Tillamook: 4 years later

2008

2012

Mother-Daughter look alikes?

Okay, she doesn't really look a bit like me.  Instead I just dress her in my clothes.  On the right is a picture of Jerel & I on our honeymoon in 2006.  On the left is Eliza wearing her new mini-dress made from my old shirt.  It looks SO cute on her!  This is one of those pieces of clothes that I've kept around long after it stopped fitting me because I just love the obnoxious brightness of it.  I've always loved bright patterns, and after marrying the ever-subdued Jerel I love them even more.  I don't do it to torture him, although it probably does.  You will all be pleased to know that the hot orange terry cloth sweatsuit I had that matched this shirt has long since been given to Goodwill (shortly after Jerel declared he would not leave the house with me if I were wearing it.)  So see, I do compromise on occasion.

Week 14

Here we are in front of our new home.  No big changes outside this week, although it looks like they're getting ready to pour concrete on the bottom steps as well as the sidewalk.

 Here is the kitchen so far.  We selected "Not-so-knotty Alder" cabinets so they have some of those distress marks on them (is that what they're called?  It's like they have gouges in them, but on purpose).  We love that they all have a "soft close" feature which means that even if you try to slam the drawer or door shut, it will close gently and silently.  This is the view from the living room area.  There's an island in the center which will have the stove top (gas for now, hopefully switching to induction soon); the big space on the left is for the refrigerator.  To the right of that is a doorway into the large pantry.  Then you can see another cabinet space which is for the oven & microwave. The sink will be under the window (as is our neighbor's sink, and the houses are so close I'm pretty sure if we both open our windows we'll be able to reach out and hold hands).  To the right of that is the dishwasher.      And then over where Isaiah's standing is the dining area.

This is from the kitchen looking into the living room.  Fireplace in center, built in cabinetry on either side.  TV will be mounted above the fireplace (out of kids reach!  finally!)

The Brightons are brightening our home this week!

For their first night in Oregon we took the Brighton family (Jerel's sister & family) to our favorite pizza place, Apizza Scholls, in Portland.  Whenever we've gone we always have to wait forever (30+ minutes, which is forever when you have a 1- and a 3-year-old).  This time because we had a larger group we were able to make a reservation.  We even got a semi-separate area in the back of the restaurant, which was nice because the folks there tend to drink a lot and get a tad noisy; we like to produce our own screaming children noise instead.  Anyway, the pizza was delicious, the company delightful, and the fact that it all worked out (we didn't think we'd have time to go there at all) made it just perfect!

The Brightons have arrived; half the flat of blackberries were consumed within 24 hours.  I made a blackberry tart for Saturday night.  Today I used most of the rest of them for a blackberry cobbler.  Both desserts were, of course, delicious (thanks to the blackberries).

Isaiah, Ellie, Isaac, Jocelyn, and Eliza in our new home.  They are the first ones to have a tour of the inside and were appropriately impressed; having just recently had a home built themselves they even had relevant questions to ask.  Building a home is like giving birth in that there are so many little details that you feel the need to tell, but no one is usually interested in hearing them.  So it was fun to walk them through and tell them about the different selections we'd made.

Fun?

At some point will this stop being fun for my kids?  Zay doesn't do it anymore, but it's Eliza's favorite thing lately.  And making her help clean it up doesn't do any good because she does it all wrong.  I'm not so uptight that my kids' books have to be arranged according to the Dewey Decimal System, but I don't think it's too much to ask for her to put them away in the order of the colors of the rainbow, whichever color is most prominent on the spine of the book; I could even forgive some confusion with that obscure "indigo" color, but her haphazard methods just don't cut it for me.  So frustrating!

A couple of random photos

Jerel was out of town a couple week ago and I tried to think of some fun things for the kids to do.  We had a   Movie Night the first night (and then each night after that).  The kids were so excited!  We brought down all the pillows from the whole house and spread them out to lay on.  Then we all got in our pajamas, popped some popcorn, and then Zay chose the movie.  I'm glad he's into reading, but Meet the Phonics didn't make for the riveting adventure I'd been hoping for.  We also had a special treat:  Pudding!  My kids have never had it before and actually didn't seem to like it all that much.  They'd sort of lick at the spoon but not really eat it. It was the best kind of treat--they felt special but didn't really consume any sugar!   

So Eliza makes the funniest face when she's laying down and trying to get up.  This is only like half-way there--her lower lip stretches out so far and she makes cute little grunts as if making noise will help her sit up on her own.  I'm still hoping to capture a better shot of it someday.  

Pioneer Day Party

We had a pioneer day playdate at our house.  It is funny to talk about Pioneer Day outside of Utah.  Most people are like "Pioneer Day?  Oh, is that coming up?"  It's not really a big to-do around here.  In fact it's not really a to-do at all.  Anyway, I whipped up some little aprons for all the kids (correction:  I missed a voicemail letting me know 3 of the kids were coming (who I thought weren't coming) so those 3 didn't get aprons.  Oops.)  So they had aprons and then we made these silly little yarn dolls.  Do they look like lame blobs of yarn in the picture?  Oh ya, that's what they looked like in real life too.  And it was too hard for the kids to do so the moms had to do it.  And then the kids didn't really like them anyway.  *Sigh* things don't always work out in the real world the same way they work out in my head.  But that's okay, the kids had fun playing with each other and I even got most of them (we're missing 2-year-old Charity and 4-month-old Isaac in this picture) to get together for a picture.  These girls are all in our ward, left to right we have Evelyn (I think she's about 10 months?), Ellie (a week older than Eliza), Emma (3), Esther (almost 3), Isaiah (barely 3), Eliza (20 months), and Raquel (12 months).  Have I mentioned I really don't want to leave our ward?