load up the church van with some of the youth group and head to Coos Bay. Our local Pregnancy Resource center was holding their annual Walk for Life, and our youth group volunteered to help serve food. Actually Julianne initiated this by talking to the center and then recruiting the helpers. The kids had a great time and their service was much appreciated. Caleb and Elisa came along, and after finishing his burger, Caleb asked if he could help too. They had him wash his hands and they put him to work. Brad and I were encouraged to see our kids growing up and serving on their own.

Tonight we returned to church for the presentation by the team that recently returned from a missions trip to Mexico. Following the presentation was a dessert potluck, which provided lots of incentive for Caleb and Elisa to sit through the presentation without asking to leave. :-)

Long time no see

You know it's been too long since you've updated your blog when you can't even remember your own website address!

I typed in what I thought it was and found myself at Kari Smith's blog, reading about her adventures working with a summer youth ministry. You can check it out at http://karisadventures.blogspot.com. The difference between her and me is she has adventures--plural, whereas I guess my life (or at least my blog) is just one big adventure.

Lots has happened since I last blogged, so let's just hit the highlights and call it good:

• Igor left on June 18. He is not one for tearful good-byes, so the airport was a very different experience from last year, and I had to save my tears for later. I miss having him around, and our family conversation is now filled with references to him and quotes of his favorite phrases.
• Brad's regional meetings with Edward Jones were in San Francisco this year, so the kids and I joined him and we made it into a family vacation. We had a great time walking on the wharf, riding a ferry, visiting Chinatown, and touring AYUSA headquarters. After the conference, we went to Vallejo (30 minutes north of SF) and spent a day at Six Flags. WOW! Awesome rides!
• I have been busy finding host families for next year, which is always fun but also a lot of work. I have some great families that are really excited about hosting, and I've placed students from some countries I've never worked with before, so that will be fun.

OK, I'm sure there were more than three highlights in the past three months, but they are not surfacing in my brain, so we will call it good and move forward. I'll add more later if I think of it--and if I can remember my own website.