But I want to wear a tie too!

Over a year ago I found some little boy ties on clearance and picked them up for Isaiah, who promptly refused to ever wear them.  But a couple of weeks ago he suddenly took the tags off and declared he needed to wear one to church.  Last week Eliza wanted to wear one too so I let her because really, I care more if my kids are well-behaved at church than if they're dressed in a gender-appropriate manner.  Plus, there was that brief year in my junior high age that girls wearing ties was popular (not to mention a short stint as a tie-wearing hostess at Tony Roma's) so I understand that sometimes a girl just wants to wear a tie.  So that was last week.  This week Eliza made the mistake of asking Daddy (instead of Mommy) If she could wear a tie to church again.  Here is her response to Daddy's refusal:

You never know when the weather might take a turn for the worse....

Eliza insisted on wearing her snow hat to the grocery store the other day.  The other 80+ degree day.  I am so used to my children making a spectacle of us one way or another that I didn't even bother to try to talk her out of it.

Thursday Thrills

For the summer, a group of my friends are planning weekly "field trips" around town.  For my week we're going to go on a walking tour of some of the fountains and splash pads in downtown Portland.  Last week I took just my two kids on a test run to see if what I planned would actually work, since I've never visited any of the places before.

Silly faces riding the train (MAX) to Portland.

 Skidmore Fountain.

Salmon Street Springs.  I had been to this one before with some nieces and nephews.  It was Isaiah's favorite.

This is the Ira Keller fountain.  There are signs everywhere saying to stay out of the water.  But there were tons of kids in the water.  I ended up taking this one out of the final tour; it was a long walk to get to it and wasn't that fun to play in.

 Teacher's Fountain at Director Park was our last stop.  It's a new splash pad and I was pretty sure it would be the favorite.  Isaiah took off running and face planted in the shallow pool.  He was soaking wet and everyone who saw it gasped and watched this sad soggy boy run over to his mom.  So he changed into his dry clothes after spending all of 15 seconds in the best fountain.

We ate our lunch at Teacher's Fountain and then headed to the MAX station.  When our train came, we weren't allowed to board because for some reason that train was turning around.  So everyone got off the train and we all got on the next (supercrowded) one.  Right when we got on they announced that there was an "incident" in the tunnel and no trains could go through; we were all to be put on shuttle buses.  I looked at my 85-pound contraption of stroller/children/gear for a whole day out and just tried to keep my cheerful face on.  Fortunately the shuttle bus driver let me leave the kids and everything else in the stroller and he got us on the bus using the handicapped lift.  Thank goodness!  It would not have been fun to carry the stroller, the back seat of the stroller, both kids, and all of our stuff onto the bus (with over a hundred impatient people in line behind us.)  So it was a little more adventure than we'd planned for, but I still declare it a success!

Preschool Party

Here is Isaiah's preschool class at the beginning of the year.  Left to right is Isaiah, Kara Dickinson, Nolan Fisher, Emma Case, Kyron Carr, and Amber Gates.  This was his first year of preschool and we did a home preschool.  It was similar to Joy School.  We took turns teaching in our homes with a curriculum that was mailed to us.  Because I knew I would be moving, I took all of my turns teaching at the beginning so that no one would have to drive all the way out to our new home.  It was a busy six weeks, but also a lot of fun!  It has been funny to see the things they learn from being around other kids instead of just their family; they care more about what color their things are, they always want to be first, and they say things like "whatever!"

And here is a picture of the moms.  We thought it would be hilarious to pose ourselves the same way our kids were in the previous picture.  Mostly we just look weird.

The photo below shows them at year end.  Kyron was replaced partway through the year by Esther Trejo.  It was so fun to have a reason to go back to Hillsboro a couple times a week and see many of my "old friends" who are still current friends, just 20 minutes away  now.

Mother's Day

Here I am with my lovely little ones on Mother's Day.  I'm so glad to be their mom!

Another outfit I made for Eliza.  She's like having my own little ray of sunshine!

New furniture

Although we now have seating for seven in our living room, our children still only sit on us.

Here are some before and afters.  The old stuff is now in our front room.

A day at the splash pad

This is what my kids do when I say:  Okay, lean together and smile!

Fruit Loop

Sometimes I just add things to our calendar without mentioning them to Jerel.  The Fruit Loop was one of those, and this time he actually agreed to do it!  If you've never heard of it, it's near Mt. Hood and is a group of farms, wineries, etc. They have it all set up so you can drive from one to the next.  It's a much shorter trip if you're LDS because then you can skip all the wineries.  Anyway, we decided to give it a try.  Many of the farms and fruit stands don't open until later in the summer, but we knew with the kids we'd only make it to a few stops anyway.

 We ate at a fun little restaurant that had an electric train circling it the whole time.  That was Isaiah's favorite part.

 Just liked this picture of Eliza.

This farm stand was listed online as being open, and it sort of was.  They have a second-hand store and a bunch of jams for sale, but the advertised animals for petting were nowhere to be seen.  We did go to an alpaca farm and let the kids feed them.  Oh wait, what I meant was that we bought food for the kids to feed them and then the kids were too scared so then Jerel and I fed them, but then it was disgusting and germy having alpacas lick us so we just left the food there.  I picked out some alpaca yarn from their shop so I can make a little something for Eliza.

Enjoying some Tillamook ice cream before the drive home.