Hover over the photos for a larger image and caption.

Char (on the left) and me
Left to Right, Reese H., Ben, and Josh T.

Jonathan T., Josh’s younger brother. Looks kinda lonely, eh? This picture just makes me laugh!

Two days after the Jamboree, Tuesday, in the morning, Grandpa (Mom’s dad) had been doing very poorly, and we were thinking of sending Mom and a boy (bodyguard, don’tcha know) to Oregon, because it might be the last time she’d see him. By about one, it was decided the whole family was taking a trip to Oregon. Talk about last-minute, sudden things! Believe it or not, by eleven PM we were out the door, totally packed (the van even got vacuumed out, although I don’t know why anybody bothered because the dog got hair everywhere!).
Two very nice ladies had given us some snacks for the trip, that were very good and worked out very well! Let me tell you, little glow sticks are very handy for nighttime trips!

It was definitely a “God-thing”, to be able to make the trip out here. In order to leave Tuesday night, which was best case scenario, a few things had to happen:
1. The van had to be cleaned, all of us packed, and our stuff in the van. (Just getting out the door to go to town is an hour process!)
2. Dad had to meet a guy and trade trucks so he’d be headed home instead of to Washington.
Both things worked out! Isn’t God cool?

The trip to Oregon was…eventful, in spots. The dinner we’d all had hadn’t agreed with our stomachs, especially Eric’s. We had to make a brief stop to let him, shall we say, violently remove his dinner. Fortunately we don’t have a picture of that.

Dad, driving
The beautiful Elle Janie!

We rolled into Portland at about 2:30pm Pacific time, on Wednesday. One of the lovely sites to see in Oregon (it IS a pretty place, when there’s no clouds!) is Mount Hood.

Mount Hood

First stop was Grammoo and Papa’s house, since we were leaving Duke there, and they had lunch/dinner for us.

Grammoo and Elle Jane
Grammoo and Elle Jane again

Dad on Papa (his dad’s) lap…rather sweet, don’t you think?
The boys were standing in a line, and I thought it was rather picturesque. Left to right, Ben, Papa, Joe, Eric.

Ben

After Grammoo’s house, we visited Grandpa in the hospital, then went to his house, as we were to be staying at there.

Welcome to Portland! Every day traffic in Portland is more than rush hour in Montana. Anywhere in Montana.
When you can’t build out, build up!

When the terrain is unbuildable, use stilts!
Portland…they fence the bums out of the underpasses so they sleep on the sidewalk. One was talking on his cell phone!

Tunnels are a novelty. In Montana, we drive AROUND the hills (or over them)!

The next day, Thursday, we went to Starbucks for our morning coffee (costing us an arm and a leg, pretty near! The woman who gave us our coffee said she came to Portland to go to college to study anthropology. We said there certainly was an interesting variety in Portland to study!), then a computer geek’s office to buy a power cord for Joe’s laptop (which he couldn’t find…turned out to be in his drawer at home!). Then we stopped by The Scottish Shop, which was very cool, and bought…guess what…haggis!

The Scottish Shop!
A cartoon we all like

Then we visited Grandpa in the hospital. Dad brought his acoustic guitar, so we brought that into the hospital and us girls (Beth jokingly dubbed us The Electric Church Girls’ Choir) sang for him. Then we went to the Guitar Center (and saw Uncle David there!), then went back to Grandpa’s house (which seemed rather empty without him!).

Playing Uno. Eric (on the left, age 16) and Paul (on the right, Mom’s youngest brother, age 16)
Joe, goofing off, pretty normal

Mom and John, her other younger brother (age 19), looking at pictures of their ancestors and relatives.
Eric holding Elle Jane

Me…I was actually “picking chicken”!
Jayden
Dad reading, pretty normal

On Friday, Mom and John went to the hospital to spend a few hours, and the rest of us hung out at Grandpa’s. Then we all went to the hospital to visit Grandpa, picked up Mom, and met Grammoo and Papa at Chans’ Mongolian Grill, for lunch. SOOOOO GOOD!!! Then we went to Grammoo and Papa’s for the rest of the day. It was a lot of fun!

On Saturday, we visited Grandpa, then went to Uncle David’s.

Rase and Uncle David’s chihuahua Gizmo
The kids on Uncle David and Aunt Fran’s trampoline. Left to right, Em in the red shirt, Rase in the striped shirt, Cody (our cousin, age 12) doing the flip; Tess in the red behind him and Jay in the blue behind him; Beth in the purple coat, and Kate in the green on the right.

Dad and Uncle David inspecting the van for traces of blue. Nah…just discussing how hard Uncle David will have to work when they race in June and Uncle David loses and has to wash the van
Uncle David and Steven our cousin (age 17, I think)

Uncle David (in blue) and Steven again
Gangsta Steve

On Sunday, we went to Grandpa’s church. Then we went to the hospital, where Aunt Laurie (Mom’s sister) came up and met us at the hospital.

Mom and Grandpa’s hands…isn’t it sweet?
Left to right, Mom, John (with the tie), Paul (behind John), and Aunt Laurie…Grandpa’s (remaining) children

After being at the hospital for a bit, we went to Grandpa’s, and Great-Uncle Earl (Grandpa’s younger brother) and Great-Aunt Jeannie came, along with Aunt Laurie, for a mini family reunion.

Elle Janie again, of course!
Aunt Jeannie, Elle Jane, and Abby

On Sunday night, we pulled out, at 11pm again, and got home about 3:30 (Mountain time) the next day. On the way home, a few interesting things happened, as well. One of them was, Jay’s snacks didn’t agree with his stomach, so he threw up all over. The other is a story in and of itself.

Dad, Ben, and Joe traded off driving (Mom sat with Elle Jane and I in the first bench). Ben ended up in the passenger’s, sleeping, and Dad was driving. He was going to trade with Joe, so he got out and went to Joe’s spot (in the second bench), and Joe drove. Dad was goofing off back there (he was about in the middle of the van!)…taking pictures of us and stuff. Then he tried to go to sleep, trying different positions…nothing worked. Then he started glancing at the three girls (Beth, Tess, and Em) in the third bench.
“What I really want is to stretch out,” he said.
“You can lay on us!” the girls said.
So Dad put a pillow on the lap of each girl, and crawled over the seat and laid down on them. And went to sleep! I have a picture of it (he looks dead, actually) on my phone, but it costs money to take pictures off my phone.

Elle Janie in the van

On Tuesday, April 29th, was the homeschool talent show, which Char also put on. The Electric Church Girls’ Choir performed Trust in the Lord.

Left to right, Kate, Em, Beth, me, Tess, and Abby
Abby

Left to right, Beth, me, Tess
Beth and I

We wore the peasant-type blouses and skirts we’d made, but we hadn’t finished the “corsets”. (Not real corsets, that’s just what they call them. Beth finished hers on Friday though, and I finished mine on Saturday.

Bethy’s
Bethy again

Me
and me again

Today, we had an interesting assortment of…*ahem* food. For breakfast, we had sausage, eggs, and tater tots. Not really unusual, right? Well, guess what was IN the sausage. You’ll never, ever, EVER guess. Believe me.

Ready?

Lymph nodes.
And salivary glands.
Can you believe it?!?
Mom and Dad didn’t tell us until after we’d eaten! (Yes, they ate some too, and Ben had known…and he still ate some!)

Anyways. Then, guess what we had for a before-dinner snack?

Haggis.
Guess what?
It was good.

It tasted (and had texture) like very onion-y meatloaf, but…richer. Of course, that’s because it was made with lamb heart, liver, beef (that’s pretty broad…I mean, those salivary glands we had this morning came from a cow!), oatmeal, onion, pepper, and water. It was very flavorful, and…good! Unfortunately, it was only a mere one-pound stomach, so when we go back to Oregon we’ll get a larger one. Also unfortunately, haggis is $10 a pound.

Yum yum! Plate of haggis. Looks like meatloaf, don’t it?
Dad wearing Beth’s Scotch bonnet, about to take a bite of haggis

Here he goes!
See? Looks like meatloaf. Harmless!

Joe, about to take a bite
*chew chew chew*

“How is it?” “mmmm!”
“Betwixt them both you see, they licked the platter clean!” (only there’s three forks, not two!)

Oh yeah, and we decided we liked liver and heart better than lymph nodes and salivary glands.

And on the lighter side, we had a very awesome deer roast dinner (with 20 pounds of mashed potatoes and a lot of carrots and yummy gravy) that we cleaned ourselves (nothing strange!). We decided we should take haggis hunting, like the real Scots.

We’re thinking about having mincemeat and headcheese next week.

Just kidding!

An ornamental knife Ben made for the fund raiser our friends are putting on to adopt the Filipino girl

Another view. The blade is made out of an old saw blade, the guard is a cross of copper, and the handle is a naturally-shaped antler. Uncomfortable to hold, but awesome to put on a shelf and look at!

Dad’s birthday was Sunday…this is him (Abby in the background) wearing his new “Jesus’ Slaves” t-shirt.

This is Joe looking…quite normal. *duck*

Elle Jane in her very cute Hawaiian shirt from Uncle David and Aunt Fran. She fits in it!! Isn’t she just adorable?!?

That’s all, folks!

Well, actually, not quite!

On Sundays we have Bible studies, and the boys are challenging us girls to read certain books of the Bible each week, and Rase has been reading as well, but from a Bible storybook. Dad was doubtful, he said “Is his ‘Bible’ bonafide?”
“I dunno,” I said, and made an unintentional pun: “but he reads it religiously.”

Also, in Rase’s storybook Bible, the years between when David was a young man and killed Goliath and when he had Solomon were missing, so Rase asked the obvious question: “Solomon is David’s son, but isn’t David too young to have kids?”

And here’s one definitely for your Grammoo’s book, Grammoo…just a few minutes ago, Tess came up to Mom and said, “I wish we had more kids, to play with!”

(If that link doesn’t work, try here.)

Are you wearing your green? If not…*pinch*!

We wear green maybe, and instead of celebrating St. Patrick’s Day, we celebrate cabbage going on sale. Tonight we had cabbage soup, which we call borscht (it’s rather a version of borscht, I guess…but totally not traditional!), and tomorrow we’ll have eggrolls. If you can make it you’re invited!

Speaking of eggrolls, our family has been “hired” to make 1000 eggrolls for our friends’ fundraiser; they’re having a fundraiser to adopt a little girl named Annie from the Philippines! Sound like fun? Totally! It’s gonna be a blast!

P.S. for Pi day, we had cake! Ben bought us an ice cream cake from Mr. Thrifty’s because Mom thought there wouldn’t be enough pies for company tomorrow night, but there were ten berry pies and four pumpkin so she figured 14 pies was enough for breakfast today, dessert today, and dessert tomorrow!

What’s Pi?
Pi, Greek letter (Π), is the symbol for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Pi = 3.1415926535… Pi Day is celebrated by math enthusiasts around the world on March 14th. Click here for a visual, and here’s the Pi song.

I’m not a math enthusiast but…hey…it’s an excuse to have pie! Why should I pass that up??

*A diatonic accordion is one that has only buttons which play different notes depending upon whether you push or pull the bellows. A piano accordion has a piano-style keyboard on one side and buttons on the other and they all make the same notes.

We started listing all the times people would comment or stare.

1. He has eleven brothers and sisters; people stare and comment.
2. He goes to the store and people comment about how his “kids” (younger sisters and brothers) are cute or whatever.
3. When he gets married, people will say congratulations on his being newlywed.
4. When he has his first kid, people will say “oh what a cute baby” and things of that sort.
5. When he has more kids, people will comment on how well-behaved they are.
6. When he has a lot of kids of his own, people will comment on how he has so many kids.
7. When he takes his last baby to the store with just his wife and himself, people will say “Oh, is this your only child?”
8. When he takes five of his boys to the store people will say “Oh, you have only boys?” when he’s actually got five more girls at home!

Poor Joe.