July Adventures in Portland

July was a great month for us!! Summer is so much fun with a pool to swim in, isn't it?!? Our new subdivision is about 4 times bigger than our last one, and they love to PARTY!! So, the Fourth of July was just that...a PARTY!!! 

It started with a bike parade that the kids were so excited to participate in. They each picked out decorations from the dollar store, and sat in the hot garage to decorate their bikes all by themselves. 

 The rest of us got to sit back and enjoy the show.

 Then they threw out WAY too much candy for the kids to gather up.

 Then they lined the kids up according to age, and threw coins in the pool for them to gather: What the FUN?!?!?

 Because we didn't have back-door neighbors at the time, we were able to enjoy about a dozen firework shows from our master balcony!! It was perfect for Elliott who doesn't  love the noise, and Archie, who needed to go to bed because the it don'ts get dark until 10pm around here!!

 And of course we can't forget our holiday breakfast bike-ride to McDonalds (that we actually did the next day so we wouldn't miss the bike-parade)!!

Not all our summer fun is outdoors...Archie loves playing with Elliott's Skylanders video game action figures, and since Elliott doesn't play anymore, he is happy to share.  He gets very creative in his uses for them. 

 Man, this makes my Mommy-heart happy!!!

 Ok, I think this post is bleeding over into August, but we'll just go with it. Mike had a 4 day weekend, his last one of the summer, so we did something we NEVER do...we were SPONTANEOUS!! We decided to head to Salem, Oregon to see my Sister Juliet, and it just happened to be the same weekend my parents and other Sister Alicia were visiting too!!!

Here we go!!!

Being a spontaneous sort of folk (at least for this weekend) we decided to cut the drive in half and stopped at our FIRST EVER MOTEL!!! It was a flashback to the road trips of my childhood in the 80s...Actually, I don't think this particular motel has changed much since the 80s. It was so fun!!! The kids loved the complimentary PopTarts for breakfast--hee hee!

What fun Salem is, especially when you have such a wonderful hostess and tour guide: thank you Aunt Juliet!! We visited the Capital building and it's gorgeous gardens...

We went to a famous breakfast cafe on our way to the beach...

(this is Archie, all ready for the beach)

Where we climbed sand dunes....

Saw famous movie landmarks (the rock from Goonies)...

looked in tide pools, touched star fish and sea anemones in the wild!!...

Enjoyed a beautiful Aquarium with these crazy people...

and finally, finished the trip with a visit to a beautiful Waterfall (where I got poison ivy for the first time...worth it!)

Then it was one more stop and a cozy motel, and a short ride back to reality. And that was how August began.

Father's Day, Camping, and Other Adventures!

And the "Best Dad Ever" award goes to...

This guy!!

Happy Father's Day Dad. The kids made him little paper ties that said what they loved about him. Isn't he handsome?!?

He's also the best because he has the patience and energy to take the kids fishing, without me!!

What did I do instead? I'll let Archie demonstrate, he looks cuter doing it than I do :)

 The kids were so cute on their one mile children's run. I love it so much. They were wonderful. Elliott was so happy that he even ran it faster then last year. 

 I think it is a new summer tradition that Lucy collapses for her yearly nap on the first day of Summer.

During restricted screen-time, Elliott got a little creative :)

 We kind of happened onto a little strawberry garden when we moved in, and we were pretty excited for our little harvest. Lucy and I made Strawberry-water, which was actually pretty yummy.

 Harmony and Had Abogi took the kids morel hunting. Mmmmmm...

What's the only thing crazier than 65 degree weather in June?

 The kids swimming in it of course!

I taught the kids how to do the 80s style Stussy 'S', and they loved it. 

 They were even able to sit nicely by each other and practice drawing them: Mommy Win!

 Lucy was my little baker this summer. If she had it her way, she would have made cupcakes every day, but, being the non-consenting mother that I am, she got to make them twice. 

 After our less-than-successful trial run camping trip, we decided a one-nighter was all we could take in the mountains, but we were determined to get at least one camping trip in this summer (and we did....just one :)

Here are the kids' obligatory pre-camping, clean-faced pictures.

 And all the fun we could squeeze into two days and one night.

 Oh, I forgot to mention that we even convinced Jason and Kristine and family to join us on their first camping trip EVER!

 Looks like one night was plenty for these crazies.

 And finally, last summer we started our 100 Miles of Summer goal. This year, we CRUSHED IT!!! We started where we left off, at 47, and we got our 100 miles before June was done!! All that bike-riding around the new neighborhood paid off! To celebrate, we went to Jump Time, and a dinner-movie theater. I am so proud of these kids. 

Summer is our kind of season!

I don't know how I missed this very important even in my last post, but SCHOOL IS OUT FOR SUMMER!!!! Look how happy Lucy and Elliott look on their last day. I think Archie is leery of how this will affect his free time!!

Hooray for HEAT!!!! One of the wonderful perks of our new neighborhood is a great pool! We made good use of it all summer long. Archie has always been tentative around water: he panics when it gets in his face, and he hates it in his ears. But, he also likes to be scared, so it kinda worked. He LOVES splashing, and he got to do a lot if it here. By the end of the summer, he even let me carry him around in the pool a bit!

We knew we wanted to go camping this summer, but we also know that Archie is a champion sleeper in his own bed...everywhere else, not so much. So, we decided to do a dry run in our backyard. We called it at 11:30pm, after 3 hours of wrestling with him. We are counting on actual camping to wear him out enough to get him to sleep!

 We had many bike adventures this summer; safety was always a priority of course!

Archie got a medal for finishing his first semester at the Little Gym! He is doing so well at taking turns and waiting for instructions!! Now if we could just get him to stay at his stations, we'll be doing fine!

 Kicking summer off right with a trip to the ice-cream truck!

 Elliott finished up baseball season. His favorite position is still catcher--that's my boy!

 We were planning on riding our bikes to the Library, but about half way, we passed a very enticing-looking park, and decided to make this our destination instead: well played I think.

 And of course there's alway lots of fishing with Dad. Somehow, Lucy always ends up catching the most fish!! She's a natural.

 Summer days are the best.