Mason's First Day of School

My little boy is officially a big boy! Mason had his first day of preschool today and he got through it with flying colors! At least I think he did. His teacher didn't ask to speak to me after class got out so I am assuming that means he did great. He, of course, won't tell me anything that went on but he didn't have an emotional outburst or lock himself in a room like his older sister did on her first day. I think that means he will be OK with this school thing. And I think I have finally had an experience where I can say raising boys is easier than girls. Yeah! I am so excited for this new adventure for Mason. He has always been in Drew's shadow, taking his cues from her behavior as to how he should act in social situations. It will be interesting to see how he does on his own. Hopefully some of Drew's obedience will have rubbed off on to him. He is a great kid and I know he will do just fine. I just got a tiny bit teary eyed when I left him but I soon got over that when I realized how quiet the house was for 3 hours today! What a nice respite. But I was just as happy to have my sweetheart home, chasing Darcy and making her scream and bringing the noise level up to where it should be. Congratulations Mason, you did great and I am so proud of you!

These were my attempts at getting a good picture for his first day of school. The last one is about as good as it gets. Oh how I love my Mason!

Drew's First Day of School

Yesterday was Drew's first day of first grade and she survived! She actually came home with a smile on her face and gave me lots of hugs. A major change from last year's first day when she locked herself in my bedroom and wouldn't talk to anyone for a half hour. She was absolutely starving when she got home because she didn't realize just how long she would have to go between meals now. No more grazing for Drew and it will be a difficult transition for her. I'm sure she will survive though. She is happy with her teacher and thinks it will be a good year. I, on the other hand, am not so sure. At her open house I discovered that the little monster who tormented her in preschool is in her class this year. I sent off an email to her teacher letting her know what had happened in preschool and I got a reassuring email back with a promise to keep an eye on things. So far Drew hasn't even mentioned recognizing this girl so hopefully there won't be any problems between the two. We shall see.

Here is Drew stepping off the school bus for the first time! Yesterday I woke up both Bree and Darcy from their naps so we could pick Drew up from school and I decided that wasn't going to happen again so we stopped off in the office and signed her up for the bus! She was thrilled but I was a bit hesitant. It worked out fine today though so I think this will be the permanent MO. We are looking forward to a great year!

Cape Disappointment 2010

Thursday we set out on our annual camping trip to Cape Disappointment State Park in Ilwaco, WA. This was our third year in a row and it has become our season ending event. Mason had been waiting all summer to go camping at the beach and I think it was well worth the wait. No flat tires this time! Just filthy kids who played in the dirt and sand for 4 days straight without a proper bath. I think their mom was the only one who minded though. My parents camped Friday and Saturday nights with their trailer so we had a good time hanging out with grandma and grandpa.

Mason LOVES roasting marshmallows. He roasted Thursday and Friday nights, fell asleep at 6 pm Saturday night from sheer exhaustion and missed the roast, but daddy was kind enough to build a fire Sunday morning so Mason could get one last roast in. I think Paul would have done it anyway, he had a great time playing with the fire, seeing just how far he could drive everyone away with his massive bonfires.

Drew enjoyed the marshmallows too. I don't know how many they got down before I would realize I should be regulating their intake and put a stop to it. Oh well, nutrition goes out the trailer door when you are camping.

We stopped at Fort Clatsop on Friday, where Bree got the first official National Parks stamp in her passport book. I now have all the WA and OR national parks stamps. Drew is pretty close to done also.

We spent every afternoon at the beach by our campground. Beautiful scenery and weather met us each day. We really had incredible weather for the Washington coast. Just warm enough to be comfortable and windy enough to fly our kites. No one was brave enough to fully immerse their body in the ocean but Drew and I were up to our knees (I guess her bottom).

Here is the obligatory picture of the bacon! I refuse to cook it in my house so Paul and Mason get their fill when we go camping.

Saturday we braved the crowds at the Kite Festival in Long Beach. The kites are cool but my main reason for going is the fried elephant ears! Yum! They are a greasy, sticky, sweet mess that I look forward to all year. Drew talked me into cotton candy too. Like I said, nutrition flies out the window.

The wind wasn't very strong on Saturday but it was enough to get a few kites in the air. Enough for the kids to be excited.

Last year we couldn't keep Darcy out of the water. This year she was content to play up the beach a bit in a pit Drew dug for her. Last year we were trying to get her to walk, and this year we were trying to slow Bree's movement down. At 6.5 months Bree decided to get mobile. She is up on hands and knees but not crawling quite yet. She still manages to roll or slide to wherever she feels she needs to get to. Fun times for me. I have never had a baby mobile this early before.

Here she is testing the sand with her toes. She didn't mind it at all, unlike me according to my mom. I would yank my legs up if my toes ever touched the grass or sand when I was little.

The crew in the trailer. Thankfully no one landed on top of each other in the night and they were relatively peaceful nights. For the kids anyway. I can never sleep very well for some reason. Maybe cuz Bree was using me as a pacifier all night since she got to sleep with me.

Paul's bonfire. See what I mean? We took some wood with us and bought a stack on the drive in. He was determined not to bring a stick home with us. It made for some HOT fires over the weekend.

This camping trip worked out 100 times better than the last one, no offense to anyone there! I think the lack of car troubles helped. We had a great time and are looking forward to it again next year. Now its time to shift gears, move bedtime up, get haircuts, and get our stuff together for school to start. I am soooo ready for the routine, the cool nights, the COLLEGE FOOTBALL. Fall is the most wonderful time of the year!

What a Weekend!

Friday afternoon found Bree and I relaxing at home in the quiet without Paul or the kids. He packed up the kids and the trailer and headed to Fisherman's Bend campground to camp with his family before the family reunion/picnic at Silver Falls on Saturday. Bree and I stayed home because I had a doctor's appointment for my out of control thyroid and also for some help with the horrible itchy rash that has come back. I had it last year and thought it was pregnancy related but that is not the case this time. This dr said the same thing the dermatologist said, "you are allergic to something you weren't before so go home and change everything you use and eat." Uh huh, yah right. And that worked so well from last summer now didn't it? They gave me the same steroid cream so I just get to mask the symptoms without discovering the true cause yet again. Sometimes I just love paying doctors the big bucks for all their helpful advice. But anyway, Bree and I hung out, she was in bed by 6:30, by 7 I was completely bored and missing the noise of my other kids, so I started a few different movies, wasn't interested in any, read my book, and was in bed by 10. I guess I don't do alone time as well as I thought I would anymore!

Saturday we met up with my bro-in-law Dan, who chauffered us to Silver Falls for the party. On the way there we got stopped in Woodburn for a lowrider parade. I saw my very first car using hydraulics as it bumped down the street! Well, I had seen them in Snoop videos but never in real life before. What a treat!

Silver Falls was beautiful. I had never been there so it was a nice place to discover. At least that's what I thought driving in. When we got to the parking lot I was attacked by my kids, which was a good thing, and a husband in "survival mode." Happy to see me and the feeling was mutual! I was also introduced to a completely flat tire on our Acadia but figured it was OK, we have a spare. We continued on with the picnic, the kids swam, Darcy was saved from drowing twice by alert and quick moving aunts, and Mason clocked me in the temple with a frisbee thrown full force about a foot away from my head. It totally dropped me and luckily there was a foam pad right behind me that I landed on. I have a nice goose egg on the side of my head to show for it.

Later on we hiked to the falls, where we were crazy enough to take the stroller all the way down to walk behind the waterfall. Paul and my brother-in-law's wife's dad pushed that baby filled with babies back up the very steep slope. Thanks guys! It was a beautiful place but we were only willing to push the stroller to the first waterfall, not the entire loop.

Darcy loves the water and just kept walking farther and farther out until her feet dropped out from under her. I think she went after a ball once too. Thankfully Aunt Star and Aunt Carmen were nearby to pull her out! The little blonde, besides Drew, is Paul's brother Roland's daughter, Maple. My kids had lots of fun playing with her and her brother Koa. We wish they lived closer so we could have fun like this all the time!

All of these pictures are taken by Paul's niece Wendi, and she was kind enough to let me use them, even though I never asked her, because my camera was in the car and I was too lazy to go get it I guess.






When we got back from our hike Uncle Paul taught Changing Tires 101 to the teenage nieces and nephews. They did a great job but the spare was a tiny donut that obviously wouldn't allow us to pull our 23 foot trailer home on it. In hind sight maybe Paul should have left his family reunion for hours to drive into Salem to get tires but that didn't happen so we were stuck trying to figure out where we were going to find tires on Sunday, and also get ourselves out of our campsite by 1pm. But first we had to make it through the night! Easier said than done. Bree ate probably 4 or 5 times during the night because everytime she made a peep I would feed her to keep her quiet in hopes that the others wouldn't wake up. Yah right. Once Drew slid from the upper bed onto Darcy on the lower bed and was sitting up in a daze looking around for the noise of Darcy's screams as she sat on top of her. Another time Mason was down on the lower tier snuggling with Paul and kicking Darcy in the face and Drew had somehow managed to get back up in her original position. At this point the 3 youngest kids were either crying or wimpering and Paul and I were trying to get it under control. They were finally all quiet and I was crawling back into my bed when Drew shouts in her sleep: "Turn it off!" My sentiments exactly Drew. The sun finally came up and ended the horrid ordeal of nighttime and Paul was off to Salem to hopefully get either the tire patched or new tires, because we relly needed new ones, and back to the camp site in time to vacate the premises. But of course it wasn't that easy. GM, it turns out, wants you to buy a very specific tire for the Acadia, pretty much available only at their dealerships for exorbitant prices, or Les Schwabs might have it but Schawbies isn't open on Sundays. Well, neither is a GM service depertment it turns out. I was/am so flipping mad at GM for their ridiculous system and even though I love my Acadia, I will never buy another vehicle from them again. If you are the only ones who have this tire then you sure as heck better have them available when people need them! At this point I was getting a bit upset since we were supposed to be at my niece's baptism in Salem later that afternoon and I had no idea what was going to happen with all the scenarios floating around. I decide to try to bathe my filthy children in our trailer but for some reason (I didn't have the gas turned on) the water wasn't getting warm so I took a cold shower and Mason suffered through a cold shower before we we said froget it. My poor kids. Mommy was not happy. After a million different phone calls to everyone on the planet Paul found 4 tires that would work for us at Costco in Portland. The one with the hole couldn't be patched so we needed to replace it and had to do all 4 as the ones we were replacing it with were a bit bigger than the originals. So to make a VERY long story shorter than what I have already written, we pulled Paul's brother-in-law out of church in Corvallis and had him drive Paul's mom's truck to our campsite to get us out of there. Paul's mom was still camping there too with her Excursion so in the end we hooked her Excursion up to our trailer, Scott drove the kids and I home and high-tailed it back to his house for an obligation later that evening, Paul's mom took her trailer home with the truck, and Paul took the Acadia to Portland for a brand new set of tires. All's well that ends well but when you are suffering from uncontrolable itchies, an out-of-whack thyroid, a sleepless night, and trying to please 4 little bodies, it is pretty much hell while you are going through it. Its nice to be home and this trip just confirms our decision to skip the road trip this summer. We do have another camping trip planned in 2 weeks for 3 nights at the Kite Festival in Long Beach but hopefully all the bad luck is behind us, knock on wood. Thank you to all of our many helpers this weekend, we couldn't have done it without your willingness to help us! Oh, and unfortunately we missed the baptism from all this mess. My niece was baptized 29 years to the day after I was. Pretty cool.

Our camp site at Fisherman's Bend, which looked like a cool campground if I had the time or energy to explore it.

I wasn't even sure this little guy would get the Acadia home in one piece.

Non-Stop Party!

Early July is party time in our family! With the 4th of July and Darcy's and my birthdays all falling within 5 days of each other we have cause to celebrate! This year we did some major partying. Darcy turned 2 on the 8th. I can't believe she is that old! She is still my baby, even though I have another baby after her. Maybe its her delayed speech but I am having a hard time believing she is such a big girl. Her words are slow in coming but that is about the only thing she does slow. She is an active little girl, quite noisy, very loving, sucks her thumb and plays with the tassles on her purple blanket, loves to give kisses, and LOVES Finding Nemo. Or "Mummo" as she calls it. Drew called it that too, I wonder why. Darcy also likes the Princess and the Frog so I made her a frog cake using cupcakes frosted together in sort of a frog shape. Not the best looking thing ever but she knew it was a "froggie!" cake and you can see she enjoyed it!

My birthday was on the 6th. I won't mention how old I am but I will admit that my body is feeling the added years. I would love to have the maturity and knowledge I have now in my 27 year old body. My birthday was no great affair. We got home from our mini-vacation on the 5th so I spent the 6th doing laundry. Paul forced me out of the house to see Eclipse by myself that night and I was so tired I almost turned the car around before I got to the theater but I stuck it out. Not my most memorable birthday but when you are the mom and turning old like me I guess they aren't huge events anymore. Mason told me to "move it old lady!" Yes, birthdays are something I wouldn't mind skipping from now on.

We spent the 3rd, 4th, and 5th of July camping in our trailer on my parent's driveway. We decided not to take a road-trip this year so this and the Kite Festival in August are our 2 chances to camp this summer. We had a big picnic on the 3rd with my side of the family. We had a bar-b-que and the kids were able to swim with their many cousins. On the 4th we went to church with Paul's sister's family, where I hoped to get to sing the Star Spangled Banner. They sang it allright, but I was out in the foyer with Miss Darcy. It still gave me chills to hear it sung though.

We had another bar-b-que at Alloa's that afternoon where the kids got to play with even more cousins. Then we all went back to my parent's house where Paul put on a fireworks display for us. I was surprised Darcy stayed awake to watch, and even more surprised that she enjoyed it as much as she did. Drew did not appreciate it and she retired to the trailer before the fun was over.

My Bree is a completely different baby than she was a month ago. She has adjusted to life on earth, finally, and she is lots more easy going than she was for the first 4 months of her life. She is content to play on the floor or in her activity seat, and she is full of smiles and giggles. She is drooling and chewing like crazy but I don't expect teeth any time soon. Her siblings were at least 8 months old before any popped through. Bree is a joy to have around and it amazes me that she is over 5 months old now! I can't believe I survived those first few months but she is totally worth it now. What a sweetheart she is.

Milestones (and strawberries)

Well, I wasn't going to start out with strawberries but that's how the pictures came up so here goes: Mason, Drew and I went out to the Island on Saturday and picked 23lbs of juicy, sweet berries. That may be stretching the truth a bit. Mason actually was more interested in moving the marker flags along the rows than in picking berries. It was fun having him out there with us as a "big kid" anyway. I guess I should be impressed with my kids' honesty but neither one of them would eat a berry out in the field because we hadn't paid for them yet. I thought maybe that was a rule you could bend in a berry patch but they weren't having it. I must have beat that idea into them when we are shopping the bulk foods in Winco.

We were proud of our hard work and harvest and had a great time hanging out together.

Drew is my great helper when it comes to mashing the berries. That freed me up to do the cleaning and hulling on one end and the sugar and pectin on the other. We ended up with 15 pints of jam, 3 gallon freezer bags full for smoothies, chocolate covered strawberries which oddly enough my kids aren't fans of, strawberry shortcake, and countless numbers of fresh berries in Darcy's tummy. It was a great harvest.

So our first milestone was Bree starting to eat solid food. She had her first taste of rice cereal on Sunday. She had about 3 bites and it looked like she actually swallowed a little bit. I held off a few weeks feeding her the solid food, unlike my other kids who had it the minute they turned 4 months. I don't know if its because I felt she wasn't ready yet or maybe I wasn't ready to admit that my last baby was turning into a big girl. Whatever, I'm over it now. Let the peas and carrots begin!

Our second major milestone happened yesterday and today as Drew graduated from kindergarten! She had a very nice program yesterday at school where her class and another sang to us, we watched a slide show, and listened as the teacher gave a brief synopsis on each child and handed them their diploma. Drew's teacher commented on her responsibilty and how she must be a great big sister. Yep! That's my Drew. Today was the last day of school and I was a total boob and cried as I picked her up for the last time! As much as I am always wishing my kids were older, I sure don't appreciate it when it is apparent they actually are getting older and not quite as dependent on me as they used to be. I am so proud of Drew and how much she has grown through her school year. She learned how to tie her shoes, snap her fingers, count forever and by 2's, 5's, and 10's, improve her reading quite a bit to where she can read random kids books now, she ran the most laps in her class for the PTA fund raiser, and she showed that she truly is a very responsible young lady who is driven to succeed in all she does, without having to be asked twice. At least that's what they tell me she does at school. Its a different story when it comes to picking up toys at home. I will be glad for the break from loading all the kids in the car twice a day for the next 2.5 months, but in September we increase to 3 times a day with Mason attending preschool. But I am soooo looking forward to those 2.5 hours when it will just be me and the 2 little girls at home napping. Hopefully the weather will start to cooperate and our summer fun can now begin.

Rolly Pollies

Mason's new obsession: Rolly Pollies. Mason has discovered that rolly pollies love to live in wood chips. And wouldn't you know it, we have a great big pile of wood chips in our side yard which is a haven for our rolly pollies! How lucky can one 4 year old boy get? He comes away from that pile with his hands full of the things. As part of his birthday science kit he got a bug collecting system and observatory. That green thing in the picture is the bottom of it. I don't know how many poor little rolly pollies, both alive and dead, I have set free from that thing after Mason goes to bed at night. He makes swimming pools for them, though I have discovered they can't swim. I told him they drown but he swears they are just sleeping, probably after having such a good swim. This carboard concoction is his rolly polly castle, made from the cardboard that came with my new vacuum. And can I just digress for a minute to admit that my new vacuum with a see-through dirt canister both thrills and disgusts me. I love to see all the dirt and dust we vacuum up each time, but it is so gross that there is that much dirt and dust to vacuum up each time! The kids love to see it too, which brings on fights over who gets to use the new vacuum, which makes my life a little easier so I won't complain. But it is gross just how much junk is in my carpets. Anyway, at the time this picture was taken there were 11 bugs crawling around. I try not to get "bugged" by it all but their little flailing legs when they are stranded on their backs kind of freak me out. Thank goodness I was never a 4 year old boy or I would have failed the bug test.