Remembering Misha

Michael was writing to someone on the home roaster list last nite (Friday 2/22) and I wanted to share part of it with all of you.

A dear friend and family member of 16 years died while we were eating dinner tonight. He's been my master since the first day he joined our home as a wee furball of a kitten. I still remember staying up with him that first night because he cried and missed his mother so much, our bond was permanently forged. It was often funny, he'd often follow me around like a puppy dog. We knew his time was nigh and decided to take him into the vet and put to sleep after we ate. He's been slowly declining for a couple years from his former 13# robust self down to under 7. Last couple of days I knew his time was short. This evening when I got home he didn't even lift his head when I petted him and he was barely breathing. But Misha always hated going the vet and especially getting shots so departed on his own terms. I was glad for that. I will miss him sorely and never forget him. It'll be a bit empty him not sleeping on the right side of my head even though he'd often be annoying many a early morning batting me lightly in the face as his purr rumbled 'cuz HE deciding it was time to be petted. Which of course I'd dutifully do as commanded then pull the sheet over my head to ward off further battings as I went back to sleep. Life goes on but I am sad and mourn his passing.

This is Debi again - I too will miss our little guy sorely.  I'll miss the way he always wanted to get on my lap whenever I was on my computer and wanting me to pet him when Michael and I were sitting watching TV at night - but only for a few minutes, before settling down on Michael's lap (never mine).  The house feels so empty today with him gone. It's like you can feel that his spirit has left us.  I keep expecting to see him - curled up on the bed or back of the couch, or on my desk (this was new in the last month).  Oh, Michael buried him in the backyard, so he will always be with us in some way.

So, now we are a catless home for the first time in over 25 years.  Hopefully not for long, but it will be strange for us to have to find that special someone to share our home with on our own  Mom gave us both Mariko and Misha, and even our very first kitty we got from Kris.

I'll write more 'family news' stuff later when we're a little less sad.

We miss all of you and so enjoy hearing how you're all doing.  Keep posting on the site.  We'll try to do better too.

Love and prayers

Mike & Debi

Big News - well, at least for me! lol

Today I was called, sustained, and set apart as the new Relief Society President. The last week and a half have been crazy, overwhelming, terrifying, and yet through it all I have felt the spirit of the Lord, helping me and guiding me each step of the way. I am counting on that to continue! lol

I typed up my feelings as I went throughout the last several days and have just posted them in my blog, feel free to visit there to hear more about this experience so far.

I still feel scared and overwhelmed, but I feel love and support from many of the people around me. I especially feel the love and support of my Heavenly Father and I am putting all of my faith and trust in Him right now. I know that is the only way I can ever hope to fulfill this calling. I know that though my best could never be enough, He can do all things and He can make my best enough. :)

Hello Everyone

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Chad Reed <pheonix8472@hotmail.com>
Date: Thu, Feb 14, 2008 at 11:21 AM
Subject: family ties

HELLO EVERYONE,

    IT HAS BEEN AWHILE SINCE I HAVE WRITTEN FAMILY TIES. THIS IS CHAD BY THE WAY! SO MUCH HAS HAPPENED SINCE LAST I WROTE. I ALMOST DONT KNOW WHERE TO BEGIN. WELL I AM STILL LIVING IN THE HEART OF DOWNT TOWN BUT THAT WILL BE CHANGING AS OF NEXT MONTH. JASON AND I HAVE FOUND AN AMAZING PLACE JUST OUT OF THE CITY. IT IS THIS GREAT TOWN HOUSE THAT IS THREE STORIES. IT HAS TWO BEDROOMS AND TWO BATHS AND A FULL TWO CAR GARAGE. IT WILL BE SO NICE TO HAVE ALOT MORE ROOM. JASON IS FILMING A MOVIE AND WE NEED MORE SPACE FOR THE GREEN SCREEN.
    OH YA FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO DONT HAVE MYSPACE OR I HAVE NOT SPOKEN WITH YET, JASON AND I ARE GETTING HITCHED. WELL NOT LEGALLY BUT THE CONCEPT IS THE SAME. IT WAS OUR SIX MONTH ANNIVERSARY THIS LAST WEEKEND AND WELL, I POPPED THE QUESTION. HE SAID YES OF COURSE. THE DETAIL ARE TO BE ANNOUNCED. WE ARE STILL DECIDING WHEN AND WHERE BUT WE ARE THINKING A MID SUMMER BEACH CEREMONY. I KNOW MANY OF YOU WONT ATTEND DUE TO RELIGIOUS DIFFERENCES BUT THOSE WHO WOULD LIKE TO, PLEASE LET ME KNOW.
    SO LET ME TELL YOU A BIT ABOUT JASON. HE AND I MET SIX MONTHS AGO ON MY VACATION BACK FORM HAWAII. AS YOU MIGHT HAVE GUESSED I DIDNT END UP GOING BACK. WE HAVE SPENT EVERYDAY SINCE WE MET TOGETHER AND IT HAS BEEN GREAT. HE RECENTLY THREW ME A SURPRISE B-DAY PARTY AND A LOCALL KERIOKE BAR. WE HAD A BLAST. I ENDED UP SINGING UNTIL I COULDNT ANY MORE. SADLY THE NIGHT DIDNT NOT END WELL. AFTER RECIEVING A CALL FROM MY FAMILY SAYING THEY WERE NOT COMING, I DECIDED TO POUND DOWN THE DRINKS. NEEDLESS TO SAY IT ENDED IN A HOSPITAL VISIT WITH ME NON-RESPONSIVE AND MY BEST FRIEND SLAPPING ME IN THE FACE SO HARD I BRUISED, WHILE TRYING TO WAKE ME UP. ALL IN ALL NOT A BAD BIRTHDAY LOL.
    SO I AM HAPPY TO ANNOUNCE THAT BOTH CHELSIE AND SARAH ARE EXPECTING. THEY ARE ABOUT A MONTH APART AND WILL BE DUE THIS SUMMER. THIS WILL BE CHELSIES SECOND CHILD AND SARAHS FIRST. WE ARE ALL SO EXCITED. OUR FAMILY IS GROWING SO FAST. SAMANTHA IS DOING WELL. SHE HAS BEEN A LITTLE SICK THIS WINTER BUT IS STARTING TO DO BETTER. SHE CONTINUES TO DO VERY WELL IN SCHOOL. SHE RECENTLY GOT OUT OF THE HOSPITAL. SHE CAUGHT THE NASTY BUG THAT WENT AROUND AND WAS ALLEGIC TO THE MEDICATION. SHE BROKE OUT IN RED SPOTS AND HAD A FEVER THAT WOULD NOT GO AWAY. I ENDED UP GOING AND PLAYING CARDS WITH HER FOR HOURS. LITTLE QUIN IS NOT SO LITTLE ANY MORE. SHE IS THREE AND VERY TALL FOR HER AGE. SHE HAS RECENTLY DISCOVERED THE GAME APPLES TO APPLES AND WANTS TO PLAY IT ALL THE TIME. SHE IS VERY EXCITED TO HAVE A NEW SIBLING. SHE THINKS IT WILL BE A GIRL. SHE EVEN NAMED HER KIA LYNN. IN FACT SHE TOLD CHELSIE SHE WAS PREGNANT. FUNNY HUH. TAYLOR IS DOING WELL. HE IS READING ALOT AND HE IS STARTING TO LOSE WEIGHT. HE IS DETERMINED TO BE AS SMALL AS ME WHEN HE COMES BACK TO PORTLAND. MOM AND MATTHEW ARE DOING WELL. THEY ARE LOOKING TO INVEST IN STOCKS AND BONDS, BUT FRANKLY THAT IS ALL OVER MY HEAD.
    BASICALLY THAT IS WHAT I AM UP TO. I HOPE ALL YOU GUYS ARE DOING WELL AND I REALLY THINK WE SHOULD PLAN TO ALL GET TOGETHER. LIFE IS TO SHORT TO SPEND IT AWAY FROM LOVED ONES. IT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE A WEDDING OR DEATH IN THE FAMILY TO GET US ALL TOGETHER! ALL MY LOVE.

CHADWICK

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You are invited...

To Acadia's very first piano recital! 

Date: Saturay, January 26, 2008
Time: 11:00 am

What?  That's past?  Oh, well then let me take you back in time to the moment when Acadia made her musical debut.  Keep arms and legs inside until we've come to a full and complete stop (and make sure the sound on your computer is on!)...

We are very proud of her!  She was bummed that she made a couple of mistakes but I told her that every single person made some mistakes and what is important is that she kept going!  I thought she did a great job!

(Incidentally, at the very beginning she is introducing the pieces she is about to play.  The camcorder didn't do a very good job picking that up.)

After all of the performers played their pieces, their teacher presented the prize to the student(s) who had the most stickers.  (Each week that a student does all of their practicing and completes the theory work and any other assignments she has given them, they get a sticker.  She keeps track and the student with the most, wins.)  There was a tie and Acadia was one of the winners!  The winners get little mini busts of music composers and there are several different ones, so as they continue to win, they will add more to their collection.  Acadia got Haydn today and it is already proudly displayed on her desk in her bedroom.

After the recital, which fortunately Ryan was able to take a long lunch for to attend, we took her out to lunch and let her choose the location.  She chose "Boffin' Bo's", otherwise known as Boppin' Bo's. ;)  It was yummy and I was really good, just ordering a cup of soup and a dinner salad... oh, and a milkshake - but I didn't get a huge sundae and a greasy sandwich and fries like I normally would! lol  Ryan had to rush back off to work so he left while the girls and I paid.  When we got to the car to come home, there was a beautiful bouquet of flowers on Cadi's seat with a note from her Daddy. :)  I hope to get a picture of Ryan and Acadia with the flowers, but for now, this will have to do.

I am really so proud of Acadia!  She is doing so well with the piano, she really seems to have a natural talent for it and I'm so glad that she enjoys it so much and WANTS to play.  I was also very proud of how she handled performing today!  She wasn't really very nervous, a little, but not super.  I think I would have been far more nervous than she seemed to be!  I'm glad that she is getting this experience and I hope that as she continues down this path that she will also continue to perform and share her talents with others.

An Update on Our Girls

Acadia has been very excited about a class party that she and her classmates earned today. She has posted in her blog about it, so go check that out. :) Today should be a really fun day at school, and not just because of the party! They start with Sharing Time (every Friday, but will be first thing this time because of the other things going on too), then have Art Appreciation (I think this is usually once a month, one of the student's aunt is a professional artist and comes in to do fun projects with them.), they also have P.E., and then there is the class party! She wanted her hair wavy and this is how it turned out...


She needed me to take a picture of her doing something for an art project today so we took a pic of her playing the piano...


Last night, Rori was playing on an exercise mat and literally, every 15-20 seconds or so, came up to me to give me a kiss. She was kissing whatever she could get, I did try to give her a kiss but sometimes she'ld just settle for my hand or arm. Then she would wave and say, "bye-bye" as she went back to the mat. lol When she was on the exercise mat, she looked like she was trying to do the splits! She would stand up and then let her feet slide apart until she fell down on her bum. lol

Last week, I found her with some chocolate candy she wasn't supposed to have.



She loves music and has lately been spending a lot of time just looking through this hymnal, sometimes "singing" along.

Winter in Oregon

It is clear and sunny with blue skies here lately.......with that comes colder weather.......down to freezing this morning. Delaying our morning walk until the sun is out a few hours.

Jeff is off on his volunteer job.......he drives the Friends of Florence van to Eugene and Springfield, once or twice a month, taking patients to their radiation sessions. He used the van when he needed it and is happy to help them by being one of their drivers now. Most days he is working out in his shop on furniture........
I resumed my cashiering one shift a week at the humane society thrift store here in Florence......it gets me out of the house a little and helps support the animal shelter. We haven't been doing any ceramics since September......our business client in Eugene was not paying us on time or communicating very well, so we said the little money we were making was not worth the stress !!!! I may do a craft show this year sometime.

They opened the permanent hotel and casino, Three Rivers, here and we will now have some top entertainers......we are going to see Michael Bolton on Monday evening.

Jeff is flying to Phoenix for two weeks next Wednesday to visit his Mother and brother......I leave for Spain and Portugal at the end of March.....all else is going very well here.....

ROBIN & JEFF

Vancouver is Twisted!

Here is a copy of a post in my personal blog called "Twist and Shout":

Okay, not so much shouting... but a heck of a lot of twisting!!!

Today started out pretty good. Ryan was staying home from work, sick. That part wasn't good but it was nice that he'd be around. Rori woke up doing great! She had been sick yesterday but she slept soundly for over 12 hours last night and I think that really helped her. I had a little headache, but other than that I felt great!

To give Ryan some quiet time to rest, Rori and I headed out to run errands. It was so nice and warm! We just wore sweatshirts and enjoyed our shopping. On the way back home, coming up from Portland, I saw some big, dark clouds over Vancouver. "Joy", I thought. Then I saw lightening - and a lot of it! Multiple strikes shooting straight down at the same time. Wow! If Ryan hadn't been sleeping, I would have called home to tell him because he loves a good lightening storm. I remember wishing I had my camera with me (as if I could have 1) taken a picture while driving, and 2) would have actually gotten a shot of the actual lightening strikes, lol).

Shortly after I got home, I saw that I had missed a call from my friend on my cell phone (Thanks for turning my ringer down without telling me, Honey!) so I called her back. "Oh, I was just calling to tell you about the tornados," she told me.

"WHAT?!?!? What tornados? Here???"

"Oh yeah!" She told me that we were under a tornado warning and that at least one had touched down, here in Vancouver! She saw that my car wasn't home and tried to call to let me know. Thankfully, I had been south instead of north, since that is where it had ended up going.

I should have turned the news on right then, I'm sure we had continual coverage seeing as how we NEVER get real tornados. We've had funnel clouds before, heck I've seen funnel clouds here... but we never get real, honest to goodness, categorized tornados. But by this time, my headache had turned into a migraine and I was in bad shape, and that was more important,so I just went to bed while Ryan watched Rori for me.

I finally got up about half an hour ago (my head still hurts but it's not as bad as before, thanks for asking ;) lol) and turned on the news. Sure enough, an F1 tornado touched down in Vancouver in at least 3 different locations. It's winds were 86-110 mph, the path was 2 miles long and 1/4 mile wide. Fortunately for us, it was all west and north of us. Unfortunately for those in those areas, thousands are out of power still because of it. :( There are a lot of home movies and pictures coming in, some are pretty impressive!

Acadia shared with us (maybe I'll have her post it in her blog too) that they were out at their lunch recess when the teachers started to yell at them to run inside. She said they were "herding" them and yelling, "Run, run, run!" She said she and her friends were thinking, "This must be serious, they NEVER tell us to run!" They were first guessing that their school was under "lock-down" but once inside, they were instructed to get on the ground with their heads on the floor and their hands over their heads, an exercise they've practiced before in "tornado drills", and they were told that there was a tornado in the area. She told me that a friend of hers was crying and I asked if she (Cadi) had been scared, she said yes. She said it kind of hurt to stay in that position, too. (I bet!) But she said that afterwards, the teachers talked to them about what had happened and assured them that the tornado had ended up being on the other side of town, but that they had needed to stay in that position just in case and kind of as another practice. I told her that since tornados are so unpredictable, it was really important for everyone to be careful because they can change directions and move so fast, you never know where they'll go next.

Fortunately, there have been no real injuries from the tornado but there has been a bit of damage. There was a boat house completely destroyed on Vancouver Lake, 90% the boats were destroyed too, it looks like. And there are lots of trees totally ripped out of the ground in the areas that were hit (several falling on cars or homes), as well as a lot of roofs stripped of their shingles, some with even the plywood torn off. (Mom, the pictures made me think of your house this weekend, the pictures from the air showed homes with large sections of just wood exposed and people were rushing to get tarps put over them before it got dark since we're expecting rain for the next few days still.) I don't envy them - especially since we JUST got our new roof put on!

Since no one got hurt, some of the stories that are coming out because of this are pretty entertaining. One man was working in some sort of construction, went to use the port-a-pot and as he was in it, the outhouse was lifted up and toppled over! Luckily, the guy had just been "finishing up" and was just "tossed" out the door before anything "unpleasant" got on him! (This guy headed home from work only to find a tree had fallen on his house! Double whammy, poor guy!) Other construction workers were digging a ditch when the tornado went right for them, they had to dive into the ditch they were digging to stay safe. One business put this on their billboard today, "Auntie Em It's a twister!" lol

So that was our excitment today! A tornado right here in Vancouver, WA!

Come on, Baby! Let's do the twist...


Acadia also posted a short blog about it, visit her blog to read it. I've posted other random posts in my blog (I try to post regularly.) in the last week too, some include pictures of the girls. :)