8/10-8/16 - Maisey's Birthday, Gilbert House, Zoo, OHSU Tram

SUNDAY:

Gage and I went for a bike ride to get all of his Sunday wiggles out! Sunday's are a hard day at our house.

S'mores are so delicious but so messy! We sure enjoyed our fire pit this summer!

She pretty much had messy hair and a messy face all summer! 

Maisey made FHE assignments for the next day. Congratulations! Made me smile! :)

MONDAY:

We needed a stay at home day to get a few things done. The kids were going CRAZY all day! These dominoes kept them busy for about 5 minutes.

We also attempted the slip and slide. They are kind of wusses when it comes to cold water so neither of them were willing to slide on the tummies! 

We headed to IKEA to buy a new dresser for Miley. She has too many clothes!!!! 

TUESDAY:

It was Maisey's birthday, so we headed to the Gilbert House for the morning.

Miley was a grumpy pants that day and I'm surprised they didn't kick us out. If it wasn't Maisey's birthday I probably would have just gone home. 

Maisey was born in the year of the pig!

This pic shows my kids' personalities sooooo well!

Miley was excited to find a little stuffed dog like Grandma and Papa Grimmett's dog in the veterinary room.

Gage and Maisey raced ducks!

After the Gilbert House, I let the birthday girl choose her lunch spot. She chose Panda Express! Then we headed home to rest for a bit before we went to meed Daddy and Grammy at Red Robin!

Yes, that is Gage drinking the ketchup off his plate!

Maisey and her ice cream sundae! Also, her best friend, Sadie, showed up at the same Red Robin as us! It was totally random, but a fun birthday surprise for Maisey!

As soon as we got home from dinner, Maisey and I took her birthday cupcakes and headed to a church mother/daughter swim party!

There were only 3 families there, but Maisey still had a lot of fun!

FINALLY, at 8:00 pm she got to open her birthday gifts! She was so patient to wait all day for them.

This girl loves to shop with me, so we turned it into a birthday gift! :)

She got a lot of fun things, but the highlight was a keyboard and piano lessons! She's going to have a great 7th year!!

WEDNESDAY:

I can't really remember what the kids and I did that day. It was mine and Shaun's 9th anniversary. I didn't see him until 10:30 that night, darn work dinner meetings! I may have treated myself to a bowl of Trix for dinner! Happy Anniversary to us!!

THURSDAY:

This was a marathon day!!

We started at the zoo! It was a cooler day, which was great because all of the animals were out and ready to play!

Gage loves eagles and was excited to see that one on the branch behind them.

Miley continued her melt down from the Gilbert House earlier in the week. She had a rough day.

The kids really liked matching up the piles of poop with the animal they thought made it. Gross!

Check out that wing span!

Roooooaaaaaaaarrr!!!

Maisey thought it was pretty cool that she was wearing a flamingo shirt and there were flamingos behind her!

After the zoo, we stopped at the OHSU tram for a ride. This has been on our bucket list for a while!

The view was amazing!

After the OHSU tram, we headed to our local library for their end of the summer reading program party! It was pretty wild and not enough workers to keep it under control. Miley still had fun with her buddy!

Gage loved the bouncy slide, but I was afraid he was going to get hurt. That thing was WILD!!

We came home and we all felt like doing this!!!

But we left Miley at home with a babysitter and headed to the Canby Rodeo. This was our non-party year, so for Maisey's birthday we let her choose something fun to do as a family. 

Since Miley didn't come, we let her bring her BFF, Sadie, along. 

We rode a few fair rides before the rodeo started.

The rodeo was really fun this time. Last time we went to a rodeo the kids weren't old enough to understand what was going on. This time they watched the clock the whole time and new when the cowboys rode the bull long enough. I love that they are getting older, it makes these family outings fun!!

FRIDAY:

We met with Maisey's piano teacher, to come up with a plan for the year and to choose out lesson books. She was so excited to start!

The WAAPO board met at my house to make posters for the back to school picnic. We worked on that allllllllll afternoon!

SATURDAY:

We started the day at the Primary Swim Party. I'm sure glad their dad likes to swim with them!

I made this delicious green bean recipe for a luau we were going to. This is one of my all time favorite dishes, but I hardly make it because no one else in my fam will eat it!

A lady in our ward invited us to her luau. It was amazing. The hulu dancers were awesome and Gage and his buddy couldn't stop staring. He finally turned to me and said, "Hey Mom! Why are they shaking their butts?" Miley just kept imitating them! 

8/3-8/9 - Sunriver and Ward Camp Out

SUNDAY:

We loved having the kids with us in Sunriver! We started off Sunday morning with a bike ride to the park. That is Gage on top of the merry-go-round in the light blue shirt. Shaun was spinning it around fast and I was worried he would fall off!

My cherry loving baby is such a cutie on the tire swing!

Hot tub time

We went to the village and got shaved ice as a family before we split up on separate adventures. Shaun took Maisey and my mom back to the lava caves for a hike (Maisey ran into the same bathroom problem I did!) and Gage, Miley and I stayed at the village to play!

Our first stop was the train!

Miley thought she was pretty hot stuff!

Then we rode the train again! These kids could do that all day long if I would let them.

Then we headed over to the monkey bridge for a while. I thought it would last 5 minutes but we ended up staying for like an hour. Kids would come and go and Gage made friends with each of them, which was fun to watch.

And when there weren't any friends to play with, he resorted to his sister. They seriously love each other so much! It was cute watching him kiss her hand and seeing her big huge smile!

We headed back to the house to wait for Grammy, Dad, and Maisey. We played with chalk outside while we waited. Miley was funny because she would make these lines all around her body then she would move to a different spot. It looked like she was making blue suns!

Miley was digging through the garbage for dinner! 

MONDAY:

We started the morning with doughnuts from the bakery! YUM!!!!

We had to fuel our inner rock star!

Then we rode bikes down to the river to feed the ducks. (and get eaten alive by mosquitoes!!)

Then we headed to the pool in the afternoon. We met a family with twin baby boys and Maisey loved playing with them.

Snacks just taste better when they are poolside!!

We started a Sunriver Lodge scavenger hunt and the first clue was to take a picture in front of this bike. We only made it through the first two clues then we got busy doing other things! Maybe next time.

We finished the day off with pizza and ice cream! 

TUESDAY:

We headed to the village to play for a while. We paid for passes to the jumpy houses. It was really hot, this little boy peed on them, and then some other kid got blood all over one of them, so we called it quits pretty quickly! (I only took this picture because Shaun wasn't there when it happened, and I thought it was hilarious!)

So we headed over to the train. . . again! I told you they could ride that thing alllllll day!

We celebrated my birthday a day early!

My birthday loot, plus new couch pillows, and a 90 minute massage scheduled for the next week!

We went to the movie in the park! They had fun activities before it got dark enough to start. The kids' balloons all popped on the grass within 5 minutes. There were a lot of tears!

They brought in a few disc golf holes and had competitions by age group. Gage won a ticket for a free train ride and Shaun won one for a free round of bumper cars!

Then they had a dance party til the movie started.

Grammy and Gage called it quits about half way through, so I ran them and Miley home to go to bed. Then I went back and snuggled with Shaun and Maisey while we finished the movie, What a fun night!

WEDNESDAY:

Birthday bumper car session! I showed no mercy on those kids!

Had to leave Sunriver in style!

I drank my last drink of Dr. Pepper, or any soda for that matter on my birthday! I'm going a whole year with out it and Wendy's decided to tempt me with this nice sign! Ahhhhhh! 

On our way home, we stopped in Redmond at our friends' new house to check it out and visit for a while. They were only gone a week, but we sure missed them!

When we got home, I pulled my laptop out to look up some different photo storage sites and found over 6,000 pictures on Picasa! Look how little my babies are! It softens the blow a little.

THURSDAY:

We spent all morning switching gears from Sunriver to ward camp-out! We set out at lunch time for a fun weekend with friends! I'm amazed at how much junk you need for 2 nights of camping! Our van was PACKED!

I loved this picture. Gage can be sooo sweet to Miley. She was upset that we left her in the car while we set up the tent and Gage was trying to calm her down by rubbing her tummy.

The camp site that the ward chose was very different than most sites. It was pretty much a big open field with a bunch of gravel squares. The gravel squares were the sites. So you parked in a parking lot and used this cart to carry your stuff to your site.

My camping girls!

Our friends joined us for s'mores that night! There were just a few families that went up on Thursday, but we had a lot of fun.

FRIDAY:

We used the dutch oven that I got for my birthday to make some cinnamon rolls for breakfast. It was our firs time ever cooking with one, and apparently we cooked them a bit too long. :(  Good thing we had extra cereal to eat that morning!

I don't have many pics from that day but we played some frisbee golf, attempted fishing, fed some ducks, and Shaun took the big kids to a swimming hole in a nearby river.

Miley was super sleepy that afternoon and conked out on me while I was playing games with my friends.

That evening more families showed up. After dinner we were all playing soccer (one benefit to camping in a big open field) and I accidentally kicked the ball into our fire pit, which had an actual fire in it. Whoops! I called it quits after that.

Missionary Moment: There was an older couple staying in the RV site across from us and the husband came over to talk to me when we were setting up on Thursday. I told him we were members of the church and he said that they have two guys come over each week to read The Book of Mormon with them. Later that evening his wife came out and chatted with me for a bit and said that they occasionally attend a ward in Beaverton. Fast forward to Friday night: We were getting ready for our ward fireside and the husband came out of his RV for something. I ran over and invited him and his wife to join us and they did. Our discussion was on strengthening families and they participated and seemed to really enjoy themselves. I'll never know what came of that, but it sure was fun to be a part of.

SATURDAY:

We made it home from the camp out around lunch time and everybody pretty much crashed all afternoon! Except for me, I went to run errands. Life never seems to stop, but it sure was a fun week!