The End of June

Well, we spent Sat. the 22nd finally adding the finishing touches to the laundry room and Maggie/Paige's room.  And now (after about 3 months) I can finally put up the finished pictures.  I know you were all dying with anticipation.  

So here's the before picture of the girl's room:

and the final pictures:

 In the original picture, they had bunk beds, but since we were completely redoing everything, we took them down.  The above picture is Maggie's side of the room.  We added little shelves so she could put her "stuff" like her phone, books, scriptures, pictures and whatever else she wants up there, so it's not on the floor by her bed.  They each got new bedspreads; Maggie's is yellow and grey and Paige's is orange and grey.

 Paige's side

 We hung up pictures in white frames (except for their baptism picture because I had just bought new black frames just for those pictures.) and Maggie has a Young Women's print on her wall and Paige has "I am a Child of God" print on her wall.  Then they have their baby picture and their current picture up.  

 Looking into the room from the doorway.  We wanted bright and happy colors and I like how it turned out. 

 Maggie wanted to paint her mirror a bright color.  I loved how Paige was looking in the mirror, so I snapped a picture.  I think it's adorable.  

 Paige's side of the room with her cute pictures.  

Then we added the chalkboard picture frame so they could doodle on it.  

Maggie is still creating art to hang up above the dresser.  I'll have to post of picture of it when she gets it done.  

Here's the laundry room before (when I started):

And here is the final product:

 I love how it turned out!  I absolutely love the stripes!!  They are so fun!  And I love the colors.  I made the curtains and Garrett helped me staple material to these pieces of canvas for decorations! 

Lydia and Bella are patiently waiting for us to start their room now.  I hope I can get motivated again! :)

Now that Garrett's parents live here in Yamhill, we probably go see them about once a week.  We usually take turns hosting/making dinner.  The same day we finished the rooms, we went over to their house for dinner.  They just got a new hot tub and even though it was pretty hot out, we soaked in the hot tub.  They also have a lot of fruit trees, and the cherries were ripe and yummy.  So the kids picked and ate a lot of cherries!

 Picking cherries

 The new hot tub

 Loving the cherries!

 These were taken the next day, after church.  Garrett was playing race cars with Noah and Bella and it was fun to watch them play.  

 Paige and Lydia playing legos

 Then they started trying to get the cars to jump over the kids.  I love their faces.  

 Noah got so excited watching the cars jump over things!

 More practicing on the bikes...

 June 25th--Lydia rides her bike on her own!!!  

SHE DID IT!!

Look at that smile!

I was so proud of her!

Noah's 3rd birthday was coming up the following week.  His cousins were coming in a few days and would be here for his birthday.  Garrett had bought him a battery powered jeep for his birthday and decided to give him his present early, so that he could enjoy it without having to share it right away.  

 He LOVED it and was so excited to drive it!

 Of course, he really had no idea how to steer it, so it took awhile to get used to that.  

 The girls love it too.  They love to ride in it or drive it if they can get Noah out of the driver's seat.  

Notice the pink stroller in the back...

A couple of days later, we all went on a family bike ride, this time with Lydia riding her bike!  

Unfortunately, as we were headed home, Lydia got too close to a parked car.  Her handle bar hit the car and knocked the bike over.  She wasn't able to get her feet down quick enough to stop herself and she fell and hurt her ankle.  She was pretty upset and swore that she would never get back on her bike again.  Since we had company coming and then our big 3 week vacation,  we haven't had the chance to get her back on.  But, before summer is over, we'll have her riding again. (I hope anyways...she can be pretty stubborn when she wants.)

That Saturday, we had big plans to get things accomplished.  I was frantically starting to work on Noah's birthday party--which was happening on Monday (ahhh!) and Garrett had a lot of work to do outside in the back yard.  Unfortunately, Garrett cut his thumb with a big survival knife while he was cutting branches off an old Christmas tree.  He came in the house bleeding everywhere, telling me I had to drive him to the ER.  So, we spent the next 2 hrs at the ER getting him stitched up.  

 This is how happy he was to be in the ER.  

 The pictures are pretty gross, so I'll just post the one.  He cut it pretty deep and severed a tendon.  They stitched it up and gave him pain meds, but told him that on Monday, he'd have to go have it looked at by a hand specialist to see if they could fix the tendon.  Long story short...all 3 specialists that he got names for were out on vacation on Monday and Tuesday.  So, he just let it heal up with out it getting fixed.  Hopefully it won't be a problem later on down the road.  So after we got home, I was working on the party and he napped.  His brother and his family had arrived the night before, so Garrett took the kiddos over to his parents house to see them while I worked on the party some more.  

The next day after church, we headed over to Yamhill again for a bbq and to see Josh and Tanya.  Garrett had bought a pool to take over there for the kids to swim because it was HOT! (and they don't have AC).  It was good to see Josh and Tanya again--the kids had so much fun together!

 Paige, Hannah, Lydia, Caleb, Bella, Maggie

 Baby Luke

 Hannah, Bella, Lydia and Caleb--Noah had no desire to get in the pool.  We think the kids were too rowdy for him.  

 Caleb jumping on Lydia and Maggie's legs

 Baby Luke

Bella, Paige, Hannah, Noah and Caleb

Meggin and her family were getting in really late that night.  

Noah's birthday next...

End of May

For Garrett's birthday, I got him a "Weekend Getaway" for the 2 of us to Bend in central Oregon.  I bought a groupon deal for a condo there in Bend.  When I bought it, I don't think I realized that it was a 4 hour drive to get there.  Oh well, it wasn't that bad.  It was a beautiful drive, going through Detroit Lake area.  Jim and Georgia watched the kids for us.  (Thank you!!)  So we left Friday afternoon about 1 and got there around 5ish.  

 This is the place where we stayed--called Seventh Mountain Resort and Condo.  It was a really nice place and we both loved the terrain-the high desert type of area.  It's really pretty!

This is what the condo looked like.  It had a bedroom with a king bed and a nice bathroom too.  

We went to the condo and dropped our stuff off and then went in search of food.  We also decided that we wanted to see a movie, so found a restaurant near a movie theater.  We ate at a really good Hawaiian place and then walked next door and saw "The Great Gatsby".  In 3D. I don't normally like watching in 3D, but that was the only showing for that time.  

Jim and Georgia took all 5 kids out for dinner at Red Robin.  I was quite impressed that they took them all to a sit down dinner.  This is Paige licking what was left of the dessert they shared.  Getting spoiled by grandparents already.  We never get desserts!

Chocolate everywhere!  :)

May 18

The next day was so incredibly nice.  We got to sleep in...late.  That was heavenly on it's own!  (I hate waking up in the morning.)  After getting ready, we had a yummy breakfast (brunch) at a really good pancake house there in Bend.  Then we decided to go on a hike in the beautiful outdoors.  We found a trail from our condo that followed the river.  It was a really nice day.  A little cloudy, in the 60's; perfect for a hike.  We hiked for 4 miles!  It was really enjoyable, and the scenery was beautiful!

After we got back from our hike, we headed to the hot tub to relax a little.  It was so nice.  It had been so long since I'd been in one.  I don't stay in them as long as Garrett likes to, so I headed back to the condo to shower and clean up and read before we headed out to dinner.  That night we found a Thai restaurant called Noi Thai Cuisine.  It was a beautiful place. 

 I found this picture of the inside of the restaurant online.  It's still hard to see how beautiful it was, but you can get the idea.  

Normally, I don't like Thai food.  I'm not a big curry fan.  But we went and I tried new things and I really enjoyed it.  I ordered the Crispy Garlic Chicken and I think it was one of the best things I've ever eaten.  Of course, Garrett loves Thai food, so he really enjoyed it too.  After that, we went to see another movie.  The one we saw was called "Mud".  I had never heard of it before, but it was a really good movie.  Plus it had Matthew McConaughey and Reece Witherspoon--2 people I really like.  

Meanwhile, back at the ranch....Bella had been invited to her friend Ji-Su's birthday outing which included a trip to Build-a-Bear where she got a "My Little Pony" pegasus thing.  And also got to eat out at Red Robin.  Again.  

Loving that macaroni and cheese!

Also that day, some of the kids in Paige's primary class were getting baptized and so we arranged for her to go with one of her friends, Ashley (who was one that got baptized).  I guess Lydia ended up going too because Ashley's sister (Kali) is Lydia's best friend.  After, they took them back to their house for a bbq with family and friends. So they had fun, too.  

May 19

On Sunday, we had another nice leisurely morning and a late breakfast, then had to head back to Cornelius.  

While we were driving back, the grandparents took the kids to the park.  These are a few shots from that.

Grandpa Jim going down the slide

The kids had such a good time with grandma and grandpa.  They played games and laughed and watched tv and ate yummy food.  I'm so glad that they have great grandparents that live so close and were willing to watch our 5 monkeys.  

There was one accident while we were gone.  Noah was running up and down the wood floor like he does all the time (running races he says) and somehow tripped and fell face first into one of our columns.  Some how he knocked one of his front teeth back and twisted it to the side and the other tooth bit through his lip.  They said there was a lot of blood and a lot of crying.  I was so sad that I wasn't there to help.  Every time I looked at him, he just looked different like his smile had changed.  His lip was really swollen and he had a bruise on his cheek that went to his nose.  (You can see the bruise in the picture below--it looks like a shadow, but it is a bruise.) It's hard to tell in the above pictures, but the tooth on the left is the one that is pushed back.  I couldn't get a good picture.  Anyways, the next day I took him into the dentist to see if there was anything they could do and they said to just watch it and make sure it didn't get infected.  

Showing off his fat lip a couple of days later.  

On May 22nd, Bella graduated from Preschool.  Kindergarten, here she comes!!!

Bella sitting next to her good friend David. 

Singing "You're a Grand Old Flag" (they sing it every year)

Bella Preschool Graduate

I thought I'd throw in Lydia's and Paige's graduation pictures, too since they both graduated from Wonder World Preschool.  

And here's Maggie, just for the fun of it.  She was incredibly shy then.  

Back to Bella...this is with her teacher Lynda.  We sure love her!

Standing outside the door to her classroom.

Friday May 24

Camping over Memorial Day

We decided to test out our new trailer over Memorial Day Weekend.  We headed down there on May 24th.  We took it to Pacific City and camped in the same campground that we stayed at when we first got our last trailer.  We loved it then.  It was ok this time.  I guess we've seen some better places since we started trailer camping.  This place didn't have any cabins to rent, so Jim and Georgia got a hotel room in Tillamook and stayed there.  They came and ate dinner with us twice, but we didn't see them much more than that this trip.  

We parked next to this hill.  The kids loved climbing it and playing on it.  

When they went to the top of the hill, they found this big open sandy area.  They played back there quite a bit, but I was worried because the people that worked at the campground said that there had been bear sightings in the campground.  

May 25th

looking down at our new trailer.  

After breakfast, Georgia called and wanted to know if we wanted to meet them and drive around Tillamook to see the sights and some lighthouses.  So, we started driving out there and then I voiced my opinion that I didn't want to spend the day driving around, but hang out at the campground playing games and hiking and stuff.  We were all kind of grumpy and no one would decide what to do.  We finally decided not to drive around, but head back to camp and hang out.  I think Garrett was a little upset about not going with his parents.  So, instead...Garrett took 3 of the kids swimming.  Maggie and I stayed at the trailer reading while Noah took a nap.  After everyone got back and Noah woke up, we went walking around looking for trails to hike, but didn't really find one, so just walked around the campsite.  

View of the ocean (way in the distance)

Dead end trail

Back at our campsite digging in the dirt while waiting for dinner.  

Jim and Georgia came for dinner and we had a little fire, but we didn't stay out by it for very long.  

May 26

Paige and Noah playing around

Before packing up to leave, we decided to try one more hike, this time through the sand.  

Beautiful views

Running down the sand hill

This was taken as Garrett was dumping the "poop tank".  I had gone to drop the garbage in the dumpster and took the picture on my way back.  Little did I know that right before this, Garrett had taken a "brown shower" when he discovered that the valve wasn't closed like it was supposed to be.  It wasn't a very pleasant experience.  

We were supposed to stay through Monday, but we decided to come back a day early so that we could have a day at home to work on projects.  We really enjoyed using the new trailer, but we were all kind of glad the trip was over and we could be back home.  

Monday May 27th

Today we mostly finished Maggie and Paige's room.  We hung up pictures, put up shelves, and hung up curtains.  I don't have pictures yet, because we are still waiting on a few more things to get finished up and I want to show the whole room done at the same time.  

Same thing goes with my laundry room.  I still have a couple of things left to do and then I'll show pictures.

Wednesday May 29th

Garrett came home from work hardly able to move.  The night before, he had gone to his parents house to help them take apart their bed because they just ordered a new one.  I guess he was sitting on the floor with his legs criss-crossed and the iron frame fell.  He leaned over to catch it and felt something in his back.  Well, I guess he pulled a muscle pretty bad, because he was in serious pain on Wed.  He couldn't bend, lift his feet, and could barely stand.  Thursday was still the same and I finally convinced him to call the doctor.  So he got an appointment for Friday morning.  The doctor confirmed that he pulled a muscle and gave him some drugs and said that if it wasn't better by Monday, he should come in or try something else.  I went to the store and got him a heating pad.  That combined with some good drugs gave him some relief that he hadn't felt in days.  It's too bad that the medicine made him completely groggy and he took about 2 long naps a day.  Anyways, by the time the next Wednesday came around he thought he was doing better and was going to head into work.  I guess though that he didn't take his pain medicine right away when he got out of bed, because after he got out of the shower, he was in almost as much pain as the first day.  So, he stayed home and called a chiropracter.  He got in the next day and whatever they did helped significantly.  He went back on Friday as well for the same treatment and also a deep tissue massage.  Since then, things have been a ton better.  He went to work Thursday and Friday and is now back to normal.  It still hurts him a little when he sits criss-cross on the floor or moves the wrong way, but it's major improvement!