Monday, August 30, 2010

Jasper the photographer

Ever since my friend Sally let Jasper use her camera to take some pictures while we were blackberry picking a few weeks ago, Jasper has been asking to borrow the camera. The other day he went off into his room for about 10 minutes and took pictures. He likes to take pictures of Gideon, which I think is pretty cute. The other thing he does when he get behind the camera is point it right at my face and tells me to say "hi". This is so hilarious because it's exactly what I tell him to do. Now I know how he feels... The other interesting thing is his fascination with textures. There were about 30 pictures on the camera of the carpet and another 30 of his jeans- all very up close and blurry, but interesting, nonetheless.

Here are some pictures that Jasper has been taking lately:


Jasper lined up all his little plastic toy stegosaurus toys to take this pic


The bird mobile from Africa that hangs above his bed


Gid looking at books


Poor Wendy...


Really close-up Wendy...


A close-up of some of his artwork hanging on the fridge


"Say 'HI'"


Gid


Jeans


Gid


"Say 'HI'" in Leavenworth


Some random lady's purse :)


Sky


Gid squishing my face


Gid's tummy

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Family Photo Shoot this past weekend!


We had Tysha Carter (owner and photographer of Little Red Wagon Photography) take our family pictures this weekend. She did a fabulous job! She put a little "sneak peek" up on her blog. I'm very pleased with the way they turned out! Thank you so much, Tysha! Jasper and Gid are getting so big. It's really, really nice to capture this moment in time with such beautiful photography.



Monday, August 23, 2010

Blueberry Picking



We went blueberry picking a few weeks ago with some friends. Forrest and Max are two our Jasper and Gid's closest buddies, so it was great to see the boys running around and stuffing their faces full of blueberries together. Our friend John Parker took these awesome pictures:




















Monday, August 16, 2010

Fun stuff this weekend

Wow! We just had a whirlwind of a weekend! Lots and lots of fun, but by 7 pm on Sunday evening, Rob and I were totally wiped out!!

I'll start off with Thursday morning. Spent the morning at Dahl playground and wading pool. We met the Kilburns and the Parkers there. Had a great time. This park is one of our favorites and most frequented since it is only a block away from our garden. Thursday evening we had a work party at our garden, so we headed back over to the same place we had spent the morning and Rob and I took shifts playing with the kids and digging in the dirt. We had a couple of fellow gardeners plus ourselves assigned to clearing out this plot we'd been assigned to adopt. It was FULL of weeds, some neck high. We pulled everything out except for a few sunflowers, swiss chard, peas, and a zucchini.




pics from the playground

Friday morning- our church playgroup met up at Volunteer Park for some wading pool fun. Had a great time. Friday evening, we biked up to Greenwood Street Festival (Jasper rode the entire way there and back by himself about 2.5 miles total) where we met up with our friends the Hawkins. We'd agreed to watch their two kiddos for them so that Claire could see Brad preform in The Belle of Amherst- a play of which he wrote the entire score for and plays a solo cello performance. Thor and Jasper are about 6 weeks apart and truly adore one another. Thor is an incredible cyclist at three and a great example for Jasper. Astrid and Gid are about 4 months apart. Astrid is a little sweet heart. All of the kids played together so well. We enjoyed the street fair for a little bit- watched some skateboarding competition and danced to some bluegrass music. It started to get late and we wanted the kids to have a chance to play at home together, so we headed back down Greenwood toward Fremont. Claire and Brad dropped Thor off with his bike, so we were quite the sight biking back- four kids, all three and under, two on bikes of their own, two in the trailer. We made it home with no injuries which was quite an accomplishment, I believe!







Saturday morning, I ventured out to Freddy's to see what I could find in the way of garden plant starts. We've inherited this new garden plot and needed to get some plants in the ground as soon as possible. There are quite a few things I could start by seed and overwinter, but I thought if I could buy some starts, then we might actually get some late summer/fall harvest. I bought a couple of eggplant, broccoli, cauliflower, acorn squash, cucumber, and basil. I'll start from seeds some beats, carrots, and greens and we'll see how it goes :) Went back home, everyone loaded up in the car, I dropped the boys off at Greenlake and I headed over to the garden to get everything planted. Once I was finished, I headed back over to Greenlake. The boys were all having a blast. It was super hot, so the pool was packed. We eventually headed home, got Gid down for a nap while Rob and Jasper ran some errands.

At 4, out friends the Schmidts came by and dropped off their two kiddos Anza and Mojave. We had dropped our kids with them a few weeks previously, so we were completing our end of the bargain :) We had such a fun time playing with them. The Schmidt kids are some of the most laid back, go with the flow kids I've ever met. They are so easy to watch! I'll take them anytime! We played with tinker toys, cars and trucks, ate some pizza, and played outside on the back patio for awhile then we all headed over to the church for the primary talent show! The talent show was a hoot!! Those kids come up with the coolest, darnedest little acts to share. After the talent show, Andy and Chele collected their kiddos, who were seriously little angels the entire time we had them. We got a call from the missionaries when we got home reminding us we had signed up to feed them on Sunday.

Sunday, I got up early for a meeting. Rob had been up till 1:30 am the night before making cookies since he was in charge of linger longer, poor guy... We both were pretty tired at church. I would look over and see Rob nodding off, then i went to the nursing lounge and fell asleep while nursing. Goodness! Linger longer went great (good job, Rob!). When we got home we got our kiddos down for a nap and started on dinner since it was already 3:30 and the missionaries were arriving in an hour and a half. We decided to roast a chicken, which was a HUGE mistake since it was scorching hot and just about turned the apartment into a furnace. Food turned out great and had a great time with the missionaries. They left at 7, and Rob and I just wanted to collapse on the floor and fall asleep, but the kiddos were wired and needed to get outside and run. So we walked down to BF Day. Rob and I took turns lying in the green, green grass while the other chased the kids. Poor Rob (again)- he got the shorter end of the stick because it started to get dark and we needed to head back home and get the kids and ourselves to bed.

So, there you have it. That was our whirlwind, fun loaded weekend.