Settling In

Finally, I think, we are settled...at least for the time being. Everythings has been in upheaval for so long that it is kind of surreal to be able to sit back and allow life to fall back into routine. Our rental home is kinda snug, but it's not uncomfortable and we are enjoying it.

Kayleen and Cosette are in Disneyland with Grandpa and Grandma right now and will be coming home on Friday night. On Monday we will be starting school full swing. I already have a lesson plan and all of the material ready. I think school will seem very laid back after all of the packing, moving, and cleaning that we've been doing lately.

Daddy hasn't been taking very many pictures lately so I have none to post. I will try to get him to take some more and then maybe I will be able to have a more interesting post. :-) I just wanted to give a quick update on where we are at.

Since I don't have any recent pictures, I am putting one from our vacation in August. It is one of Jonathon and Ania serving time in the Astoria prison.

The Eye of the Storm

So much has happened in such a short space of time that I scarcely know where to begin. In less than a month we have gone to Summer Family Camp, then headed down the coast to Manzanita Beach, then come back around to our old home at Sierra Ct., finished packing it up, followed by a Labor Day weekend move to a rental home. Right now we are in the process of going back and forth between the two homes settling into one and spring cleaning the other in preparation for the new family to move in. Vacation this year truly felt like the eye of the storm preceded by a whirlwind of packing and followed by more packing and a move to a new house.

After all that...I've decided I'll start by catching y'all up on our vacation in Manzanita. As you can see, I've put a lot of pictures on again. There are so many beautiful ones that I had to pick and choose and couldn't post all of the ones that I would have liked to. If you're wondering how we could possibly have more pictures than the ones that I've posted, well...all I can say is that you just don't know my Daddy and his camera. :-)

On our first day at Manzanita, we went down to the beach and then walked back through town and got milkshakes. Jonathon and Ania got a little bit affectionate right outside of the ice cream shop.

We took our traditional family picture right near Haystack Rock and I even managed to get a picture of Daddy and Mommy. It's hard to get the camera out of Daddy's hands, but occasionally we get to snap a picture of him.

One of the days, we headed over to the Tillamook Air Museum. It is an amazing place! The building is about 10 stories tall and was built as a hangar for air blimps during WWI. Inside they had a huge display of fighter planes most of which were from WWII. They were all authentic planes used by the American, French, and German military.

While I was wandering around looking at pictures and reading little biographical sketches on some of the pilots, an older man walked up to the display board and was searching for the name of a pilot, Leanord Hays, on one of the pictures. I was in the middle of reading Leanord's biography at that moment and I asked him if he knew Leonard. He said that Leanord was his older brother.

Later when I saw him again, he pointed out a picture of the housing sight near where he grew up. I got to introduce him to Daddy, Mommy, and Jonathon and we got to talk for a while. His older brother, of course, had fought in WWII and he had fought in the Korean War. It was so fascinating and I felt so honored to be able to meet him.





They even had the front half of planes complete with all of the buttons and meters that fill the cockpits of real planes. I think the plane halves had been used in pilot training and they were there for the children (and grown-ups :-D) to climb in and explore.
































Ania gets a double kiss












We walked down to Ecola Beach again. It's a beautiful beach that is very popular with surfers. With the rumors of Great White Sharks moving into the coastal waters around Oregon, however, I would not have been too eager to be out that deep.

Ania loved the ocean! We tried to instill in her a healthy fear of it's power and danger, but it didn't seem to deter her. She loved to run out and jump the waves.

Austin got to go out and practice his bike riding skills. He is getting quite good. When he was first learning how to bike, he could not get the hang of the brakes. When he was headed for a wall, instead of applying the breaks, his arms and legs would shoot out from the sides of the bike and he would spread eagle himself against the wall. He seems to be doing much better now, though.

Climbing the Column in Astoria was a fun experience. The Column is located at the top of a tall hill and then the column rises up about 160 or so steps beyond that. The views are breathtaking!

Daddy had a special devotional with us 6 older ones in the evening and he and Mommy both had devotions in the mornings with the 3 younger ones.

During the evenings we went through Dicken's Little Dorrit as our marathon movie. Being 8 hours long, it kept us busy for a good 4 nights. The second to the last night we sat around the kitchen table and played a competitive game of Settlers of Catan.

Leisel and Lynnae Plotting and Collaborating

The picture below was a repeat of a triangle picture that we took several years ago. Except this time half of us were adult size and so it was not the most comfortable picture I've ever been in. It was pretty funny, though when we started stacking on top of each other and you have someone's knee digging into your hip and you're yelping and instructing them on how to shift their weight into a less painful position and then the next person gets stacked on top and the load gets that much heavier and everyone's giggling. I'm sure we looked quite a sight to everyone on the beach. After all it's not every day that you see a family of 11 piling on top of each other. A kind young lady ran over and offered to take the picture for us. She commented that she assumed we were forming the pyramid for a picture not just for the fun of it. You betcha, for the fun of it I would rather be jumping the surf instead of gaining a bruise on my back. :-D

Lynnae dared me to get completely wet in the cold water. I don't normally take a dare just for a dare's sake, but it was very tempting just to dive in completely...so I did. Not to be outdone, Lynnae did the same. We knelt down in the shallow water and let the waves splash over us. We didn't want to go out any deeper because of the riptides around that part of the coast.

All in all the vacation was wonderful. God is so good to give us that brief time of respite before the storm. He has been gracious through this whole process of moving, renewing our strength day by day. Now we are pretty much moved into the the rental and are a week away from handing over the keys to the new owners of our home. I will be so glad to be over with this part of the process. The Lord is very good.

Picture of the Week

Yes, these are chocolate pancakes. Lynnae made them for her. We are seeking to get some nutrition amidst all the business of packing and moving. :-D

Camas Days

Camas Days has come rolling around again. It is hard to believe that another year has gone by. I did a post last year on Camas Days and it was during that time that Mommy, Leisel, Lynnae, and Ania were away at Piatt. This time we got to go all together as a family which made it even more fun.

We started the day out with a blueberry pancake breakfast put on at the Methodist church just outside our little downtown Camas. For $20 we were able to get a breakfast of pancakes, eggs, sausage, orange juice, and coffee for our entire family.

Afterward we headed down to the main street in Camas where they had a big parade which lasted about 45 min. Everyone watched as different floats (the theme this year was Pirates), cars, motorcycles, and even horses went by. The children gathered along the sides of the street while the parade participants threw handfuls of candy at them as they passed by.

They even had a war veteran and army nurse drive by in an army car.

Ania sat safely in her stroller and just took it all in.

Later on in the day they had bathtub races. They are a lot of fun to watch. Groups of three form and one person sits in the freezing cold water and steers the bathtub while two others push it in a zig zag pattern around orange cones.

After every match while they were refilling the tubs one of the firemen would point the hose down the center of the street and all of the children (and some adults) would go running and get themselves soaking wet under the high pressure torrent.

O.K. Yes, Leisel and I did go running out there a couple of times, but the day was very hot and the cold water felt very good.

The day ended the entire family heading home to take showers and eat some leftover lasagna which we heated up for dinner.

New Blogs

After some slight deliberation, I decided to start a new blog. This is my main blog, but I wanted a place where I could record personal reflections on different topics, something that has just never seemed to fit in with a blog on the Spafford Family. So I decided to put my own personal musings elsewhere (http://solo-deo-gloria.blogspot.com/) and keep this blog devoted to the more interesting, newsy items of daily life in our house.

Lynnae also has started her own blog. She wanted a place where she could record some of the poems she has written and write little snippets of news about what she is doing. Her blog address is http://randomnessbylynnae.blogspot.com/. I think you will find her blog very enjoyable; it is very...well...Lynnae (And, if you don't know Lynnae, that means full of personality.)

Taking Boston by Storm

On Independence Day our entire conference group gathered on the Boston Commons at 8:00 in the morning. The morning was crisp and clear without the threatening heat of a Boston summer day and without the previous chill that we had been experiencing for the past couple of days.

Almost everyone showed up in costume, covering eras from Tudor to Regency to Colonial.

I got a chance to meet both Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin. They put together a film several years ago called Return of the Daughters which was a great encouragement to me at that time when I had decided to stay at home and take over the home schooling and meals for our family.

There were so many adorable little children at that parade. It made me miss all of my little siblings. I wished so badly that my whole family could have been there. They would have had so much fun.

Talk about ambitious, some of the costumes were just amazing! I don't know how the mothers and daughters found time to put all that work into the outfits, but the results were beautiful. It made me really want to go home and get out the sewing machine.

I wasn't sure at first whether I would join in the parade, but on that day, everyone, even the adults, became little kids and joined in the fun.

We marched all around the Boston Commons. Certainly a more picturesque and comfortable march than many of the soldiers faced who won our freedom in the Revolutionary War.

Below the picture shows a small section of our parade crossing the bridge.

The young men that led our parade were dressed in (what appeared to me) an almost exact representation of the old American military costume. Their mother had made their entire outfits by hand!

Somewhere near the front marched Mr. Foster, Mr. and Mrs. Phillips. (below)

We crossed the streets of Boston singing A Mighty Fortress is Our God, America, and other songs of faith and patriotism. We wanted to bring back to Boston some of the old spirit of patriotism and love for God that burned in the hearts and blood of our forefathers who fought for America. A spirit we have lost as we live on the borrowed resources that were bought for us at the dear price of the blood of our forefathers, but which we receive with little cost to ourselves and which we are far to ready to relinquish without a struggle.

Traffic in Boston was brought to a standstill as queens from the past and patriots in whose heart the spirit of America was burning still crossed the modern street that ran through the ancient heart of Boston.

That evening we went to the large grounds where over half a million people had gathered to view the Boston fireworks display. We heard the Boston Pops play the 1812 overture, the climaxes punctuated by canon shots.

The day ended with a spectacular show of fireworks on the bank of the Charles River.