The End of An Era....

Julia will be graduating from High School in one week. That will be the last child for us, the end of an era. It has been a busy year for her and us, a year with many wonderful memories and blessings. She is a beautiful christian girl with a deep faith and love for God. It's time now for her to move on to college, and a new life as an adult. We will really miss her when she leaves for college next fall. May God Bless you Julia with all that you endeavor in the future. We love you so much!
This next week we will have a senior/parent breakfast to attend with Julia at her school. She has qualified for the state track meet in the triple jump, (a huge honor)! We will be heading to Boise next week for that big event. She will be staying there for 3 nights with her other teammates who have qualified for the state event. We've been told that the opening exercises are a tremendous affair. We are all really looking forward to attending.

Dad has a field trip scheduled at the dairy with Oregon Trail Elementary School for next Friday. There will be 100 3rd graders coming all at once. Yikes! We usually serve cheese cubes, but we've never had a group this large before. Dad loves doing this kind of stuff.

Tyler's parents are in town for 5 days now. We met them at Tyler and Johanna's softball game last night. Today they are traveling to Sun Valley, tonight they are coming here for a bbq salmon dinner. They are wonderful people.

We've been thinking of Sharon and Derek alot this week while they are cruising on the Freedom of the Seas ship. We are very anxious to hear and see photos from their trip.

We have a rental house vacated right now. We asked the people to move out because they were in breach of contract. I've been mowing their grass for the last month, dad has sprayed all the weeds and is watering the lawn. It has been a huge mess to clean up. The carpets will be cleaned today, next week the interior will get painted. We bought a large "For Rent" sign and placed it in the front yard. We have been amazed at the interest shown in the house already. Maybe we won't even need to place an ad in the newspaper this time. We will have to be more careful with our screening process with renters after this. This was not a pleasant situation. All of our other renters are great. It just takes extra time to check out potential renters. Johanna said that she would handle that for us this time.

I found a new dinner menu that is real quick and easy. It's a package located in the frozen food department at the grocery store. It's: Contessa, Sesame Chicken Stir-Fry with Rice. I served it in lettuce wraps, (recipe is on back of package). They were just like the ones that PF Chang serves, very yummy!

Mother's Day is tomorrow, and I've been receiving lots of gifts in the mail. I will wait until tomorrow to open them. Thanks for all the thoughtfulness guys, I love the attention! I'm not sure what we will be doing after church for lunch on Sunday. Tyler's parents will still be in town, hopefully we will all do something together.

That's all for now. Be well and take care!
love ~mom~