Cheesy Pop Music for your Monday!

I turned the radio onto a different station the other day and 'Lean on Me' was on, I started rocking out! Which then inspired Lincoln and Taylor to join in. The sun was shining the windows were down and the heat was on (it is still March, ya know, and as the kids teacher always says 'don't let the sun fool ya'). Life was good. No, life was great! Then little miss Carly Rae Jepsen's 'Call me Maybe' came on and oh boy they were loving it! I think the reason why Payden was so serious is because she was trying to understand all the words, and we had just dropped Hailey off at pre-school. Enjoy...I know I did!!!

And I apologize that this song is now stuck in your head!

Drizzling

Since the big kids didn't have school today, we took advantage of hanging out at my parents til well after bedtime. Surprisingly not one if the kids fell asleep on the drive home. Upon slowly getting out of the car Payden tells me 'I was like drizzling off to sleep', me "you mean drifting?", P 'no, I mean drizzling, I felt drizzley, and like I was falling asleep, so that's what I mean by drizzling off too sleep'
Alright then, sounds good to me!

All Boy

My poor deprived son! He craves time with the guys so much that he plays that way even when he's alone/overwhelmed with the girls all weekend. Let's get this straight, he's not REALLY deprived, there are boys everywhere! I think the weekends can just get to him sometimes, the girls love their make-believe/dramatic play and not that he doesn't have his own  flair for the dramatics, I think I tend to forget what a good wrestling session can do for the kid. To be clear while he loves lego's, dinosaurs, cars, wrestling, volume, video games, running, building, and competition he also loves babies, My Little Ponies, Tinkerbell, and is my most emotional child. Sounds like a pretty great guy to me!

So when I heard him playing all alone while he was supposed to be cleaning up the game they just finished playing, I walked in to redirect his efforts. Then I started snapping pictures to remember the moment. It was a full on Candyland War. His intensely themed out battle commentary was littered with weapons like: 'Gumdrop cannon balls', 'cupcake bombs' and 'popcicle swords'! 

Impromptu Pittock Mansion Visit

We were downtown today for a birthday party for a dear friend. After the party we found ourselves in a fairly typical conundrum. I'm ready to go home and relax and Jer is wanting to continue the outing, there's plenty more daylight to burn...and fun to be had. So, I obliged. And boy am I glad I did. First we wandered down the street to a world I was oblivious to, Filson clothes.

This is a jacket similar to one he inherited from his Grandpa after he passed away. Don't get me wrong, they are sturdy, good looking, well made, impressive pieces of clothing, also...they cost a pretty penny. It was fun though. He walked in wearing his coat and we immediately had some credence to what we were doing there, and if they saw us on other days, we might be laughed out of the store. The girls had a grand time and quite fir the part in their wool pea coats and swiftly won the hearts of the salesmen, Lincoln was down in Eugene for the day with his Grandpa watching the Ducks beat Stanford in basketball. Beautiful store, beautiful clothes, and it made me wish money wasn't an object and I could shower my love with some more of these great pieces...ah well a girl can dream right?

Well after our gallivanting around the fancy part of Portland we went on a little drive, and landed at Pittock mansion. It couldn't have been more beautiful. The inside of the mansion was already closed for the day, but that didn't keep us from wandering around the grounds. I could see the girls heads spinning trying to get a peek in the windows of a real mansion! I had never been here either and am embarrassed to say that it was today that I learned that the Pittocks were the wealthiest family in Portland, the Owners of the Oregonian, and founders of the Rose Festival. The girls loved seeing where the horses would drive up and drop the family off, and just dreaming about what it looks like on the inside.

I've had Downton on the brain, so I can't help but think that if it were a true story they would have had some connection to the Pittocks and maybe just maybe Lady Mary would have escaped one of her many embarrassing life choices and retreated to the hills overlooking Portland while staying with a distant cousin. 

My goofy little princesses, imagining which of the 23 rooms would have been theirs.

Portland tour via dad...it was a seriously dreamy evening. Only thing missing was Lincoln! Oh well guess we'll have to go back and get inside next time!

Family Time

A few weeks ago we had a somewhat impromtu family date. Lunch after church at this great 

spot that makes a mean mac n cheese. And in this family, we take our mac quite seriously! Don't let that statement fool you, that little blue box lures us away from the good stuff every once in a while but you'd be hard pressed to keep my kids from inhaling any form of cheesy covered elbow noodles! Which is why we were so shocked when we were all drooling pulling up to the restaurant and Taylor said, 'I don't want macawoni and cheese, I want salad wif wanch'! Um...daughter I don't know if I can claim you as my offspring since I didn't voluntarily eat salad till I was 20! Needless to say, I tried to convince her that she'd want what the other kids have once she saw it and this is where she proved that in fact she is my child, she stubbornly insisted that she wanted salad.

And she was quite happy with her decision!

Then we headed into Canby where there is a Lego resell store that is pretty epic for the kids.

By the way, did you have any clue how expensive Lego's are? It's insane! Even the used ones! And we have a couple of Lego obsessed kids on our hands. So if anyone is getting rid of their Lego's feel free to send them our way...or try and sell them since apparently there is a profit to be made there!

My beautiful oldest, who doesn't like to jump into pictures lately, so I'll take what I can get!

Taylor worked on filling in this whole board for a while.

And her diligence paid off!

Lego Art!

Drooling...oh boy!

Way to go daddy-o, holding Tay Tay's purse so she can build away!

Lincoln had a coupon for a free Lego mini figure that he got from the prize box at our last dentist appointment. Pretty sweet deal, those guys cost 4 bucks!

It was one refreshing to get to spend time together on a somewhat dreary day and fun was had by all!

All By Themselves

We crossed some sort of responsibility milestone with Payden and Lincoln. They can now take care of their showering hygiene needs all on their own. But for Lincoln it was a little bit of a bumpy path. I'm pretty instant with them if they're wanting to try something new by themselves they need to be able to do it from start to finish without help. I stood there and walked them through which knob was hot and cold and all the basics of getting all you want out of your shower experience. About the 3rd time was Lincolns first time from start to finish by himself and by golly he is a verbal processor! He had this emotionally desperate monologue going on that I naturally started writing down. I hope your glad I did, the only thing that would make it better is if you could hear his voice change as he got it.

'I don't know what to do, the water is going on the supplies that you use when you take a shower!

This is too hard! I think this is just too hard! 

There's a lot of waiting!

I don't like waiting!

This is actually turning out a little better now, all I needed was a some patience!'

And after the shower he came in and triumphantly announced:

'That was quite the experience'

Getting the forest out

Every year we know that we will have the tree and Christmas decorations up for an embarrassingly long time, due to Winter Youth and then life...I was just thankful we got everything down before we were out of January!

 The means to the end when you have a giant tree...chainsaw in the house!

 What took 5 guys to get in to the house, took my one burly husband to get it out. Well one husband with a chainsaw!

Messy, messy, messy

It needed to be in 6 foot chunks in order to get picked up from the sidewalk

And boy was it crispy! I had to leave the room because I was certain a spark would fly out and we were all going to die in a matter of seconds. I'm sure that wasn't annoying at all!

But order has been restored to our house, and I'll be honest, I kind of love the clean look after the decorations are all put away, even though I miss the beauty of the red and gold...til next year.

And now I plan on moving backwards through the season to attempt to record some memories.

Traditions

It was one of those ideas that came to be that added another check to the 'reasons I love my husband' list. We were living at camp and Jer came across a big frame on camp in storage that wasn't something anyone in modern times would ever enjoy displaying in their home. Then an idea was born. We would make a family art piece to decorate a big wall at Christmastime. We needed to paint the frame (which Toby did for us) and then start creating. Year 1:

December 2008

Handprint Christmas tree's. Payden & Lincoln 3years 3 months. Hailey 1 year old.

The next year, just paint over and create again... 

December 2009

Decorated 'ornaments'. Payden & Lincoln 4years 3months. Hailey 2years old. Taylor 7months old.

Ahhh where is that smooshi faced Hailey?!

The idea was to take pictures of the kids with their creation, but we had some computer problems and lost the one of the kids before it could be permanently saved...sad day.

December 2010

This is a 'strand of lights' the kids thumbprints being the lights.

December 2011

I can't get enough of Taylor's face in this picture!

The kids each did two snowflakes out of paper and then we mod podged them on.

December 2012

Whatever, getting them all in a picture is good enough, someone will inevitably be blurry! They were all super proud of their reindeer footprints, and take more and more ownership of the piece every year! By the way, where did my babies go?

Snow Day

Today the kids and Jer had the day off and for, what feels like the first time ever, we took advantage of a family day. We were trying to decide between the beach and the mountain and last night let the kids know we'd be heading to the mountain to play in the snow. They were ecstatic to put it mildly...dreaming and scheming about what they have been planning on doing in the snow ever since it started teasing us a month ago.
We borrowed  a sled from our neighbors, and supplemented snow pants for the little girls thanks to the Mullens and we headed out!

As the trees turned whiter and the snow covered the fields and roads in beautiful white the oooo's and ahhhh's got collectively louder and more regular, and I'm pretty sure Lincoln was singing some song about the snow for a good 10 minutes. 

It was a gorgeous day full of sledding... 

Sliding down on their rears and attempting to climb back up...the giggling took them down a lot at the beginning. 

Smile's around...except Hailey who thought we were doing mad faces. 

Sledding and belly sliding! 

Crazy Tay Tay, loving life! 

My loves! 

All Lincoln wanted to do is have a snowball fight, he found this bunker and it was on!

Making snow chairs for our picnic lunch in the woods...we ended up on the sled and a big branch...it's rather cold to sit on the snow for a while...

We found a snowman friend that had some additions thanks to the Schuies! 

Taylor said, "I really like to eat this freezing snow, it good" 

After the sledding was done we went down the road to Ski Bowl to drink the hot chocolate we brought from home and watch the skiers and snowboarders. 

Cheers 

The end of a seriously blessed day with the family in God's creation. I just kept looking around thinking how lucky I  am that this is my life...it's a little unbelievable. I am so thankful. God is good, all the time!