We Heart Cousins!

We have had such a wonderful time playing with our Sander's cousins for the last two weeks.  We only get to see them about once every two years so this was especially fun.  Caralee has been here with her six kiddos ranging in age from 13 to 1.  They are such fun, creative kids and Spencer has had the time of his life with them.  We will miss them a lot when they go back to Wyoming tomorrow.

We haven't done much besides play with cousins so we've done a lot of fun things and I have a lot of pictures.  It will take several posts to get them all in.  One of the first things we did was go to this fun spray park in Wilsonville.  Of course, we went on a cool, sprinkly afternoon, but that didn't stop the kids from having a blast.  It was nice that there were only a few other kids there.  I was surprised that Spencer didn't mind the cool water at all and had a great time throwing water on his cousins.

Everything was great until I lost a contact right at the end.  I searched for about 30 minutes and then gave up and drove the 20 minutes home with one eye closed.  When I got home, I said yet another prayer and looked through my stuff one more time.  I emptied my purse out onto my bed, opened my wallet and out fell my contact!  What a tender mercy!

 

Another day, we all rode the MAX train into Portland.  Here are all the kids waiting for our train.  Spencer had only ridden it once when he was too little to remember, so he was thrilled.  

We rode several different trains to different spots.  First up, was the Lloyd Center, a big mall with an ice skating rink in the middle.  You don't get to ride many escalators or elevators when you live in a small, Wyoming town, so those were a big hit.

This is all of them except Austin (1).  Jeramiah and Erica (11), Hailey (13), Camille (8), Spencer (3), and Carter (almost 5).

We ate our pick nick lunches on the Waterfront.  It's such a great place to people watch.

Carter and Spencer were definitely the most excited about the trains.  They would sit right on the edge of the platform to wait for ours to come.

These kids were such good troopers!  We took one wrong train and I think we probably walked 2 miles, but they were great.  I didn't have to carry Spencer once.  We were all tired when we got home, but it was a fun day.  I need to get out and do fun stuff like that more often.

 

Manzanita

Alan timed a race in a little coast town called Manzanita a couple of Saturdays ago.  Spencer and I decided to join him since the race provided a hotel room for him and had never been there before.  We thought it would be a great chance to see Alan a little more and to play on the beach.  It would have been a fun weekend if the weather hadn't been so miserable.  It was cold and it rained and rained.

This was Spencer's first time staying in a hotel room and the excitement was almost more than he could take.  He loved that the bathroom counter was low enough for him to reach the sinks and thought it was super fun to get drinks with the little, plastic cups.  He had a really hard time settling down enough to go to sleep.

Spencer and I ventured out to the beach twice.  Our room was right on the beach and Spencer asked to go back in before we even completed the 100 yard walk to the water both times.  The sand was the best I have ever seen on the Oregon coast, too bad we didn't even get to use all of the sand toys we packed.

Despite the rain, there was still a decent turn-out at the race and everything turned out well.  The only down-side was that it took forever to clean the sand off all of Alan's equipment when we got home.

After we checked out of our room, Spencer and I checked out a few little shops to try to stay dry.  We read a silly book in this bookstore.    We didn't manage to stay very dry though and got soaked walking between stores.  We finally opted to just sit in the car and wait for Alan to finish.

We didn't have to wait too much longer, but by the time Alan was finished with the race, all three of us were wet and cold and had no desire to stay at the beach any longer.  We stopped at the Tillamook Cheese Factory for lunch and ice cream on the way home.  The factory was really busy, but they gave Spencer some fun stickers to play with while we waited for lunch.

 

The trip ended up alright, but I don't think we'll try it that way again.  At least not if there's crummy weather in the forecast!

 

The (REAL) Most Wonderful Time of the Year

I have always known summer was my favorite time of year, but it wasn't until we moved to Oregon where I'm more sun-deprived than ever before that I realized just how much I love summer. The past few weeks have been especially nice since I could count the number of days it got about 70 last summer on my fingers. Boo! So far, this summer is much improved.

Here are some pics of the fun things we've done in the sun so far:





Spencer's not a huge fan of getting very wet in his pool. He takes off his suit every time it gets wet. He likes pouring water though.




This is a fountain on the water front in downtown Portland. Again, Spencer didn't want to get wet, but liked watching the other kids go crazy in the water.




I think Alan was trying to convince him to get in. I had to include this one because I don't think Spencer and I are going to get to do many more fun activities like this with Alan this summer. He's too busy with his new business.




The water front is really gorgeous and relaxing on nice days like this. I love all of the different bridges.




Berry season is here! A couple of weeks later than usual this summer, but we've already done strawberries and raspberries twice. I almost made myself sick from eating too many while we were picking last Saturday. Spencer's picking abilities are much improved from last summer. He didn't eat EVERY berry he picked this year and he can tell when they're ripe now. I scored a small chest freezer at a yard sale last week so now I can pick and freeze all the berries I want. We're still looking forward to blueberries, boysenberries and blackberries.






Hooray for summer and more picnics, parks, swimming and produce to come!

Happy 4th of July!

We didn't do anything super patriotic to celebrate the 4th this year. The holiday was quite laid back for Spencer and I, but not so much for Alan. Alan ran his 11th marathon! This one was held on an island of the Columbia River called Sauvie Island. The races wound up raising $100,000 for the Sauvie Island Fire Department, so I guess that was our patriotic contribution this year. Especially since I paid to run the half marathon and then had to drop out. Alan got up super early to make the 45-minute drive out there and Spencer and I came to watch him finish a little later.

Running in Oregon is usually nice because the temperature is almost always mild. The only problem with that is that we turn into wimps and have a hard time running in any kind of cold or heat. Alan has an especially hard time with the heat. He sweats a lot and gets heat exhaustion easily when there's not much shade. As luck would have it, Monday turned out to be one of the warmest days we've had all year and there was almost no shade on the 26.2 mile course. So, this wasn't Alan's best marathon by any means. But, he finished! It was hard, but he did it. I guess that's what's addicting about marathons. They are so difficult that you get a huge feeling of accomplishment when you finally finish, even if it wasn't your best time. Way to go honey! I'm proud of you!

Spencer was such a good trouper to wait around in the hot sun with me. He got a little bored, but leave it to a little boy to find the only mud around to entertain himself.








Hail the conquering hero!




Sharing the free post-race hot dog. It's amazing what Spencer will eat when he's sharing with Daddy. Normally, there's not a single thing I could offer him that would convince him to try relish. One cool thing about this race was that they served free strawberry short-cake to everyone - runners and spectators. Mmmm.




The finish line was at a pumpkin patch/farm that had a small barn with animals for the kids to look at. Spencer thought it was neat that the goose had a swimming pool similar to the one we have.




After a nap for Alan and some quiet time for Spencer and I in the early afternoon, we headed over to Alan's parent's house for a bbq. Watermelon and home made ice cream are some of Spencer's and my favorite summer foods.





We spent a relaxing evening eating and playing in the backyard. Once again, we opted for putting Spencer to bed at a reasonable time rather than watch fireworks. I haven't missed them too much the past 3 years, but for some reason I was really wishing I could have seen some this year. Maybe we'll be more brave and adventurous next 4th.

Definition of a Bad Man

The other day, a picture of Charlie Sheen popped up on Yahoo's home page. Recognizing him from all of the news coverage he got a couple of months back, Spencer said, "That man is on tv!"

Me: "Yes, he's a bad man. He doesn't do what Heavenly Father and Jesus want us to do."

Spencer: "Does he not brush his teeth?"

Me: laughing

Spencer: (in an annoyed voice) "Why are you laughing?!"

Ha! I love the innocence and simplicity of a 3-year-old's world. If only not brushing one's teeth was the worst sin someone could commit.

(ps: No offense to any of you who may like Charlie Sheen. I have never actually seen him act in anything, but was quite disgusted with his behavior as featured on the news lately.)