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This weekend it was a camping trip to Chelan, Wa.  This town is very nice, reminds me of McCall in Idaho a bit, minus the ski hill.  It's nestled around Lake Chelan in a picturesque way.  We pulled in Friday early evening after a late start out of Duvall.  Saturday came and with it was rain.  This put a bit of a damper on the day, it let up enough for a trip to the park and the lake side, but not for very long.  Sunday was a much sunnier/dry day, but the wind was pretty strong.  This didn't stop us from going to the beach and hanging out though.  Kids seemed to really enjoy themselves.  I think this will be a reoccuring location, but just schedule it for a month later.

Here are some pics:

Not normally do I get to do field trips with the Girls, but I had taken this day off since we were going camping.  I was excited to see all the animals, we are members at Woodland but still do not go as often as we should.  So we loaded all the kids up and headed out for the zoo.  When we got there we noticed that there were school buses dropping off kids.  Not sure why I was suprised, but I was that we were going to have to share the Zoo with other students.  What I didn't realize is that it was going to be EVERY schoole bus in the next 2 counties.  Wow, that was a crowd, and it started before we could even get into the Zoo.  I bet we sat in the "Member" line for about 20 minutes.  Thats quite a wait considering we have 4 kids to keep entertained that long.  Once we made it through then we had to wait for the rest of the class to find each other and then we were off. 

Even though it was crowded, it was still fun to see the girls' eyes light up when they saw the animals.  Being tall I was the official child picker up'er.  Everyone wanted to see at a good height.  I was ok with it, saves me from having to go to the gym.

Here are a few pictures from the event!

Kids sure love a parade.  Last weekend was Duvall days which is a day long set of events here in Duvall.  Not sure what to liken it to from my past since it is a pretty small event, but fun for the kids.  It starts with a 5k/15k run/walk then jumps into a kiddie Parade and then the adult parade.  After the parade is the car show and down to the park for all of the booths and food + live music.  Kids enjoy the petting zoo and the kids bouncy toys.  Here are a few pictures of the kids and Denise during the events.

Gabi Madi and Sami wait for the parade to start:

Lexi was hanging out on Momma's Back:

This is the third year in a row that we have camped out right in front of City hall and hooked up with alot of our friends.  Here is kind of a group shot of us waiting:

Neighbor riding his motorcycle in the parade:

Pretty cool old time tractor:

The next morning we had breakfast at the Duvall firemans Pancake Breakfast.  This is an annual event and the kids seem to enjoy themselves.  After the breakfast the kids enjoyed putting out fires and playing on the fire trucks.

Wow, who here is wow'ed by any of the candidates that are out there?  I like Rudy because he seems to be the most plain spoken person of the hunt, but there are issues I have with him.  I have been hoping that someone like Fred Thompson would get in the race, and now it appears he is destined to get in the race.  I like the fact that he speaks his mind and doesn't always pander to the popular answers.  He seems to have conviction and the right morale direction for a simple guy like me.  If you too are looking for someone who just tells it like it is, then check out http://www.imwithfred.com.

Good luck Fred!  I am with you,

-Jon

So you know that we have 4 daughters 5 and younger.  But what you don't probably know is we are masochists and we wanted to add more work and stress to our lives by getting a puppy!.  After we lost of 2 Cocker Spaniels 2 years ago we have been without a dog and ended up getting cats(one still with us).  Agreeing to wait on the puppy till the kids were older I just figured I would settle with dealing with the cats and try him to be more like a dog.  Which of course is no easy chore.  I think Denise must have taken pity on me because one day she said she would like to get a puppy for the girls to play with, I was stunned. 

We set off to figure out what breed we wanted.  I was really pushing for a Bernese Mountain Dog, but the life expectancy of them is only 7 years right now.  Having lost 5 animals in the last 3 years I didn't feel that was a good breed to bring into our home, considering our kids know way too much about death already.  So in our pursuit of a breed we came across the Golden retrievers which I have always thought were beautiful breeds.  Turns out they are also excellent with children and other animals.  So we went down the path of looking at breeders and found the puppy for us.  We did look for a couple of months for a 1-2 year old dog so we didn't have to worry about house breaking and chewing of kids toys and clothing, but had no luck finding one.

Introducing Tinkerbelle (Belle) Beck (she was born 3/28/07)

So if you know me well you know that I have 4 wonderful little girls.  Of which our youngest is now 5-1/2 months old.  Life has been pretty hectic having 4 girls 5 and under, but I must admit that I like my life, and I love my children.  Couldn't imagine it any differently.  Well this weekend we had a monumental stage in our lives.  Lexi hard her first cereal, while I was sitting there taking pictures of that moment, I got to thinking.... This is the last time I will be taking a "first cereal" picture.  No more kids will be coming, while some of you think this is probably a reason to rejoice, for me it is bitter sweet.  Sure I talk a big game about not having a 5th daughter, but I think secretly deep down I would have loved more children.  This isn't the first last time we have celebrated, we had our last time home from the Overlake Birth Center(at least as a father), last time changing a size 1/2/3 sized diaper.  Last time wearing clothes that no longer fit.  All of those earlier last timers we rejoiced and hugged our way through it.  It wasn't until this weekend that it hit me that it is our last time feeding our new baby cereal for the first time.

Oh well, enough about my silly feelings, here are pics of the great day in history! Gabrielle actually fed her the first bite.

Day 3 getting cereal and she is already an old pro. 

Denise and I love to camp, but we have been having more and more difficulty doing it now with the kids, so we decided to purchase a new travel trailer.  Someday soon I will write a sad depressing story of how we come up with the decision to purchase this travel trailer.  But the good news is that we love this trailer.  It is new, fits ecveryone  and will soon have the comforts of home in it.

Here is a shot of it when we brought it home.

Neighbors and friends were putting odds on if I could fit it next to our house.  Trailer is 31ft long, 8ft wide and I was trying to fit it in a gate that is 8'10" wide.

  Needless to say it was a tight fit, but I was fairly confident that I could park her back there.  Check out pictures of my parking experience.  I have sense done it again so I know it is reproducible.

Next was our Maiden voyage.  We were so excited about getting the trailer I took friday off and we headed up to Leavenworth Wa.  It is truly a beautiful area, and we love the bavarian feeling of the city.  We chose to stay in the KOA campground there.  What luxury this was, the campground wasn't the best I have seen, but it had Internet, Cable TV, Power, water and sewer.  All the luxuries of home, but I could open my door and be out on a nice trail in about 5 seconds.  In fact here are shots from our camping trip.

Trailer all set up.

Pictures from our hike

The girls had a ball as did their Dad.   I was having fun shooting pictures of everything, and they enjoyed posing for them :)

Now we are trying to figure out where and when we can go next.  Hopefully soon.

Duvall is really a lovely breakfast community outside of Redmond Wa.  But lately we have had our issues.  Started with the floods then made it's way to the snow and frozen phase now we just had the wind storm phase.  The first two phases I didn't mind much but this last phase has been a pain.  As I am sure most have lived through or heard about we had a rather large wind storm come through.  Typically this isn't to big of an issue unless you live in Washington where we have alot of trees. 

Let me introduce you to the newest feature of my front lawn.  This 100ft free decided to leave my neighbors back yard and join us.  All I can say is thank God it didn't hit the house or hurt anyone.

However, when it joined the family it stepped on a few toes, well maybe a few cars would be more accurate.

After it fell (1:30 am) I quickly moved my expedition and my mothers SUV out of the reach of the cars so no more damage could be done to them, but the above picture the expedition was about 18 inches behind the lexus so the top of the tree landed right on it's hood. and ripped off the bottom grill and licence bracket.

The bizarre part is our landscaper (best landscapers in Washington, JP Landscape Services inc) had it all cleaned up within 12 hours of the tree falling.  You can barely tell the accident happened except a trench in my yard and my cars with dents.

All of this mayhem aside at our house, we are blessed compared to some.  Here are some pictures of other homes in my neighborhood.

Add on to this that we have been with our power since thursday at 8:30pm and no cable modem (damn them) the family is going a bit stir crazy.  I finally went out and bought a generator on saturday and periodically tapping off a neighbor who has DSL we are managing to keep it together.  Hopefully this won't last much longer

If you go to this web site,  www.letssaythanks.com,  you can pick out a thank you card and Xerox will print it and it will be sent to a soldier that is currently serving in Iraq. 

 

You can't pick out who gets it, but it will go to some member of the armed services. How AMAZING it would be if we could get everyone we know to send one!!! This is a great site.

 

Please send a card. It is FREE and it only takes a moment.

 

Wouldn't it be wonderful if the soldiers received thousands of these?   Regardless of your politics or whether you are for or against the war, our service men and women over there need to know we are behind them.

 

And pass this on!

 

 

Xerox is now my hero company for doing this.  Please take the time and send one out.

-Jon

We have been home with Alexis 1 week and everything is starting to settle down.  Her Bilirubin was starting to get out of the comfort zone so they decided to send a nurse over to setup a light bed for Lexi to lay on.  This only lasted 3 days, as I say better safe than sorry.  Since she was a little Jaundice she was sleeping a little more than usual which actually equals sleep!  Last night was probably my first night of good sleep I have had since she came home.  Granted my whining doesn't compare to Denise who had the C-Section and has to wake up every 3 hours to feed, so I will stop my rants now. 

Thanksgiving is 1 day away and yesterday I was tasked to go do the shopping(they wanted to get me out of the house to prepare for my birthday on friday).  This list was 1 full page, front and back.  It took me 2 1/2 hours to shop for everything.  I never wanted out of a situation so much, at one point I considered just leaving the cart and trying again in a few days, sigh.

Thanksgiving is one of those holidays that I like.  It is a day for family and reflection.  I hope you all have and had a good thanksgiving!

So it all begins with the crazy weather blocking us off from the real world, to us finally getting to go in and see the Dr. to find out that the baby is breach.  Well, we scheduled time on tuesday to discuss our options about the breach baby and what if anything we can do about it.  Monday morning comes along and the baby had other plans, Denise's water breaks and we go to the hospital.  They decide to setup a C-Section for us at 1:00, 12:45 comes along and the Dr comes in to discuss our options and what is involved with a c-section(of course we learned 5 years ago when we were in baby class).  Sounds like we are on point for our 1:00 O.R. visit.  The Dr. using the ultrasound does a check to make sure the baby is still breach.  Yep there is the head not in the right place so we all go into the O.R. room for the surgery.  At 1:30 when they were ready to pull/push the baby out the Dr. says "that little stinker turn on us and is head down after all of this". 

 Alexis Olivia Beck

She was born 11/13/06 @ 1:30pm PST

Weighed in at: 7lbs 10ozs

Height was: 19.5 inches

More pictures in the photos gadget.

So far this is very impressive.  I think the power of something like this can go MUCH further than just publishing blog entries. 

Let me try adding a picture:

Here is a picture of my Madi at a recital.  She is the one on the right side.

Here is one of Both of my oldest sweethearts!

Here is one of my whole family.

So here we are on another business trip.  Seems the only time I have to Blog is when I am alone in the hotel room.  Go figure.  I was so frustrated with myself this trip I forgot to bring my camera.  Ok, so I have my camera in my phone, but sorry the camera in my MPX220 bites.  Besides, for some reason my phone doesn't work in Japan.  First country it hasn't worked in so far.

First impressions of Japan.  Their airport was very organized.  Unlike the madhouse of Shanghai on last trip.  I was truly impressed by how quickly we made it through immigration.  For those that don't know the Narita airport is 90 minutes away from the hotel in Tokyo(Shinjitsu), so we had a few options for getting to the hotel.  a couple of train options, Buses and Taxi's.  We ended up taking the "Bus limo" which in english means greyhound :).  What it had over the others was a door to door trip.  Laurent and I wouldn't have had to make our way from a train station to the hotel and the taxi was about 3 times as much as the Bus.  I think we made the right decision because that bus driver was driving very fast.  It was great, felt like I was at home .  We arrived in Tokyo at a great time, all of the cherry blossoms are in blume and they are truly beautiful and plentiful.  When we started getting into downtown it looks like most other big cities with the exception that things are pretty compressed.  Also as we pulled into the city we took an overpass and never got off of it until we were almost at the hotel.  I felt like I was in the movie fifth elelment flying by the 4th floor of all of the buildings and looking down periodically at the people and cars below.  I had heard about all of the neon and business of the city, but I didn't see it until I got to Shinjuku, and wow, there are several small streets that are extremely busy, I look forward to taking some pictures (with that damn cell phone(which by the way is great, but I have my eyes on a new 8125 so every issue with the phone makes me even more frustrated with it)).