Our Family

We tried to get some professional pictures of the kids and every time I would think about doing it someone would get some sort of bruise or scratch and I would say "oh I'll wait till next week" then next week would come and go with no pictures. So since I had only taken London's picture once when she was 3 months old I figured it was now or never. Jason and I had not intended on being in the pictures too, but I was actually wearing a coordinating top and thought what the heck. So maybe next year we will actually get some good professional shots, but these will do for now....

Happy Birthday to Cayden

Is it true I have a 9 year old...I can't believe so much time has gone by. Cayden is in the 3rd grade now and doing really well, he has a great Spanish accent. He is taking piano and is involved in Cub Scouts. He has this notion that he wants to be a movie star someday and so he wanted a Hollywood style party...I was all for just having a few friends over to swim but he and his Dad got to planning, well we won't let that happen again. He had a great time and it makes me happy to see him happy.

Trip to Cali...

Well we decided at the last minute to take the family to San Francisco and go to Six Flags, since they had been begging for a trip to Disneyland. Needless to say we did not want to endure a 14 hour drive with the kids, so we settled on the 8 hours drive each way instead. We had a great time, and then were home in time for Labor day weekend and a great Oregon Duck Game.

Some pictures of us at Six Flags....




We took a tour of the Jelly Belly Factory....YUM...I think you gain weight just from the smell inside.

We visited the Golden Gate Bridge in San Fran and headed for the beach...

At the Beach...Newport, Oregon

Oh what do you do at the Oregon Coast???
We build sandcastles...

and some just dig...


We Play Frisbee on the beach

And have sand ball wars

Some people like to be buried
Others do not...
We hook up with old friends
We watch the seals We go to the tidepools


We visit the Yaquina lighthouse
And climb the 110 stairs to the top
We put our feet in the water
And try and wait till we can go back again...

A Day At The Lake

We went out with Grandma and Grandpa Stanley to Fall Creek. The kids did not know what to think of being on the boat and tube. I guess it has been too long since we had our boat for them to remember, except for Cayden, who always told Grandpa to go FASTER. We played a game with Preston and Maddox of "No Hands" to distract them and get them to enjoy the tube. It worked!
London wouldn't move while the boat was going...not such a bad thing. We did have to put the infant life vest on her though and she was not happy.

Preston loves his Grandma Stanley.....

Happy Anniversary

It's been 13 years!! We can't believe it, it's gone by so fast yet it also seems like there was never a time when we were apart. I was 13 when Jason and I first met. It's hard to believe that now we have been together for so long and have four beautiful children together. So Jason's parents and Emirose were so kind as to let us get away for the weekend and we stole away to Sunriver, just the two of us. We hardly knew what to do with just each other, but quickly figured it out and found ourselves remembering what it was like to have so much time to do whatever you wanted. For us that included long walks, biking all over, playing tennis, hiking, reading books while sitting by the pool, having a long relaxing dinner, and whatever comes later...(No there will be no 5th child as a result of this vacation, Jason already took care of that.) So needless to say it was wonderful and we remembered that we do really enjoy being around each other, but we also really missed the kids, (at least a little bit.)
Here is a picture of Lake Paulina, we hiked around the whole edge of the lake, 7.5miles. It was a little farther than we expected but we made pretty good time.

This is one of the falls along the way...
Then we drove to the top of Paulina Peak for an awesome view of Lava fields and other surrounding lakes.

Touch a Truck

We went to the Touch a Truck event on Wednesday night where they had all kinds of trucks for the kids to see, touch, crawl up in, and their favorite thing...Honk all the Horns!! There was logging trucks, dump trucks, garbage trucks, ice cream trucks, and all sorts of police and fire vehicles. The boys had a blast going through each one, sometimes multiple times.