Bday Weekend

Whew! We had a busy weekend, but it was a good one.  Let's start with Friday.  Jeremy usually leaves for work about 6:45 and I try to score lots of wife points and get up early with him and make him breakfast/lunch.  I got up early that day to go for a little jog (trying to start a habit), but Anna woke up 2 minutes later, so I fed her and still went - which left Jeremy on his own for breakfast and lunch, but it was nice to get out in the fresh air all alone before the kids woke up!

So I came back, he left, and then I got breakfast ready for the kids and we got ready to go pick some more berries!  Total disaster with 3 kids by myself.  A few people from church said they were going, but I didn't see anyone I recognized and it was hot and the kids (mostly Connor) were far from enthused about walking to the farthest field to find the newest variety of raspberries.  Oops.  But we got a few and then headed back home.  Check out these big cascade raspberries!

My cousin Michelle, who served her mission in Portland, was in town with her parents (My Aunt Marie & Uncle Chris) visiting her mission, so they stopped by after we got home (and after I ran around picking up toys for a half hour before they got here...).  It was so good to see them!  They stayed for an hour and then headed off to see some people from the mission.  That afternoon I let Eli run through the sprinklers - he'd be asking me all week and it was finally hot enough that we needed to run them for the 2nd time ever - and then we made dinner, got the kids to bed, got a redbox, ate popcorn, and went to bed.

Saturday!  On my very brief jog on Friday morning I went over to the park near our house and discovered they have some beautiful trails around a lake and a great little playground, so I told Jeremy I wanted us all to go on a walk there Saturday morning.  So after Jeremy made me some delicious french toast for breakfast, we did!  It was so pretty.  It's only a 1/2 mile from our house and we'd been there before, but hadn't seen this area of the park, so it was nice.  Everything is so beautiful here, so we enjoyed the scenery.  The boys liked seeing some geese and ducks and Anna slept away in the stroller.  Win!

After we got back, Jeremy offered to go pick me some more berries.  What a guy (and he's as addicted as I am).  I wasn't able to get as many as I wanted the day before, and they were opening up a ton of the blueberries, so we wanted to get some before they got picked over.  Eli really wanted to go, so they both went and came home with over 10 pounds of blueberries and 4 more pounds of raspberries!  Yippee!

We should be set for awhile now.  Our freezer is now stocked and we had some awesome blueberry pancakes this morning.

During the kids' naps, Jeremy told me he went way overboard and got me a new wheat grinder for my birthday!!  Ah!!  After feeling sick to my stomach about him spending too much money, I was very excited.  It's not here yet, but should get here in a few days.  We don't really ever buy flour or bread anymore, so it will be really nice to have an awesome grinder that will hopefully last forever!  After the kids woke up, we went on some errands to get a few things for our family reunion/camping trip this next weekend and then we went to a little hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurante for dinner.  It was a great day!  I felt very spoiled and grateful to have my bday on a Saturday so I could have another full-size human around all day. :)

We enjoyed a nice day today too.  Earlier in the week, we thought we were going to have to speak in church, but by the time Jeremy returned the phone call, he'd asked someone else.  I was so grateful!  I just spoke on Mother's Day and Jeremy spoke on Easter, so we were glad to get off the hook this time.  The kids spent a little time outside this morning and then I gave everyone haircuts...except for our little baldie Anna of course. :)

 Cute Eli with our "little" tomato plants we planted less than 3 weeks ago!  I guess things grow well here!

They're coming!

And Jeremy has a short work week this week because we're taking off for California on Thursday!  We're excited to see both of our families.  We're going camping with Jeremy's family and then heading to my parents' where the kids and I will stay for the week with all of my family.  It should be a blast!

We're coming, grandparents!

Portland Bucket List: Raspberry Picking!

Jeremy and I made a "Portland Bucket List" a week or so ago, since we're only going to be here a year and there's so much we want to see and do!  One of the things on that list is to pick raspberries.  Well, all berries really, but strawberries are done here (Eli picked us a pint last week) and blueberries and blackberries aren't quite ready yet.  Anyway, so we went raspberry picking last Saturday as a family.  I have officially declared Saturdays as "Family Fun Days", so we will be working on our list every Saturday. :)  With Jeremy actually working now instead of hanging out with us all day everyday, hehe, I want to make sure we do fun things on Saturdays and don't just let them lazily slip by as they so often do.  We don't have church until 2:00 on Sundays (crazy!), so we have plenty of time for laziness then.

I put some pictures on facebook, but for you non-facebookers, here are some more.  It was actually very sunny that day and got up to 70 degrees and it felt really hot!  I guess we're getting acclimated!  It was a beautiful place about 15 minutes away.  We passed several other u-pick places along the way too.  A lady from church told me about this one, and I'm really glad we went there.  All the berries there are $1.25/lb and they were beautiful and plentiful!

(On the drive home - it was so nice to see these wide open spaces just a few minutes away from us.  One of the very few things I haven't loved about being here is all the congestion where we are. I hate traffic!  Getting out in the beautiful farmland was really nice.)

You're free to eat as you pick so we had a great time eating away.  I don't think I've ever eaten so many raspberries plain - they're so expensive normally, so I usually have only bought them for special occasions and have used them very sparingly!

We picked almost 5 lbs (for $6.15!!) and I'm going again on Friday to get more.  I froze most of them, but we also ate a lot plain, had them in our granola, on our waffles, and in a treat I made for Family Home Evening.  I think I'll make jam with the next batch.
 

Mmm mmm, they are delicious!  I can't wait for the blueberries to be ripe in a few weeks!

Life so far

Jeremy didn't start work until Monday, so last week we were able to get a lot done.  It was really nice!

Last Tuesday we got everything out of a box and it felt so good!  I sold the boxes on Craigslist.  That felt good too. :)

(Boxes standing up are full of packing paper! We had even more not pictured.)

Last Tuesday we also got some pots and planted 3 varieties of tomatoes, red bell pepper, and basil.  Yummm...we haven't had to water them a single time!  Thank you Portland rain. Haha.

 Last Thursday we drove the 15 MINUTES to the temple!  We walked around the grounds and popped in the new Visitors Center for a bit.  We'll definitely be back soon.  It was overcast and a little drizzly (our new normal), so I'll try and get some pictures another time when you can see the white temple better with a blue sky behind. :)

 I am in love with these dark green trees!  It would have been hard to go somewhere without trees after being back east.  Portland is full of evergreen trees and they are so dark and so beautiful!

 Our piano has already gotten a lot more use (from me too, not just these two!) now that it's out in the open instead of hiding in Anna's room/office/teeniest-room-in-the-house.

 Just a picture of our cute girl!

Saturday we went to the Portland Farmers Market downtown.  It was amazing.  We had fun sampling lots of things and just took home a few things.  Eli was very excited about the berries.  Oregon is known for growing the best berries (and they are EVERYWHERE).  Boysenberries grow wild everywhere - along the side of the road, in the parks, etc.  We're excited to go picking in August!  We had boysenberries in our backyard growing up and biting into those that day brought back a flood of memories.  Yummy!

 A few pictures of our backyard.  It's small but perfect - fenced, flat, little swing-set left by the previous tenants, and private with all the big trees.  Being able to send the boys out in the backyard by themselves - and have them love it - is the greatest thing ever!

Eli's first comment when we got here was - "Mommy, we have our own maple tree!"  We do, it's a beautiful Japanese Maple, and yes, he's a genius. :) 

These were this week...

 And today...

So Jeremy started work this week by flying to Cleveland for 3 days.  Boo. But we survived and he got back last night after getting a speeding ticket just a few miles from home on his way back from the airport.  Double boo.  Poor guy.  So today is his first day of work here.  As of lunch time, it seemed to be going well!  The kids and I also went to a park playdate thing with people from church yesterday at a u-pick Berry Barn.  Eli picked us a pint of delicious strawberries and then we played at the playground for a bit and made some new friends.

We're enjoying getting to know everything here.  There's still lots to explore and learn, but we are getting there.  In the 2 weeks we've been here, I'd say the weather has been about 60-70% in the 60s/overcast/drizzly-off-and-on and 30-40% sunny and in the 70s.  It's definitely different June weather than I've experienced before, but it's really comfortable weather.  Sweatshirts in the morning, jeans and t-shirts in the afternoon.  Everyone says summer doesn't start until July and that August and September are when it gets hot.  We shall see!  We made a "Portland Bucket List" last weekend, so we're looking forward to getting out and doing lots of things this summer.  Stay tuned!

We're Here!

First off, today is our anniversary.  Eight years!  I can hardly believe it's been that long.  We're not doing anything too exciting today since we're still swimming in boxes and packing paper, but we're glad to be here and glad to be getting settled.  And don't pity us too much, Jeremy's company has taken very good care of us thus far - I didn't have to pack a single box, but I don't have any unpacking fairies on this end so we're busy this week!  Lots of things to come, but for now, here's a summary of our trip.

We...

• Drove over 2900 miles
• Drove through 10 states
• Saw 2 sisters, 2 brothers-in-law, 1 brother, 1 sister-in-law, 5 aunts, 4 uncles, 1 grandma, 11 cousins, 4 nephews and 3 nieces! (and some friends!)
• Bought 1 car
• Drove separately for 800 miles
• Stopped about 40 times on the side of the road for the boys to go to the bathroom - Connor officially completed his boys-pee-in-the-dirt-rite-of-passage
• Had only 1 pee-accident in the car (way to go Connor!)
• Stayed at 4 different hotels and at 2 different family members' houses
• Arrived in Oregon and said we WOULD do a trip like this again
• Unpacked for a few days and vowed we would NOT do a trip like this + a move again :)

It really was a success.  The trip went really well, the kids did amazingly well, especially considering how far we traveled, and if we didn't have to unpack a whole house on the other end, we'd probably do it again.  It was great to see so many wonderful people that we haven't seen in a long time.

Here are a few - er, a lot - of pictures from the move/trip.  More to come about Oregon later...

 The boys looking out at the river at our hotel in Pittsburgh the night before we left.

 Swimming!

 The giant moving truck maneuvering through all the cable lines.  That's Pittsburgh!  (And no, we in no way filled up that truck.  He was picking up multiple loads after us).

 Anna napping during the loading.

 Goodbye house!

 About 5 minutes after we finally hit the road.  Exhausted kids.  We drove 12 hours to Des Moines that night, arriving about 3am.  Yikes.

 Goodbye Pittsburgh!!!

 In front of Des Moines University about to get the tour from Sam. :)

 We got to spend an entire day in Des Moines with Heidi and Sam.  It was so fun to see them in their cute place and enjoy a day off from driving.  Eli pretty much worships Sam so he was thrilled to be there!

 Although he looks anything but thrilled in this picture!  Haha.

More swimming! :)

Sittin' poolside with this cutie-pie.

 Our caravan getting ready to take off for Idaho!  We knew we wanted to buy a 2nd car anyway, and this way we could get all our stuff that was in storage in Utah AND we didn't have to pay sales tax since we registered it in Oregon!  Woot! It was a busy 45 hours in Utah.  We bought a car, picked up our stuff, talked to our renters about selling our house, visited our old ward, and had some awesome family get-togethers.

 In Idaho - Jeremy with Connor and Sydney - fireworks with those two two-year-olds!

 Eli was in absolute cousin heaven with Russell.  They lived outside for a few days.  We were there for 2 days and 3 nights - a wonderful break!

I think my sis-in-law has some better ones of these, but here's Anna with her cousin Kamryn who is just 13 days younger.  Anna looks huge and bald!  Kamryn has a TON of dark hair.  So cute!

 A view of Mt. Hood as we drove along the Columbia River!

 Beautiful!

 Happy to be out of the car and eating our last meal out!

Sweet sleeping girl on the floor while we were unpacking.

And a picture from today.  So happy!  You can see our GREEN backyard through the back door behind her. :)  I'll put up more pictures of our house and yard when we get things under control around here...whenever that is...