May 2009 Trip to the Oregon Coast with Friends

We played on the beach:

(Ascha ate the sand, but didn't cry. She seemed to like it. Odd.)

We also had a lot of fun at the aquarium in Newport:

And at home, we enjoyed playing football and shooting at cans:



It was a great visit with great friends!

Visitors from Idaho - Part 1 - Fun in SW Washington

Our very dear friends from Idaho came to visit us before heading to the Oregon Coast for Jack's eighth birthday. We enjoyed showing them our house and our yard and our slip-N-slide and our favorite parks and waterfalls.

There! I'm all caught up from backlogged posts so I can devote more time, hopefully, to more current events like Part 2 - our trip to the Oregon Coast. Be watching for more updates soon! :-)

Swimming Lessons

The boys have been taking swimming lessons twice a week since the beginning of May. They are both doing great! Thankfully, we have a lesson slot all to ourselves, so the boys are learning a lot every time. Taylor can swim 15 feet all by himself with no problem and Aric is excelling at reaching down to the very bottom of the pool to retrieve things.

A Day at the Lake

We spent an afternoon on Merwin Reservoir with the Hendersons and their sailboat, the Christina Marie. We all enjoyed the sun, the sand, and the fellowship of good friends. Everyone except Ascha enjoyed the sailboat. We didn't take pictures of her tears, but the lifejacket was a bit too restrictive for her liking.

Thanks, Henderson family, for a fun visit!

Taylor's Special Day

At the beginning of May, Taylor was inducted into the "5 Book Report Club." In order to be a part, one needed to read 5 chapter books and then write corresponding book reports. He was the only kindergartener to join the ranks, along with selected first graders. He was the focus of a special "circle time" with his class and another kindergarten class and the principal came to present the award. He received a bright yellow button, an award certificate, a coupon for a free kids meal at Taco Bell, and a hug from the principal. :-) ("That part was silly!" he said.)

We are very proud of the hard work he put in! Good job, Taylor!

Ascha at 10 months



As you can see, she's got a lot of teeth (five now) and a huge smile.


She's going everwhere she wants...she's an expert crawler and cruiser.


She's also getting into everything! What else would a 10-month-old want to do?

A Visit With Uncle Shane

Shane was able to come down for a weekend and enjoy Saturday and Sunday with our family last weekend. We had a lot of fun with him and the weather was beautiful on Saturday, so we took him to a few of our favorite spots. Here he is with the boys at Lucia Falls.

Here they are hiking one of the trails near Moulton Falls.

Here is Ascha doing her new trick - making a kissing sound. Since this photo was taken, she's developed a great ability to suck in her cheeks until she looks like a fish while trying for the sound. The funniest part is when we ask her for kisses. She still goes in with the wide open mouth for baby kisses, but when she gets close, she ends up blowing raspberries as she tries to figure out how to put the closed-mouth sound with the open mouth she's associated with kisses. She also had her 9 month appointment the other day (although she's 10 months old as of today) and was in the 30th percentile for height and the 90th for weight. She's definitely our child...following in the footsteps of her long lean brothers.

And here's a rare picture of "the mommy." It's an odd thing for me to be on the receiving end of a picture, but since it happened, I figured I'd document it. :-)

Happy Easter!

He is risen! He is risen indeed!

The Mousetrap Car, Slurpy the Snail, and Easter Egg Fun

Last week was spring break, so Jeremy and the boys worked on creating a car propelled by a mousetrap. They got a great introduction to physics and Jeremy got to relive his childhood a little bit.

Ascha is getting close to walking. She's an expert behind her little walk-behind hippo and she's been balancing for periods of time before sinking slowly down into a sitting position. I keep reminding her she isn't allowed to walk until she's 1. We'll see how well she listens to Mommy's rules. She also just got her fourth tooth. I'm very thankful and hopeful that it will usher in an era of renewed nighttime sleep. 

Look how cute she is for spring in this lovely vintage-looking outfit, courtesy of her Grammy.

And how sweet she looks in her Sunday best alongside her handsome big brothers:

Introducing Slurpy the snail - our new pet. He is expected to stay with our family for three days. Daddy has been gone upriver, and as soon as he's been introduced, Slurpy will be "released back into the wild" (a.k.a. put outside where Taylor found him). It's been a lot of fun to learn about snail habits and habitat, and although the boys think they'd like to keep Slurpy long-term, Mommy has decided she doesn't like the smell.

Today was the day to dye eggs.

Gotta be goofy:

Ascha actually napped through the egg-dying process, but she was incredibly excited to see the colorful results when she woke up.

Happy Almost Easter! Remember, Jesus is the reason for the season! We are SO thankful for our life in and through HIM!

Daily Adventures

* Ascha is officially 9 months old. Can't hardly believe how fast it's gone...and is still going!

* The boys had two neighborhood buddies over today for a few hours. They disappeared outside during a break in the rain. I "kept a visual" on them for most of their adventure, but after they disappeared into the trees for a few minutes, I decided I'd go check on them. I found them under the trees just beyond our property, digging into some logs for grubs and roly-polies. Their instrument of choice? A very old, very rusty steak knife they'd discovered stuck in a nearby tree. THANKFULLY Aric hadn't had a turn with the knife yet. :-) He was so disappointed I decommissioned the tool without his having used it, but I figured even the six-year-olds were too young, so my four-year-old definitely didn't "get his turn." I asked the disappointed troop what they thought they should do next time they find something sharp or unsafe...you could see the wheels turning in their dejected heads (as one of the other moms said, we're sure they were thinking "Hide it from Mom at all costs!"). In a great Eeyore impersonation, one six-year-old sighed, "Don't touch it." 

I guess boys will be boys...sometimes it's a lot of work sneaking and spying to make sure they don't poke that proverbial eye out. :-)

A Quick Trip to Seattle

We zipped up to Seattle yesterday to see my little brother, Shane, for a few hours. He is volunteering for a disaster-relief organization and is temporarily stationed in Seattle helping to fix up a donated ship. We got to see the ship (here are the kids at the helm) and then we took Shane for a nice tour of Seattle. (Read in between the lines - we changed our plans because of the weather and drove ALL OVER trying to find a kid-friendly place to eat. Thanks to cell phones and family members with the internet, we finally managed to net a restaurant, and lucky Uncle Shane got to spend a bunch of time in the back of a mini-van with kids. :-) The boys were so happy to see him and talked his ear off the whole time, and Ascha was happy to see a new face from the vantage point of her carseat, so I guess it could have been worse. :-) After lunch we went to a park on Lake Washington for a few minutes (it wasn't exactly a balmy day - it had snowed quite a bit that morning on the drive up), then dropped Shane off at his ship, and zipped back home. It was a long day but it was SO good to see Shane and hang out for a bit.

In other news, Ascha has her third tooth and is crawling VERY quickly these days. She still prefers to say "ba" (or "bra," which we're SURE means "brother" :-)  over any other consonant combination, but every once in a while she'll let a "da" or a "ha" or even a "ma" slip out. With teething has come another round of interrupted sleep at night - she's been up at least four times a night lately. We're really hoping that after her second top tooth comes in, we'll get another reprieve. Thankfully, she doesn't have any sicknesses on top of teething this time, so hopefully a full night of sleep is only a few more days away.

Aric is picking up steam in the reading department. He's getting very good at sounding things out (IF he doesn't guess - he's a VERY talented guesser, which leads to some amusing "interpretations"). His latest funny phrase came the other day when the sun was shining and the boys were enjoying popsicles on the back deck... "Ummm....Did you know??....My teeth are allergic to popsicles."

Taylor is going along with kindergarten and growing up. He's such a dichotomy right now - he seems to be both little boy and big boy at the same time, all rolled into one package. He is changing before our very eyes and although the vestiges of babyhood have been gone for a long time, we're losing some other part of "little-boyhood" right now and I mourn as I see it less and less. However, at the same time, we are so proud of the kind-hearted and helpful big boy he is becoming.