Well we are back up and running. :) The old computer seems pretty shot but some kind friends had mercy on us and gave us one of theirs. So, we get buy with a little help...

S. has one of her best chums over for a few days this week and they stayed up late watching movies so I have a bit of time this morning to put something up here. They have been eagerly awaiting a new Stargate movie coming out and wanted to all go to the theater together to watch it. Well, as it turns out it wasn't coming to the theaters, only DVD, so after recovering from their disappointment they decided to get the DVD and watch it on the big screen in the basement. And S. and Bethany slept down there-WITH THE HOBOS!!!!(spiders, that is-not the human type.) (Mrs. D. tell Tink they slept down there with the Hobos! I haven't checked to see if they were eaten yet..)

We have a sort of family rule that we can't do anything or like anything that is super, super popular. My dad says we are "reverse snobs". So everything we like is sort of the underdog type things. But the down side of that is that the bands we like hardly ever come, the movies we like only come out on DVD etc. *sigh* Oh well.. We still aren't going to do anything popular. So there!

The weather has been beautiful lately. I love spring in Oregon. I took some pictures of the boys playing outside but I have to figure out how to load onto this thing. Or I'll ask the kids to figure it out. They seem to have a much better instinct for these kinds of things. The cherry trees are blooming and the daphne which is so lovely. I love it when I go on walks and suddenly I can smell that sweet, sweet smell and I think "Oh, there must be daphne about" and sure enough, I look around and there it is.

Tonight there is a music performance thingy at church. My little girls are all singing in the girl's choir, F. is playing guitar and S. is singing a solo. I get so nervous when my children are going to perform something. I think it is harder on me than them! What is it about that? I'm so afraid of them messing up and taking it hard. But they also seem a lot more able to cope with those sorts of things than I was when I was a kid. I guess they have less of that peer dependency which made me so anxious that I would be made fun of when I did something in front of my friends. S. worries about where to put her eyes, though. She's afraid that if she looks at any of us in her family we will make her laugh. Now why would we do that? She has been working so hard on her song. Ack! I hope it all goes well.

I'm so thankful that our church has been such an aid to us in the musical education of our children because if it were dependant on R. and I it would have been sadly lacking. Music and sports. F. would never have learned the rules to basketball if it were up to us. But in our church my children have had the opportunity to learn violin, piano, guitar and voice so far. Hilary is wrong about it taking a village. It takes a family-and a church. :)

I'm hoping to get E. a mandolin. Then I would have a fiddle player (well, in years to come, Fi. is just starting on violin.) a guitar player, a singer, and we would about have a bluegrass band. Now, wouldn't that be fun? We have been listening to a lot of Nickle Creek lately. Sarah Watkin's voice reminds me of S's and we really like it. We saw them when they were just kids-I think Sarah was about 16, though that was about 7 years ago. Now they are getting pretty well known, at least in bluegrass circles, though they aren't strictly bluegrass.

Well, I guess now I will tootle around and see what is up with all of you. If I can. I am hearing signs of life downstairs...

Oh, if you need a little laugh, check out this video Karen has linked @ her blog. I wanna do it, like at Pioneer Square or even better, Saturday Market downtown! Wouldn't that be a kick?