Heff Graduates!

One last sleep out for a boy and his dog before the boy graduates high school and goes out to conquer the big bad world.... : )

Riiiiiiggggghhhht.

Dad and Mom held an Open House to celebrate Jeff's graduation and let me tell you, were we ever glad for Aunt Emily! She is one hard working veggie and fruit chopper. This isn't really fair of me, but I thought she looked so cute chopping onions with the bread in her mouth to absorb the tear causing odors. Mom worked doggedly to keep the house clean with 11 of us living here for the weekend.

Sunday we headed for the ceremony. It was the usual mix of student speakers and performers. The student speaker chose to profess Christ and many in the audience applauded him in that moment. What guts for a young man to stand up for his Lord in front of such a large audience!

Jeff receiving his diploma.

And now will follow the gazillion requisite photos of the grad with his various and assorted family members standing in the sunshine outside the Tacoma Dome.

After the ceremony and photo session, we all headed home to get the food ready for the Open House. Mom put together a delicious mix for the menu: steak, pepper and onion kabobs, chicken poppy seed green salad, rolls, fresh fruit and a dessert tray from Affairs full of delectable calories. The salad is one that we saw on the Panera Bread menu. Rather than over pay them, she decided she could duplicate the salad here at home. I highly recommend this salad. She mixed romaine lettuce, strawberries, blueberries, diced fresh pineapple, mandarin oranges, grilled chicken, sliced almonds and creamy poppy seed dressing. Yum! We washed it all down with gallons of fresh homemade lemonade.

I want to start this post by asking for prayer for a young family. Some cousins of ours lost a 4 month old baby to SIDS yesterday. Please join us in praying for comfort for Sam and Jackie and their surviving three young children. Their house and hearts must surely be filled with sorrow and confusion right now. Only the Lord can come in and fill the place with peace and comfort. Having a baby born a week and a half after their precious young man makes this hit very close to home for me. We keep looking at our sweet Nora and thinking of Jackie and what she must be going through. Thank you for your added prayers!

I thought that I had more pictures for this post, but I guess I didn't. The below is a sample of what we do a lot of...look at houses that are for sale : ) The kids categorize our drives looking for houses two ways. They ask is we are going on a "look on the outside of the houses" drive or a "go inside and look" drive. Some days it's one, some days it's the other, and sometimes if there are open houses going on it's a little of both. Nothing so far. Some places to think about...but no offers out there yet.

When mom is busy taking care of the baby and can't snuggle with you after you wake up, what do you do? Snuggle with your brother or sister!

Watching the action from her spot on the kitchen counter.

Uncle Heff went to senior prom this last weekend. Isn't the corsage for his date pretty?

And isn't he dapper?

Tomorrow is his last day of high school and on Sunday--GRADUATION! 11 years of having kids at Gig Harbor High School will be coming to a close for my parents. Unless, of course, we never find a house and live with them forever. Then they'll have grandkids go there. Haha, not funny mom, I know.

So, obviously, Nora is NOT happy here. But I really wanted a picture of her super cute boots crocheted by Aunt Doe. I needed some purple shoes for this outfit and the boots were just perfect. Thank you, Aunt Doe! She was a very good girl the rest of that day, by the way. She just had an opinion she wanted to give at that moment. Hmmm, maybe it was about my outfit : )

My Landlord Turned Fifty!

Another one of the hundreds of shots we have of our girls together to start the post off.

But the main reason for this post is to inform you that Grandpa Tractor turned 50 last month!!! We made plans to go out for dinner and celebrate. That day while he was at work the kids and I made a cake and banner.

Nora supervised the banner making.

This is a little boring guys!

We hoped that the restaurant would allow us to hang up the banner where Grandpa could see it.

We waited to greet the birthday boy at the door when he walked in. The sweet hostess kindly hung up the birthday banner in the entry way for us. After we were done taking pictures by it, she carried it to where we were sitting and hung it up behind our table. What a great gal. This restaurant is very kid friendly also. They give a free (big) bowl of pasta, your choice of noodle type and sauce to kids under 6 and bring a tray of starters for them too.

Nory Pory got in the party mood. Look how happy she is, even with that chin strap cutting off circulation to either her neck or one of her five chins, I'm not sure which.

Party hats all around.

Okay, that's about as silly as it gets...oh wait, nope, we can step it up a notch with another hat.

Daddy's ferry got him back just in time to join the celebration. He's a very stereotypical Seattleite these days. He drives from Gig Harbor to the Soutworth ferry, rides to Vashon Island and then hops a "water taxi" (a ferry with no cars, passengers only, that goes a bit faster) to downtown Seattle where he walks very fast up the steep hills to his office in the heart of down town. Who woulda thunk it of this Idaho boy???

Grandpa with his choice of cake--yellow cake with chocolate frosting, and some pudding for the filling, just for good measure. By the way, the recipe is from Marcy Goldman's A Passion for Baking (one of my fave cookbooks) and it's delicious. I'm not generally a yellow cake fan since there are so many other great flavors out there. However, this one was moist and wonderful. And the frosting...ohh la la! It calls for cocoa powder AND melted semi-sweet chips. The mix is fabulous. And if you put the cake in the fridge overnight and forget about it and the frosting hardens to the consistency of concrete, don't worry, pick it off and eat it like fudge, cuz that's about what it tastes like : )

And that's all we got, folks! I'll try to do a catch up post later this week. I want to blog more, I really do. It's just a little crazy with all of us sharing my mom and dad's computer and figuring out where to store all the pictures from my camera while our computer is not out, etc., etc. I'm sure we'll still be spotty with the posting--but I'll keep trying!