Saturday, August 30, 2008

Family Fun Farm Day

Today we took the kids to Sauvie Island for some country time. It is amazing out there in that you can grow just about anything and the hills from the gorge all around are just beautiful. We decided to go out since summer is closing thus meaning that certain fruits will now be in season. So, we went to the Pumpkin Patch and picked about 11 pounds of blueberries, and we got about 20 pounds of peaches for canning. The U-pick does not start until next week unfortunately. We also got some corn, grapes and blackberries and may potentially find a place around here to pick more blackberries. The Pumpkin Patch also has a little barn with some animals in it that the kids thouhgt was pretty neat. It was nice to be able to go out and spend some time in the sun picking berries. The kids were done sooner than we were, but said they had fun and we made lots of references to one of our favorite books, "Blueberries for Sal." Eli has already ordered blueberry pancakes for breakfast tomorrow!

Evan kind of lost interst after awhile

11 pounds in all of it's glory!
Victor the goat

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

This and That

For some reason I failed to post a picture of Eli and Evan completing their summer reading at the library. It has been about two weeks now and they are very proud of their shirts!
We have had various activities as of late, nothing earth shattering, but note worthy anyways. For the first time, we, that is to say John, attempted canning. We picked about 10 pounds of green beans one afternoon from our garden and decided that now would be a good time to try out canning. John read up on it, everything seemed to work, and the jars are sealed, so we are assuming they will be good! In the end we had 10 pints and 6 quarts of green beans.
I also hosted my first baby shower for sweet little Greta.
My cousin, Michelle, and I the other day went to a zoo concert which was lots of fun. I had not been to one in a long time. We saw Brandi Carlile, and it was a really great show. Thanks again for the invite, Michelle! Love you lots!
Eli finished up his summer swim session. He graduated from P1.5 to P2, so he is very excited that he will be starting in the big pool! Sorry no pictures. My camera is a bit uncooperative.

The weather has been quite odd lately, so today we had some art time. We finger painted in the garage, and had a great time. The paint fortunately was water soluble, because Evan pretty much painted himself! Later, they used scissors and cut pieces of their finger painting and glued them on paper. It was fun seeing them being creative and I discovered that Evan is quite handy with scissors. He had never used them, but held them right from the beginning and I rarely had to replace his fingers in the holes. I also reminded him about a hundred times that scissors are for paper even though that is how he gets his hair cut.
They have two different cutting styles. Evan uses the open mouth approach, while Eli prefers the tongue sticking out technique. Both seem to be effective.
And last but not least, our food harvesting for the day. We had some blueberries that were ripe and they picked about 1/3 of that little green bowl.

Unfortunately, Eli became distracted while picking tomatoes when Evan held up the little green empty bowl. Oh well, there will be more blueberries in a couple days!

Monday, August 18, 2008

Little Tid-Bits

Not much has been going on lately with us. The hot weather mostly just meant swimming, swimming, and swimming. Our pool got a lot of action and is looking a little grimy. We also have been watching a lot of Olympics. The boys have enjoyed the swimming and some of the gymnastics, and Evan enjoys the synchronized diving. John and I have been up way too late since we DVR it.

Speaking of Olympic swimming, I debated whether or not to share this on my blog, but many encouraged it, so I am. We were watching one of the men's swimming finals, because Eli thinks those are the only ones worth while, and they were showing all the guys coming in. Some of them have full body swim suits and some just have the pants. As they are doing the close ups of the swimmers and showing their names and countries, they come to the first bare chested swimmer. Eli says in a loud voice "wow, he has big nipples!." Then, he looks at me and says "mom, his nipples are bigger than yours!" Thanks, son for noticing.

Only a few more weeks until school starts. Eli will be entering his second year of preschool and I get the honor of going back as an aid in Miss Wendy's class. I am very excited to be getting back to TOK!
Happy Valley City Park, it was about 103 later this day!

This is about what we get once to twice a week from our garden, as well as the buckets of tomatoes we get each week!

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Swimming Lessons

Today was Eli's first swimming lesson. The excitement began the night before and I was not sure that he would be able to go to sleep. He would sit up and say, "tomorrow after I get up?" about a million times. When it was finally time, he hoped right in and did all the activities that he was asked to do. He is quite a little fish when in the water. Evan kept asking for his turn and I had to convince him that after he turned 3 then he could go to swim class. It seemed to be a good enough reason for now. My camera is dying a slow death, so the pictures are not real great. I am hoping that on the last class, since they only let you in the little kids area on the first and last day of the session, I can get closer so that my camera and the flash don't have to work so hard. So these pictures will have to do.

When the weather is nice, which has been off and on, we pretty much spend the day in our pool. It got hot enough last week that Evan decided that he would give it a try, and I also got in to cool off! Evan has now decided that he likes the pool after all, which would seem to be better than walking around in the heat not wanting to get wet which was what he was doing before. Hopefully we will have plenty more swim days before the summer ends.

Eli actually took this picture.






Sunday, August 3, 2008

The Lively Family Reunion

This last weekend the Lively family, that's my mom's side of the family, got together for our annual reunion. This year we went to aunt Kim and Kris's house in Prineville, and boy was it a treat! We had such a great time getting away and spending time with family. The boys definitely had the times of their lives. Prineville is in the central Oregon high desert area, so it was quite toasty and and between the nice cool breezes and the boys playing "baking" in the sand, we stirred up a lot of dust! Most of our time consisted of eating, of course, and just sitting around talking. The boys enjoyed the swimming pool that Kim and Kris got to cool off in and looked like little sugar cookies after going back and forth between the pool and their sand digging spot. They also found a new hobby of instead of looking for bugs, they were looking for lizards in the rocks. They spent a lot of time peeking in nooks and crannies for lizards! Kim and Kris were also kind enough to let us use their trailer and the boys thought it was the coolest thing and often wanted to be in the trailer and roll around on the bed with their flashlights. John was able to go out fishing with uncle Mart and uncle Jay which was a nice get-away. They did not return with anything, but that was not the point anyway! On Saturday we had a big breakfast and a family picture in our matching shirts that aunt Kim had presented to us the night before. It was really neat to see everyone with Grandma and Grandpa Lively. Then we got another treat as uncle Jay and aunt Kim brought their boat and we spent the day at Lake Prineville. It was so much fun! We played in the water, floated on this barge boat thing that the boys liked a lot because it filled up with water and they could splash around, kayaking, tubing, wake boarding, boat riding, and just sitting on the shore. Eli even went tubing....twice! Eli and Evan also enjoyed kayaking with Kim and Kris and got to paddle as well. John and I also got in on the fun and went tubing too. We are going to be and already are quite sore!

It was a fantastic weekend and I am so thankful and grateful for our extended family. Everyone had a great time and were so great with the boys. We are so blessed by all of you and thank you so much for an awesome weekend!
It is thought that this juniper tree is about 800 years old, which was the family picture spot!
Cooling off in the pool
...and then getting absolutely filthy!
sometimes all you can do is have a seat and a good cookielizard hunting, and the lizard to the left is not real, it is plastic
a friendly game of Candyland
Eli and Evan had a good time with Jenny, Grandma and Grandpa Lively's dog, and no we do not want one despite the suggestions!
Evan trying to free Jenny from timeout. He was successful after awhile.
aunt Cheri and uncle Mart preparing the BBQ lamb. It was quite tasty!
Eli and Evan and great-Grandma and great-Grandpa Livelyin the evenings the quail would come through. There was a rabbit that would come in the morning, but I never could get to my camera before he would hop away. We did squat down once to look at him, and he came real close to me and the kids. I did have to inform them to not pet it.
What a cute couple
Since a neighbor came over to take the big family picture, we thought it best to just use one camera, so once I get the big picture, I shall post that toosome things never change!Prineville LakeEli and aunt Kim kayaking
Evan and Kris kayakingEli and daddy tubing

I realized as I was posting pictures that they all pretty much have the same fuzzy spot and I looked at my lense and it had a finger splodge on it, so that explains some of the bright fuzziness. This is not one of our better pictures as I fried my face and Evan was done for the day, but it is not too bad.
Headed home with smiles on their facessome high desert scenes


And now for some movies!

The first is of Eli and daddy on their tube ride. He later went again with my cousin, Ashley


Evan and his new best friend, Jenny


Eli and uncle Mart taking a three wheel ride. There are pictures of me and Jessica doing the same thing at the same age!


Thank you again Kim and Kris for all of the work that you guys did to have us there for the weekend. We love you guys lots!