Happy Easter

The Gish family, visiting from Idaho.

It was so nice to spend Easter services at church with our long-time friends. My sister Toni and her husband Chucky also surprised us by attending Easter service with us. It was a great and very moving service.

After church we hosted Easter lunch with my family. Mom and dad were both sick, as was John and Brandon, but everyone else was able to make it...even my preggo sister Andrea.

Here's Aaron and his crew. The girls were so cute with their curls, and you can see Becca's missing bottom tooth

Here is the Ernst family in our new Easter attire.

Becca and Alexis brought thier cute bunny, Cocoa and all the kids took turns holding him.




My parents bought the ham and potatoes (for potato salad) and I turned it into lunch!

Our pretty Easter table

That's it for now. I have more photos, but my hard drive is so full, I can't import them into iphoto...to be continued!

Catching up with the kids

On Wednesday, Natalie was invited to a Japanese themed birthday sleepover at our neighbors.

Natalie thought I was weird for putting chop sticks in her hair, but I could tell she was relieved when she opened the door at the party and all the other girls had chop sticks in their hair as well. I was surprised to learn after the party that Natalie was teaching her friends how to hold and use the chopsticks. I guess she did really well in a game where you have to pick up Kix with chopsticks, so they all wanted to know her tricks!

Here are all the neighbor girls (minus one who arrived after we took the picture)

Here is Zander at his Preschool spring program. His class was singing that monkey song that goes "five little monkeys swinging from a tree...teasing Mr. alligator, can't catch me..."

His class all dressed up in monkey hats and tails and looked so cute! Here you can see Zander doing the hand motions for "along came Mr. Alligator quite as can be...SNAP!"

Jog-a-thon

Thank you to everyone who helped contribute to Natalie's Jog-a-thon fundraiesr earlier this month. Natalie ran 42 laps and raised $101!!! The combined total money raised by all the kids was over $10, 000!!!

Everyone who ran got a certificate and a gold medal.

Because Natalie (in the black shirt) got over $100 in pledges, she was one of 70 kids who got to throw a pie at the teachers. She couldn't wait to throw a pie at her PE teacher!

The most popular targets were the principal in blue and the PE teacher in green.

The kids were also rewarded with a fun Zone, which we all went to today after school. There were scooters, 3 bounce houses...

Dance Revolution

...and video games. Here Zander is learning how to "bowl" from a nice 3rd grader using the wii game system. He LOVED it. He even loved the Dance Revolution. At the end when his score basically read..."sorry you lose," Zander, who obviously can't read, said "I'm the winner!!!" and jumped up and down for joy! Now that's self-confidence for ya!

P.S. Natalie still needs to collect money from some of you who pledged...Thanks again!

St. Patty's Day

Early in the morning, before leaving for school the kids put out their shoes for the Leprechaun (they remembered him from his visit last year!) I didn't think they would remember and didn't have my "supplies" so after picking up Zander from Pre-school, I stopped by the store and used my stealth shopping skills to buy their treats without them noticing! The kids checked their shoes promptly after coming home from school...and at least once an hour after that. Finally the Leprechaun showed up and the kids were so excited. They got Andes mints and Sunkist fruit jellies and mini gold slinkies (I couldn't find those chocolate gold coins to save my life, so I thought the slinkies would be a good substitute.)

I made the usual green eggs and ham for breakfast. For Lunch, the kid ate sandwiches with green Jello, green apple fruit roll ups and had green snap peas an a mint Oreo for dessert. Then for dinner I made corned beef and cabbage with baby red potatoes and green buttermilk biscuits.

A week filled with friends and family

On Tuesday Dan and I hosted a dinner for his former boss and co-workers from Portland Advertising and Design. This is a really great group of guys...and some serious story tellers in this bunch.

Dan, Stan (former boss), Mo and Ben.

I've been camping with Mo and Ben (and Dan of course!) and they are super funny. Stan loves to talk and we would always yak on the phone when I called for Dan. Sometimes I would talk with Stan longer than with Dan! Anyway, it has been years since we have all seen each other and it was so great to catch up. I was still recovering from my cold, so Dan even made the dinner...well, most of it anyway! For the past (I'm guessing 6-7 years) Dan has designed and updated Mo's website for his door and window company. You can check it out here...and be sure to call Mo if you ever need windows. Mo will be flying to Egypt (where he was from originally) to get married in a week or so. As it turns out Ben is a very talented painter and has some of his paintings here. I think they're great, you should check them out.

Last night we had our friends Shawn and Katie over with their 3 kids. It was great catching up with them and having their kids over to play too. Sadly, I left my camera in the car and don't have any pictures.

Today was my nephew Brandon's first birthday party so in keeping with the Roush family first birthday tradition, my sister borrowed my lamb cake mold and made Brandon a lamb cake! I bought it at an antique store, but it's the same cake mold my mom used for our first birthdays and I think even my grandma used one for my dad and siblings.

"...and he saw that it was good!"

Brandon got lots of goodies for his birthday, so I'm sure he will have plenty of fun playing with everything.

...but really...who needs toys, when you've got grandpa?

Brandon couldn't get enough!

...and it looks like grandpa was having fun too!!!

Not long after we got home from Brandon's party, we were out the door again to a surprise 50th birthday party for our friend and neighbor, David.

His wife had him pick up his brother at the airport and David had no idea that we were all waiting for him when he arrived home.

The kids, especially Zander, were drawn to the live music (mandolin and guitar). These musicians were top notch and really set the mood.


A big ol' piece of cake (angel food I think) for the birthday boy! It was a fun party and Dan and I got to mingle and meet lots of great people.

Okay, this is totally off topic, but I'm noticing that my photos look a little grainy on my monitor...Do they look that way to anyone else? Last weekend, my display stopped working on my digital camera, so I can't see the photos until I upload them and for some reason, they seem a little lower res than I am used to. Let me know what you think.

Our trip to Seaside

Last weekend our friends the Mickles invited us along to stay at a time share in Seaside. We didn't have a direct view of the ocean, except from the patio, but we did have a great view of my favorite house in Seaside. It's that cute yellow farmhouse B&B with a turit and screened porch. I've admired this house since I first noticed it when I was in high school.

I tried to post thsese pictures a week ago, but the blogger server was giving me error messages, so I gave up and then got sick, lost my voice etc and just haven't gotten back to it until now...because I am procrastinating putting the laundry away!

Here we are at the pool as the sun is setting. It was soooo coooold...until we got in the pool, then it was warm, and the hot tub was even better!!! Ahhhh!

The kids all had fun playing in the sand.

On the way home we stopped at the landmark Camp 18 Restaurant for lunch.