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April 4, 2008

IT'S FRIDAY, MY FAVORITE DAY!!

While we were in town last weekend, we attended Jordyn's baptism. Leslie, Jason, Ashtin and Paige came up from Silverton too. It was quite a day and we celebrated after the ceremony with pizza. It was really hard during the service to keep a couple of big sisters quiet. They wanted to see all the action! You can't blame them and trying to keep them out of the baptism water was a challenge. Jaysa was trying to pull herself up to see over the edge of the baptismal font and we thought she was going to pull it over on herself! She had it sloshing around back and forth, but somehow it stayed upright! I don't know why they don't have a shorter version of the baptism for families with small children! Baby Jordyn even fussed a little but I think it was just because it was time for her to eat.

Speaking of the baby, it is now customary for parents to receive the newborn's social security number about seven weeks after the birth. Actually, they get it when they're born and it takes the government seven weeks to deliver it. In my day, it wasn't necessary to have a social security number until you had a job. Anyway, Lara has been waiting and waiting for Jordyn's social security number to come in the mail. After hassling the hospital after 8 weeks, she found out that that they had lost the application papers. So Lara had to take Jordyn down to the social security office to reapply for a number. The man she talked to was really nice (for a government worker) but Lara couldn't believe that he wanted two pieces for identification. All she could provide was a birth certificate and the living body of evidence, which you would think would be enough. Although Jordyn is too young to get a driver's license, what other kind of ID would a newborn have? Isn't showing proof that she was born enough? Anyway, it all worked out and Jordyn should be receiving her official social security number in about ten days.

We arrived back home Sunday afternoon and have been home most of the week. I can't believe this weather, are you sure it is spring? We had more hailstorms, record breaking snow for this time of year and freezing temperatures for a couple of days. Finally on Wednesday, it warmed up enough for me to get outside to do some yard work. I mowed the lawn for the first time and worked out in my greenhouse. The day before, Dave had worked out in the freezing cold and got the roof replaced on the greenhouse after the storm had blown it off last December. While he was debating on whether to tackle the job of rebuilding the blown-down fence, I caught him in a weak moment and had him repair all my birdhouses that had come down in the storm. After he got them all put back together, we got the extension ladder out and he put them all up for me. He is such a nice guy!

We had a pleasant surprise this week as we watched a whole herd of elk graze out on the island. Dave counted 48, and it looked like there were some little ones in there too. It's not too unusual for us to see them out on the island, but it's usually later in the year. I can't remember when we've seen them out there this early. And usually when they swim out, they don't stick around. They get back to the mainland as soon as the tide goes out. This time, they hung around for about 3 days feasting on the fresh spring grass on the island and it was really fun to watch them. In fact, a lot of people were able to watch them. They're real traffic-stoppers and we had a never-ending line of cars stopped along the highway checking them out.

It was back into Portland Thursday for another Blazer game. We are almost done, I think there are about four more home games and then we are done for the year. We'll stay in town because it's birthday party time on Friday night! Two of our granddaughters were born about a week apart (on the calendar anyway), Jadyn turned five on April 3rd and Paige will be six on April 9th so to make things easier, we just combine the two for a family birthday. My two sisters have birthdays in April too, so the month is filled with celebration.