Senior's Win!

The kids and I went to Jade's powder-puff football game last week.  Jade's team won!

Lincoln City : First Night

After a very long drive, we arrived at the beach house our family had rented just south of Lincoln City, Oregon on Friday, June 20th.  It was just over 500 miles!  We had met up with my parents (and also aunts, uncles and Grandma Pat by chance) at Mo's for a late lunch.  The weather was clear and we had a pretty sunset.

Pat and Aileen got to open a couple gifts for their baby.

 Bryce wanted to play the DS (aka GameBoy).

 And it was Jade's 14th birthday!  So we had a little birthday celebration with berry shortcakes.

A great start to a great vacation!

Viva Pinata! & The Woodbridge Summer Party

Every summer our neighborhood holds a summer party.  Seems like many years we end up being out of town but this year they combined it with that National Night Out thing and it was held on Tuesday, August 7th and we were here to participate.  There were lots of fun things going on... a jumpy house, a water slide jumpy thing, dunk tank, volleyball (although I think Jade and I were the only ones who even touched the ball... it was like 104 degrees out so a little toasty!) and they also had some contests which we entered. 
Claire had been looking forward to the pinata contest for several weeks... this was my first experience with papier-mache.  It's... messy.  We papier-mached two balloons last week (Cole helped, too).  I didn't get any pictures b/c it was so messy!  Claire helped me look online to find some inspiration... we found some really cute pinatas.  It was hard to decide what to try and make, but we decided on a monster and an owl.  We were so excited about how they turned out!

Our time and effort paid off when the owl got 1st place in the contest and the monster got 3rd place!  We won a couple day passes to Roaring Springs Waterpark (where Claire has wanted to go but I wasn't quite willing to spend the money... now she can go!).  We also won some passes to play mini-golf and to go bowling. 
On a side note, we also entered the Salsa contest and got 1st place in that as well.  Jade helped me make the salsa and did most of the work.  The prize for that contest was from Blue Sky Bagels (yum!) - we will get to enjoy 1 dozen bagels and 2 containers of cream cheese each month for a whole year!  I should mention that there weren't very many entries in either contest, but I like to think we would have won even if there were.
It was pretty fun to make the pinatas and have such a cute finished product... we may have to do this again sometime.

Claire's favorite part (not mine... it was a little sad to watch our hard work and super cute pinatas get smashed... but I guess that was their purpose in life).

 Claire spent most of her time at the party on this jumpy water slide.

Memorial Weekend in McCall

We had a great time spending Memorial weekend in McCall with my family.  We stayed in a beautiful cabin/home that was in town but had forest right behind it with some trails to explore... perfect for Claire!

Bryce ready to go for a walk in the sling.

Mom, Claire and Jade on our trail exploration adventure.

This is Claire showing you the fort we built behind the house.  Someone else had already started it but we left it much improved.

Front view of the cabin.

On Saturday we enjoyed a campfire and roasted marshmallows and hot dogs (for Claire).

Silly girl.

Bryce and Daddy hanging out.

Bryce's smiles are contagious.
 

Claire was pretty excited to blow bubbles in the bath tub.  Barley enjoyed it too!

Grampy sleeping with a tired baby... never seen that before.

The weather wasn't as good on Sunday so we mostly stayed inside the cabin.  We had fun playing lots of games.

My parents and baby Bryce.

Our family.  I think I will give Juan some lessons on how to hold a child in a picture...

Fun Times

Riding bikes on Easter weekend.

Jade and Andrew put together a scavenger hunt for Claire and Cole.  They put clues in plastic Easter eggs to help the kids find the next egg.  The clues were things like "Roses are red, violets are blue, bushes are green."  It was pretty cute (and best of all kept everyone entertained for quite a while!).

Later in the afternoon on Easter we took all the kids over to the hotel where Aunt Peggy and Uncle David were staying to swim in the pool.  Fun times!

 Bryce and Grandma Pat didn't go swimming but they had fun watching everyone else!

Cute Easter Kids

Easter Sunday

The Easter bunny hid lots of eggs at our house!  Claire was excited that her hat still fit from last year.

 

Claire with her Easter basket... lots of good stuff!

Santa Came!

Santa came to our house on Christmas night and filled our sacks with all sorts of nice things.  Thank you so much to Santa and to everyone for the thoughtful gifts!  We love you!

Pink Hot Chocolate!

Claire nearly climbed in her sack to make sure she didn't miss anything.

Santa even came through with a couple Barbies... just like Claire had asked him.

After we had all opened up our sack/stockings Claire helped pass around the other gifts.

So many nice things!

 

Grammy gave Claire a special ballerina music box that plays the Sugar Plum Fairy song from the Nutcracker.

And Grampy and Grammy gave Claire her first bicycle!

 She wanted to test it out right away.

Porter and Barley had Christmas at our house, too.  I'm afraid they were on the naughty dog list though as Santa forgot to bring them anything nice... oops.

Daddy and Mommy gave Claire a Leappad which was a big hit.

In the afternoon we took a little walk/bike ride around the neighborhood.  Claire did so great on her new bike!

That evening Jade, Andrea, and Jeff came over for dinner and of course there were a few more presents to open.  We had pasta fagioli soup, candied walnut and apple salad, rosemary bread, and brownies with peppermint ice cream for dessert.

 

It always amazes me how Christmas goes so fast after all the preparations and decorating that lead up to it!  Now it's all over for another year.  I feel so blessed that we were able to celebrate with family and spend several days together.  Thank you again to everyone for the lovely gifts.  Now we are focused on getting everything ready for our little bambino to arrive sometime within the next month!