Whirlwind trip to Oregon

Last weekend our family had a whirlwind of a fun trip to Oregon. I got to attend a two day workshop called "Time Out for Women" in Portland. I joined my sister, Emily (she lives in PA), my sister-in-law, Caroline (living in OR), her mom, and my mom. We had a great time together and I enjoyed celebrating womanhood. The speakers were fantastic but the company was even better!

While I was gallivanting around Portland, Birch and the kids were partying in Kaizer, Oregon. They all had the best time playing with their cousins, Grannie, and aunts and uncles. Saturday they all went to a park in McMinnville, Oregon. Apparently it was SUPER DUPER FUN!!

Saturday night we all met up in Corvallis at my parent's home for a yummy dinner and an evening together. Sunday morning we all jumped out of bed and headed back to Kaizer for baby Claire Ditto's (Brent and Deena's baby) baby blessing. We enjoyed an afternoon together and then off we went. It was all way too short but we certainly made the most of it.

Blayre (by the way she will be leaving in her mission to Las Vegas in a couple of months) and Alysee making their way up the sand covered foam mountain thingy.
Andrew (graduating from high school in a couple of weeks) allowing Alysee to give him some lovin'.
Tyler
Crazy Alex
Nate and Uncle Brent
Jacob, Nate, Alysee, Malia
Sweet Cooper, who was a bit emotional without his mommy and with being around so many new faces.

Mommy I love You

This past Wednesday Alysee had a special Mother's Day Tea at her preschool. All the preschool kids sang several cute mommy songs and then their teacher did a little guessing game for the moms. She read the answer that the preschoolers gave to five different questions and then we had to guess which mommy it was. Well, when mine was read I had no idea Alysee was describing ME. Here are her answers:

Favorite color - red

Favorite food - lettuce

My favorite thing to do with my mother is - play games.

My mother's favorite thing to do by herself or with a friends is - watch mom and dad movies.


If you know me well you will probably find these answers comical too. After her teacher said that this mommy's favorite food was "lettuce" I pretty much tuned the rest out. This is the first year that I have actually come to tolerate lettuce (as long as it is covered in a sugar/vinegar/olive oil dressing). The other thing that was funny is that I like to watch mom and dad movies. That is actually true but it is a rarity at our house. Birch isn't much of a movie/tv watcher and so it is something we do maybe a half dozen times a year. Anyway, we got a good chuckle.

I did appreciate Alysee's picture of me, though. Recently she noticed that I have one silver filling in my teeth and so she has been drawing all the pictures of me with an "owie" on my teeth to represent my filling. I love my butterfly earrings that she drew on me. Gotta love a child's honesty!

Lover of legos

Nate, like the other kids, is a lego lover! He spends hours each morning before the rest of us wake up creating lego cars, airplanes, houses, etc... I love that ALL my kids ages 8.5 to 11 mo. can all enjoy the same thing (yes, Coop loves putting lego pieces in his mouth).

Bubble Fun

Smiles

Unfortunately, Tyler's smile changed a bit this past week. We returned for our follow up visit to the dentist this past Tuesday where Tyler got a spacer put in (to hold the spot open where they had to pull a tooth two weeks ago) and a big ol' metal cap put on. Ugh... I am adjusting to the new silver smile. The worst part of it all is that we are late bloomers at this house and so we will be stuck with them for many moons until these baby teeth fall out.

On the bright side of things, Tyler still has a wonderful smile and did great at the dentist!

Awards and Space Derby

This past pack meeting Alex really had worked hard and earned LOTS of awards. He got nine beltloops, two pins, and three elective arrow points. If you are not a past cub scouter or a parent of a cub scouter that won't mean much to you--but it means that he passed off a lot of stuff. He certainly has caught the fire of scouting; it helps that he loves a competition!

This past month the boys had also been working on their rockets. We decided that our den was just going to have fun and not make it into a competition against the other boys. Alex loved carving his rocket out of the balsam wood, painting, and then putting it together with dad. He had a lot of fun seeing how far it would go.

My little cute ducky