A Bowl of Freshly Picked Strawberries

We have a bumper crop of Strawberries this year, probably 300+ ripening on the vine, and more flowers yet to become strawberries. Yesterday, the first "big" harvest happened. The boys and I went out and picked probably around 40 large ripe strawberries off the vine! I had to memorialize it with a picture because I knew that they would be gone in a matter of minutes.

Here they are in all their freshly washed glory:

They were consumed with great relish, within 5 minutes.

A neighbor boy exclaimed, in between bites: " You have food growing in your backyard??!!!" and later, "These are the yummiest strawberries I have ever tasted!"

My Newest Creation

Juli, a lady in my ward, commissioned me to do a picture (of herself and son Jacob) as a surprise for her husband, for Father's Day. There is kind of a cool story behind it all.

Years ago, there was a picture, in one of the church magazines, that her husband loved. He kept it with him, and even had it before he met Juli. It was of a mother and son (in the same pose as the below picture). He loved the interaction between mother and son, in the picture, and wanted to marry someone that would be that kind of mother. Years later, after he had married Juli, he told her that she was that kind of mother. What a cute guy! Anyway, he has that old picture framed somewhere.

So, after seeing what I can do, she thought it would be really neat if she had me do a replica of that picture, but with her son and herself as the subjects. I thought that it was a great idea. She was in a rush though, and wanted it by this weekend, but she didn't get the picture to me until a few days ago!!! Yikes! (They are moving up to Washington next week, so that is why she needed it sooner than Father's Day.) It is a good thing that I can whip these things out relatively fast, but even still, the house is now officially a wreck from neglect. Joe came home yesterday and said "Sheesh, things really get bad around the house, when you are working on a project". ...... Duh.

Here it is, my latest piece:

We interrupt this regularly scheduled posting for an announcement.......

Here ye, Here ye: Kaelan is now in a big boy bed...........

Today, we went from this:

To this:

Because of this:

But, now we have to deal with this:At least it isn't as far of a fall for him...


We are all set up,
now, for the test run.....
Will he stay in his bed for a nap???

I snuck in to find out.....

Check!!
All systems go!

California Here I come….

Our little family took off for a fun 1o day Memorial “Day” vacation on May 21st. It was a much anticipated break from real life. We were so glad to be free from all our worries for a while.

The posts on this vacation will be a series of blogs for each special activity. I am starting with the drive down, just because. Normally, I gloss over this part, but I thought, “you know, the drive down to the Bay Area is pretty amazing”. It definitely deserves a few pictures and a blog. So here goes, for those of you that have never made the trek, now you know what you are missing….or not. :-)

The boys were actually really excited to be driving down in the Enclave. I guess I spoil them, or spoil me, however you want to look at it! ;-). A 10 hour drive isn’t so bad when you have computers/games, movies, books and yummy food to snack on. They weren’t even grumpy when we woke them up at 5:30am to get going.

Here they are enjoying Mickey “D’s” food and a Movie. (Yes it really was cramped in there. We had everything for camping included with our bags.)

Kaelan really loves movies, so he was content kicking back and zoning out the entire time, even got in a long nap.

Total Zone out pictures:

Joe, doing his thing:

The Beautiful drive down:

The I-5 corridor in Oregon is so amazing. I never got bored looking out the window. Here are just a few shots of what you see out the windshield. One can’t beat driving through that!

Cool little Farm on a hill in south central Oregon:

Just had to get a picture with a Semi, because what is a road trip with out mass encounters with Semi trucks and their sometimes psychotic drivers!!

The I-5 Corridor in N. California:

Volcano Route:

Mt. Baker? (I can’t remember)

Mt. Shasta:

So cool to drive right up to all the volcanoes.

Shasta Lake:

You drive over it on a bridge, so cool. It was not as low as the last time we drive through, so I guess the snowpack had been melting quite a bit recently!

The best part of the drive down?

A happy, content baby!!

And, of course……..

Arriving at your destination!!

Yay for grandma’s house!

Wild June Storm

Yesterday, we had a really amazing storm in Portland! It was so crazy. Sunny and in the 80's one minute, then torrential rains and tree breaking windstorms the next.

I wanted to share some of the wild pictures from yesterday:

These two show the sunshine turning to black clouds. It was so strange. It made it feel like it was 9 o'clock at night all of a sudden.
(all of these pictures were taken yesterday in Portland)

The boys loved the lighting and thunder. There were some magnificent lightning strikes. I didn't capture these, but they were featured on Oregon live, from readers around Portland:

It was so loud that it felt like you were outside in it, the rain came down so hard that it flooded the backyard in minutes. The boys ran out in the rain to play because it was still in the 80's and warm rain. Even KK in his nakey bottom half. (only after the lightning part was over)


The craziest thing happened to Joe on the way home from work. This on-ramp to the 84 that you see below, is the one Joe was taking to come home yesterday. He came upon this tree falling accident just after it had happened. The cars were waiting for the light to turn green and the tree fell on two, just in front of him. This lady's car took the brunt of it, here it is almost cleaned up, but when Joe was there it was still on top of the cars, and the people were okay, getting out of their cars. The cars behind him (including Joe) had to drive to the far left, under the tree top, in fact the first two cars broke off some major branches as they drove under. Joe said that is was so nice that they sacrificed their cars for him! This poor lady had to wait forever, until Trimet could free her car.
And that was our little excitement yesterday!!

Freezing time..

If only life could be like a photograph and freeze time every once in a while so you could take a good look at yourself and see what needs fixing. Wouldn't that be nice? You could really study yourself from the outside and make improvements along the way.

I don't think that's what the boys had in mind when they wanted me to take these photographs, but it's what came time mind as I was freezing them in free fall.

I am almost FREE!!!

It's Potty Time....

Let's eat, drink....



And Drink....

And make Pee Pee!!

We have started the exodus to being a diaper free family this week! A few weeks ago, when I looked at my schedule for the summer, I realized that the next two weeks will be the only time I will have, in months, for a good solid potty training session. We are doing the "3 day Potty Training" in interest of time.

I have been prepping KK for weeks. We have read potty stories, got out the potty to play sit on (with clothes on), watched internet potty clips for kids, and talked it up big time.

We started yesterday. You pretty much give them their favorite drinks and salty snacks, and watch them pee 50 times a day! Practice makes perfect right??? Part of this plan is for them to go completely naked for the 3 days you are training them. So this is what could be seen around our house yesterday:

Kaelan has been loving being able to run around naked. He thinks it's the best thing ever. Yesterday he peed in the potty 3 times, and had one accident. Pretty good for the first day. But that was mom coaching him and racing him to the potty when he felt like he had to go.

Today has been SO different. It really clicked. We went on the potty 2 times the usual mom "coached" way and then the next time I discovered him peeing in his potty all on his own! He has gone at least 8 or 9 times on his potty by himself!! I don't even have to ask him to go, he does it all on his own!! WOW! What a surprise. I guess this 3 day potty training stuff really does work! Of course, there have been a couple of mishaps where I have found pee half inside and half outside, but only because he shifts on the seat and the pee starts arcing over the top of the potty onto the floor. Pretty good for a first timer! There has been one accident when he was too busy playing with his cars to walk the 2 feet over to his potty, but he was a "good boy" and helped clean it up right away.

YES!
I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.......................
We are almost diaper free!!!