Indian Summer

I think it was Anne of Green Gables (via L.M. Montegomery) who said, "My life is a graveyard of buried dreams." It sounds like something the dramatic, young Anne would say. Well, my blog is a graveyard of buried posts. I get idea for posts all the time, but it seems I only get around to writing about a third of them. This summer we did so many fun things. I wanted to write about a lot of them, but it never happened. Part of the reason is I had so many pictures I felt overwhelmed in sorting through them and figuring out which to include. So, I turned to Flickr. I've spent a lot of August playing around on Flickr. It's wonderful and addictive. My thought is that instead of cluttering up my posts with lots of pictures like I usually do, I'll have one or two, directly linked to Flickr, and the die hard (ahem-Grandmas) can click and see more pictures there. Well, by the time I got that figured out, summer was over and no posts! So, I thought I'd just give a little summary and a slide show and call it a day. Too bad for me I didn't know that dumb wordpress has a bug that won't let me display the slide show I made. So, I'll include a link at the end.

On July 4th we took off for California. We spent a little over a week visiting friends and family and having fun. It was great to see everyone! One of the many highlights for the girls was picking lemons straight off the tree and making lemonade out of them. Thank you Heastys for opening your home only two weeks after having a baby and Bartles for giving us a place to stay all week and entertaining us to boot! Thanks to all of you who fed us and gave us great fellowship-you know who you are! We had a blast.

A few weeks later we went camping for the weekend with a group from our church. I was nervous about going camping with a six week old, but it went surprisingly well. The girls had a blast being out doors surrounded by friends for two whole days.

This was followed up by a visit from my Dad who got to meet his new grandbaby for the first time. I love having my Dad around. It's really fun watching him interact with my kids.

The rest of the summer was spent picking all kinds of berries, going to the pool, visiting the Oregon Coast Aquarium and even going to the beach a couple of times. The summer blew by and now school has started and it's gone. I hope we made some good memories for our kids. If not, we made some for ourselves!

Slide Show 

**Well, in the process of moving/updating my blog I see that Slide.com will soon be no more. All the pictures from the slide show are available as a Picasa Album, so if you'd like to look at them you can click on the link.

Making Lemonade

We took a little trip down to LA last week. Christoph had some paternity leave and we decided to use it to travel instead of just sitting at home. It was a fun time seeing friends and family, some of which we hadn't seen in years. We also got to meet our new cousin Spencer who is just a couple weeks younger then Micah. It was really fun to have the two little cousins "meet" each other.

I was a little worried about Micah and a road trip, but all the kids did really well. Micah slept great in his car seat and the girls kept themselves entertained without too much whining. Emily had a blast playing with all her "new" friends.

One highlight for both girls was being able to pick lemons right off our friend's tree and make lemonade out them. It was fun to watch them experience the entire process from start to finish.

Lemons!

 

Picking

 

 Prepping

 

Waiting Anxiously

 

Success!

Thank you to everyone who hosted us and made time to see us and hang out. It was a lot of fun!

Kids Say The Darndest Things

On the fourth of July we spent the evening at our friend's the Divineys. They are great friends and we love hanging out with them. Selena is one of Emily's favorite friends and they get along really well most of the time. You know kids, you can never say always.

Before dinner we set off a few fireworks, including smoke bombs and sparklers. Then the girls were jumping on the trampoline. I wandered over to take some pictures of them and Emily says, "I had fun smoking, Mommy" and Selena chimes in, "Me and Emily were smoking together". I knew they were talking about the smoke bombs, but it sounded so bad. Smoking already, at such a tender age. Goofy girls.

Emily and Evan, Selena's older brother, had this massive water gun fight too. Evan, being a year older was much better then the gun and Emily was drenched, while Evan was almost dry. She was just squealing with laughter the whole time. She really liked it when Evan's gun ran out of water and she could exact her revenge. Later that evening Evan was using the restroom and I was in the hallway, he pops his head around the door and says, "There is a tentacle in our toilet!" "A tentacle?" I question, confused. "Yeah, a tentacle that kills the germs." "Ohh, a chemical?" "Yep, a blue tentacle!" Way cool.

The kids and Dads had great fun watching and setting off fireworks. All in all it was a great evening of fun and fellowship, just waiting to see what the kids would come up with next.

Outdoor Fun

A couple of weekends ago we got away from the weekly grind by going to visit our friends the in nothern OR. They live on 20 acres of wooded land in the beautiful Columbia River Gorge area. Sunday evening we went on a little walk and boy did Emily have fun! She spent plenty of energy running up and down the paths in their forest.

It's not very often that I can just sit back and watch Emily play without feeling guilty. Usually I have constant thoughts of, I should be...insert never-ending household chore here. I try to have some balance, otherwise I feel guilty that I'm not spending enough time with her, but I'm usually left feeling pulled in two directions. So, this weekend was doubly fun because I had nothing else to do but sit and enjoy watching my daughter's imagination at work. Her imagination is an active one! She told us all about her pretend dog named Treehouse. She was playing with Treehouse all around the porch. At one point she crouches down and says, "Come out Treehouse. It's ok, I won't hit you with my stick". What!?! All I could do is laugh. It does make me think twice about getting her a dog. She then picked up a bunch of rocks (very carefully selected) from the garden path and arranged them in a complex geometrical configuration. She then proceeded to have us each one by one pick a rock. Sometimes she would have us hold the rock for a few moments and other times we would be told sternly, "don't touch it, just leave it there". It was like playing some complex game where only one person knew the rules. I wish I could see exactly what is going through her little head. It's funny to me because she is still egocentric enough that she assumes you are thinking the same thing she is. So, there is no reason to explain, you already know. She gets quite frustrated when she's talking to you and you have no idea what she is saying. How many times have I heard, "No Mommy, don't say 'what' to me!". This sometimes makes me laugh and other times I have to take a deep breath and count to ten so I don't bite her head off.

I love her little personality so much. In some ways she is so girly, making up stories about her stuffed animals, breastfeeding her dolls, and having her nails painted. In other ways she can be a little tomboy, collecting rocks and sticks and hating to have her hair brushed. I love the mixture, if she were too girly it would drive me crazy, but if she didn't like playing with dolls at all I would feel a little sad.



I also had fun taking pictures of random things. Hurray for Macro-mode and hurray for weekend getaways!