A1 Picture Day

Picture Day happened about a month ago.  A1 was so excited to get to wear her new clothes and her new necklace to school.  I think she looks gorgeous!

Our BIG Accomplishments

L2 had his six month well-child check, and he is doing magnificently.  He remains in the 75th percentile in height and weight and is off the charts in head circumference (we have yet another lollipop baby!).  By this time, A1 and A2 had both receded to below the 5th percentile, so it looks like we are going to have a big person in this family after all!

Isn't he the most adorable thing you have ever seen?!

In other news, we have recently discovered Lowe's Build and Grow Clinics.  Each month Lowe's offers some kind of project to do with your kids.  If you sign up on the website, they provide the materials and tools for free.  We have had a blast building a Shrek onion cart and a firetruck.

Putting the wheels on our onion carts

I highly recommend looking into your local Lowe's to see if they offer this fun activity.  Our kids were so proud of themselves that they were able to build their own toys and that they got to use actual tools (a small hammer) to do so.  Let your kids be proud too!

A2's Thoughts on School

A2 prefers to learn with others, but by the time we moved here in the summer all the preschools were full, so we are working on learning here at home.  His favorite thing to do is trace letters.  At first we were going through multiple papers each time he wanted to write.  But then I discovered page protectors; they are my new best friends.  He can now trace the letters, erase it, and do it again and again and again without my having to print out the page every few minutes.  And look at that face!  That face deserves trace letters to his heart's content.

As the unpacking progresses, I continue to find random things that I don't know what to do with.  Exhibit A: my graduation cap from high school.

When A2 saw it, he immediately put it on and said, "Look, Mom, I'm a pirate!"  I laughed so hard that I let him play as a pirate for a few days before explaining what it was really for.  Now he tells me that he is going to get one when he graduates from college.

You certainly are, kid.  It warms your mother's heart to hear that there is no question in your mind that you will go to and graduate from college!

This Year's Firsts

In September, A1 started first grade.  Here's the first day of school.  She is in a first-second split class, and she is absolutely thriving!  She loves her teacher and gets to sit next to her best friend.

Yes, she does have a black eye in this picture.  About a week before school started, A1 and A2 were playing on the swing set.  They decided they wanted to play catch down the slide (something I have done quite often with them using bouncy balls, stuffed animals, etc.), but they didn't have a ball outside.  Rather than go into the house to find something, they decided to use our recycling box because it was already outside.  A2 threw the box down the slide and A1 caught it - with her eye!  She's okay, but it made for one impressive bruise.  I wish that I had thought to get a picture when it first happened (does that make me a bad mother?).  Needless to say, that was the first and LAST time they will be playing catch with the recycling box.

I also started home preschool with A2 in September.  I do my best to keep him entertained, but he wants to go to school too.  Everyday he asks if he can go to class with A1.  Maybe we'll have to start him into some kind of preschool in January.

L2 is now old enough to start eating solid foods.  We started, as always, with rice cereal.  His reaction:

We'll keep working on it.  Heehee!

New Food Storage

First, happy Halloween! That's out of the way, so on to the real reason for posting.

Now that we live in a green and growing wonderland rather than the urban jungle, I have time and room for food storage.  The leaders in our church have been counseling us to have a year's supply of food and other necessities for decades, so I'm glad that I can finally comply with that counsel.

First, we needed supplies.  I was able to get these huge buckets for a steal off Craigslist (I love Craigslist!).

Now to fill them...

Hmmm...

I hear that fruit is a good thing to freeze and store.  What does Oregon have to offer?  Let's go to the local park!  Blackberries, growing wild!  We were able to pick two big buckets full of them.

The kids grew bored of picking after a while, so they found other ways to entertain themselves.  L2 fell asleep, and A1 and A2 decided to pick him some flowers.  Wasn't that nice?

And here's A1's interpretation of our activity:

[I like to pick blackberese. I got poked allot. A 5 9000 Pinke]

We're still working on spelling! A is for her name, 5 is for how old she is, 9000 is her estimate of how many berries we picked, and Pinke (pink) is her favorite color.

Well, now that we have discovered that we can fill these buckets with food, let's look for other places to do it, shall we?  What?  You have a friend that told you about Salem Harvest, a not-for-profit organization that helps local farmers pick their crops and in return the farmers donate their crops to food banks throughout the city?  Let's get involved!

The way it works is farmers harvest the easily-harvestable (yes, that is a word I just made up) part of their crop and sell it.  The rest would just go to waste, so they allow Salem Harvest volunteers to pick the rest of their crop which is completely donated to whichever food banks need it.  Salem Harvest entices volunteers to show up by allowing us to keep half of what we pick, free of charge.

Here we are picking onions with Salem Harvest.

As a family, we were able to pick 150 lbs of onions.  We decided to only keep 50 lbs, which now that I look at the buckets of onions in my garage is way more than we really need.  So if anyone has any good recipes that involve a lot of onions, I would be interested.

We also participated in an apple harvest and were able to keep about 50 lbs of apples.  As I was using my handy peeler-corer-slicer to prepare the apples for apple pie filling, I ran my hand through the slicer part.  Three knuckles needed repair; luckily R was home so he whipped out his medical kit and stitched me up.  I'm just now getting the use of those fingers back.  Next time I'll have to be a little more careful.

Our New House

As promised, here are pictures of our house now that we are moved in.

A2 helping R fix the kitchen table

A1's room

the boys' room

the toy room

the living room, all decorated for Halloween

(I'm so excited that I have a place to decorate for each holiday now)

A2 also loves the living room; I often find him sleeping on these couches instead of going to bed.

the "Man Cave"

Funny story: when we were first looking at this house, we found a random door from the backyard into the basement area, but it was locked.  We asked what was behind the door; the sellers told us it was a small crawl space where they stored their lawnmower.  Thinking that we might be able to squeeze in a few boxes of decorations along with a lawnmower, R decided to check it out.  When he opened the door, he found this gigantic room (pictured above); it's about the size of our kitchen and living room combined.  R has claimed it as his future media room/man cave.  This space has sealed this house as ours for the rest of our lives.  We will not be moving away from this house because it now has the potential for everything we ever wanted (the lack of a man cave was the one drawback about this house).  We still can't figure out why the sellers told us it was a small crawl space rather than room to expand the house; wouldn't you think that would be a good selling point?

We love our new house.  I'm sure I will be posting more pictures as we finish emptying boxes and finally deciding where to hang our pictures.

Family Picture Outtakes

Jon Woodbury is an amazing photographer and makes family pictures look like no big deal; these people always casually look this good and he just happened upon them like that.

Yeah, right!

We had so many problems with our shoot; I'm amazed it even happened.  So I will share our problems so that you can feel in good company if you've had a rough photo shoot before.  Don't worry; you're in good company.

It was raining!

It was cold!

We were supposed to be fishing!

Some of us had car trouble (I'm amazed these two are still smiling after the rough time they had just getting to the photo shoot)!

Some of us were being naughty!

Others of us were being naughty!

We were supposed to be fishing!

We were hungry!

We were tired!

We didn't feel like smiling!

And did I mention?  We were supposed to be fishing!

But our photo shoot came together, we had a good time, and now we have some awesome memories with photographic evidence!  Isn't that what family pictures are all about?