Happy Fall!

My Sunflowers

Here are my sunflowers! Looking at them out in the garden makes me feel so happy! I am also quite pleased that I intentionally got something to grow this year. If life depended on my gardening skills, I am quite sure that we'd go hungry! Anyways, I get excited when something actually grows like it is supposed to.

Kids

Here's Mason. Right before this picture was taken, Mason was patrolling the yard with his gun. Guns have been his new obsession ever since Joe bought his first gun a few months ago.

Here is Leah playing some imaginary game behind the sunflowers. She has a really great imagination and she loves playing out in the garden.

Pumpkins!

Here is the only other thing that grew this year and I can't even take credit for it. These are our HUGE pumpkin plants that took off on their own in the dog run (they were so happy there that I couldn't pull them up). The leaves are huge and there are probably 20 flowers on the vine. I hope we will get some pretty pumpkins from these plants:)

Happy 8th Anniversary! (Holy cow! Time sure does fly by!)

We took off on Monday on a trip for our anniversary and we had a wonderful time! We stayed at the Skamania Lodge and did some fun things around the Columbia River Gorge.

OUR HORSE BACK RIDING ADVENTURE

After we checked into the hotel, we took off to go horse back riding. We had a lot of fun and we would like to bring Leah back to ride here as well (she was crying because we got to ride horses and we didn't take her with us). We started off on the 1 hour long ride, and half way through, our horses stopped and wouldn't go any further. Joe looked into the woods and saw a black bear! We turned the horses around and took another trail for the rest of the ride, which was really beautiful! The trail went down into the woods, through a creek and up onto an old logging road with absolutely beautiful views!

The people who own this horse back riding company live on 30 beautiful acres and have 26 horses! Here I am petting the horses while we wait to ride our horses.

Here is Joe riding "Curly Sue"

Here is me on "Rocky"
The little girl behind me is living Leah's dream:) She gets to ride a horse anytime she wants to.

My hoses walk was so bumpy that I had bruises by the end of the ride.

Here is a view from the ride. It was so beautiful!

Here we are at the end of our ride.

DINNER AT SKAMANIA LODGE

Ok, we took almost all of the pictures of the two of us ourselves. Here we are right before we went down to dinner.

We thought that the food was really good!

DAY 2-MULTNOMAH FALLS

We can't drive through the Gorge without stopping by Multnomah Falls. We ate hot dogs for lunch and hiked up to the bridge.


ONEONTA FALLS

Here we are about to go down and hike Oneonta! I hadn't done this hike in a long time and we had a great time!

The fun part of this hike is you get to get wet:)

Here we are, all wet.

Here is the view at the end of the hike.

Our conclusion at the end of this trip: WE NEED TO GET AWAY MORE OFTEN! We had a blast and the kids had a super fun time at Grandma's house.

Happy Kids and Getting Back into the Swing of School

Leah and Mason in the Backyard

I am happy to report that we are officially back into the normal swing of life after a busy and crazy August!

Mason woke me up with a wonderful surprise this morning. . .a dry night time diaper! He has been wearing a diaper at night, even though he has been potty trained for quite a while now. I figured I'd give him some motivation to give it up by making a chart with a picture of a car on it and three small circles below the car. Every night he stays dry, he gets a yellow star. When he has three stars, I'll take him to WalMart to pick out a car. He is very excited about this and I hope we can ditch the diapers for good . . .and soon!

This morning, we started up again with our home school and I'd have to say that things went quite well. We started the morning with scripture and prayer (even before breakfast I might add) and perhaps that is the reason for the harmony of the day. I read the children a little bit about the life of Johann Strauss and then the story behind "Die Fledermaus". Leah listened and danced through it twice while Mason watched her. Leah worked on Math and brushed up on place value with an activity and her addition facts with a game of war while Mason played with her bin of Math manipulatives. Then we worked on learning the poem, "My Shadow", by Robert Louis Stevenson, played Rummy Roots to brush up on Latin and read "Little Town on the Prairie" while Leah practiced crocheting. Leah has decided that her special project for the next two months will be learning about horses, so she reserved some horse books at the library.

I am so excited for this year to begin! We have so many fun things planned. I'd love to say more, but Mason is having a bit of a rough evening and I need to go see what all the tears and crying is about.

Bransen's Baby Blessing

Here is my handsome new nephew, Bransen! Last weekend, I took a trip to Rexburg, Idaho to be there for his baby blessing and I am so glad that I got to go:) (This was my very first trip without Joe or the kids.) I had a wonderful time and I could have held little Bransen all weekend long!

Now focus in on little Bransen's outfit. Brenda made his entire blessing outfit (without a pattern I might add), including the blanket and he looked very handsome! Brenda did a great job!!!

Brent, Brenda and Bransen

Me and goofy Dad as we were getting into the car to head off to church

Me and Mom (this was taken by Carson and apparently he takes his camera everywhere, including church)

Dad and Grandma Doty

Dad, Me, Brenda and Bransen, Brent, Carson and Mom

Uncle Carson and Bransen

Cousin Collin's 3rd Birthday Party in Astoria

We drove out to Astoria for Collin's 3rd birthday party last Thursday and the kids had a lot of fun! After we had dinner and cake at Katie's parent's house, we went to the City of Astoria Service Fair. The kids had a great time (this was a wonderful party idea Katie!) sitting in firetrucks, bulldozers, tractors, etc. Here are some pictures:

Collin (the birthday boy) and Mason

Mason in a firetruck

Uncle Josh and Hadley

Collin and Mason

Collin

Leah

Mason

Collin and Mason looking at all the trucks

Leah and Mason in a tractor (Mason had been eying this tractor:)

Yeah! Free cotton candy! Mason was a sticky mess and he loved every minute of it.

Our last stop in Astoria was the dock to see the sea lions, the boats and big ships.

It was a fun birthday party! We are so excited to have Josh and Katie close by again:)

A Weekend Without Mom

Janell went to a home school seminar in Portland one weekend and it was just me and the rug-rats. I figured that I would make the day somewhat memorable with a hike to Hamilton Mountain (although the kids can't make the entire 4 mile hike), we just went about 2 miles to some falls and ate lunch, played in the water and talked for a bit. Here are some pictures from the trip.Below "The Pool of the Winds"

A quiet moment at a spot called "The Pool of the Winds". It was a hollow rock formation with an open top that has a stream flowing into a water fall, then down to another pool area followed by more falls. It was really very peaceful and pretty.

The usual scene between Mason and Leah; "Dad! He/She is not sharing!" and "Give me that!"

Baby Bransen

HOSPITAL PICTURES

PICTURES FROM HOME

Bransen is so cute that I had to put some pictures of him up on our blog! He is just adorable and I can't wait to see him in a few weeks:)

Baby Bransen is Here!

Auntie Brenda a few days ago

Baby Bransen was born today! Great job Brenda!

I haven't seen a picture of him yet, but I hear that he is darn cute and he has lots of long, dark, curly hair and that he looks a lot like Brenda. He was 10lbs 1 oz and 22 or 23 inches long.

Congratulations Brent and Brenda!

Leah, Mason, Collin and Hadley at Ester Short Park Yesterday

Josh and Katie are in town! We are so excited to have them close by and we hope that Uncle Josh will find a job around here:) It was hot yesterday and they kids enjoyed playing at Ester Short park on the playground and in the water.

Collin and "Macy"
Mason was so excited to see Collin again!

Collin with all those handsome curls
He is moves around pretty fast! This is the only close up picture I could get of him:)

Cutie pie Hadley playing in the water

Auntie Katie, Leah and Collin