catch up

I've got a lot to catch up on. When the weather is nice, there's all of a sudden a whole bunch of things to do! We've been biking and hiking and swimming and all kinds of fun things lately.

Last Friday (I can't believe it's been a week already! Time flies!), Noah went to swim lessons with us. It was quite the juggle with two toddlers. They had a great time in the pool (sorry - I forgot my camera!) and Allison got her first pair of goggles.



Here are some pics of the kids at the playground on Thursday.


Abby wanted to "share" the bike with Noah.



Chris, blowing bubbles for the kids....like any true engineer would blow them.


Here they are eating a Blizzard...mmmmmm......


Story time before bed (yah!!).

After swimming and lunch, we headed to Portland to drop Allison off with Grandpa Cary and Grandma Andrea for the weekend. After a quick stop, we dropped Noah off with Auntie Brie and then it was just Chris and I with Abby! It was a really different experience to just have Abby with us, but we had fun. We headed out to the Dalles and got some starters (tomatoes, bell peppers, green onions, strawberries), camping gear and birthday presents. The nice thing about two-year-olds is that you can take them shopping, let them play with the toys, pick out the ones they like best and....drum roll......when they open their gifts on their birthday, it's like seeing them for the first time! :)




Here are my starters! I am very excited about them. Hopefully we will get a great little crop out of my garden. I am waiting until sometime next month to plant some lettuce, cucumbers, cilantro and carrots. I have never had a garden before so this is really very fun and I am excited to see the results of all my hard work (removing dead plants and brush to make room for my veggies). On Monday, I dug up all of the ground cover over the stone pathway in the backyard. It looks fantastic! I will try to post some pictures later.

We also went for a nice 11 mile bike ride - very beautiful - very painful. I am rather out of shape. Sad, but true. I made it, but man was my rear sore! Those bike seats are definitely not made for comfort! Perhaps I am not sitting on it correctly? All the same, I definitely got a good work out and could feel that I was already in better shape when we hiked up to the top of Multnomah Falls on Wednesday evening! My dad (Tom) met us there and climbed to the top with us - it was a lot of fun. Allison walked all the way to the top with just a few quick breaks (more for us adults than anything else). Chris and I were fairly impressed considering she would never have made it up there last summer. Unfortunately, I have forgotten to bring my camera with me pretty much all week, so Chris has all of the pictures on his camera. I'll try to snag some later on. My dad took a really great family shot of us.


Abby came into our room the other morning, looking like this. I had to snap a pic.

Thursday morning, Chris had an appointment in Gresham, so he decided to take the whole day off and we headed over to OMSI. There were a ton of school field trips there, but they all left about an hour or so after we arrived. We had a blast! Chris took Allison through most of the regular exhibits, while Abby and I spent most of the afternoon in the new pre-school room. The room is fabulous! There are things to climb on and through, a water play area (complete with waterproof aprons and rubber boots), a sand pit area (in retrospect, I recommend playing in the sand area and THEN playing in the water), a kitchen area with toy foods, a puppet theatre with puppets, flubber, construction crafts.....there are tons of things for toddlers. Abby could have stayed there all day. We also watch an Omnimax movie about undersea African coast. Very cool. Abby enjoyed it very much, although she was a bit antsy half way through (it was approx. an hour long). Allison, of course, thought is was "awesome!"

Today, we had swim lessons again and Allison is currently finishing up her schoolwork for the week. She and Chris finally went on their Father - Daughter date this week. They went for a picnic and bike ride and had a great time together in the outdoors! That's about it for us, this week. Whew!

PS - I found pearl sugar at IKEA. Now I just need to find my recipe for Belgian Waffles!