Seaside

At least once a year, starting a few years ago, our family goes on vacation to the beach at a place called Seaside. Once Grandma and Grandpa came with us, this time Poppie is coming. Dada rents out this little house from one of his friends at work. It's really fun to go there, and I feel like us kids get a lot more freedom because we are allowed to ride our bikes on the street and do the family's shopping at this little store close enough for us to walk to! We also have memories there, like, once I wanted to start a slug club, because at Seaside banana slugs are everywhere! Seaside's also the place where we found out Mama was pregnant with Tuff, and where Opal and Berg learned how to ride their bikes!
At Seaside, it is important that we all know how to ride a bike (except for the two littlest's, who get to ride in a bike trailer), because once a day we all pedal to town where Dada buys us each a one dollar ice cream cone at this cute little candy shop. The shop is famous for it's 170 flavors of taffy, but they also have tons of flavors of ice cream and a wheel you can spin to win a free taffy or some other big candy. Another tradition at Seaside is getting sick. And it's always either me or Dada, or that one time it was Mama because she was pregnant. When Grandma and Grandpa came with us, I was the one that got sick. Grandpa lost Opal when they were bike riding and I wanted to go look for her so badly, but I wasn't allowed to, and was stuck laying on the couch. On Friday we are going to go to Seaside again, with Poppie like I said earlier. The house there has three bedrooms, a kitchen/dining room and a living room, and is nice and cozy, so I don't know where Poppie will sleep yet. Normally there is a boy's room, a girl's room and a Mama/Dada room, but I don't know what there will be this time.

P.S: I forgot to mention that we also go to a Goodwill where we are each allowed to pick out a five dollar or less toy to play with while we are there.

Sphero

Just the day after Easter, we got a sphero. A sphero is a little robot ball that can roll in water and on land. It can do cool jumps and stuff too, and it comes with two ramps. Eben is obsessed with it, though then again he is obsessed with everything electronic related. He is actually the one who talked us ( all of his siblings) into getting it. You see, in our family, if you really want something, you have to petition Dada for it. It always helps when we use fancy words, and start with a title for Dada, like,''Dear loving, caring, handsome Dada,'' because, .... I don't know why. Anyways, this time when we petitioned him for the sphero, he agreed that if we payed for all of it, and were completely good for two weeks, he would let us get one. The being completely good for two weeks part was hard, and I think it took us five weeks to do it because everytime one of us just groaned because we didn't want to do something, the whole two weeks reset. We finally got through it because Dada took away some days from our weeks when we did jobs, like cutting off six feet of ivy on all of the trees in the front lawn. When we finally went to Barns and Nobel's to get our sphero, Eben was so excited he threw away the receipt ( And we're talking about a $130 item!), and had to go back in and get it. Tuffy and Eben still really like it, but I think that I have gotten board of it. It should last a while longer ( the people that invented it dropped sphero from an adult's waist height thirty times to test it's durability), so I'll probably get interested in it again. Eben would reccomend getting one, and I probably would if I was asked. P.S. We named our sphero ''Dave".

This Resurrection Sunday...

Just a little bit ago, on Resurrection Sunday,

All of us got on our clothes, and then got to go and play!

Mama took our Easter pictures and little man got cold,

We bundled him in a blanket and we went inside ( to home). 

We went to church (Coal's first appearance), 

And then went home and found our Easter baskets! 

We had an Easter egg hunt, that was fun,

 Then the silver egg was found, by Eben's friend, Ian.

(The prize for the egg was a giant chocolate bunny, 

And when Mama awarded it, we laughed, it looked so funny!)

This Resurrection Sunday, or Easter as it's called,

Was a lot, really, truly, fun, all in all.

Opal Poem

Opal is sweet, Opal is kind.

Opal is my sister, so she is mine.

Cause' once upon a time...

Opal was born, in the birthing inn.

In the purple room, in the bathtub...

 BOOM!

There was Opal, sitting right there,

Mama was happy, the receptionist was scared!

 (The receptionist and Dada were the only others there.)

Well, now it's eight years later, and cute Opie is now grown,

By that I mean she's older, because she still lives in our home.
My Opal, you're my sister. I love you, you are mine.

You should stay here til' you're married... but that shouldn't be for a time. 

The Bush

In our backyard, there is mostly grass. Go a little farther, and you will find a three foot drop to the lake. A little to the side, and you'll find a dock. Go to the other side. and you will find The Bush. The Bush is a giant bush that acts like a property divider on the outside, but on the inside it is a giant climbing mansion! Dada says that it blocks our view of the lake, which is true, if it weren't there we would have twice the amount of lake to.... view. The Bush is one of our favorite parts of the house, partly because it is one of the first places we made memories in at this house (We just moved). On one side of the bush there is a rock wall, with lots of little holes and stuff, so when we play house in there, that is the kitchen. On the other side, there is the three foot drop to the lake. I have made a little seven level ''house''over the drop that I call Pumpkin Point, because there is a little window that looks out over the lake, where there is a lamp post whose light reflects on the water and makes the shape of a pumpkin. We have only discovered part of the bush ( not all of the top yet) and hope that we will continue having a lot of fun in it.

Coal!

Up until recently, I have had four brothers and two sisters, and the order of our birth has gone like this: boy, girl, boy, girl and so on. However, on March 10, our new little brother Coal was born! He had to be born early, because our good midwife found out about five weeks ago that Mama had this liver problem that would kill Coal if they waited till' he was nine months old. That meant that he had to be born at the hospital, which we are not used to. Eben, the oldest was the only one born at the hospital, because after that Mama decided that she did not like to be surrounded by machines and doctors. I was born on our kitchen floor, Jasper at a friend's house, Opal at the birthing inn, (Me and Jasper were planned for the birthing inn but never made it) and Berg, Pella and Tuff at home. When Coal was born, he was nice and healthy and a good size. Unfortunately, five minuets later he stopped breathing! The doctor said that he was dead, because he couldn't find a heartbeat, but the nurse said that he was still alive and called in a lot more nurses and doctors and Dada said that they kept working on him, got him breathing and took him to the NICU.

 He stayed there for four days, and came home on Monday, where we finally got to see him. I had kind of gone a little crazy, because normally I get to first see my siblings when they are about an hour old. Now that he is home, whenever we are around him we have to wear yellow masks, because we don't want him to get any germs because he is a premie baby, and we have all had this cold for a while. All of the people at our church have been really nice, and have been bringing us dinners since Sunday, I think. I love Coal, and hope that we will get more siblings!

Pella's Ballerina Birthday!

This year, for her birthday, Pella wanted to have a ballerina birthday party!  She has been looking forward to it so much that she has been planning it since the day after her last birthday! Mama has stopped making really complicated cakes, ( such as microscopes, alligators and whole scenes!) and has reduced to just sticking stuff on the top of normal cakes. This is Pella (or as we call her, Chuggy) putting the candles in her cake.

Once at an auction, Mama got a free ballet lesson, and she decided to use it at Pella's party! But when she called, we found out that the teacher would be in Portland, Oregon and couldn't make it, we called in our next best choice: Dodie. Dodie, our aunt, has been in ballet multiple years and agreed to step in as the ballerina teacher at Chuggy's party. She is the adult in black. We transformed our basement into a ballet studio by setting up a bar and lining the walls with mirrors! I was Dodie's assistant, and everybody copied what we did (or tried to). 

Eben and Nathaniel Schock did the music for us, and projected it nice and loud with speakers. When the boys found out that there were boy ballerinas too, they rushed to get changed (Berg was going to be the ''Rainbow Ballerina'', who dressed just like a girl with a rainbow tu-tu!).

Along with cake, we also decorated cookies in the shape of ballet dresses! Mama and I made lots of bags of powdered sugar and water frosting. We added food coloring and it turned out great!

This is our group photo.

After the dancing, down in the basement we took turns letting Unka Cheese carry us across the basement with us frozen in a ballet position. This is Opal, who I thought was the prettiest (besides Dada, shown below) being carried across.

At the end Jasper and Pella did a dance together. Chuggy had a fun party and has already started planning the next...