Daddy's 12 days of Birthday

I love it when Andy makes up new words to old songs....this one is to the tune of "The 12 Days of Christmas"....

On the first day of daddy's birthday my two kids gave to me....
1 Millennium Falcon
2 Ben Tens
3 Star wars Guys
4 video games
5 pints of beer
6 books of Goosebumps
7 musical instruments
8 Club Penguin characters
9 packs of trading cards
10 gifts from Santa
11 cans of coke
12 Webkinz

The kids were a little unimpressed!! ;)

Crazy, Crazy, and More Craziness

My poor neglected blog, but it was a busy summer and the fall now has been even busier, and I didn't think that was possible. Thankfully, soccer season is almost over, which will free up some time. Less shuttling around of children. And for the record, Mason LOVES soccer! He would play and just have a big grin on his face the whole time, for him, it was a total thrill! Matthew likes it, but I don't think he will ever love it. He likes the socializing aspect the most...strange considering he was the toddler/preschooler that had socializing issues. Go Figure!!! School seems to be going well for the boys, conferences are right around the corner so we shall see what that brings. In the meantime, Mason has the flu. We made it through Halloween, totally got lucky on that since I've heard of several families where at least one sibling was sick on Halloween, see example here. But the next morning, which was one of the best mornings of the year to sleep in, Mason was up at 5:30 am!! Yeah, I was thrilled! Not!! Grrrr....I got real testy with him and then tried to go back to sleep for awhile. Didn't work and it's just as well. By 8 am he was on the couch with a fever. And coughing. And chills. And throwing up. Let's just say he hasn't hardly touched his Halloween candy and the rest of us in this house are waiting for the other shoe to drop, as in, when are we going to get it?!?

Camping

Yay for summer! ;) We did finally make it camping, although it did get cut short a bit but that's ok. Our goal was to see Crater Lake, especially since Andy and I both had the realization that we both had lived in Oregon all our lives and have never seen Crater Lake except from an airplane. Not acceptable. So we decided we would change that and make sure our boys saw it too. We ended up camping at Diamond Lake, which is absolutely gorgeous! Just a beautiful campground, we went on a Monday and they have a whole section for just walk up tent camping, no reservations needed as long as they have space! Worked out well, we quickly found a spot and set up camp and got down to business, namely, dinner and then roasting marshmallows!

The next day we made it up to Crater Lake, and all I can say is wow. When you first walk up to where you can look out at it, it's amazing. Just amazing. Everyone should experience this! Wow! The water is so incredibly blue and not a ripple on it. It was a clear day, hot down at our campground, but up at Crater Lake it was only maybe 80-85 out. Much more tolerable, although I quickly found out that being that high in elevation, I burn even faster than I normally do.






And yes there were patches of snow! :) Pretty impressive, considering the heat wave the whole state was/is practically under! We had to find a spot of accessible snow because, really, who could resist a snowball or two in July??!!

The second night in our campground there was wild turkeys! They are not much smaller than my children.....

Andy did attempt to take the boys fishing, but only from the shore. Of course they didn't catch anything (not the best spot, too shallow) but it was good practice and experience. Besides, Andy figures out that it's probably best to only take one kid at a time if he wants to do any fishing himself. He spent all his time running back and forth between the boys, but at least everyone seemed to be having fun. There again, it was a beautiful morning....and the boys were thrilled to get into the water! Trust me, by 9 am it was getting pretty warm in the sun.

I wasn't surprised that we got nailed with thunderstorms given the heat, I was surprised at how much it suddenly cooled down (it was cooling down very nicely at night, sleeping was great! The kids did get a little cold though...) and then it started pouring down rain. While we were at Crater Lake the second time! The kicker of that was the entrance that we were leaving out of,ended up getting closed because of the road work they were doing and then the rain screwed it all up. So we ended up going halfway back around the rim and out a different entrance and then a long way back to our camp. We had already done the whole rim drive, and the extra part to the campground was beautiful, but we were also anxious to get back to our camp to see if we needed to pack up or not. We were soooo not prepared for any kind of rain, and a downpour was not particularly do-able for us.


We ended up packing up, (and Andy obviously had a little finger injury!) and decided to head out. But boy it was fun! I'll will have to add some more observations later.... ;)

Happy Birthday Matthew!

It still amazes me that the little baby I once had has grown so much. I just got done wrapping his presents a little while ago and noticed how much easier the wrapping has gotten as he has aged. No odd shaped things to wrap this year! ;) The picture was taken Saturday night, as he was unwrapping a gift from Louise. Probably a good thing that he got an early b-day present, he has been rather bent out of shape lately since Mason has gotten the lion's share of the attention (and a few gifts too!) lately. More on that a little later! But for now, he is officially an 8 year-old. I'm still wrapping my head around that one.....Happy Birthday to my sweet boy, my sometimes moody but always spirited, lovely boy. Love you!

Strawberries On The Brain

It's that time of year that I love so well! Not only for strawberry season but for warm summer days and pleasant evenings before it gets too hot. I've noticed I've been taking lots of food pictures lately....anyway, some of the strawberry related goings on that have been happening in my kitchen:

Strawberry Granita....from Giada De Laurentiis "Giada's Kitchen" cookbook.
I had never made a Granita before and this was Divine! Strawberry puree, mascarpone cheese, and a sugar and mint syrup. Frozen goodness!!



Strawberry Shortcake cookies from Martha Stewart Living, I think it was the June issue but the recipe is here. There is a similar peach pie cookie in her cookie cookbook that I have tried and they are sooo good. They really do taste like a peach pie. So I figured these would be tasty and sure enough, they were yummy! They don't keep for very long but that didn't really seem to be a problem.



Of course, I had to make strawberry shortcakes themselves! ;) The shortcakes were actually starting off that night as rolls with dinner but I was digging around in Marion Cunningham's "Lost Recipes"
and found a recipe for sweet cream biscuits and figures I would rather have dessert than rolls with my dinner! Strawberry shortcake is always a winner!


Hee hee, this last one is "Skywalker Smoothies"! My kids have now discovered they love smoothies if they come from the StarWars Cookbook. I will (hopefully!) get around to a full post of the recipes we have cooked so far but right now it's all about Skywalker Smoothies, lots of strawberries, bananas, and vanilla yogurt. I think I added frozen raspberries as well instead of ice. The kids can't get enough and Matthew thought is was great fun to make his action figures pose with the food!

What Came Home From School Today...

It's the end of the school year and all the usual papers, journals, pieces of art is making its way home from Matthew's class. However, this afternoon when I was looking through his backpack I found this little gem! ;)
I was amused! However, I also think we need to practice some writing skills over the summer. As in, why did he forget that sentences start with capitals??? (he knows this, we have gone over it many times!!) Then again, who am I to complain? Like I follow any kind of grammatical rules on this blog! Now I am off to go see what else I can do to keep the kids busy over the summer! ;)

It's Official....

It's official, I am no longer the parent of small children. I have gradeschool aged children. Mason graduates from preschool tomorrow and while I am mostly excited for him to move on to kindergarten, I think I get to be a little bit sad for one day at how quickly time is flying by. It's strange because that preschool has pretty much been a part of his life since he was only a couple of months old. First with just tagging along as his big brother went there, and then getting his own experiences at preschool. I am much more confident of his future in gradeschool, way more so than I was with Matthew. Partly due to Matthew's social struggles and partly that was the fear of the unknown, having no clue what gradeschool would bring. But we have had so many positive experiences with the gradeschool and I love it there. Wouldn't dream of sending my kids anywhere else. And it will be nice to have both of them under the same roof, only one school to devote my fundraising loyalties to, one school to juggle activities to. Not to say that there won't be a fair amount of classroom time juggling with both kids, that's bound to happen. But for the next couple of years we just have to concentrate on one place. Unfortunately, that does mean leaving the safe, protective, and oh so very sweet environment of the preschool. And I can only hope he likes his kindergarten teacher as well as he likes his preschool teacher, as excited as he is to start kindergarten, he is also already talking about how we must go visit "Teacher Amy" too! **sigh** Yes, I am feeling a bit sappy. But summer is almost here (gotta love summer and it's less hectic-ness!), and it's already here for Mason! I think my whole little family is ready to move forward with plans and dreams (and vacations!) but tomorrow is graduation and playtime at the preschool! We will see how well I manage to hold it together. ;) Look for pictures later of Mason graduating, I'm sure there will be some sort of silliness involved! The pictures below were taken on Monday, his last day of school. And for fun, I was just looking back on his first day.... ;)

Please Tell Time To Not Pass So Quickly!

Someone Is Five-Years-Old today! That must mean I officially do not have small children in my house anymore. Of course, Mason hasn't exactly been "small" for quite some time. Small is not in his genes, large and LOUD is what his genetic make-up is! And that is just fine...he is quickly becoming more fun as he gets older. I have analyzed that thought....Matthew is (for the most part) at a really fun age and I am really enjoying his company. I think the older my kids get, it just highlights how hard life was when they were babies. Babies are hard....or at least for me. This bigger kid thing suits me much better. Even though it seems scheduling wise, we are always crazy/hectic busy.
Mason, my darling sweetie, you are getting more enjoyable by the day.
And you are always entertaining, even if I don't always appreciate it at the time! If your fifth year is half as fun as your fourth year has been, than oh boy are we in for some laughter!! Happy fifth Birthday to my baby! :)

A Nice Mother's Day Morning

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there! Today started out quite nice...Andy brought me coffee, then made me a Mimosa(!), then he made breakfast while the boys gave me a card, a cookbook I have been wanting, and Matthew had a little poster he made for me. Mason had a lovely flower pot and card he had given me on Friday. And then, Matthew had a song to sing to me. It was so darn cute!! You may have to turn up the volume on the video since he doesn't sing very loud. :)

Silly String

On the Saturday night before Easter (Easter Eve, I suppose!) we went to my Grandma's house for an egg hunt and Easter fun from my side of the family. My dad thought it was a good idea to give the children silly string. The boys (and grandpa!!) loved it. I guess I'm okay with it as long as silly string never makes it to my house.

Tree Huggers

Mason & Sophia

What's Going On At Our House?

So this is what's happening in our backyard right now!

Mason, Matthew, and Matthew's friend Ayden all are light saber fighting Andy in the backyard. Good entertainment!! ;)