The forgotten photos

Somehow these photos were left out of the Bend post...

Aiden and Aubrey are two peas in a pod when it comes to personality!!

Ainsley at the obsidian flow

Aubrey and Ella at the obsidian flow

Family photo time!!

In the parking lot of the obsidian flow, the chipmunks would come right up into the kids hands and eat snacks. Of course, this type of behavior is highly discouraged not allowed. As we were heading into the obsidian flow, we passed a park ranger and she stopped to chat with the kids. What do you think the first thing the kids told the ranger was? Yep, "We fed the chipmunks some goldfish and they ate them RIGHT OUT OF OUR HANDS!" "Oh, I know how exciting that can be but we don't want to feed the chipmunks because then they aren't afraid of humans and might get hurt," the ranger tells them. "I'm going to feed the chipmunks again!!" SShhhh!!! This was one of those parenting moments when we struggled to do the right thing. We are cityfolk; feeding wild animals isn't something we do on a daily basis and little chipmunks are cute. Do we want to be responsible for the reduction of the chipmunk population because we fed them? No. But will our few goldfish crackers really cause an extinction? Probably not. So we may have shared a little bit of our lunch with the resident critters ;-)

Ella, Nathan, Aubrey and Aiden

Such beautiful scenery!

Neal took the maiden voyage down the waterfall before we turned the kids loose!

Caleb and Ainsley! I may be biased, but we have the cutest kiddos =)

I think this marks the official end to summer. All the camping photos are shared, the blog is up-to-date and the sunny days now require jeans. At least we can say we had the most fun possible this summer!!

16 months old--cuteness

Ainsley doesn't necessarily cooperate when I attempt to get pictures of her these days. She is so busy and independent and opinionated (I'm not sure where she gets any of these qualities ;-)) that we have to just take lots and lots of pictures in hopes of getting one or two where she is actually in the frame and not blurry.

1st ponytail with her favorite puppy Violet

16 months old!

I tried to take Violet away to get her to look at the camera...you can see how much she liked that idea!??!

I am really enjoying watching these 2 figure out their relationship now that Ella is away at school.

Ainsley loves being outside. And she loves her 'dirty baby'! This is the baby who went camping, swimming in the pool a few times, has been dropped, drug under the stroller...you get the idea and the reason for the name ;-) This baby lives in the garage and Ainsley goes straight for her each time we go outside.

This month you really seem like you are trying to move into the toddler portion of life. I'm secretly trying to hold onto the baby stage. When you threw yourself to your knees, then onto your hands and finally onto your belly in a fit the other day all because you refused to ask "please" I realized that you may really be a toddler!! Your belly laughs and smiles are so infectious. We love you so much little peanut!

School days 2013

Its back to school time! Our house has been counting down the days until school starts with more excitement than either ones of the girls could contain. 

Ella made the big jump to full day school this year. On top of being able to take her lunch to school (she was so excited about this that she walked to school every day instead of riding her bike or scootering just to be able to carry her lunch box), Ella also is in a 1st/2nd grade split class.

I love this girl!! She jumped right into her classroom and was SO EXCITED to see that her teacher had a basket of books on each set of desks. Her teacher encourages reading once the kids finish their work....Ella is in love =)

Ella the 1st grader with her lunch!!!

Crazy sisters! Try as I might, these are how our pictures of these 3 pretty girls turn out. No one can say they lack personlity!

 

Cousins going to school together is a wonderful childhood memory I have. So so blessed that our girls get the same opportunity! Ella and Quin, the 1st graders; Logan the 3rd grader.

Aubrey's smile tells how super excited she is to be going to school!

1st day of school craft, hanging out with her buddy Aiden. Aubrey's favorite part of the day- taking a picture with Mrs. Nolan and playing in the sand table!!

With the energy in our house about school, this year is bound to be a great one!!

Instalife---August edition

For all those life moments that happen when the camera is not around, thank goodness we have phones with cameras ;-)

Happy 8 year anniversary to us!!!

This picture is really grainy because I took it with the iPad, but I couldn't resist... Ainsley sleeps every night with her baby tucked under her arm. SO SWEET! I love how individual each of our girls are with their sleep routines. Ella- pet the soft part of her blanket while sucking her left thumb; Aubrey- suck right thumb while playing with her belly button; Ainsley- baby or stuffed animal tucked under her arm on her tummy!

Aubrey has definitely gotten her our money's worth out of this Pooh costume. On the left is the year we originally bought the costume, Halloween 2010- Aubrey 18 months old. On the right you see a very happy almost 4 1/2 yr old Aubrey sporting the same costume in August 2013.

Everything about this makes me smile. Ainsley has logged many miles in her little car this summer. Her sisters are so loving to push her around in it. Ella sure loves rollerskating so why not combine the two?!?!

Evening at Oaks park- Ferris wheel, carousel, cute baby!

Family fun night at John's Incredible pizza =)

After our hiking adventure while camping, Ainsley was exhausted. We barely had her buckled in before she was falling asleep. Ella and Aubrey were super hungry so I handed each of them a graham cracker. Ainsley L.O.V.E.S. graham crackers, so even though she was half asleep she asked for her craaacker. Poor girl only got this far on getting the cracker to her mouth before she fell asleep.

Aubrey didn't last much longer after the graham crackers either!

Ella is officially a brownie Girl Scout!!!

Wow!!! Its hard to believe this is the last post of our summer fun/adventures. We have had a blast. And I have to give myself a little pat on the back, its only September 3rd and the ol' blog is pretty much caught up!!! Stay tuned for back to school posts-- preschool and 1st grade!

All the things in between...

Popcorn night is always fun....and messy when you have a 15 month old around!

Ainsley Rae, 15 months old

Time is just flying by!!!

Details:

21.5 lbs 

4 teeth (but there are about 6 trying to make their way through!)

still waking up once a night

2 naps a day, 1 hour in the morning, 2 1/2 hours in the afternoon

a climbing machine

learning more and more words every day- favorites are still daadeee (very emphatic about pronunciation on that), Ella, craaacker, no (even when you mean yes!)

want to be outside every waking minute!

our family's favorite little peanut!!!

Aubrey "jumping" on her scooter. She has gained so much balance over the summer!

Scooter-riding machine.

I was trying to get a new picture to take to work of the 3 girls. They are so wiggly these days when you put them all in the same place. After I took the picture, I realized that I had a similar picture taken a year ago. Little did I realize they were in the same order as last year! So fun to put the pictures together and see how much they have changed in a year.   LOVE THEM!!!

Grandma and Poppa came up for a little visit. Poppa was in charge of babysitting (though he often wasn't sure which way his charges ran ;-)) while Grandma and I made curtains. Thanks to Grandma's help and expertise we were able to finish 4- 81"x105" curtain panels for our front room in 24 hours! Thank you so much Grandma!!

Mommy only wanted a little bite of chocolate cake...but Ainsley knows what's good and wouldn't share a bit!!

Bye Grandma and Poppa! Thanks for having a sleepover.

Neal's work does a big family event every summer. This year it was at Oaks Park, a small amusement park in SE Portland. Fortunately it landed on a weekend we weren't camping so we could take advantage of a free night of fun!

Riding on the Ferris wheel is a wonderful end to the day!

Last summer adventure!

Summer has flown by faster than I can imagine. Somehow we are already at the point of loading the back packs with a new year's worth of school supplies and getting back into early to bed, early to rise routines. Fortunately for us, we scheduled one last camping trip to Bend before we had to say goodbye to summer vacation. Although the trip started off with far too many speed bumps (I spent the days before we left frantically trying to finish Aubrey and Ainsley's photo books for year to utilize a coupon only to realize as I finished at 11:30PM that my coupon had actually expired the day before at midnight....I was off by ONE day!! Prepping for camping then was consolidated into the morning we left resulting in us leaving Neal and my suitcase at home...fortunately we realized this when we were only about 15 minutes from home :-/ Back on the road and off to Bend, as we were unpacking and setting up camp in a rush to beat the sunset we realized that we had forgotten Ainsley's pack'n play. Goodness gracious!) we still had a blast and didn't let the rain or thunder or cool nights ruin our fun.

Onto talking about the fun stuff!

Our first day of adventures took us to the lava caves and the lava flow. 

End of the lava cave

Day 2 was spent around Paulina Peak.

Family photo time atop Paulina Peak in the Newberry Volcanic national park.

View from the top. 2 lakes and the obsidian flow. We hiked around the obsidian flow before we drove to the top for a bird's eye view.

Ella striking a pose at the top!!

On our way down from the lakes, some friends had told us about a waterfall you can slide down! It was only supposed to be about a mile from the trail head. We didn't really consider that said waterfall may not be exactly 1 mile or less from where we parked our cars; we set off with no water, no snacks and no baby carrier except our trusty arms...ugh!! 1.6 miles, 11 kids, 6 adults and who knows how long later we arrived.

Our crew staging at the top.

Aubrey sliding down the waterfall!! It gives you a good push down into the water at the bottom, but daddy was there to pull her up and she gave us a family Aubrey smile.

Ella went down all by herself and swam over to the side all by herself! I was so proud of her. She was spitting and sputtering for a second but then was excited that she too could say she slid down a waterfall!

Day 3 was spent hanging out around camp. Unfortunately it was a little chilly to spend much time in the river, we still enjoyed our day.

Picnic in the park

Ainsley Rae- our dirty faced, outdoor-loving girl!

Ainsley spent most free moments camping dragging her stroller around. She had so much fun! Our campsite was right next to the bathrooms (convenient for the older ones in our group ;-)) and the first day camping, I swear I no more than blinked and couldn't find Ainsley!! Everyone set off in different directions. I found her smiling, with her stroller in the 1st stall of the men's bathroom. For the rest of the trip, she found it very entertaining to hide in that particular spot....crazy kid!!

The top photo can be used as comparison for how dirty this child's face is. For reasons a child could never explain well enough, Ella picked up either charcoal or just burnt wood from a fire pit and decided to color all over her sister's face!?!?!

Jr. Ranger program- binocular making!!

Ella, her binoculars, and the pose!

Beautiful sunset on our last night! Kinda symbolic of our whole trip...a little stormy at times, but without the storms you would miss out on beauty that follows. 

Happy end of summer!!