Breaking Dawn Book Realse Party!

Those of you who know me know that I am insanely obsessed with the Twilight series as well as anything from Stephanie Meyer. Others of you may also know that on Friday night (08/01/08) at midnight (I guess 8/2/08 morning technically) there was a Breaking Dawn release party across the nation. This is the fourth and final book in the series. Border's bookstore in Gresham just happened to be hosting one of these parties. Naturally, I had to go.

Luckily, I called ahead to find out that we actually needed to show up that morning to get some pre-entrance bracelets to guarantee us a place in line. Glad I called.

Here we all are in line to get our bracelets.
This is our group. We chose the name "Team Edward Mom's". "Team Edward" because we are in love with Edward from the books, and "Moms" because, well, that's a given. You may note all of our matching shirts. Amy's fabulous Mother-in-law (seen two pictures below) made these t-shirts for us. I think she was almost as gitty as we were. On the front is the Breaking Dawn book cover with the words, "Edward and Bella Forever" below, and on the back (see below) is our "Team Edward" logo! So this is (from left to right) Amy, Challene, Holly, Becki, and Lindsey.
And the backs. Pay no attention to Becki cupping the bum of Amy, nor of Amy backhanding my bum. It was girls night after all and we got a little wild.
Here's Kerry (Amy's Mom-in-law) with the group. She even brought us all delicious double chocolate chip cookies! Aren't we cute? Thanks Kerry, we L-O-V-E our shirts.

Last but not least, here we are again. We had such a blast that night. The party started at 9:30 but our night started at 6:00! We went to dinner and did a little shopping before the party began. Hey, we were already in a mall, what did you expect? We got there shortly after 9:00 for the party and chit-chatted for a while. At 9:30 we got right into the swing of things. The place was packed with Junior High and High School kids... and us. They started with a round of Twilight based trivia, which nearly killed me. I answered the first question which was nice, but they wouldn't call on me after that. I won a Breaking Dawn button and some stickers.

After trivia, they had a little debate as to who Bella should end up with at the end of this book. After what seemed like a long while of listening to the "children" make their case for Bella staying with Jacob and after some down right peer-pressure from my friends, I got up and laid it out that Bella should be with Edward and only Edward. Well, maybe it was more of a rambling, but I got up just the same!

After that they had a costume/t-shirt contest. So what do we do? We get up there like we're models and strutted our stuff down a catwalk. Word on the street was that we ran down the catwalk, more-or-less. Regardless, the crowds loved us! We won first prize in Team T-Shirts. For the TEAM prize we got two CDs of unknowns, a single posture of Jadis-The White Witch of Narnia (we gave this to Lindsey's husband Jared who apparently has a little crush on her), some candy, a button, and some stickers.

Then we had a count-down as if new years eve, and then we got our books! Best girl's night ever!!!!!!

I finished my book last night at 3:00 a.m. Can you say, "page turner?" It never went the direction I expected it too. Plus, it had a happy ending, which I love! Bravo Ms. Meyer, bravo!

transc: wdg

Some day I will laugh

Lets just say that Friday I felt like I was on a roller coaster. Some moments were fine and then others were like "Why me?". My day started off on a low. Ethan came in the bedroom waking me and saying that "Joshua was ripping books". So I staggered out of bed blurry eyed to go and assess the damage. When I get in to the boys room I find 4 books torn up and only one salvageable. 2 of the 4 had sentimental value to them. "Hop on Pop" by Dr. Seuss I had given to Will for his very first Father's Day. The Second one "No Matter What" by Debi Gliori I really liked and my Mom had given it to me. So I'm sure I can replace them but I am annoyed that I have to.

So that was how my day started. The next part of my day went well, it was almost too easy. I took the car and renewed the registration. The Passport passed with flying colors, I paid for the DEQ test and the renewal all right there and was handed my stickers for the plates. I couldn't have been there more then 15 minutes. It was fabulous! Utah could learn a few things from Oregon. Ease of registration, and we don't have to register again until 2010!

After that I went to Fred Meyer Jewelers were I got my watch battery changed. This was another low. The guy was totally engrossed with helping this lady with her watch. I guess it was an antique. She was talking about how she aquired it and how beautiful the box was, how much it was worth and so forth. I really was not bothered that he was helping another costumer but it was that fact that I felt like I was being ignored. Here I was with two not quiet boys and they didn't even glance up to see if I needed help. All I wanted was "I will be with you in moment, ma'am". I have worked costumer service a lot and you acknowledge when people are there waiting to be helped.

I went to the bank to deposit a check once I was done at Fred Meyer and that went really well the boys actually stayed close by. They never do that! They are normally all over the bank, but this day and moment they stayed quite close. It was another high on my roller coaster of a day.

Here comes another down. So I walked next store to the AT & T store to pick up a battery for my phone. The kids were not as good as they were at the bank. Ethan was running all over touching phones. One worker even came up to me and warned me that Ethan looked like he might pull an I Phone display down on himself. So I got all flustered, there is nothing like feeling like a bad Mom because your kids are not listening to you. Then to have somebody point out that your kids are doing something bad is never good. So there I was holding a struggling Joshua in my arms trying to get my battery and telling Ethan to stop touching stuff.

We finally got the battery then I headed to get some lunch for us. I grabbed some Arby's for Will and the boys and some Jack in the box for me. That was also a joke. The guy at Arby's thought I was slow or something. I never go to Arby's and there I was trying to order Will's food and the boy's. I don't even think he really was listening to me because thank goodness I noticed at the window when he tried to hand me a Pepsi instead of a lemonade. Then at Jack in the box the lady tried to tell me they were out of the food I wanted. Which threw me. I guess she had bad information given to her. Finally I got what I wanted and I was off to Will's school. That part was nice. I always love seeing my husband. Even if it is eating fast food in the car, with the kids throwing food.

By the time lunch was done, I was starting to stress because I needed to get the boys home for a nap so I could turn around and come back to Will's school for an appointment that I had with Jared. So I said good bye to Will and we were off. Once home I was in pre-nap time routine mode. Diaper change, potty, and change of cloths if necessary and so forth. Well this was the worst part of my day. The part that I will hopefully some day soon look back and laugh. Ethan and I were in the half bathroom, I had the door shut because I did not want Joshua in there into everything and distracting Ethan. When I had shut the door I totally remember Joshua having a fairly large bottle of lotion in his hands. Yes it was full. So there I was in the bathroom trying to get Ethan to hurry up and go potty so I could get them down for their naps. I was listening for Joshua and he sounded like he was just outside the door and doing fine. Ethan finally finished. That is when to my horror I opened the door to a HUGE mess! Mounds of lotion in the carpet, Joshua covered head to toe, it was smeared into the drapes, the door and the mirror. I just stood there. I did not even know what to do. Where to start. How to clean up the mess. So I grabbed the camera and took some pictures. I am sure you the readers will feel my pain and probably laugh too. And that is fine. I am slowly coming around. I am sure someday I will laugh. Just not quite yet.

So that is not even the end of my roller coaster of a day. Yes it did continue. So to continue on, I called Will almost crying and told him what had happened. He came home to help, he is such a great husband and Dad. So the mess got cleaned up. I got a break because Will took care of putting the kids down for nap time. After my appointment we got some Keva's and went to the park. My day was still looking up. I took a much needed time out and sat on the bench and soaked up the sun while Will played with the kids. Here comes another down. Ethan towards the end of the park trip came over and laid his head on my lap saying that he was tired. I just thought he had heat exhaustion so we left soon after that. He was pretty much in hysterics after that. He said he did not feel good, he would not eat dinner. He had a fever so I put him in the bath trying to lower it and make him feel better. This seemed to only agitate him further in to hysteria. Will and I were doing everything to get him cooled down and happy. That is when Will had to leave. The one and only time Will has a guys night and I am stuck with a sick hysterical child. Grrrr! So after this long day I was on my own. I do have to say that it went better then I had expected. Ethan feel asleep on the sofa while I was trying to get Joshua asleep, an hour early I might add. Joshua is such a trooper though, he did go to sleep or at least he was quiet for me. So of course Ethan woke up when I tried to transfer him from the sofa to his bed. Ethan was and always is harder to put down but I did get him down earlier then normal. At this point with the kids down and my husband gone. I did some much needed release of stress, I exercised. It felt so great!

What a day!!!!!!!!!!!

Splish Splash

Blue Lake Water Park

So, it was pretty darn warm over here about 3 weeks ago. We're talking upwards of triple digits. We felt that a trip to the local Blue Lake Water Park was definately in order. I guess it's not so much a water park as it is a "kiddy-water-fun-zone". Our kids were too young to actually swim in the lake, so this worked out well.

Joshy, my usually water loving son, wouldn't go near the splash zone for quite some time. It wasn't until I showed him the fun of stopping up the water streams with your feet, only to let them build up back pressure enough that when once release an incredible stream of water would shoot across the diameter of the "fun-zone". Joshy just liked stopping the water.

Ethan, my usually water hating son, was loving it from the get-go. He and Liza (seen here) were inseparable the entire day. They'd go play for 10 minutes, get towelled off, then go play some more. good times.

Pre-towelling.
My brown-eyed boy.
We told him it was time to eat lunch, so he went and sat at a table and waited patiently for his food (something he never does at home). Only thing is, we were picnicking on the ground. Someone else had planned on using this table.
Here's Joshy unstopping a water-stream only to get Ethan in the face. The love of a sibling...

I suppose that's it. We had fun and this post was a long time coming. I really have nothing more to say, so I'll stop here.

Burnside, I hardly knew ye...

I don't have any pictures to dazzle anyone with today. I just thought I would write a small (yeah, right) tribute to a little piece of Will Green HIStory. This is for posterity, so those uninterested are free to go elsewhere.

While completing my fourth academic year here at good ol' Western States Chiropractic College, I had the distinct honor of spending 13 well-rounded weeks at our Burnside Clinic. This clinic, located on Burnside street - hence the name, is a hole-in-the-wall free chiropractic clinic to those who qualify. How do you qualify? Well, you have to have a gross income of less than 200% of the federal poverty level and a way to get to the clinic itself. Who does this encompass? Well, the guy living under the viaduct... yeah, he'll come in. The man pushing the stolen shopping cart with all his belongings inside... he qualifies. You get an idea of the kind of people for whom we catered.

It was a bittersweet experience being there. I hate to admit it, but initially I most certainly felt "better" than the people who came in there. I thought that my spending time there was a waste and that I would be better off back in the out patient clinic on campus. That was before my first shift there.

I met a man who was suffering from back pain. He had steel rods surgically implanted along his spine to straighten his scoliosis. He was wasting away. Over the 13 weeks I treated him he was obviously losing weight because he had no money for food. He had chronic neck pain from being dragged by the head down some stairs by police officers arresting him. He would moan and moan while on the table because of the pain. Beyond the physical help, I think the visit was a psychological help to him.

I also met a family. A mom, dad, and a son (jonah). They walked in with the dirtiest of clothes. The matted unkempt hair. The smell of not showering for days. But after taking all of that in, I noticed their smiles. Big toothy grins. They smiled as they spoke to each other and they kept their heads high. It was obvious that they had run into a spot of bad luck. But they remained a family and I could sense the strength in that. The mom was suffering from a lumbar disc herniation and though the pain was exquisite she would assume a less painful position (kneeling on the floor while lying her body along the chair) and wait patiently for her turn. I had a chance to speak to Jonah while his mom was being treated. He held two Star Wars Stormtrooper action figures - his birthday present two years ago. These figures were in pristine condition and he went on and on about them and how excited he was to get them and how he never lets them out of his sight. He reluctantly let me hold one with the promise to be gentle as he didn't want them to get ruined. The mom was able to walk out of the clinic painfree for the first time in a long time.
That was in the first day.

I went there every Tuesday afternoon from 1:30 to 6:00.

I met a lady who had been dealing with low back pain for over 30 years. She came into the clinic basically on a dare from a friend. She is ~5' 8", 350 lbs, and very boisterous. The intern that treated her initially (the one I took over for) was about 5' 2", 102 lbs and very soft spoken. The first time I met this patient she said, (to be spoken in a eubonics type speech) "You know that other intern? I didn't think there was nothin' she could do for me. But I tell you what, after she finished with me I didn't have no back pain at all! I tell you, I've suffered for 30 years with this back pain and this little bitty girl come in her like, 'ok, I'm going to adjust you now' and I'm thinking, 'YOU!?! Adjust me!?!' But you know what? She did it, bless her heart, she fixed my back. I feel better than I've felt in 30 years because of her and my mama she tell me that I aint never looked this good... or this happy. I told her its all cause of you guys." And she went on like that for several minutes.

Sometimes it was hard to treat people. I must admit that on occasion I would get a patient who is in pain because of stupid life decisions and I almost didn't want to treat them. I had several patients who were involved in drunk driving accidents. They were the drunk ones. Many drug addicts.

There was one guy who I treated. He came in for shoulder and neck pain. The shoulder pain was because he held his arm up in attempt to ward off attackers trying to beat him with a pipe. He was hit in the face with a 2x4 and broke his dentures. He was tortured with hot pokers. He just wanted his shoulder better so he could get a job holding the "slow" and "stop" signs in construction zones. He just wanted a break. We found a possible malignant melanoma on the top of his head.

One man was an aspiring rapper who was waiting for his big break. He was an 18 month recovered heroin addict. He turned his life around and was now volunteering at the rehab facility that helped him.

One man had severe psychological disorders (schizo-afferent disease). That was interesting.

My last day at Burnside I had a 79 year old little southern black lady. She is osteoporotic, diabetic, hypertensive and could barely walk. She was also quite hilarious. She had pain in her tailbone that she had been dealing with for over 10 years. "I hear all the other women [in the nursing home] complaining about pain. What are you complaining for? We're all in pain, just deal with it and stop whining!" She would say in a southern accent/eubonics combo. She came in as a referral from her MD. "He told me to come in, so I came in, though I doubt there's anything you can do for me." I smiled. I love it when patients tell me that. "Well, let's see what we can do." "All right, I been livin' with this for a long time now, but you do what you gotta do." We finished the exam and treatment and she stood up. "You know what? I feel better." Her look went from a confused kind of grimace to a big loose-skin, toothy grin. "I feel really good!" She was very complimentary.

As of last tuesday my time at Burnside is over. I'm glad I had the opportunity to do something like that. I learned many things. I learned that as a physician it is not my place to judge people and their life choices. It is my job to get them back to health - physically and mentally. I learned the power of the chiropractic care. I learned to listen. I learned that we all feel pain, and we all have ups and downs. I learned that I, for sure, have been lead to the right career choice for me. I love what I do. I love helping people. I love actually seeing people getting better after laying my hands on them. I love that there is hope to those who have been putting up with pain for 30 years or so.

I guess mostly I had a rather rude awakening to the fact that we are all human beings. We've all been dealt different hands in this life and we all deal with that differently. By the time my 13 weeks was over, I didn't want to go. I will miss it there.

A Day at the Beach

Gearhart Beach

So, graduation is fast approaching and we're starting to realize that we could be gone in as little as three to six months. There's definately a lot of Oregon things we wanted to do before we left. One of those things is to spend more time at the beach. We heard from some friends of a magical place called Gearhart beach. A beach where travelers need not park two miles away, unload and haul all their beach-going fare on foot for those two miles, and then haul it back once finished... oh, no. This beach was famed for allowing visitors to drive on the beach itself! I know the question burning on everyones lips right now, and yes, I did feel a little like David Hasselhoff from Baywatch. I can't speak for my wife, but I'm sure she felt a little bit like Pamela Anderson too. Well, maybe more like Yasmine Bleeth. Anyway, it was fun 4-wheeling on the sand.

It was July 5th and it was cold, rainy, and windy! A stark contrast to the near 100 degree weather we'd been "enjoying" weeks previous. Surprisingly, the beach wasn't all that busy.

And now some photo's:

There was this cool little "reef" of tall grass and wildflowers bordering the beach. It was quite lovely.

Getting ready for our picnic, we parked facing up-wind so we wouldn't be bothered too much by the pummeling gale. We enjoyed delicious peanut butter and jam sandwiches, grapes, Cool Ranch Doritos, and ice cold water.

This is a picture of my Sweetest Challene after a quick trip to the Loo. "Wait," you may be thinking, "I just saw pictures of that grassy meadow and I didn't see any nearby buildings, shanty's, outhouses, etc. I couldn't even imagine anything out there except maybe a lone hotel not 1.5 miles in the distance!" My reply to you? "What an astute observation!" Yes, Challene's need was just that bad.

Nothing says "Beach Fun" like throwing dirt on the car and yourself. Good times.

Except maybe an opportunity to smash someones pitiable attempts at a sandcastle. Even the makeshift moat didn't stop Josh from kicking the crap out of that thing. I've never been prouder! *sniff*

Ethan trying to make his own sand castle. Don't worry, Joshy smashed that one too!

Later, we travelled to Seaside to check out the aquarium. Disappointing? Well, we did pay $14 or so for Challene and I, but they did have a giant squid, octopi, and several playful, hungry seals. I think it was worth it. Joshy and Ethan wouldn't have anything to do with touching the starfish or anenomes. Well, that's not true. Actually, Ethan grabbed the very starfish I was holding above and nearly squished it to death. After a firm, but not overbearing, chastizement he refused to touch anything else.

See, I told you so.

Doesn't look like we got a picture of the seals, but there were 6 or 7 seals in a tank you could walk right up to. You had an option of buying a cut up fish to feed to the seals. As the 25 other patrons had paper bowls of stinky fish we opted not to. These seals have been pampered for far too long. One, I'll call him Tim, would sit there all cute like waiting with baited breath for someone to throw a fish-bit to him. Well, if no one threw anything before his internal timer counted down to zero, he would put both fore-fins in front of his body and splash the onlookers in a rather humorous and human-esque fashion. Challene was holding Ethan to see and she would duck behind him so as not to get wet. Ethan didn't mind a bit.

Another seal, we'll call him Hal, also had a "feed me" attention getter. He would roll on his side and smack his fore-fin against his voluptuous belly creating a makshift vacuum which invariably lead to a significant pressure differential. As we all know, that differential would resonate at particular frequencies easily audible to the human ear. In other words, he was clapping. Loudly. It, too, was humorous.

The aftermath of the day was, of course, two very dirty boys. So, here they are in the bath enjoying bubbles-a-plenty. Elmo's Wild Watermelon bath bubbles to be precise.

I failed to mention (but don't have the patience to amend the beach portion above) that Gearhart was riddled (rittled?) with sand dollars. We had the boys hunt for sand dollars as we strolled along. Most had been busted open by the bane of the shoreline... seagulls. As the seagull is NOT the state bird of Oregon I really wanted to kick one. Sadly, someone else must have tried the same thing before because they were awfully skiddish. Until I broke out the residual PB&J. They flocked to me like... well, like a flock of seagulls. Once one of them, let's call her Anjali, came within my sites. I flexed my knee, ready to strike, but after taking one look into that hungry little face and my heart was melted.

The above story is nearly true.

At any rate, we found a bazillion sand dollars on the beach. Well, they don't just come all white and pretty, oh no. You have to work for that. So, here is a photo of Challene and the boy's cleaning the sand dollars.

We never took a picture of our finished ones. They are beautiful, that's for certain. Here's an example of what one would look like.

Oh yeah, ours were looking just like this puppy... let's call him Raul.

Birthday Party & 4th of July

Happy Birthday Olivia!

July 3rd was our friends the Woolsey's daughters 1st Birthday. To celebrate Olivia birthday they had a party at the Park. The kids had a blast.

Olivia with her birthday cupcake

To celebrate her birthday they had sparklers. Only the boys enjoyed them. The girls were to scared.

Joshua and Chloe

The 4th of July!

This year for our 4th of July celebration we invited our friends over for a little pyrotechnics. Will and Jared put on a fabulous show for the kids. Thanks guys!

Liza was so excited she could not stand it. Here is a picture of her happy dance.

Will was lighting a smoke bomb for Ethan. He is such a boy he loved it.

The boys with there Tanks.


Ethan showing off one of the bigger fireworks. He was loving the show. Joshua on the other hand was a little bit nervous with it all.

The Dragon finale. It was pretty cool. It had these red and I mean red and yellow fire balls that would pop out every now and then (not shown in this picture).

Oneonta Falls

Many of you know that it is one of our favorite pass-times to go to the falls. The Columbia River Gorge is full of amazing falls. You faithful readers will recall many-a-posts about them.

Well, yesterday we found a new one. We'd heard legends of this waterfall, but never had the nerve to go see it. "Nerve," your asking? Yes, nerve. You see, this particular waterfall involves a 1.7 mile (-ish) trek, up the river itself, midst two sheer enormous cliffs on either side of you, a la Zion's Narrows. This particular season the water is also running high and fast. We had 95 degree weather yesterday but due to the intensely high rock walls the water didn't see an ounce of that sunlight. So the water was a frigid 50 degrees (-ish). At any rate, it was C-O-L-D cold! Once our legs numbed up a bit, it wasn't all that bad. It took a long time for them to numb up, though. We weren't sure just how high the water would be so we didn't take our cameras or phones. It was a good thing. At one point it was up to... well, it was up to my nipples. Yes, nipples. (This is Will writing, by-the-way). So these pictures are from the inter-web.

The beginning was enough to deter many people. You had to scale two enormous boulders with a 3-foot span between them. Either that, or swim through the icy water. Most everyone opted for the boulders. 3 feet may not sound like much, but when you're twelve feet up with nothing but a jaggedy pit of pain below 3 feet seems like a long way to jump.

After successfully scaling the boulders we then had to take on the slippery "Dam-of-Death". Tons of enormous logs smashed together in an eternal entanglement of slivery soreness blocked our way. This too involved some deft. But we made it.

Our path unblocked from this point we slowly trudged up through the rocky river. With an average depth of knee high (on me) it was no easy task. And again, I cannot verbally express enough just how cold that water was. Truly, the only way to describe it is, "Huhuhuhu...chchchchhcchoooooooollllllldedededed". This is where the bottom of the river decided to drop out from under us. This is where it came up to... dare I say it again... my nipples. For some reason, nobody wanted their arms to get wet, so the held them elevated above the water. It reminded me vividly of the scene in Forest Gump of him sludging through the waters in Veitnam with gun overhead. That's how we were. Anyways, there were a ton of people there. We even saw a woman with a baby (couldn't be more than a couple months old) slung over one arm as she worked her way along the river. This was more towards the enterance and I hope she didn't try to go up to the falls.

Well, soon after the near drowning the canyon opened up a little and we caught our first glimpse of the falls. It was amazing. This photo does not do it justice at all because it was running so much more water than what is shown here. Apparently, the river is quite deep just under and near the falls itself, such that you can swim around the falls and dive down in. It was too cold to attempt anything like that, but perhaps at high noon one could do such a thing.

It was an amazing and exhilerating experience to get there. We admired the falls for a moment and then realized we still had to make it back. So, we went.

All was going smoothly for us, until the deep area. Challene thought that scaling the wall was a better alternative than getting incredibly wet with water nearly approaching absolute zero. Many had done it before, so she tried. I opted for the water. As I was slowly making my way, and at about the deepest portion of the trek, I heard a high pitched scream, a "William" followed by the sound of falling rocks and slipping shoes. I turned just in time to see Challene lose her footing, turn, and begin to fall toward the water. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time and I turned quickly and caught her. She clung to me tightly as I completed the journey out from the deep end of the river. She was slightly rattled but mostly grateful not to have belly-flopped into liquid ice.

We hiked back through the river, over the dam, and across the boulders back to the car. All in all it was an awesome adventure. I loved it.

If you're wondering about the kids, they stayed home.