Our trip to Oregon

Warning: Lots of pictures of cute, silly and very, very active children (with a few mommies and daddies included.)

The slides at the playground were a hit for all the little kiddies.

Notice Brian in the background. The adults needed to try it out, too!!
Brian's score: 6.5 It was a little slow
Paige's score: 9.5 Very fast and could do it all by herself after 2 tries
Anything that Cousin Natalie did, Paige had to do.

Walking to the playground with Grandpa A.
Climbing the mountain
If Sister can do it, so can I!! He actually climbed up this by himself later. He was halfway up before anyone noticed. Crazy boy!
Grandmas and Grandpas have to have a little fun, too!!

We had so much fun with Ray, Krissy, Kate and Jack!!! Has it really been a year since we were all together?!?

Paige LOVED this little bike. She felt like such a big girl!!
Jack taking a break. He is one funny boy!!! Oh we miss them so much already!!
Umbrella fun!!
Peek-a-boo


The Deschutes River was right in our backyard at the condo we stayed in. Isn't it absolutely beautiful?!? We took a 4 mile hike by it. (We found out after the hike that it was 4 miles. Sorry, Krissy!!) We were just trying to get Krissy to have her baby so we could see Baby Hardy before we left! :0)

Rocks + body of water + throwing action = Heavenly bliss

This was the coolest tree on the trail! I love Jack in the pic. He was so exhausted from the hike that it was too much to even open his eyes for the picture!

Two of the sweetest girls I know!!

This bear was outside of the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory store and Paige and Austin were fascinated by it. It's kind of scary lookin' if you ask me!! Thank goodness it was locked onto the bench or Paige and Austin might have begged to take it home with us!! :0) (I think not!)

Thanks Ray and Krissy for everything! Thanks Mom and Dad A. for letting us take advantage of your timeshare! Thanks Julie for coming and making this vacation so fun!! What a wonderful week!!

Memorial Day 2008

Since we live back in the West we were able to visit a few family graves this year with my family. It has been a long time since I've seen my Grandma and Grandpa Nebeker, Grandpa Gifford and Great, great-Grandma and Grandpa Thorne's graves. I loved being able to remember the wonderful people they were, or in the case of my Grandpa Gifford, hearing other people's memories of him. It was neat having my children there to see where their ancestors are buried and hopefully they can begin to understand who they were. It was also so fun getting together with most of my family. We were missing two of my brothers and their families, but hopefully we'll be able to see them soon!! Enjoy the pics!

The whole gang!
What is with Austin and kissing?!? It doesn't matter if the cute girl is related or not! :0)

Where, oh where did our backyard go?!?

Here's a few pictures taken yesterday and today of our lovely backyard. So sad! At least Paige and Austin enjoy watching it all while eating their snacks.

Another little update!

So, it's been an interesting 2 weeks. Remember when we first moved into our house and we had a little incident with toilet water all over our basement....well, it happened again. Luckily it wasn't as bad and this time we actually had friends who own wet vacs!! This time, however, our landlords gave in and decided to put in new pipes since the old ones are "root-infested" beyond repair. This means, however, that we now have a HUGE hole with a very long and deep trench in our backyard. (I'll take a picture of it tomorrow to prove to you how big it is!) Can you say, "No more picnics or playing on the swings in the backyard for a while!" At least Paige and Austin were occupied by the "digger" in our backyard for most of the day!! They moved some chairs over to the sliding door and sat there watching the men work while eating their snacks and drinking their milk. (I'll post that picture tomorrow, also.) That was very nice, since I had to unpack everything from our trip this last week. We went to Bend, OR for almost a week and it was the best vacation we've had in a very long time!! We were able to see and play with our wonderful friends, Ray, Krissy, Kate and Jack again, play with cousins, Natalie, Lauralee and Ava, Aunt Julie, and Grandma and Grandpa A. The weather was actually pretty nice. It rained a little while we were there, but we still had plenty of sunny days for tennis, hikes and just relaxing. It was wonderful!!! Since it's 11 pm right now, I'll post the pictures tomorrow when I'll have more patience for them to load. But now we're back home and wondering when we'll be able to have our backyard back!!

Swimming...kind of

A couple weeks ago it was very, very warm. Brian got home from work a little early and we decided to head down the the Marina. The water was a bit chilly (OK a LOT chilly) but the kids didn't seem to mind at all. We'll definitely be taking advantage of this place this summer, especially since it's about 2 minutes from our house!! ;0)

Austin couldn't get enough of the rocks. Thank goodness there were millions to choose from! :0) He's saying "rock" in this pic. He's talking quite a bit now and is trying to copy things that we say. It's so cute!!
Paige doing her tippy-toe dance in the sand. She had to watch her shadow the entire time! :0)

Spring and Sprung, cont.

Of course, we have to have some pictures of Austin, too!!! Isn't he so cute? He follows the saying on his shirt, by the way, very well! :0) Oh, how I love this boy!

Spring has Sprung!!

The beginning of last week was beautiful. We had to take advantage of the sunshine. Here are a few pictures of Paige enjoying the dandelions. Yes, we had a slight problem with dandelions. (We have since sprayed them and they are now less numerous!) :0) Don't mind her crazy hair!

Paige didn't want her picture taken anymore so she hid behind a tree. I was standing quite a bit away from her so she didn't think I was taking pictures, but thank goodness for the zoom function!! :0) Peek-a-boo, Paige!!

Another "project"

Paige has been begging me to do a project with her. I saw this flower project on Kids Craft Weekly and had to try it out. It was so easy and Paige LOVED doing it all by herself. Seriously one of the easiest projects we've done, but isn't Oh, so cute?!? :0)

Some random pics

Here's just a few pics showing what we've been doing. There will be more to come in a couple days.

We finally took the kids to their "eye doctor". :0) They had so much fun going to see Daddy at his office and having him check their eyes. Their favorite thing, though, were the sunglasses that they got afterwards! They wore them for at least an hour after their appointments!

Who loves to brush their teeth?!?
Picnic, anyone? We are usually having one at the park, in our backyard or even in our basement!
We decided to curl Paige's hair a couple Sundays ago. She thought she was so cute and I have to say that I whole-heartedly agree with her!!!
The kids' new favorite place to be. They stand on the floorboards and look outside all the time, especially when Daddy goes to work and when they are looking for him to come home!
Ice cream bars...YUMMY!!! Especially after black beans! :0)

We told them not to drink the water in the bathtub, so they decided this is the next best thing! ;0)
Austin decided he wanted to lounge on my lap for awhile. Funny boy!!

Baggie Taggie

My friend, Lindsey, tagged me quite a while ago, but life has a way of getting kind of crazy when you least expect it to. :0) Anyway, for this tag I had to take everything out of my bag and take a picture of it. I couldn't omit or change anything. So here it is in all it's glory! :0) As you can tell it's been over taken by kid stuff! :0) The contents are...

Water bottles (You should hear Austin say water bottle. It has to be the cutest thing!)

Sunscreen (We were actually having nice weather when I took this picture and we went to the park a lot!)

Lotion

Hand sanitizer

Picture of my adorable niece, Sydnee

Book and notebook

Pen (my kids LOVE to draw, I just have to make sure they draw in or on "allowable" objects)

Disposable sunglasses from Bri's office when the kids had their eye appointments! (Picture of that later)

Receipts

Diaper and wipes

Brian's wallet...oops! Do you notice my wallet isn't in there? What's up with that?!? :0)

toys

chapstick

The kids' immunization records

Pretty standard diaper bag, don't you think?!? You should check out Lindsey's diaper bag for her twins and almost 3 year old!! :0) I do have to say that I LOVE my new bag! I just have to put pictures in the front. I have them, I just haven't trimmed them and put them in. I'm such a slacker!! :0)

I now tag anyone who wants to show off their bag!! No cheating, though. Show it like it really is! :0)

Havasupai Trip pictures

So, Brian, his dad, brothers and brother-in-law all returned home safely and in one piece! They were all a little sore from the hiking, but enjoyed everything about the trip. Here are a few of the pictures that Bri took. I'm pretty impressed that he took so many pictures. If you know my husband, you know what I mean! :0) I'm not sure all of the names of the falls, so I won't even attempt labeling the pictures. After seeing the pictures, though, I am definitely going to be going there with my hubby!! Enjoy the pics!!