The Second Quarter of 2013 in Photos

It's been a busy second quarter for us.  Lots of life has happened and time spent with friends!  The beginning of the month was marked by saying goodbye to my dear friend Katie whose brave battle against stage four colon cancer met it's conclusion here on this earth on April 4th.   Sadness for sure but the celebration of her life was such a beautiful sea of purple and with a packed out church a wonderful testament to the lives Katie touched in her brief time we had with her.    Perhaps as a bright hello from Katie in heaven, the sun has been shining brightly - early and often for here in the NW - where normally our April and May would be quite gloomy.

The weather has been gorgeous!  So much so even on April 24th it was warm enough to break out the sprinkler (people in Cali would most certainly disagree, but eh us NWers tend to melt quicker up here so 68' is more than adequate weather for sprinklers.)   I also ventured to see the tulips for the first time after having lived here for seven years.   We went on the last day with the Playground Pack and had a blast with 9 kiddos and 4 mamas!  

May breezed past us with Mother's Day programs, birthday parties and fun!  More water fun was had and weekend wrestling with dad!

June - to say June was busy would be an understatement!    We were quite busy with the Playground Pack: a trip to the splash pad, many park visit, an outing to a flower garden, petting zoo,  last day of school, graduation (stay tuned more on this!) and the ultimate excitement the color run (a separate post on this to come too!)   Splice in time with family to celebrate Father's Day, a visit with my Uncle, more birthday parties, BBQs, bathroom remodel, and planning a baby shower  we've been busy!   

Summer is in full swing and with two busy kiddos (a kindergartner and a 2.5 year old!) life is fun and chaotic!   Many posts to come... eventually!  :)

Just Us - A Pet Store Scavenger Hunt

It's been a long time since Ace and I had regular 'just us' time.   As he's the first born - he and I had over two years of 'just us' time and then his sister came and he blossomed into the best big brother that any mommy could have hoped for.  He's a traditionalist in many ways - as he gets annoyed by her presence, "helping" and her volume level form time to time, but since the start he has been great.   Still his "just us" time is woefully lacking and sometimes it is pretty clear the toll that takes on him.

So Loving Husband and I set out to set aside some specific time to spend just with our boy to help him know that he is loved individually and just as much as before his sister's arrival.   The boys have gone on hikes together, gone on a ferris wheel together, and many out and about activities.   Ace and I have gone to coffee, to the movies, and the latest in our adventures a trip to the pet store for a scavenger hunt!   I found a great print out (and the idea!) over at Enjoying The Small Things and after I bundled up his sister for a walk with her dad - the boy and I were off!

He was quite excited to go as he loves the pet store.   He was a bit confused when I first pulled up to the pet store trying to establish if we needed food for Pixel, but was excited to know there was more to the stop than just a simple errand.  We got in the store and I handed him the clipboard and away he went!

I was surprised at how accurate the pictures were - yes granted we went to the same store as the sheet was designed from, but this was a print out from months earlier - you'd think some thing had changed or inventory would have changed a bit.  Granted many of the items are general things found in any pet store but the Dora fish tank item was still placed immediately next to the pineapple one as pictured.  Which is good because the boy was very insistent that it needed to be exact!

 

Ace had a great time looking at all the different animals and observing their behavior and what it was they were doing.  Including the differences of 'toys' that they had in their cages.   He really enjoyed talking to the ferrets too.  Thank goodness there was no "can we have one?" type questions.  Thankfully, I don't think he quite gets that it's an option (for others) to buy them. 

 

 

Most of the items were pretty easy to spot.  He asked for help only a few times and the final item was REALLY hard even for mom to find.  A picture of a barn.  I assumed it was on a bag of food... but it ended up being at the top of an end cap (pretty large actually... ah well!)

 

 

In the end we found everything that was on the list except an iguana (they didn't have one)  so Ace suggested that we find something that looked the closest to an iguana and count that as successful (his wording... not mine!)   And indeed it was a successful activity.   After we had spent a good hour in this store - we found a toy to take home to Pixel as I didn't want to just be loitering their store and asking them questions for no benefit to them at all.  :)  

 

We wrapped up our outing with a couple of errands where he got to help push the cart and pick some stuff out and then we grabbed lunch for the whole family and headed home to eat it together.  It was a good time spent, just us!

Mommy Escape!

A couple weekends ago I got the privilege to go with my friend B and quite an entourage to go on a dress shopping adventure.   It was a lot of fun but more note worthy was the fact that it was the first time that I was away from Mae overnight.  Yes, a week after Little M turned two I was out of dodge for 48 hours! 

We're all a tad on the sleepy side as the Starbucks run hadn't yet taken place!

We stayed in a nice vacation rental that D found for us and made our stay super affordable,  we ate delish food everywhere we went, and the Bride found a dress after some fun mayhem of massive bridal shopping - and experience everyone should have!  (There of course will be no pictures of that!)

After the dress was found, we enjoyed shopping around Portland in the Pearl District for a while.  Back to the house for a screening of Bridesmaids and then a late dinner!  We sat down to order our food at 8:30, ah to be kid free in a restaurant and dine at whatever hour you feel like!  After we got home we watched Pitch Perfect and headed to bed.   We rounded out our visit with a bit more shopping, some more yummy food and then an easy drive home! 
 

1. Starbucks Pre-Dress Extravaganza, 2. Pear Cider at Savoy Tavern, 3. Photo booth!, 4. My crazy colorful bed, 5. In line for the bride, 6. Out shopping around PDX, 7. More shopping!, 8. A dress shop we determined B's dress was better than anything there! Success!!, 9. Ombre hot chocolate at Equinox

It was a great time with friends and Mae didn't miss me at all.  Ace missed me a little more and it was sweet because before I left I told Mae to hug Piggy and Ace to hug his tiger if they missed me.   Ace upon my return said "Mom, I hugged my tiger a lot but I still missed you and it didn't help at all."  Glad I was missed.  It was good to be away, but even better coming home to big smiles and hugs.  A big thanks to Loving Husband for taking Friday off of in order for me to go in the first place!!

Cherry Trees

Every year we make it a point to venture to see the cherry blossoms.  Even last year we went prior to moving to Mississippi.  It's just a fun tradition and I absolutely love to look back on the past years to see the changes in our family.  This year we waited a little too long and almost all of the blossoms were gone, but it was a gorgeous day in the NW and it was such a blessing to be out in the warm sun.  As usual there were many pictures taken!  :)

It's so fun to see Ace try to climb the trees now, how big he is getting! It's adorable to watch Mae want to climb them too - to chase after her big brother. Both of them loved being up in the tree with their father. Although Ace was a bit gun shy with the heights in a general sense. I suppose that's good instincts. This mommy certainly prefers caution over chaos, not sure dad does though. ;-)  I just love their pensive looks in these two shots...

There was a lot of fun climbing in trees and running around in the grass.  The kids enjoyed picking up grass, dirt, sticks and leaves.   Ace and his father enjoyed 'listening' to what the grass blades were telling them - often it meant being tickled.  

Trying to get the kids to take a picture just the two of them was nearly impossible, until we found an electrical outlet in the ground and that struck both of their fancy and that was my moment, my shot, my only picture of the siblings together - still enough for daylight-speed photography to catch a clear shot that yes we have two kids that like being near each other.  Otherwise they were too busy, wild and having a grand time independent of one another.

Stopped to say a prayer to Jesus

It was a great day that was followed by lunch out and then a mother son date (more on that to come!) We enjoyed a sunny afternoon and were able to capture it on film, only thanks to the fact that I always carry a back up SD card in my camera bag! The SD card that I usually have was sadly left in my computer.  So a note to photographers, be sure to always have those extras tucked away - otherwise  our outing would have been a whole lot of cell phone shots.

Until next year...

A Sunny Walk

In early April on a sunny Saturday, Mae went on her first walk with her dada (and the rest of us came along too!)  Her big brother has long enjoyed walks with his father and now Mae gets to enjoy them too. We walked to a local park and played on the playground, picked flowers, ran across the fields and enjoyed a sunny weekend afternoon as a family.   It was delightful. 

A Sunny Day...

A little lunch before we start playing!

She loooved to swing!  Brother even helped push her a little.  :)

They played together a lot! M loved to climb around!

The Mouse House

Team Katie

Today many friends and family of Katie gathered together to participate in the Get Your Rear In Gear 5k.   Together we formed the largest team:  Kickin' The Stink Out Of Colon Cancer!   With the kids in tow, I headed out early on this chilly Sunday morning to join everyone dressed in purple to walk.  

Our group gathered together with Blake setting out with the twins to run the race, while the rest of us took a nice stroll through the course. We joked that it was fitting that we were at the back of the race pack.  :)  The kids did pretty well - Mae rode in the stroller for about half.  My friend B helped push the stroller for about 2/3rds of the race (thank you!)  Ace did pretty well, but his hands were pretty cold.   He was pretty excited when he got a GIANT leaf to hold for a while.

We finished the race just as the kid's dash was beginning - which means we finished at just about 55 minutes after we began.   We jogged in - Mae was a bit unnerved by mommy jogging with her in the Ergo carrier, but she did ok.    Afterwards we stayed for the award ceremony - where Katie was awarded a pretty 'legit' (her husband's word for it) plaque for having the largest team (27 adults with several babies not included in that number!)   We grabbed a few pictures of the whole group, and with my camera we snapped this shot of our portion of the group.  :)


We were glad we were able to come out and support Katie in this way through her journey and help raise money and awareness on colon cancer.    To continue to support Katie, please stop by her CaringBridge site and sign her Guest Book.

Halloween Festivities

This was Mae's first Halloween and Ace's fourth (gasp!) with the move looming we were a bit at a loss as to how best to handle the whole event.   Do we carve a pumpkin?  Here or there?   Do we have costumes?   Simple or elaborate?   Pack them or ship them?    There was a lot of uncertainty on our arrival home - but in the end everything worked out well.     We went to the Pumpkin Patch in Biloxi and decided that we would carve our pumpkin there too.   

Ace once again helped decide what kind of face the pumpkin should have and helped dad cut open the top.  Ace agreed this year that the pumpkin could have a scarier face, but not too scary. Dad did most of the dirty work scraping out the innards of the pumpkin while Mae watched quite curiously as to what he was doing.

 
We had a few nights left in Biloxi where we were able to light up our jack-o-lantern before we donated him to the neighbor and headed on our journey across the country home.    Ace was very excited to see the pumpkin lit on the nights we remembered to do so. 

Their costumes were proving to be tricky - we didn't want to carry anything large or bulky in the already overstuffed vehicle, and not knowing if we'd be home in time for Halloween also precluded us from mailing costumes directly to the house at our arrival destination.    So I found a solution of some matching skeleton fun for the kids.   Basically glow in the dark pjs.  :)    Which they wore on Saturday to a party.

However, after that afternoon party it was clear that neither of those costumes would cut it on the crisp night in the NW.   They would have been completely bundled and nothing would have been seen!   I had already broke down found a cute monkey costume that did make the cross country trip with us for Mae.  I just couldn't resist!  The baby costumes are just so darling!   So I knew I needed to find something for Ace.  So on Halloween we headed to Target to hunt for something festive and there it was a size medium (way too big) Incredibles costume.    He wanted nothing more - so we made it work with a few tucks, rolls, and binder clips. :)   The sun began to set and the kids got ready!  Ace was very excited for trick or treating!

"Protecting my identity is the most important part, mom"  Well ok then!

I added a festive Halloween bow to Mae's monkey costume for a girlie touch!

We kept telling him he could yell 'Trick or Treat!' and he said "I like to say it really quietly..."

Ace did great with the scary stuff  and loved going up to the door by himself. Afterwards we came home and Ace enjoyed eating candy before bed! 

Mae only got to enjoy the outside wrapper of the candy this year... but enjoy it she did!