When will I get my couch back?

This is a regular appearance around our house. 

You wonder where are the cushions?

Well of course they are strewn across the floor of my kitchen, because come on what else would you do with cushions?

Unless it is making a fort, or a special chair for a stuffed animal.

As I said my kids don't like playing with toys, but when it comes to making a big pile of pillows this is their favorite activity. In the meantime I would just like to be able to have one couch that I could reliably sit on. Maybe in another decade.

Library Day

One of my favorite days of the week is when we go to the library. We don't like the story time day (too many people and my kids don't like to compete for the books and computers with the crowds.) Each kid gets a cloth bag and they can fill it up with as many books as they want as long as they can still carry it (I carry Little Miss's selections). Then we usually head to the grocery store. The kids pile into the cart each with a book and I am able to make it around the store usually 1/2 way before I even really hear a peep. 

When we get home the books are strewn about the floor and the kids dive in. Midge is our only official "reader" so often she is wrangled into reading to Leo and Little Miss, but Leo and Little Miss are able to imitate very well. We have caught Little Miss on several occasions in a corner reading out loud to herself. 

Midge reminds me of myself at her age. I loved escaping into a good book. My favorite thing in the world then as well as now was to bring home a stack of books and dive in. I hope that all my kids are always readers and have a love for it like I do. 

Our little Linus

Midge was crazy attached to pacies, Leo had a special blanket (that he liked to sniff - don't ask), but none of our kids have been as attached to a single blanket like Little Miss. She has to have it to sleep, eat, go on errands, cuddle with when sad, watch TV. She would take it into the bath with her if I allowed it. June Banta (my visiting teaching companion gave it to her as a gift when she was only a few weeks old. I don't remember when she came attached, but it is official now. The funny thing is she loves to chew on the satin edges. Recently I had to remove the old edge and attach a new edge, because she had turned the old edging brown. 

Leo and Midge tease her because she will hold it up to her nose and snort into it. I can't explain it, but she only does this when she is tired. So it is usually a clue that she is ready for bed. 

The biggest challenge is getting her to not take it outside. She had a major tantrum because I wouldn't let her take it to the park today. If I would have let her she would have dragged it through the sand, water, and bark chips without a second thought. 

We love Legos

In my humble opinion I think legos are one of the best toys for kids. My kids rarely play with toys. Don't get me wrong they always love toys, but they don't hold their attention beyond a few hours or days. The one major exception to this is legos. My kids will play with legos for hours. Just the other night we heard a crash and Ken ran upstairs to see if everyone was ok. When he came down stairs with a grin he explained that the kids were just trying to build a tower with legos and it had tumbled down. Leo is starting to move towards the smaller legos. He received this kit for his birthday. You can build three different models with it. Yesterday he and I sat down to build the plane.

Leo made it clear from the very beginning that he wanted to build this himself. I was allowed to tell him what pieces were next and help him read the instructions but if I tried to put any of the pieces onto the model he would get upset. 

Half way through.

At one point he said, "Mom this doesn't look right". He was looking at the instruction sheet. I chuckled. In my mind I thought please I have a master's degree. I have read these instructions carefully and of course I have instructed you right. Outloud I stated, "Sweety I think I know how to read the instructions." Leo replied, "Mom this isn't right". "Well let me see, but really son I think that...well...I think that well look at that those two pieces are upside down." 

It was amazing to watch my son sit next to me for two hours manually being able to manipulate these extremely small pieces. I have always commented on the mind of my son. Never once did I seem him get extremely frustrated. If he couldn't do something he would simply take a deep breath and go at it again until he mastered it. I think this reflects highly of Leo's ability to conquer difficult tasks in a calm methodical manner.

The finished product.

A Week with Papa and Mimi

For the past week Midge has been staying with Papa and Mimi. She has had an absolutely fun time. When I called earlier in the week she spoke to me for a few moments and then said, "Who is this I am talking to?"..."This is your mother"..."Ah right my mother!" She then went on to tell me she had thought it was going to be boring, but she was having a fantastic time. She helped around the house (even having a time sheet), she went miniature golfing with Mimi's young women, went to see the movie UP, had a play date with her new good friend Janessa, and helped with Mimi and Papa and their canning. As well as many other activities. During this entire week she was also doing her jump rope class for the 2nd summer in a row. I surprised Midge by showing up on Thursday for her big recital. Our old neighbor and friend Dana is the instructor. Two of her kids are some of the instructors (I would like to say that when we lived next to Dana her children were my kids age.)
Dana is the person twirling the rope for Maddy in the above picture.
This trick was amazing. Midge would drop down and do pushups while still managing to jump over the big rope.
In this picture Midge is jumping with her smaller rope while also jumping within the larger rope as well.


All of the above pictures are from her individual routine. 
Midge also did a routine with the other member of her class. During this trick they each take the other person's handle and jump at the same time.

The boy was Midge's instructor, Ian.
On Friday Mimi, Midge and myself drove to Newport and walked along the boardwalk. We purchased some fresh crab and salmon. We then headed up to Lincoln City. At our hotel they had a barbecue and we decided to grill the salmon. It was delicious. 
I couldn't persuade anyone to come down and see the sunset. I had to race to catch a photo before the sun slipped down. It was even more beautiful than this. The day had been amazing for the Oregon Coast. It was clear skies, not too windy and fairly warm temperatures. Midge and I were able to go to the Yaquina lighthouse just north of Newport. Midge braved climbing all 104 steps to see the top. We discovered that she suffers from a fear of heights, but she did really well. Then we went to my favorite beach below the lighthouse with all of the agate stones. Unfortunately I had misread the tide tables and arrived right on time for high tide so the tide pools weren't exposed. Which was unfortunate because the coast is having record low tides right now. Instead we sat on the beach and had fun throwing stones into the water. Someone then pointed out a baby harbor seal 50 feet away from us. We weren't allowed to get closer, but it was so fun to watch him crawl along the beach and into the water to join his mom and play in the surf. I had such a great time spending one on one time with Midge. It has been so long since we have had an opportunity to do this. We were able to talk about a lot of different things. She is maturing so much, and I loved watching her and seeing her react to different things. She is such a beautiful girl and has amazing confidence. I hope that she always remembers how much she is loved. 

This was our hotel, The Looking Glass Inn.
When we woke up the next morning there was a surprise waiting for us as over 75 seals were beached across the water from our hotel. 
After breakfast we hit the outlet mall for some shopping and good deals. 
Also going on in Lincoln City was the kite festival. It was amazing to see the giant kites.


Our favorites were these giant squids.


Midge took this picture looking up at the three squids.
This was my favorite picture. When we arrived home this evening it was fun to see everyone and catch up on what we had missed. Little Miss and Leo were excited to see the gifts we had brought back. Little Miss has become a daddy's girl and kept calling me Dada all night. Leo was just excited to have his partner in crime return. 

What to do with an old pool

Midge has been staying at Grandma's for the past couple of days and I thought Leo would be overjoyed to have her out of the picture and have our attention all to himself. Instead he has turned in to a raving, jealous, moody kid. We were trying to come up with an idea for things he could do to make him feel special. We had planned a play date for him, but they called and canceled this morning. He was devastated. Luckily another friend we had called earlier in the week called and we invited him to come and play. Yesterday we had gone to the store and bought a bag of sand. We dumped it into the kid's old swimming pool. The boys played in it for hours today. They brought out all of Leo's cars and created an entire playing field. 

Of course it was only a short time before water had to become involved.

Ken has had a little bit of a hard time with how much of a mess they make with this (he tends to be the neater one of us), but I have fond memories of playing in the mud as a kid. There is nothing like creating a huge mess and just having fun. 

This was supposed to be the lake, and why the cars are in it I don't know. Hopefully this will not be reflective of any future driving situations. 

Despite the really fun day Leo asked me tonight, "Is Midge ever coming back?"

12 Year Anniversary

Ken and I were able to take a night to celebrate our 12 year anniversary. My parents were gracious enough to take our kiddos and we headed north. I have always wanted to visit the Northern Coast. We decided to camp at Cape Lookout. When we arrived it was full, but because of some bad weather the night before a few people had canceled. Cape Lookout is a fairly big campground but the campsites are really close together. It was nice to be really close to the ocean, but not so great to be so close to a group of drunk college students all night.  

The weather ended up being really nice in that there was hardly any wind as usually there is as evidenced by the tree below. 

The next day we woke up early to along the beach and then headed north. We stopped briefly in Oceanside. I thought that it had a pretty beach and it was amusing to me how the houses were built straight up the hillside.

We then visited the lighthouse at Cape Meares. It was a cute little lighthouse and had a great view of the ocean.
Ken thought it was silly that I wanted to stop at the Tillamook Cheese Factory, until he found out that they had 38 flavors of ice cream. He chose white licorice and wild mountain blackberry. They also had samples of cheese. The extra sharp was my favorite. 

We then went to Cannon Beach. This was a really fun beach with a lot to do. The weather was beautiful when the sun came out. Every year they have a sand castle competition. It had been the weekend before we arrived, but I would love to take the kids sometime in the future.

The last beach we explored was Oswald West. This is a really fun beach and apparently a favorite of surfers. When we arrived there were over 100 surfers. It was fun to watch them, but we kept thinking you really have to love surfing to get out in the cold Oregon water.