A bit of Halloweeny Time Fun

Our Fam Halloween Party, OCTOBER 2020

Halloweeny Foods.

Charades, thanks to Brooklynne and Ashton for planning the games.

Making Tye-Dye.

The kids Tye-Dye turned out pretty cool! Looking forward to Halloween this year!

Back to School and Feeling a Bit Fallish 2020

September 2nd, 2020 then finished October 20, 2020

Spencer Junior 11th Grade, Orting HS and The Pierce County Skills Center IT and Cyber Security

Josh 8th Grade Orting MS

Brooklynne 5th Grade, Ptarmigan Elementary School, Mrs Scott

Saydee Kindergarten, Orting Primary School, Mrs Phelps (Over-sees Plan B)

All of the kids this year went with the PLAN A schooling except for Saydee who we put in the PLAN B remote learning school year (which is online.) Our wifi in our home is less than good (living in the middle of the woods has it's perks but also has it's down-falls...the internet connection would be a BIG DOWNFALL, especially with the amount of users in our home.) The Cable and Wifi have been a challenge ever since we moved here even with the best possible access we have to it, it stinks! Plan A consists of a Teacher and Classmates where the students log in at certain times and with certain classes each day with attendance taken, set assignments each day and throughout the week. Plan B gives the student the curriculum and a weekly schedule but the student or family decide when the best tine for the student is to get it all done and taken care of through out the week, then they check in once a week or as needed with a teacher who over-sees their progress through out the year. We went with this plan for Saydee only because of the wifi and all of the kids needing to log in at the same time, with getting bumped off or bad connections, we were trying to limit the frustrations. It has been nice this way so when it's convenient and when the other kids are off-line or finished with their school work, I go to the computer or lap top with Saydee and help her through her weekly assignments. 

When our city here in Graham was out electricity, Brooke and Ellie went with me to fulfill a craving at Ivars that I've been having for some time. It had been a long time so in celebration of my dad's b-day in Sept, the week of the 13th (I remember going to Ivars and him sharing his Clams with us kids growing up) so we did the fried fish thing, it was super good and did the trick to fulfil the craving. I don't even really care for fish too much, but every once in awhile when I feel like it- it's a nice treat.

So the first (supposed to be full week) of School, we got hit with a SUPER BIG windstorm here in Washington which caused a lot of wild fires all around Northwest Washington and in Oregon and California. We were out of electricity for a day and a half, (it went out Monday evening and it came back Wed morning early.) Spencer and Ellie had gone to the gym to work out and on their way home it had gotten so windy that a tree fell on Spencer's car headed down the windy back roads through the woods to our home. It scared them pretty bad, Ellie said at first Spencer was driving super slow and then once the tree hit his car- he was like...we just gotta get home and he went a lot faster! 

The boys had drove to Oregon (Portland I think) they've been on this new quad buying spree that's been going on for some time now. But they went there to purchase a new banshee in Oregon and saw this road sign on their way. Grandpa Glen would have been happy to see a bridge named after him. (His middle name doesn't start with an "L" but Gary's middle name- Matt's dad's name does with Lynn, so it was kind of cool to see that scenario!) Anyways, these masks have covered a few needs over the past lil bit with the Covid and then the Smoke and our air... here just so happened to reach the worst in the US mark, so horrible! Not exactly the record we wanted to make...

Bre's boyfriend Andrew's mom breads dogs and the kids had been wanting Andrew to bring one of the pups over to play. He finally did and the kids were so happy! This dog was so passive and perfect, totally didn't bark once and just took all of Bella's barking and nudging like a champ, it didn't even phase him. Such a cute puppy!

Jarom and Ellie went to Las Vegas Nevada to go to a wedding of Jarom's mission companion Jake over by the Hoover Dam area. Didn't get many pics but here's a few they sent over to me during their stay, 

Brooke and her Friend Tori went on a Mani-Pedi Girls day then ice cream before school started back up.

Brooklynne went to The Children's Museum with her friends the Bennett's out in Olympia. Kira (her friend) was at school and her mom Emma took Brooke and a few of the other neighbor kids with them to go to the museum with Kira's brother Nathan before they picked Kira and her sisters up from school.

They had to wear their masks of course but they had a good time with all of the fun activities offered at the museum, here you can see them sock skating.

Here's some SUN pictures in the sky, the pictures really don't do the true color of the sun's appearance any justice. It was pure pink and looked so stunning in the Smokey sky. 

It is Fall Season and the Fall Decorations and Pumpkin Pie is Out and About! Also, Andrew set up some flowers to be dropped off for Bre one day when she wasn't feeling well. (He worked out the details with Ellie since he lives like two hours away.) 

My Brother Wes and his wife Catia had a baby boy! He is super cute and looks quite a bit like his big sis Lavinia to me. He was born weighing in at: 6 lbs 10 oz and 20" long. 

His name is Noah Henry Noble. We ended up taking Lavinia a few times just to help out since both Wes and Catia ended up having to commute and stay back and forth at the hospital due to the unexpected health conditions of little Noah with first his heart then seizures. They are gratefully home now and Noah is almost just about weaned off of his meds for his seizures. Lavinia is such a sweet and tender hearted little girl, so mellow...(that is if our dog Bella is no where in her sight or sound.) She is terrified of our little friendly doggie. Bella soon learned that Lavinina wanted nothing to do with her so Bella just gave Lavinia her space but if she heard as small of a little bark or dog sound she would let you know and scream and cry and just want to be held, latching on to you so hard that she would pull the hair out of your head lol. (I am thinking that she must have had a very traumatic experience with a former dog in the past.) We tried and tried multiple times to show and let her know how nice and friendly Bella was but to no avail, it was so sad. Poor little girl, there were just so many unusual things going on for her, she was prob just so confused! We just did our best and the little girls really did have a fun time playing with her when she could calm down and feel safe that the dog was no where in sight or sound. 

So the whole situation with this poor little guy was that Noah ended up with some heart issues when he was born so he had to be transferred from Bellevue to Children's Hospital in Seattle. He was in intensive care for awhile until they could figure out what the breathing issues were while he was on a breathing tube then a C pap. The conditions were apparently from a leaky valve on the left side of his heart. The blood flow was irregular kind of like a back flow which they were able to treat with medicine. He has been in cardiologist care. During those issues, Noah started having seizures and apparently an MRI determined that he had a pretty severe stroke on the right side of his brain with cerebrovascular issues. 

Ellie is working at Ross and Gravity, both part time to bring in extra money. It has been good for her as she continues her schooling. 

I've been dealing with such fun dental issues lately. Not really fun at all, just getting new dental bridges since my old ones (over 20 years have failed.) It was time to get in to get things looked at and taken care of. The joys of strange and wacky dental genetics I suppose. I and our dentist had thought that the front bridge (with the Marilyn bridge) that we would just do an implant which is more solid and functional than a bridge; however, with the loss of that tooth for so long (due to back when I was younger it was found side-ways in the roof of my mouth and was never going to come down on it's own, so they did oral surgery and exposed it and tried to bring it down with braces into it's proper place...only it ended up breaking the roots off my other teeth causing more issues so they just pulled the tooth after a ton of pain...frustrating!) Well, it had been out for so long that my roots on each side of it had caved in towards that tooth opening not leaving any room to do an implant, that and those roots were smaller than they are supposed to be. So yep after another dental bill for the Oral Surgeon to tell me that for nothing, back to just re-doing the bridge with an updated one. But, I had decided to just re-do the bottom two first. (I had those done over 20 years ago since I didn't have any permanent molars under my baby ones.) The tooth enamel had all worn off and a ton of metal was exposed, so it was time to re-do them. Anyways, in the process due to the trauma of prying the old bridges off and prepping the teeth under for the second time, I ended up in a ton of pain at night with throbbing and need at least one root canal first. So I go in for that this week. Joys... you know?! 

Update on this: no root canal was needed, my teeth were just sensitive and sore from the prying off of the old bridge and it being a live tooth it was just sensitive with the temp bridge while the new one was being made...that was a big sigh of relief...too bad another hefty dental bill this time with the Endodontist for nothing but I now have two of the three new bridges and only one more to go. I will wait for the new year, we still are needing to get Josh and Ellie in to the Oral Surgeon in the next few months so I'll take my turn...

Then there was Saydee who went under Anesthesia for some major dental work her little self! She had two baby molars removed, she landed herself 3 silver teeth and 4 surface cavities filled...talk about a mouth full of work done. She healed super fast and the surgery was actually super fast but the anesthesia wear off process was not a fun one for her in the least, yeh' she cried and cried- she was super irritable, she doesn't remember much of it. She thinks she woke up in the car so that's the last thing she remembers after smelling and having to take deep breathes of the smelly air (she said it was worse than a skunk smell lol) she breathed it through the mask that initially made her all sleepy so she could get the IV. I low key was a bit concerned that at one point she was going to jump out of the car as I was driving home when she was going to crazy in the back seat. So I was like "Saydee I need you to hold my hand." I was the only one who went to take her to her surgery because of Covid regulations but it sure would have been nice to have someone else in the car to sit back and console her in the back seat. She had to get a Covid test the week of her surgery on the 5th of Oct and her actual surgery date was on the 8th. We were pretty nervous for the whole process that's why we waited so long, they wanted to do all of this when she was 3 but since she wasn't complaining of any teeth hurting at the time, we put it off. I didn't want to put her to sleep so young if we didn't have to and at almost six years old I felt the timing was right now. So all in all, it was a relief that she recovered like nothing even happened the day after because the roots of those baby molars- my goodness they were huge- they almost looked fake! The tooth fairy actually came the day of the surgery as she took a long nap on the couch, she got a good amount of money and two toys so she was happy about that part. The dentist put silicone sponge like stuff in her holes to clot the blood and the one in the way back was irritating Saydee so much the first day when she wanted to eat so she took it out, that was the only draw back of the healing portion- big mistake, the blood from that tooth had a hard time clotting back up. She learned her lesson and just kept the other one in until it dissolved a few days later. She does a good job at brushing her teeth now (and actually has been doing good, it was just when she was younger that she wouldn't brush...oh the repercussions of poor dental hygiene mixed with bad dental genetics for this girl!) All fixed and good to go now though!    

Bre and Andrew (yeh Andrew was trying to look tall in this pic.)

Project Time for the kids and Matt. 

Brooklynne made a spontaneous Ice Cream Bar one evening and had a fun time scooping everyone up some ice cream. Funny thing was that it was probably 10 or maybe even closer to 11 pm when she decided to do this so no one was really feeling up to going into the kitchen to give her our orders (we were all tired and too lazy feeling) so Saydee was the little waitress and took orders and brought the ice cream to us. (Probably not exactly how Brooke wanted her stand to turn out but maybe next time she will decided to play Ice Cream Shop a bit earlier in the evening.

Ellie is in the Skin and Nails Portion of her College Cosmo Training.

Grandma and Grandpa came to pick up the younger girls for a little over night camp out in their trailer with their cousin Emily. It was a very quick trip but they had a good time spending the evening with them over at a camp ground by the Cedar River. They stayed there two evenings when they came up to see Baby Noah and Wes's fam.

Getting in some Pre-Christmas Shopping in with the girls while the boys had one last trip to the Dunes to ride their quads for the season.

This trip was to Florence, Oregon.

Bre made a trip out to Idaho to visit a friend from her Aesthetics class, she went to a derby out there.

The girls have had fun making earrings and selling them in the front of the house, it's a good craft for Brooke to do with her friends and she has even managed to make a little money at it also. They made $60. last Saturday, whoot whoot!

Saydee made Matt and I a "Surprise" in our bedroom. We couldn't get mad when she was so excited about the whole thing and literally had every one of her stuffed animals on our bed now could we?! This gal, just whatever are we gonna do with all of her creativity?!