A Visit from Family

Last week we had the opportunity to have family come visit.  My dad, his wife Ruth and her daugher, Raquel, as well as my brother and his family came for 4 days to Oregon and played with us.  Because i' super lame and I forget my camera all the time, I have very few picture to show you.  So, I will just have to paint with my words their visit...
We tried to give them a true "Oregon experience" by taking them to some worthwhile places.  First was the beach.  We went to Oswald beach about an hour and a half a way from us, which in my opinion is the nicest beach that I have been to in Oregon.  It is a nice cove surrounded by a beautiful forest that has a sweet little water fall and lots of small sea creatures.  The only pictures I took are of Nate and Matt, although there were lots of family members there, just not in my pictures (because I am really lame).

My two favorite guys walking along the beach

Matt is actually terrified of the beach (biggest understatement of the year). So, as they were walking, Matt pretty much cried most of the way.

He spent most of his time far away from the water building "sand castles".

This would be one of his sand castles.  Notice the impressive architectural detail.

Adorable!

There were some really cool trees on the hike down to the beach.

On the way back home, Lydia was sad, so Matt held her hand. He is such a good big brother!

I should also mention that My aunt Karen came up with my dad and we were able to spend the day at the beach with her and her son Jason who lives in Portland, as well as his very nice girlfriend Julieanne.

Some other activities that we did with my family while they were here were berry picking (of course), canning strawberry jam that we made with our berries, having fun at Out of this World Pizza and lots of playing at the parks.  It was a really fun visit and we're glad that everyone was able to make the trip up to see us!  It's always really fun to see family since we live kind of far away.

Swimming Lessons

Now that Matt is 3 1/2 we decided that now is a good time to put him in a more structured activity so someone else can entertain him, where he can learn something new.  We enrolled him in the two week course for at the local aquatic center, where he goes Mon. through Fri. for a half an hour to swim.  He was really excited to go to the first lesson, but when he realized that it wasn't just playing with toys in the water, he decided he didn't want to do it anymore.  The second day he cried through his whole lesson.  Luckily his teachers are young and don't have any kids really patient and they worked with him a lot to help him be happy in the water.  After the third day he was pretty much loving swimming lessons.  We have only completed the first week and have one more week left to do, hopefully this week Matt can work on listening to his teachers instead of just wanting to start water fights with the girl next to him :)

He loves to bob up and down on the side of the pool, and that would be the little girl who he loves to splash. My children are classy.

Summer Goings On

Having Nate home for the summer has been a lot of fun.  It's been nice to have time together and lots of fun activities as a family.  Although, there are those times when Nate is a work and we have to be really creative how we spend our time so as to not get insanely bored!

So, we plan with dish soap, milk and food coloring and get really messy!

And make really cool bubbles

And have entertainment for an hour!

While Lulu watches and laughs at her brother :)

Having Nate home also means that I am able to go to the berry farms by myself and pick 9 lbs of berries to make jam.  

I love living in a place where I can go to a farm and pick such yummy fruit!  I love summer in Oregon!

Teeth!

Our sweet little Lydia is such an angel!  So, when she was having a hard time sleeping at night and not letting anyone but mom and dad hold her we knew something definitely was up. We knew she was teething, but it seemed liked it had been since she was 4 months old that she was teething.  She has always been drooly and chewed on her fingers nonstop, so we really weren't sure this time it was the real deal.  Luckily, for everyone's sake it was!  Within two days of each other, she had two teeth come in; one on top and one on bottom on the same side.

I always thought that I loved a toothless smile the best, but now seeing such a happy smile all the time with her little top tooth, I think I love that even more!  Seriously, adorable!  She has been so happy with her two teeth, especially since now she gets to eat so many new things: watermelon, banana (not pureed), apple pie, pretty much all of Matt's cracker snacks, just to name a few.  That's right, this little girl loves food, so anything that lets her try new foods is amazing!

Just because I know you all really wanted to see another picture of such an adorable baby!