Ellie's 3 year old spoiling!

Our sweet Ellie just turned 3! It has been quite the week too. Tuesday morning we had her "friends" party here at our house. It was so fun, there were like 10 kiddos here, running around everywhere. They colored and decorated cookies, and ate their creations, and played with all Ellie's toys, it was so fun! Then Wednesday morning was her first Ballet class, and she had lots of fun there. And then Wednesday night was her Joshua Party. Now the week before the cooks had asked her what she wanted to eat on her Birthday and she said Macoroni and Cheese and Corndogs, so that's what they served. Then Rich asked her if she wanted it to be a theme night and have people dress up, and she said yes, like Princesses. He asked, what about the boys, and she said they should dress up like ducks. Ha! I think because in her mind she remebered Halloween when she was a princess and Jaron was a duck, so it made perfect sense to her. Well, the Joshua students love her so much and everyone dressed up. In fact, when we arrived at the building, probably half of them ran out to greet her and wish her a happy birthday! Rich played all her favorite songs, you know, Stuck in the Middle by Lenka, Are we Human or are we Dancer by The Killers, Glamorous and Big Girls Don't Cry by Fergie, some Coldplay, you know, all the normal songs that 3 year olds love. BaHAhaha! She was so cute, she would get kinda nervous and shy, then she would here one of "her songs" and run to the middle of the dance floor and jump and dance, then run back to her seat. I don't think she even had one whole bite of her food because she was so excited and nervous. Then we brought out her cake, which I had attempted to decorate a crown on but ran out of frosting and I had forgotten the candle, so they just sang while I brought it to her, and then I took it and cut it. It was really yummy despite the unpolished decoration. Then as the students cleaned up and got changed for their meeting we had some family time (Rich's parents are up) and Ellie opened her presents. Thank you one and all, she absolutely loved everything! It was so cute as she opened them and would realize what something was, at least three times, she was like, "this is what I wanted". Well done! Then Thursday morning we had her 3 year old Doctor visit and she had to get shots, sad day, but she was a trooper, as soon as they gave her a sucker, she got over it. It was just her and me who went down together, so it was special. We went to Chevy's and they sang to her and brought her the sombrero and ice cream treat, so fun! She was very confused why they did not sing the normal Happy Birthday song, I told her it was complicated. Anyways, that was our week, well besides the baby shower I hosted on Monday night, Bible study on Tuesday night, a women's event and then Broom Hockey on Wednesday night, the Passover Sader at Joshua on Thurday night and dinner with the family at the Hospitality House tonight, whew! What a Birthday Week!

A Good Night Sleep

Rich and I got brave and decided to leave the kids here at Hume with some very sweet and willing Joshua girls, while we went down to LA for our friend's wedding. We had a great time and had a late anniversary dinner at the amazing Ruth's Chris. Yummy! Steak, Lobster, Creme Brule, and NO KIDS! Whoo Hoo! Okay, so we love our children dearly, but it was so fantastic to have a whole nights sleep, all in a row. It was very timely, since my brain had begun to quickly deteriorate with the little sleep I had been getting. All refreshed and back at home. Oh and the wedding was great too! The bride plays Belle at Disneyland and played Jasmine at Disney, Tokyo, so the special music was phenominal and of course, she looked gorgeous! If they made a "Belle gets married" Barbie this is the dress she would wear. And they are a very sweet couple who have been dating for several years. The groom runs Reflect ministry. A ministry to the poor children in Mexico. Very cool. Anyways, the girls survived and gave us hope for the future, particularly the Israel trip. No pictures, sorry.

So many things

Okay, so first, Happy New Year! We went to our friend's house and just ate and let the kids all play, while occasionally checking in with the ball drop. Pretty low key, we left before midnight, wow different stage of life. But the best part of the night was by far, when I randomly said "Happy New Year" to Jaron in this funny voice and he just thought it was absolutely hilarious! The next day, nope, he was over it, but that night he would just laugh and laugh. I hope you enjoy the video.
Well first event of 2009 for us, was going to Pine Valley for the week with the Joshua kids. The trip went fine for most of the students, but for our little family it was rather tiring. We were all sharing a room, which is always interesting, and our sweet little Jaron must have not felt very good because he spent most nights crying/screaming for several hours of the night. I took him driving one night and Rich took him the next. It was pretty sad and exhausting but luckily Ellie slept through most of it.
The students got a lot of work done at the camp and then had a free day in San Diego. I took that day to do a little shopping and then head up to mom's to visit with Josh and his family and mom. (And to let Rich get a good night's sleep before driving all day) Saturday, I met up with all the vans and grabbed a couple girls to ride with me. They were a big help in the car and the trip up went really well.
We are home now, and tomorrow should be interesting. I'm taking Jaron, hopefully, to the doctor, and Rich will be back in the office at Joshua. The whole class and staff start a fast tomorrow, so hopefully that will go smoothly. And it is the first "normal" week since the students Christmas break, so there will be a lot of catching up to do.
We are looking forward to having Rich's parents up next week and for Ellie to start Ballet and have her birthday. All very exciting!

Christmas Fun

Some of the fun times of our Christmas festivities

The Long Awaited Christmas Blog

Wow, Where to start?! Most of my family came up on Tuesday before Christmas and the fun started. We had lunch in the dining hall, got settled in the cabins, then headed up to Joshua to hang out and have dinner. The kids played in the snow and in the big open spaces of the Great room and Joshua dining room. We enjoyed each other's company and looked forward to having Josh and Heather and Jeremy show up. Then, the snow started falling, and falling and falling. Everyone had made it for Christmas day, where we had a fantastic breakfast, opened gifts, played, had a wonderful lunch, played some more, had a nice dinner, then the kids acted out the Christmas story while I read it and we had a time of sharing. Because of the weather, we had moved everyone to either Joshua or the lower cabin, so as we cleaned things up and were getting ready to take off for the night, the power went out. This is not uncommon in a storm, so Rich went to start the generater at the cabin. Everyone headed home and planned on meeting for breakfast at 8:30 so Jeremy could get on the road at a decent time. Well, at our house, we slept just fine and about 8am went to pick up the crew from the cabin. Rich went in and then came back out and said they were all sick. So we went up to see the Joshua crew to see if anyone up there was sick, well, no one was, so we began to brainstorm. It must be something with the cabin, for everyone there to be so sick, but no one else. Clearly not food poisoning like we had initially thought. Rich and I headed to the cabin to help out, when I walked in, everyone was strewn across the house, laying on the floor, huddled in blankets, with bowls near by, no one could stand, they all looked so miserable. I tried to make everyone comfortable the best I could while cleaning things up, and Rich went to seek help and get a CO detector. When he brought it in, it went off immediatly so we had everyone crawl to the open door and windows to get some fresh air. Rich returned again with help and the news that we really needed everyone to go to the infimary and probably down to Fresno to get checked out. So we began to get coats and boots and get people down the steep, snow covered stairs in their foggy state. Most everyone had some time on the oxygen in the infirmiry and then a couple went down in the ambulance and everyone else road down with Rich or Dad to the hospital. Only the ones with remaining symptoms went in, and the rest either came back up or hung at Rob's house to rest and wait for the 3 to get released. Everyone was back up at around 10:30pm when we decided to have a little birthday party for Josiah, (my nephew, some birthday so far!). Then we settled in for the night, cleaned up in the morning and everyone left just as they had planned. Whew! What an adventure, what a crazy, memorable Christmas! Everyone says that they had a fun time, despite the almost dying, and that they would even come back to Hume Lake again sometime. Such troopers! I loved seeing every single one of them, only wished Jonathan's family could have made it, and that I had taken more pictures!

The Cold Brings Colds

This week was full of fun, snow, and a couple colds. We started the week with a ton of snow, which is beautiful and quite cold, it has been below freezing daily, so no walks for us. We are all terrain, but not all weather, moms! But it gave us a chance to play in the snow. Ellie was not much for sledding, but she loved using my snowballer to make snowballs and throw them! Jaron, he didn't love it as much. Then Tuesday was our Program Christmas "Party" down in Fresno. So we dropped the kids at the Sees house and went to dinner with the Program department and then headed to a minor league hockey game-Go Falcons! It was a good learning experience, I think they must have a fight quota they have to meet, because within the first couple minutes they had two fights, which seemed to come out of nowhere, but then that was it, the rest of the time, they just played hockey. Weird. But we got some good broom hockey ideas, which is really our sport. Well, that morning the kids had woken up with runny noses, but Erin said to still bring them, and they were good for her, but at around 11pm poor Ellie started waking up like every hour. The crazy part is, she was staying upstairs and we were staying down, so she would walk in the pitch dark all the way down to our room each time. At about 5am I decided to just stay and sleep with her. Good decision, we finally got a couple hours of sleep in a row. Wednesday, we did some shopping and errands and then headed back up to the chillyness. The kiddos are getting better it seems and we just had a fun evening where Rich pulled out his guitar and we sang together. First Ellie had her microphone and would do her best to sing along, even if she didn't know the song, then she switched it out for her guitar, so she could rock with dad! So Cute!

Joshua Events

This Tuesday was the Joshua formal Christmas Party, where everyone gets all dressed up for dinner and they come in to a nicely decorated dining hall and then they are served Pizza! It is really fun. Then after dinner, all the Pause families are invited up to help build GingerBread "houses", as has been tradition for several years. But last year we decided to add an "Ugly Christmas Sweater" competion, Caroling, and a Story read by Nathan Pearsey, (He has a great reading voice), while the staff judges the gingerbreads. As a staff we put together a Wildwood scape to remember the fire that the Joshua student started. It was quite a masterpiece. We had a helicopter above dropping "water" and everything! I hope to have some cute pictures of the dress nice portion soon from someone else's camera, but I hope you enjoy these.

Then on Wednesday was a regular monthly theme dinner. The theme was How the Grinch Stole Christmas. So Ellie and I dressed as Whos. She just wore jammies and had some funky hair and I went a little different direction. All to say, it's been a busy, but fun, couple of days!