What Matters Most

(Push pause on my music playlist first)

This about sums it up...

From a recent Baby Blues Comic:
(double click on the picture to make it bigger if it's too hard to read)

I think the mom is nursing the baby too. That makes it even better!

Just torturing our kids because we have nothing better to do

Friday night we decided to treat our children to a movie at the theater since we have never done this before. Mike has taken Nicholas to one movie in the theater and I took Zach to one movie in the theater. They were both 3 at the time. Ellen (Mike's mom) has taken both of them to several movies. We've heard good things about "Up" so since it was now at the cheap theater, we decided to go as a family. I knew David would struggle through it since it would be dark and loud, and he met my expectations. Brooke sat on either Mike's lap or mine and was shaking through the scary parts. Zach covered his eyes and kept saying, "I don't like this!" But Nicholas was CRYING and covering his eyes and begging us to take him home. Heck no, you WILL watch this movie!! It was all too scary and intense and just way too much for them to handle. At one point I took Nicholas, Brooke and David out of the theater until they could all calm down, and then they wanted to go back in. We did make it through the movie, and if you asked the kids, none of them enjoyed it. And Mike and I don't know whether to laugh or feel guilty for forcing them through this torture! I guess we won't be going back to the theater anytime soon!

Ha! Gotcha!

To prevent David from emptying all my bathroom cupboards each morning while I'm getting ready for the day (yes, I could put locks on the cupboards but I'm too lazy), I sat him on this stool and he just can't figure out how to get off it! It's pretty halarious that he's just "stuck" on the stool. So I gave him some hangers to play with and I can get ready for the day extra fast!

But alas, today he figured out how to get off the stool...

Holy Tomatoes, Batman!

I don't know if Robin ever said "Holy Tomatoes, Batman!" to Batman, but if he saw all the tomatoes I've been getting out of my garden, he would have said it!

Here is another big bowl of tomatoes I picked today. I bought only 1 tomato plant this year and then had 8 more tomato plants come up spontaneously from last year's tomatoes that were apparently left to rot on the ground.
Spaghetti, anyone?

How do you give a one-year-old a decent haircut?

You don't. You just shave it and be glad his hair grows quickly.

Kate's Birthday Date

Whenever Mike and I have a "getaway" without the kids we typically go to our favorite hotel on the beach. Earlier this year while camping with the kids Mike and I were reminiscing about how easy and relaxing it use to be when we went camping together before having kids. So with that in mind, we decided to go camping for our getaway for 2 nights and decided to go east instead of west. We ended up in a very small and secluded campsite in the Columbia River Gorge, Ainsworth State Park. We ventured on 2 hikes also. This first hike was to Horsetail Falls that had several waterfalls along the way:


The top of Oneonta Falls:

Top of Triple Falls:


The next day we hiked Eagle Creek (yep, Mike is in this picture, can you see him?):

The whole hike followed the creek. We hiked along this cliff, with the creek down below:

YIKES!

Punchbowl Falls:

Metlako Falls:

Very beautiful hikes, I highly recommend them!
Thank you Grandma and Terri for each watching 2 of our kids. It was a wonderful trip!