gardening for biggwrls

Today was a beautiful spring day. Tomorrow is supposed to be 80deg. So it might be the ONLY spring day we get. ANYWAYS. We planted some baby seeds in the little dehydrated dirt pellets (is that what those things are? seriously) She had sooo much fun watching them grow then being able to plant her corn and punkin seeds. Seeing her concentrate so hard on getting those seeds in that little pile of tule wrapped dirt was precious. She had her tongue out and everything. I loved it. That however was the extent of what we accomplished today. It was to pretty. We spent the day outside playing Bawbees and swinging again. I LOVE days where it seems the only thing to do is cuddle with your baby. I hope you have many snuggly days to come this spring.

Photo assignment picks

okay guys for the photo assigment i can enter one a day. These are your pick for the pics. Get it? Get it? pick for pics? heheh sorry to much caffine. Anyways Thanks for voting!! It means alot to me.

Photo assignment: Green

I have a photo assigment for this week. The Theme is GREEN please go to the Facebook fan page and click on the photo assignment folder. Please let me know which if any of the pictures best represents GREEN. To me flowers and buds blooming represent green at this time of year.
Thanks
Rachael

Eva's Obit.

You were a friend and an inspiration to so many.
You are LOVED and missed dear one.

Eva Markvoort, the 25-year-old University of Victoria student whose blog about her battle with cystic fibrosis attracted an international following, died yesterday of the disease.




Markvoort has recently been awarded her theatre degree from UVic at her hospital bedside.



She had struggled with the genetic disease since she was a year old and went into chronic rejection after receiving a double lung transplant in 2007.



Her father, Bill Markvoort, said her family was by her side in her last days and "in the end she simply ran out of breath."



"We're going to miss her so much."



Markvoort's website, under the moniker 65 Red Roses, inspired an award-winning documentary of the same name, which aired on the CBC.



The New Westminster native wanted to be an actor, and it was with a dramatic flair that she spread awareness about cystic fibrosis and the importance of organ donation.



Shortly after news of her death, hundreds of messages of condolence from all over the world flooded her blog.



"She is in our hearts. Rest in peace dear Eva," said Natalia from Poland.



"Eva changed my life with her message of hope and love. I will never be the same, and though there are no words to express my sorrow for your loss, I am glad to know that she is in peace," wrote Laura, from Albuquerque, NM.



On March 25, Markvoort wrote her last post.



"I am not managing, not managing at all. I'm drowning in the medications. I can't breathe. Every hour. Once an hour. I can't breathe. Something has to change"



As she lay in Vancouver General Hospital the last two months of her life, the walls of her room were plastered with hundreds of cards and letters, many from people with terminal illnesses inspired by her strength.



Markvoort recorded a tearful goodbye video Feb. 11, saying she likely had only days to live. But she kept hoping a lung donor might become available, despite the risks that come with a second double lung transplant.



In late February, UVic forgave the two electives she had yet to finish and awarded Markvoort her bachelor's degree in fine arts. She was also awarded the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation's Doug Summerhayes award for outstanding commitment to the cause.



Her father said her response after accepting the award was, "This is my legacy."



The family asks that in lieu of flowers, people make a donation in Markvoort's name to the Vancouver chapter of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation at www.cfvancouver.ca



kderosa@tc.canwest.com





Blog: 65 Red Roses



© Copyright (c) The Victoria Times Colonist

family bloggers

Every one in the house thought (well thinks) it's funny that I started blogging as a release and a way to keep long distance family up to date with the crazy nutty things that happen mostly on a daily basis. Now I can proudly say I am rubbing off. Not only does eldest roll her eyes and caution you may end up being blogged about if you are not careful but now Big Daddy has his own blog. I am not going to promote it because well there is a reason I protect my identity. So now we are a family of bloggers. YEA!!
the family that blogs together stays together? It's kinda funny he sits with his lap top blogging and I am in the seat next to hit doing the same. We talk but only through instant messanger (only while blogging) and it's such silly things like can you get me more water you drank all mine. *sigh* What fun hahahaha.

Spring has Sprung... kinda

March is almost over and well it's not leaving like a lamb... at least not so far but in the south does it ever? We go from warm and sunny to thunderstorms (or snow) in a matter of hours! So this afternoon on the way to Nanna and Grumpa's house we saw some flowers that i couldn't bear to not take some pictures of. Daffodills. They just say spring to me well those and Iris' but my love of Iris' are another post for another time.. i am a little obsessed.
anyways.

These next ones were taken at Nanna's house... im not sure what kind of tree this is.. it may be some type of magnolia but it is sooo pretty.

Thank you for sharing the few hours of Spring with me

Crop night

Last night Ms. Kitty and I went to another evening crop at WiseScrappers. We had sooooo much fun!! She worked on her Katnboo Crew scrapbook and I worked on cards. After work T joined us for a little bit. There is nothing more fun than enjoying your time with eachother without the distraction of Kiddos... even though the three of us likes that too!
This is what I got made last night:

This was the only one colored. I didn't like the coloring so much, but all the others were already addressed and sealed soo...

.

Had to throw this in. We spiked Ms. Kitty's hair. Her hair is currently special effects Atomic pink. Just like mine. TWINKIES!

Good Bye friend.

Eva Markvoort passed away this morning. As you know she has been fading away. This was not unexpected... She was 23 years old. If it had not been for Organ Donors she would not have lived this long. If you are not already a Organ Donor please consider it. Your Organs can prolong a life like Ms. Kitty's or Eva's. Please pray for Eva's family and for Ms. Kitty. This loss hit her very hard.

Rachael

Nerd in training..

Eldest is one of the most beautiful 11 year olds I have ever seen. Seriously. She has the most beautiful face.  Fortunatly she hates boys, she knows how to shoot (to fend them off) and she is kind hearted (toward those not her sisters). She also has brains. She is extremely left brained. She is her fathers child after all. Typically I try to limit the amount of nerdness her father might expose her too( not really I encourage it).

 This week she has had ARMT testing and so she has had to go to bed early. She wasn't even allowed to stay up to watch NCIS. So as a reward for doing well and for getting a straight A report card she was allowed to stay up a little late and play a game with Daddy. I figgured she would go for UNO. She is constantly wanting me to play with her. However tonight Big Daddy picked Munchkin (yes i know how much you hate wikipedia). This is like role playing game Magic for Dummies . Sigh. My poor baby. Big daddy tried to explain his new expansion pack to her all we heard was maw maw maw blah pizza blah blah mah maw. So he had to show her. He is DETERMINED to turn her into the chess playing nerd everyone gives Wedgies to. Poor Girl. Ms. Duckie and I are trying to save her. I think we might be over our heads though. HELP!!! What can I say she is most definatly her Fathers daughter. Good thing Ms. Ducky isn't one too. wait... aww crud..the poor child is doomed. At least I will always have Middlest to play Princess and Fairys with!

I apoligize for the pictures being wierd blogger was not letting me add them where I wanted too. I blame the Allergy medicine.

Where are my Children?

In the afternoon's I usually have cleaning to do, supper to make, and homework to help with so typically if the weather is nice and homework is done the girls take Indiana and go outside to play. They have VERY specific boundries to stay within and there is the barking muppet that lets me know if someone strange is in the year. Not to mention 3 girls can get VERY loud. I check on them about every 10 to 15 min sooner if they are quiet. Today was no exception. They all took thier very loud and rowdy selves outside to play. THANK GOODNESS. So when everything was very silent...oddly silent.. and I went outside and saw...

No children. The dog is there but not the kids. Now I took allergy medicine today and Yes i am a bit foggy. But I did worry when I did not see them. Like I said VERY strict bounderies.
then I focused and saw....

A fort. How cool!!

So I being the cool fun loving mommy I am thought i'd investigate.

They took various chair's, Car mats, and the cushion from my porch swing to form thier fortess. They told me they were hiding from the wind. I want to know who let them watch "The Happening". I still get chills when the wind blows through the trees in that errie way. UGH... Anyways soon after I got the tour they decided the fort was to small. So...

They tore it down to rebuild it. Then decided to play tag. I started sneezing and ran back inside where it was safe.

Getting back in the swing

Due to spring break and mom's surgery and both mine and Biggwls colds it's been almost 3 weeks since
we could go swimmy. Man we got on it today. I am sooo sore! I wore Biggwrl out. When we came homw she napped for about 4 hours!!! We got quite a few laps in before our time was up. But man that water was so warm and I didnt want to leave.. it was snowing outside. Im sorry but SNOW come on!! Saturday I wore a SUNDRESS yes a SUNDRESS and today it was snowing! and Im not talking about oh look a flake im talking SNOWING. Luckly it did not stick. It's supposed to start warming up soon though... hopefully. The agenda for tomorrow? Nothing. Perhaps I'll actually get some house cleaning done... hahah yeah right BigGwrl and I will end up snuggin watching Princess and the Frog all day. Over and over and over and over.. you know house cleaning does sound good.

Do NOTHING day

Today was another one of our do NOTHING days.
We debated cleaning house.
We didn't.
We debated doing laundry
We didn't.
We debated cooking a big sunday lunch.
We didn't.
We did however take naps. Long ones.
We did watch Harry Potter ALL DAY LONG.
We did torture our sisters. Well they did.
We did let the doggies out.
We did get dressed.
We tried to go to church. We slept to late in the morning. So we planned to go to an evening service, Who knew that Churches no longer have evening services.
Big Daddy and Eldest went grocery shopping. We now have food!! I did have to convince Big Daddy that the big Papa Murphys sale was yes a good thing but we were NOT going to eat pizza everyday for the next two weeks. That was a little much. Even for yummy pizza.

Mommy Middlest Day

We had the BEST day yesterday! Middlest and I were on our way to Wisescrappers when we decided to stop by the local small planes airport to see thier Saturday FLY IN. It was sooo awesome! We were so close to the planes as they taxied. it was just amazing! Middlest and I had the GREATEST time!! We headed on in to work to play with boss lady. We once again discussed kittys for the shop. We actually found some this time!! 4 year old brothers named Frick and Frack they are the most beautiful cats.. well other than mimi.

Frick had not left his box by the time I left but Frack was getting to know the shop. Usually in a place he could hide but still he was getting around and getting to know things. His Favorite place by far was the quilt stand. He loved hiding under it.

As soon as we got back it was time for Middlest's kids scrapping class. She did soo good! I was a proud mommy!

The theme this month was pets. She did one page with Genesis Leigh and Indiana and the other with just Indi appropriatly enough indi's page says spoiled. She is soo proud of how hard she worked. It was a great time. Big Daddy and the other girls tilled the garden with out us. It was the only decent day we'd had during spring break. Now Spring Break is over. AWWWW... I'll miss them as they go off to school tomorrow...but maybe not until next week.  

Geocaching funnies...

My mother needed to stop by the Library today but she was getting a little worn out after her group so I recommended the girls not go and we would wait in the parking lot for her. As we pulled away I noticed that there was a geocache near as in in the middle of the traffic circle. We parked got our gps and ran to the middle of the street. we look high and low not finding anything BigGrwl suggests looking in the rose bushes so mommy volunteers for that one. I tear my brand new shirt :((. good thing I can sew. Finally we notice a bit of time has passed and Gwamma will be waiting. So we run back to the car which I left unlocked! and I can't find my keys! ANYWHERE! I didn't remeber carring them  over across the street. I dumped out my purse my moms purse EVERYTHING out of the front of the car. NO KEYS. I cam starting to panic. I finally decide to run back over to where we had looked for the cache. We look high and lo and there on groundzero were mommy's keys right where the cache SHOULD have been. Middlest picks them up and yells you keys turned into the geocache mommy we found it!!!
Then mom calls.. are you guys okay?? I am sitting here waiting for you! yeah we are in the parking lot and do we have a story for you.

We FINALLY got the Princess and the Frog!!

From mommy: I finally bought the Princess and the Frog for my sweet precious little perfect angels. notice the scarcasm?They also scammed me into buying Tiana shirts and sunglasses so we could all look like Tiana!

From Middlest and BigGwrl: We are sooo excited! Daddy is having friends over so we are going to pick out special pizza, and make popcorn AND drink SODA in MOMMYS ROOM all night! We are gonna stay up SUPER late! and watch lots of princess movies and never ever go to sleep!! We are gonna watch Tiana all night too! Over and Over again! Mommy thinks we'll poop out but we arn't gonna. Mommy buyed us Tiana shirts and sunglasses so we could be princess too and daddy sayed did you buy ALL the tiana stuff but we didn't cause Aunt Oregon buyed BigGwrl a TIANA BARBIE! AND a TIANA AND a Tiana BOOK so we didnt need those. okay mommy we are done. can we have some candy too? Please we love you mommy! You're the Bestest mommy in the whole world! We love you all the way to Vancouver!! PLEASE!!!

2am

Im not usually to keen on being up at two am, but this morning just feels diffrent. Possibly because I slept half the day. Its so quiet. I can hear Genesis and Indiana shuffling around and I can even hear one of the girls talking in thier sleep. Now that is kinda funny. Its probably Riley, my mother said I never shut up even when I was sleeping.
Seriously though being up tonight reminds me of when the girls were newborns. They would wake up in the middle of the night and we would bundle the girls in the car and drive around. Sometimes we would go to Krispy Kreme and wait for them to open other times we would have a picnic breakfast and watch the sun come up from the mountians (or what they call mtns). Van Morrison is softly sining in the background. My soul is fed. I came across these REALLY old pictures of the girls..

This was eldest and middlest back when they were best buds and inseprable. and yes I know I spelled that wrong.  Middlest was 2 1/2 and Eldest was 5 or 6 . Now they would never admit to walking this close to eachother :)

This is the girls same age about the same time 'cept that little baby is my now biggwrl.

Seeing these pictures makes me think it's time for another baby. However until we find out about Big Daddy's job Thats prolly not going to happen.

I hate colds

For as long as I can remember every cold has turned into a sinus infection. Okay I think I've had two that haven't. From the time my cold starts I am doing sinus rinses, sitting in the steam, drinking lots of water. Doesn't help. Soon the migrains from pressure start. Woke up this morning with what I call the drunkness. The dizzyness and the upset tummy. I am taking the day off to rest. But it's spring break. So i'll try.

Toxic Relationship

I've been doing a lot of thinking today on toxic relationships. Not very cheery I know. I am a helper and I have a bad habit of befriending the wrong type of people. I am still young and though I am a mom I like to have fun but not FUN you know? I don't judge them for the things they do I've just grown out of that stage. As a helper I find myself being sucked in especially not haveing the constant church foundation I used to. I find myself being harsh and using harsh words to my husband and children. The hardest part for me is noticing when someone is bad for me. Especially when I am trying to help this person out of certin situations and trying to be a friend to them. Though once I figgure out that that person isn't good for me to be around I have a hard time cutting myself off from them. Each friendship is a loss something to morn. I think I ought to be strong enough to avoid being dragged under but I am just not. How many others have this problem?

Soda Bread

Todays project was to make Irish Soda bread. The girls decided mommy makes enough bread that THEY ought to make this one.

They shared the duties. Eldest got out the ingredents and tried to pre-measure them out.

Her sisters got to pour the stuff into the bowl and stir while she measured out the rest of the stuff.

They each took a turn kneading the dough.

I LOVE this picture. Eldest took it of biggwrl and myself. I was showing her how to knead the dough.

she has a little trouble pushing instead of flat-ing the dough.

The bread is cooking and they are all tucked into bed with green on thier jammies so the leppiecauns won't pinch them during the night!

Eldest

ugh.
This is so bad.
She just mixed milk, Kiwi, apple and pumpkin pie spices.
and NOW she is freezing it. I would wonder where she gets it from
except that i know. Ms. Duckie. She is sooo guilty. Eldest eats Ice cream from the carton..
whose fault. Ms. Duckie. I have tried so hard to turn our dear child into a lady.

This is what happens at her mother's house. But I love her for it.

See Eldest is a lot like me and a lot like her mother. She has a wild rock and roll trouble making smart mouthy side

And a very lady like loving side.

She loves her sisters (most of the time) and she cares so deeply about those close to her.

Even though she solves NCIS before I do and makes the most disgusting creations I can think of she is the most perfect 11 year old I have ever met. I love her so much. I thank God everyday she chose me. 

The Irish Movie Marathon

We have started our annual Irish Movie marathon!! This will continue with one or two movies a day until St. Patricks day where we will watch all of them all day long! I am sooo excited! We have chosen to start this year's marathon off with Behind the Waterfall a great Christian movie that teaches the imporatance having an imagination and beliving in things unseen, Also the quiet man. Big daddy's Favorite.
Tomorrow will be Darby O'Gill and the little people and Luck of the Irish.
Wednesday we will watch ALL of them in a major pig fest we call St. Patricks day!

Spring break

Spring break is here!!! AND St. Patricks day!! I am sooooo excited! I am hoping it doesn't rain. We are supposed to be working in the garden this week getting it all ready for planting. Stay tuned becuase tomorrow I learn not only how to assemble but run a roto tiller BY MYSELF. Should be intresting!

i love Milo (who ever he is)

This is an old post that got sent to drafts instead of posted.

So i'm wired on caffine right now. We had a late night crop at the shop. I took Ms. Kitty so she could learn how to scrap and have a new hobby to do while in the Hospital. We had soooo much fun tonight. One thing we really had a good laugh about was the 10k CF walk. hahahah We were talking about how we have not been getting much support. So this what Big Daddy had to say when I dropped the bomb on him:
So baby you who can't run or walk up stairs are going to take part in a 6 mile walk and you're going to try and run part of it? Yep I am!! You do know that you and Ms. Kitty will be sharing a room in the Hospital you with knee surgery her because she passed out from not breathing... My friend said let me get this straight you who can't run or walk up stairs are going to take part in a 6 mile walk and you're going to try and run part of it? Yep I am!! You do know that you and Ms. Kitty will be sharing a room in the Hospital you with knee surgery her because she passed out from not breathing. Yep but we are going to do it we are going to support CF!! Go us!! My Family said you who can't run or walk up stairs are going to take part in a 6 mile walk and you're going to try and run part of it? Yep I am!! You do know that you and Ms. Kitty will be sharing a room in the Hospital you with knee surgery her because she passed out from not breathing. hahah it's soooo funny because it is sooo true!!! We are going to have soo much trouble.. I think we might need a wheelchair.. maybe two of them maybe we could tie them together like the six seater strollers. how funny of a pictures is that?

Cards

I have been working on more cards exploring more tutorials, copic markers, and Digi stamps. They don't always turn out the way i'd like them to but the cards are still cute. Problem is that I just can't bear to part with them :(. Whats the use is making cards though???
Here are some pictures of what I have been working on lately.