Starfish

Levi and I are half way through our three weeks of swimming lessons.
Last week we had lessons in the morning. This week, and next week, we have lessons in the evening (right after dinner. So much for waiting 30 minutes after eating to get into the pool.)

What a difference a year makes.
Levi was great in the water last summer. But this year I think he's really starting to get it. He kicks more, splashes more, and even puts his chin and ears in the water. He's really working on blowing bubbles. I'm hoping he'll really accomplish those before lessons are over next week.
Since current lessons are in the evening, Gabe got to take pictures last night.
Here's Levi waving to Daddy.
Levi floating and doing some forward kicks.Doing his back float. Which he doesn't really like. It's hard to let water in your ears.And here he is doing his favorite thing of all, SPLASHING! Getting water in Mommy's and his face.I'm hoping to get Gabe in the pool with him next week. Right now he's still recovering from the surgery he had Friday night...but I think he'll be up for some swimming next week. So I might be back next week with more pictures from the pool.

This is how MY boys play...

They make ramps for cars.And play this video game. (Which Levi pre-ordered for his dad's gift.)
This is how Gabe and Levi spent their afternoon together on Father's Day. We spent the morning at the Portland Art Museum to visit this exhibit. Gabe's friend and former boss, the late Tom Campell's, car was on display for the day. There was a special video tribute to him in the morning. It was a very nice event and a wonderful way to spend father's day.

Flowers and Friends

It's been a busy and crazy week around here. Between daily swimming lessons, getting estimates for the house painting, and dealing with a flake of an optometrist/insurance, I'm exhausted this week. And I'm suppose to be on vacation. Even with all the crazy stuff, Levi and I have had some fun afternoons.
On Tuesday, Tricia and Travis came over and we went up to the Rose Garden. It was a beautiful day. The roses are just finally starting to bloom. And a certain little boy loves to smell them.We smelled some roses, kicked the ball around for a while and then came home and had some dinner.Yesterday, the Wilkinson family came over. They are here from LA for the week and I'm so happy they were able come by and have some dinner with us. Levi and Zachary "played", I got to snuggle a tiny baby, and we enjoyed talking to friends I wish were closer. Baby Zane is smaller at almost a month old, then Levi was when he was born. So wonderful! Levi wasn't too sure about the baby at first.But soon, he wanted to put his hands all over him!Zachary and Levi did also get lots of hugs in.So I made the mistake of letting Levi lay down with two of his favorite stuffed animals. As I've been downstairs on the computer editing pictures and writing this post, I've been listening to him not take a nap for the last 1/2 hour. Guess I better get in the shower while I can, and hope he's asleep when I get out. I'm tired and sure could use a nap myself today before another painter comes by to quote our project this afternoon. Given the way some things have gone this week, I'm not going to hold out much hope.

Game!

Levi has really been into games lately.  Anytime the TV gets turned on, he's sure it's so he can watch a game.  We're blaming his Grandpa Girard for letting Levi watch too many baseball games.  It helps that baseball combines two of his favorite things, balls and hats.  We're not sure if Grandpa has been working with him on his pitching technique or if he's just picked it up by watching, but clearly he'll be the next Nolan Ryan.

-G

Hidden "Treasure"

Levi and Tinka (Grandpa Tom and Grandma Joanne's little dog) found this while digging in the sand earlier this week. Must have been left behind by the previous little boy who lived here. Actually, they found two army guys (the other one is doing the army crawl) and a fake gold coin. Pretty good treasure for a kid and a dog. I'm not sure who likes digging more, Levi or Tinka. They're both pretty good at making a sandy mess.
I took about 200 pictures this week and lots of videos. Guess that's what happens when I'm home all day. I'd like to get a video up of Levi playing a one man baseball game, but last time we tried to upload video it was in slow motion.

First Three

Levi and I have really enjoyed my first three days of summer vacation. (Minus the new wake up time of 6:30am and few toddler fits that have been thrown because Levi doesn't get his way. And it's him throwing the fit, not me...promise.)
We've already gone to story time at the library.
Played at the zoo with friends.Had an impromptu Daft Punk dance party.
And made chocolate chip cookies together. Levi likes the chocolate chips the best.Levi's into this thing now where he just licks his favorite foods. In fact, he'll just hold on licking them FOREVER! He'll actually put raspberries on his fingers and just lick them like some kids have been known to do with black olives. I finally had to tell him to just put the chocolate in his mouth because it was all over his shirt, the counter and his face.

Now all Levi and I are waiting for is the sun to arrive. We want to play at the park, go for walks, get out the sprinkler, pool and Popsicles. When that happens...summer is officially here!

Dinning Room Floor Project

Is 99% complete. We're still missing the piece that goes in the door way between the dinning room and the front door entry. The only problem is, the store we bought the flooring from last year no longer carries our flooring. So now Gabe needs to find a local distributor we can buy one little piece from. Hopefully he'll have time to figure that out this week.
But since it's so close to completion, and we've already worn it in during the last two weeks, I wanted to get some pictures of the project on here.
Here's what we started with, dog pee stained carpet in the dinning room!So glad that gross stuff is out of here! (Although, it's actually piled in the back of the blue truck in the garage for now.)
Here's Gabe and his helper laying down floor boards all day. Don't you love that Levi has his "safety glasses" on?And Gabe proud to be putting the last piece in.We are very happy with how it looks. Makes the room seem bigger.
I love it, and my handyman husband.

Cilantro Pesto

We harvested our first bunch of cilantro this week.
Gabe's dad and Joanne have raved about how wonderful cilantro pesto is, so we decided to give it a try this week. We decided to try this recipe. It looked simple, perfect for dinner on Wednesday night in the midst of a crazy week. I have to admit that I had high expectations and was therefore very disappointed. Levi was very disappointed as well. You would have thought the sauce was actually poison.
Here's what might have gone wrong:
*may not have had quite enough cilantro. And since talking to Gabe's dad, next time I'll add in some basil as well.
*too much garlic. Three raw cloves is overkill. Especially for a 22 month old, even though he does usually like garlic.
*in my opinion, way too much sesame oil. That's all I could taste. Although Gabe said he really liked it, next time I'm only putting in half the amount.

Any other suggestions from those who have made cilantro pesto?

Time for Breakfast

Levi's favorite elephant got to have breakfast this morning. In addition to grass (which Levi says "gass"), apparently this elephant also likes eggs and mango-peach yogurt. Silly elephant. And silly little boy.

Being that this was the crazy last week of school, I didn't really get out the camera. This is all I have the energy for right now. I sure am looking forward to getting some quality play time with Levi this week, the first week of my summer vacation.

Perfect Sunny Saturday

We spent our beautiful Saturday morning at the zoo yesterday. I don't think we were the only ones happy to have the sun out, and the temperature above 70. The animals were out enjoying the sunshine along with all us visitors. It felt good to get a dose of vitamin D.
We invited Josh, Danelle and Weston to join us but Danelle was working, so just the boys came along. The little boys were really impressed by the animated dinosaurs the zoo has during the summer. They probably would have watched this big guy all day. Personally, I think they're pretty lame.We had a nice stroll around the zoo and a great picnic lunch. Perfect way to enjoy the sunny day. The BBQ ribs for dinner were pretty nice too.
Oh, and here are the Lorikeets enjoying their bath and the beautiful morning.

Handyman

Levi is in love with daddy's tools. Who knew daddy's stud finder and tape measure could provide this kid with so much entertainment.
Guess we know what to get Levi for his 2nd birthday...a tool set of his own!

As Levi played with tools this week, Gabe was hard at work on the dinning room floor. He needs to install the baseboard this afternoon. Since he was in Indiana most of the week, the project has been on hold. We have a serious deadline too. We have special visitors arriving on Friday!

I only have 5 more days till summer! Wow, the school year sure went by fast.

Garden Support

Last weekend Gabe was busy building.
First he put in some support for our raspberry bushes.Then he built this tepee type thing for the peas to grow up.Sure wish we could get a little more sun. All the rain and hail we had yesterday sure wasn't what the garden needed.

Two of my favorite...

pictures from this week.
Levi's grandma's get a two-for-one today.

Here's Levi being silly while reading books on Monday. He usually only sucks his fingers when he's going to sleep. So when I saw him doing it while reading books, I asked him if he was sleepy. This is him pretending to go to sleep in his chair. Oh, and the snake. It makes a perfect scarf.
We went to Enzo and Finn's 2nd birthday party on Saturday evening. This big blue balloon was one of the things Levi got to bring home with him from the party. It's so big he calls it a ball, not a balloon. And apparently it's fun to sit and bounce on. Gabe and I were both pretty sure Levi was going to pop it doing this but it's still around the house somewhere.
We don't really have any big plans for the holiday weekend. Becky's going to come over and put Levi to bed for us tonight. Gabe and I are going out to dinner and a movie. We're having a few friends over on Monday for a little BBQ. Oh, and we decided to start the dinning room floor project this morning. I'll post before and after pictures when it's finished.

Longest home improvement project EVER!

OK...I'm embarrassed to admit that Gabe and I started giving my work out room a face lift in JANUARY! It's now May, and we put the finishing touches on the room this weekend. I guess it's easy to start a project and never get around to finishing it when it's not a room you cook in.
So here's the chronicle of our 5 month home gym creation.

In January this is what we started with:Where do I begin describing the things I hated about this room?
1. Oh, I have to start with the floor. Lovely leopard print vinyl tile anyone? We have some in our laundry room too. That's another project altogether. Which at this rate we will never get around to.
2. The two colors. I'm all for bright colors in my home. I have an orange dinning room after all, but these colors just don't do it for me one bit!
3. The electrical outlets...yes...they painted over them. Something that slowed down our project when we couldn't just replace the covers. Gabe had to put brand new plugs on as well.
4. Something you can't see in this picture. The horrible job they did painting. Want to see the ceiling for yourself?January-
So that's what we started with.
Gabe started the face lift by painting the ceiling.I painted the walls the color of my choice. My favorite color. Might not be the best choice for a small room but I enjoy it.

February-
A few weeks after painting was done, we made our decision about flooring. We decided the easiest thing to do was to just cover that "lovely" tile. So, we got some rubber gym tiles and Gabe installed them in no time.I know what you're thinking...we were thinking the same thing..."There's not much left to do now". It was 100% usable and we just sorta forgot about it.

April-
I decided I need a mirror in the room. After all, what's a gym without a mirror in which to stare at my growing muscles! So we took the huge mirror off the wall in our downstairs bathroom. No big deal, we're planning on re-doing that bathroom next month anyway. (Not sure how long that project will take to complete given the time frame on this one. I'll let you know when it gets started.) Anyway, we had some trouble figuring out what we wanted to do to frame the mirror and hang it. This little thing is what held us up for months:And here's the finished room:Oh, I forgot to mention the TV. It was my Valentine's day gift from my dear husband. Romantic huh? I tease!
Working out is about one of my least favorite things. But knowing I get to spend 30 minutes in a space I enjoy, makes it a little bit more tolerable. OK...a lot more tolerable.

Wish us luck as we rip out carpet in our dinning room and lay hard wood this summer. We've had the flooring in our downstairs closet for almost a year now. We'll probably need luck on our bathroom project too. Just those two projects this summer. Oh, I forgot...we have to paint the house. But I think we'll hire someone to do that. Good idea huh? We'd probably still be painting it in December!

BIG Bubbles

Levi loves bubbles. He loves to pop them. He loves to blow them. He likes to eat them. Yes, he'll put his face on the ground and pop them with his mouth. And he'll also stick the wand in his mouth when he's blowing them. He must be watched very closely when bubbles are out!
So when I saw this big bubble wand in the dollar bin at Target this morning, I knew we had to get it.
And it is a lot of fun!I love this shot Gabe took this morning. It's so cool that you can see the bubble popping in the middle. What a dramatic splash!

Our Garden

Since my friend Nickie was asking about our garden in a comment last month. I thought I should try a blog series on our family garden. From start to finish. Or in other words, from planting to preserving.
We have three raised beds in our front yard because we don't have much of a back yard. And the house faces south, so the front yard has the most hours of sun each day. I'm not the sort of gardener who starts things from seed indoors. Mostly because I'm lazy but also because we don't really have a good place to put them. None of our windows really get enough sunlight. So, we buy veggie starts for the most part. This year our garden has herbs, lettuce, spinach, green bush beans, and four tomato plants (heirloom, yellow, cherry and roma). We decided to put zucchini in a pot this year to see how that works. They take up so much room in the garden, we hope that putting them in a separate container will help save some space. We also planted sweet peas, snap peas, and carrots from seed.
Here's my helper digging and getting ready to plant some pea seeds a few weeks ago.And here he is helping me plant the seeds too.My goal is to keep updating the garden's progress but maybe also add some recipes we try. Three years ago we ate, canned or preserved everything that we harvested from our garden. The second piece of my goal is to also share that part of the process. So, stay tuned. We already have peas sprouting!

Oregon Trail Rally

Just to keep everything on the blog even, I wanted to get on here and show how I like, or would like to play.  This weekend is the Oregon Trail Rally, an event I have codriven in, volunteered at and spectated over the years.  This year I got to play spectator.  Above is the car owned by Dan Brown and Doug Heredos, here, Dan is driving through one of the stages held at Portland International Raceway.  This will be the second season for the guys in the new car.  Sounds like Friday got a little eventful when they lost brakes on the third stage!  Hopefully they do well the rest of the weekend.

Below is a shot of Antoine L'Estage, last years Rally America champion.  As you can see, racing went well past dark, giving you a chance to see just how much these guys use their brakes.

Happy Mother's Day!

This is my kind of Mother's Day breakfast.
Gabe and Levi got donuts and coffee this morning. And flowers too.

I tried to sleep in, and was completely unsuccessful at doing so. Guess for the rest of my life, my body will just be conditioned to wake up at 6:30am. Even on the rare day I actually get a chance to sleep later.

The boys were also going to make me a nice dinner. But I took the car, which also happened to have Levi's car seat in it, to see a movie with my mom and sisters this afternoon. So, they were left stranded at home and couldn't go to the store to get any groceries. We ended up here for Mother's day dinner instead.

On this Mother's day, and every day, I am very grateful to have this wonderful child in my life! Stories before bed are definitely the highlight of my day!

Bike Repair Shop

I think what I'm loving most about playing with Levi right now is just watching what he comes up with. Everything is a toy. Everything can have an unusual purpose. Everything must be explored.
And I'm amazed at the things he does naturally.
For example, he loves this "bue" hammer. (He just started saying blue this week. And that's what it sounds like. He also started saying "poo" and "hoe" this week. Translations: poop and hole. Although thankfully he's not using the two words together.)And this is naturally what he does with it. I swear he's never seen his dad working on his car or bike. So how does the kid come up with the idea to use the hammer to "fix" the seat on his bike?And he couldn't take off riding his bike without the hammer. It had to go everywhere with him this morning. He tried to put it on the front of his bike but it wouldn't stay on while he rode. But he was thrilled when I suggested he ride with it in his pocket!It's crazy what this kid comes up with!

This is why...

I teach.

And boy did I need a reminder today!

It's Friday. It's spring. Only 20 days left.

When a couple kids make my day difficult, it's hard to remember the ones I enjoy spending my day with.

Gabe was told by his boss Wednesday afternoon, that he'd be spending the rest of the week in Canada. He gets home tomorrow afternoon.

Our district is cutting another 120 teaching positions this year...should find out next week if I still have a job next year.

Just feel like there are a lot of things out of my control right now and a lot that has me worried.

I needed this poem a girl in my second period class wrote and gave me today. I'm sure she wrote it because Tuesday was teacher appreciation day. She had no idea I really needed this reminder today.

A love for history

A passion for teaching

A heart for students

Memories you make

Thoughts you create

Dreams you inspire

Places we wish to go

Things we want to overcome

Actions we hope to do

Thanks to you

The day must end

The trimester is almost done

The year is close to the finish line

I will never forget

I will always remember you!

And I should probably also include the funny reasons why I teach. I don't get a lot of this mushy stuff often, but I do get a fair share of funny random stories and crazy statements.

Like the kid who walked into 5th period on Wednesday and announced that he was still hungry because "All I had for breakfast was a rice crispy treat and a piece of ham."

We have a beaver!

I'm a little late in finally getting around to posting this story.
We were notified several weeks ago by the neighbor behind us, that we have a family of beavers living in our creek. He took Gabe down to the creek and showed him the damage the beavers are causing and their "cute" little den. The neighbor says he's seen them, but we've only seen evidence of their existence. Here it is...I was sorta putting off this post, hoping that Gabe would be able to get a shot of the actual beaver(s), but he just hasn't had the time. Maybe I'll update if he finally gets around to it.

After doing a little research (thanks to our friend Carley for recommending this source) here's what Gabe did to solve our little problem...And so far it's worked. He covered about 6 trees (you can see one they started in on in the background of the photo) and we haven't found any more evidence that they've been after more trees on our property.
Here's to hoping they've moved on to better tasting trees somewhere else!
Oh, the joys of home ownership. I never really did expect we'd be forced to deal with beavers. We can cross that one off the list!

My Idea of "Play"

I was told by a friend last weekend (a friend that will remain nameless so she will not incur the wrath of Levi's grandmas) that I should include some pictures of what I consider "play". In other words...not just pictures of the cutest kid on the planet. That got me thinking. There are a lot of things I enjoy in addition to spending time playing with my boys. And really, I don't do those things nearly enough. I don't get out my paints and pictures enough. I don't open up my Kindle enough. I don't sit outside and soak up the sun enough. (Actually, I'll do this in a heartbeat when we get some sunshine). I don't get pedicures and massages enough! And I don't bake nearly enough! Mostly because if I bake it...I eat it.

Other than spending my furlough days (Thursday and Friday) playing with Levi, I made the most delicious chocolate chip cookies.

I think Levi likes my idea of play too...

I gave him two chocolate chips while I was making the cookies and he thought they were the greatest thing ever! I don't think we've ever given him chocolate. Boy, did he love that cookie!
(This picture is for Levi's grandmas.)