Portland Airshow

The airshow was the second weekend of August this year. We decided not to go since the kids' attention spans are a little on the small side. Instead we went to the Friday morning meet the pilots event. It's free. You just show up at the airport and walk around and see some of the planes close up and meet some of the pilots and the parachuters. William and Anna loved it. And there were free Krispy Kremes and water. The kids got posters and cards with pictures of planes on them.

Because we no longer live in the flight path, we didn't actually see much of the show. So, Saturday afternoon we took the kids to a park near the Hillsboro Airport where they could see a lot of the action. They were really more interested in the play structures than in the airplanes, so it was a good thing we didn't buy tickets. I was kind of sad, though, that we didn't last until the blue angels. But it was hot and nap time, so we went home instead.


This was William's favorite airplane.

Couldn't get William to pose with us...

Anna actually smiled after the picture was taken, but she wouldn't smile when the camera was up.

The New Bike

William got a bike at Goodwill a few weeks ago. He's been loving it. He rides it almost every day and calls it "training". My first thought as he sped down the sidewalk away from the house the first day we had it was, "I don't have enough bandaids for this." He's doing OK, but he tends to fall over a lot. One of the first days he had it, he fell onto a screw right on the handlebars and gashed his chin. It was pretty sad, but after getting a bandaid, he was right back on the bike.

Ward Campout

July 27-28 was the ward Campout. We went to a little campground outside of Tillamook Oregon. It was almost a 2 hour drive, but the area was beautiful so that made up for it. The campground was bordered by a small river, the Kilchis, in which the kids all played and got wet Saturday morning. We arrived late Friday evening and quickly set up camp. The site next to us had the Bug Family, with two kids close to William's age with whom he quickly made friends. Anna was swooped off by one of her Young Women's friends, Sarah, for most of the trip. It was pretty nice. We had a good time talking with people in the ward and getting to know them better.


Here, Anna has tasted something she apparently doesn't like.


Thanks for the loan of the tent, Rach and Josh (as usual).


William and his friend Ashley in the sand.


William, Kip, and Anna on our little walk in the woods.

Washington County Fair

On the 26th of July, Rachel, Emma and Gabe joined us at the Washington County Fair. It was a perfect morning for fairgoing. The sky was overcast and it remained cool until after noon. We looked at the animals until William, who has developed a super-sensitive nose lately, decided it was too stinky in the animal sheds. Then, we ate some greasy fair food and headed to the rides. The kids loved riding the carousel and the boat ride. Anna had to be dragged out of the boat kicking and screaming, much to the amusement of the parents in line. But I'd bet half their kids did the same thing at the end of the ride. At the end of the day, William and Emma did their best not to pose for a picture together. They turned out looking pretty silly.

4th of July, 2007

We went to the Hillsboro parade on the morning of the 4th. To make it even more fun, we road the Max there. The kids love riding the Max and it stops right by the parade route. Anna and William loved getting candy from the parade participants. William got especially excited about it when he realized he could take his parade candy to the party at Butch and Jo's that night to share with Spencer, Alyssa and Jared. I thought that was very sweet of him.

Utah Trip

We spent the 28th of June to the 3rd of July in Utah. The first few days were at the Killpack family house. It was a blast to be there with Chad, Angie and their new baby Abby, Cory, Ang, Jovin, and their new baby Mayer, as well as Mom and Tasha. It was definitely a party house. The kids loved seeing the little babies and William enjoyed playing with Jovin. But nothing was better than when Jenny and Tyler brought over their boys. William called them his "friends" and adored playing with Clayton, Orson and Preston. Anna also adored Preston, dragging him by the hand around the house to play with her. He seemed quite pleased with the attention. It was really cute. William loved the campout, but our camera battery died soon after we got there, so there aren't many pictures. And Kip managed to take off the tip of his thumb chopping wood. Luckily, it turned out to be a superficial wound, but it was scary for a while. He's been banned from the use of sharp objects for the time being.

After a few days in Sandy, we loaded the kids in the car and headed to Kaysville. William was very unhappy to leave his "friends" behind, but he did find some things in Kaysville that made it worth being there. Grammy and Grandad have a great toy collection saved from when we were kids and William always enjoys playing with them.

Here are some pictures from the trip.

Anna having fun at the Killpack House.

William and Daddy.

Everyone Adores Abby.

Camping Out

Fun toys at the Parker House.

San Diego Day 5

This was the day we chose to go to the famous San Diego Zoo. It's really a huge zoo (http://www.sandiegozoo.org/zoo/zoo_map.html) and the map doesn't do justice to the hills. We did the bus tour first. Anna wasn't fond of it. She cried and tried to get off because it was too much like the airplane or maybe because she was simply tired. And it was an hour long ride with no chance to get off early. Luckily she settled down and things got better.

After the bus ride, we went to the children's section of the zoo. They have some cute things there that are smaller and closer together for the kids to see. Plus there was a petting zoo. William enjoyed touching the goats, but Anna wanted nothing to do with them.

After getting some lunch we decided to try the sky ride. It was included in our ticket, so I wanted to do it. Big mistake. Both kids were terrified and cried the whole time. It took us up to the far side of the park and dropped us without our strollers and with two kids who refused to get back on. I was not excited about dragging two tired kids up and down all the hills back to the entrance to get our stroller and go home. We looked at the exhibits around the sky-ride exit and then, in a moment of weakness, I stole a stroller. There were like 20 of them parked at the entrance to th sky ride. They were park strollers, rented for the day by people who didn't bring theirs. They were all completely empty, no jackets or snacks or diaper bags, so they seemed pretty abandoned. I was fairly certain that people rented them, used them to get to the top of the zoo and then balked at the thought of pushing them all the way back to the exit. Instead, they paid the $2 or so to ride the sky ride, leaving their rented stroller high and dry. That was my theory anyway. After pushing Anna around in one for a while, my conscience got to me and I tried to return it. Anna wasn't having any of that. She screamed and clung to the stroller for dear life. There was no way I would get her to walk the miles back to the exit. After seeing another family load into one of the unclaimed strollers, I asked the woman at the food booth beside them if I could take one too. She said sure and confirmed my theory of their being abandoned. I took a double one this time so that William could sit with Anna and started on the long journey back to the front of the zoo. Anna promptly fell asleep and I took the walk pretty slowly, being tired and hot myself. It took us about an hour to get back to the bottom of the sky ride where my little stroller sat patiently waiting. Anna again threw a fit when I tried to switch her over to our stroller. I guess she really liked the hard plastic of the zoo stroller better than our softly padded one. But I bribed her with ice cream and we made the switch. By the time we were done, I was ready to collapse. William wanted to ride the bus tour again, but Anna cried when we talked about it, so we headed to the car to go home instead.

On the way to the car we passed a little train ride that went through the park near the zoo. It looked like fun and Anna acted like she wanted to do it, so I bought us all tickets. As soon as we got on, Anna started to scream. She just wasn't in the mood for that kind of thing. Another failed attempt at amusing her, I guess. We made it through the trip with her crying and screaming and I headed to the car in defeat. It was not the best day of the trip, though it was slightly more fun than lying in bed with a migraine.

San Diego Day 4

Our 4th Day in San Diego was spent touring all the museums in Balboa Park. We started with the Model Railroad Museum. It was really neat with all the different sizes of model trains and some very creative track lay-outs. William had too much fun and mortified me by having an accident in the wooden train kids play area. We rushed out of there (after borrowing some paper towels from the front desk) and back to the hotel for a clean-up. Then, we hit the Aerospace Museum and the Natural History Museum. William wasn't as interested in them, but the Natural History Museum had a big-screen movie on oceans he enjoyed and it allowed Anna to get an hour's nap in the stroller in the dark theater. When the museums closed we spent some time playing by the fountain in the center of the pedestrian way and ate some snacks. Then, we went to the hotel for dinner. Daddy couldn't join us, so we ended up getting take-out from McDonalds and eating a picnic on the floor of our hotel room.

San Diego Day 2-3

We spent days 2 and 3 in Legoland. It was a ton of fun for William. Anna had limited things she could ride, but there was still enough to keep her busy. I especially loved the Lego Duplo play areas next to each line so while I stood in line, William could build with Duplos until I reached the front. Then, he came through the gate and joined me. That made the hour-long wait for some rides a little better. William had a blast driving his own little car and did pretty well at it (no track even). Anna enjoyed seeing all the things built out of Legos.

San Diego Day 1

June 2 was the first day of our San Diego Trip. We had flown down the night before and discovered that Anna is really not fond of airplanes. As soon as we took off she started screaming that she wanted to get off and trying everything she could think of to get away from us. Not fun. I got a migraine during the ordeal and didn't manage to shake it with my regular medicines, so I spent day 1 crashed in the hotel reconsidering whether I'd already met my life's goals and it could all end and I'd be OK. Luckily, the pain eventually went away and things didn't look so bleak anymore. Meanwhile, the kids and Kip picked up our San Diego Go Cards and went to the aquarium. They had a good time. They enjoyed the water play areas and Kip and Anna got eaten by a shark but William had too much good sense to let it get him.

When they were done at the aquarium they went to the temple grounds and enjoyed the peaceful setting. Then, they came back and we all went to dinner at a hole-in-the-wall Mexican place that was really good.

Cookie Party

We had a fun birthday party for William on the 28th. It was a day early, but more people could come that day since it was a holiday. We iced sugar cookies since he had decided his theme for the party should be cookies. William and Anna both really enjoyed the new swingset Daddy worked all day to put in.

Grammy and Grandad's Visit

Grammy and Grandad came out to our new house for William's birthday and just in time to help us move. We had a lot of fun with them. Here's the kids and the Grandparents in their Sunday best. Poor Anna was a little off balance on the sofa.

Moving On

We're really doing it. We're moving to the new house. Things got a little tense there at the end. On Tuesday we went to the "signing" and learned that the buyers of our house had somehow lost their loan. Our super-amazing realtor promised to try to work a miracle and get us in the new house anyway (without their purchase of our house, we had no money to put toward the down payment on our new house). Wednesday there was no news. Thursday I took off for a trip to the coast and the outlet mall with some friends because I couldn't take the pressure anymore. I mean, everything was scheduled - the rental truck, the electricity to go off here and on there, the water, the gas. If our buyer's new loan was a day late, our sale would most likely not go through until Tuesday and we wouldn't get to move until then. We would have to make a million phone calls and deal with a ton of stress. That day (Thursday) the realtor told us the buyers had a new loan lined up and it would probably close Friday. If there were a miracle, our purchase loan would close that day too. If not, she would work out a back-up plan to get us in our new house. Friday the new buyers' loan closed but they didn't get the info to our new house people in time, so our loan wouldn't close. Because of our seller being an attorney, he wouldn't let us rent the house without a statement from our insurance-provider stating that we claimed all liability in relation to the house even though it was not officially ours. Our insurance agent is notoriously difficult to contact and this was Friday afternoon before a long weekend. I had a sinking suspicion that he would be out of town. I was right, but he had an assistant! Hooray! The assistant drew up the required paperwork and we got the keys at 5:00. We spent the evening moving clothes and the kitchen into the new house and Kip and some friends moved a first load of stuff into the garage. Hopefully tomorrow will go as smoothly as possible. After the emotional rollercoaster of this last week, we would enjoy that.

Our new house won't have internet connection for the next few days, so it will be a while before we post again. And we head to San Diego on Friday of next week, so stay tuned for all the adventures to come!

New Roof

Our prayers were answered and the sellers will be replacing the roof. Now, Kip and I are deciding the shingles to use. We went by the new house the get pictures to help in color selection. Here are some sunny spring-time photos to enjoy. The back yard one shows the two windows that are in the master bedroom and the bay windows that are over the jetted tub in the master bath. I know, we're really going to suffer in this new house...

Easter Kids

These are a little late, but check out our cute kids in their Easter clothes!

Rainbow

This is a picture we took one night (April 12) while working on spreading bark dust to prepare for putting our house on the market.

Our new house

Our house sold. We had 2 offers, one 4 days after we put it on the market and one the next day. We accepted the second one. Then we were faced with the frightening situation where we had to be out of our house in a month and we didn't know where we were going. I found this house on the web.

I thought it looked pretty nice, but the price was a little high. We checked it out on Monday and someone else had made an offer on it that day. I fell in love with it immediately, so we worked with our realtor until 11pm to put together an offer to try to outbid the other family. (Sorry, whoever you were!) Our offer was accepted! Hooray! Then began the stress of addendums, disclosures, inspections and waiting for signatures and appointments. I've had a lot of migraines in the past weeks. We finaly got the inspection done Friday night. We got a long list of repairs to make, most of them fairly minor. There were two biggies, though: a new roof (we were afraid of this) and a new back door. So, we've put together a request for the seller to cover the two biggies. Now, we have to wait while they get bids and decide how to counter or accept our request. Kip's nervous, but for some reason I really think it's going to work out fine. That doesn't mean I managed to go without a migraine this weekend, though...

Here are some more pics from their sale posting. The ones I took at the inspection were OK, but I didn't get any outside shots because it was rainy.

This is the kitchen. The linoleum unfortunately goes through the kitchen to the family room. We'll have to change that when we've had time to recover from the financial shock this transaction has caused us.





This is the back yard as seen from the back door.

"I di' it!"

Anna has been amazing me lately with her use of language. When William was the age she's at now, he could hardly say a single word, let alone full sentences. Anna, in true girly fashion (I've heard they develop a lot of skills faster than boys), is using five word sentences at 21 months old. I went into her room to get her this morning and she looked up and me and said "I jumping on the bed!" Who can reprimand someone so cute? Her favorite phrase lately is "I di' it!". She's extremely independent and very proud of her little accomplishments. I taught her to play Peggles today (a computer marble-shooting game Butch got us into last week) and each time she clicked the mouse and had the ball shoot across the screen she cried "I shoot!". It was very cute. It was even cute tonight when we were sharing a bedtime snack to look up and see two of her dollies on the table getting salted. She was pretty proud of herself for that one, too.



Meanwhile, William has reached the "Why" phase. He asks 'why' about everything I say and he follows it up with 10 or 20 more why's. And if my answer is "I don't know," he says in a very exasperated tone, "TELL me!". He won't accept the fact that Mommy might not actually know WHY something is the way it is. I know he'll get over that someday and I'll miss it, but for now it's a little annoying.

House 4 Sale!

Kris commissioned me to write the blog while the kiddos do cooldown with Charlotte's Web after dancing the night away to an Internet Radio Techno Latin station.

I was going to post last Monday that our house went on the market and start a guessing game for how long it would be before we got a visitor, and how long before we got an offer, and so on ... BUT in the last 5 days we've had 6 showings, there are two scheduled for the weekend, and we've had one low-ball offer. All that's left is to bet on when we'll accept an offer and when we'll move. Any guesses? Closest person wins a nifty prize.

We are going out house hunting the first time tomorrow.