Happy 9th birthday Aaron!

Aaron's birthday was celebrated over our memorial day camping trip on May 24, 2015. He wanted to have a mustache theme, so we did!  It was fun. Pictures from left to right, first row: mustache straws, and cupcakes. Second row: opening presents, and his birthday lunch at Izzy's in Newport, OR. Third row: Aaron with a cake decoration mustache, and more present opening.

This boy has grown a lot this year! Some highlights of his 8th year are:

~He earned his Wolf badge for cub scouts.

~He had his first piano recital

~He went on his first clamming trip with his Dad and Uncle Marc

~He had a fun time at his first cub scout camp

~A lot of fun cub scout activities like his first pinewood derby

Here are his 20 questions:

1. What is your favorite color? Blue

2. What is your favorite toy? Exploderz gun (he just got it for his birthday)

3. What is your favorite stuffed animal? Minecraft pig

4. What is your favorite thing to sleep with? A pillow

5. What is your favorite fruit? Star fruit

6. What is your favorite cereal? Captain Crunch

7. What is your favorite thing to eat for lunch? Trout (note we don't really ever eat this for lunch)

8. What is your favorite thing to eat for breakfast? Bacon

9. What is your favorite dessert? ice cream

10. What is your favorite drink? Dr. Pepper

11. What do you want to eat for your birthday dinner? Crab (and he did)

12. What is your favorite animal? fish

13. What is your favorite book? Minecraft chapter books

14. What is your favorite song? Dark lord funk (a Harry Potter parody)

15. What is your favorite game? Minecraft

16. What is your favorite TV show? Sarah Jane adventures

17. What is your favorite movie? Star Wars

18. What is your favorite thing to do outside? Shoot my Exploderz gun

19. Who is your best friend? Karl

20. What do you want to be when you grow up? Engineer

Happy Birthday to an awesome boy!  

Aaron's baptism--a year ago

In honor of his 9th birthday I am finally posting his special baptism day from a year ago--when he turned 8!  I realized as his 9th was approaching that I never got around to posting about this.

It's an important day, and one that deserves to be posted about, so I figured better late than never!

He had a joint baptism with his good friend Karl P. who have a birthday just about the same time.  For some reason we didn't get a picture of the two of them together!  Weird, and kinda sad.  That would have been a fun memory.  Oh well, we got some pictures with the family.  These are the best we got...

With Dad who baptized him...

With Grandpa...

All the boys...

And, our family...

Aaron's baptism: May 25, 2014

A very special day.

Old school

Remember the antenna?  Yep, we still use one!  We picked up this one at Costco yesterday.  No more rabbit ears, and trying to find the perfect angle to get PBS to work!  We don't have cable, but we like to watch things on the basic channels sometimes.  Much clearer now!

Mother's day weekend 2015

Aaron made this stamped card for me at cub scouts.  He was so excited to give it to me with a bag of candy.

On Saturday (yesterday) I wrote this:

We celebrated the first part of Mother's day today.  I was treated out to lunch with my family at The Cheesecake Factory.  It has been years since we went there!  I think the last time was when April was about 6 years old, and Aaron was a baby. It was delicious, but more than that I just loved every moment of being there with my kids and husband. After lunch we walked around the mall, and I found a stack of dresses to try on at JCPenney.  I picked my favorite one, and can't wait to wear it at church tomorrow.  I have to say I had lots of fun trying on dresses with April.  She found one too.  I'm thankful for a Hubby that likes to go shopping with us and pick out dresses.  I'm thankful for little boys that were mostly patient (but a little crazy too).  It was a fun start to a great Mother's day, and I even got all the laundry folded today so I don't have to look at the pile on Sunday!

But our fun really started on Friday afternoon...

We took the boat out for the first time this season.  It was a beautiful warm day, and Hubby took half the day off.

Alex finally got brave enough to get on the tube for the first time!  He loved it and didn't want to get off.

Alex getting ready to tube for the first time!

It was so relaxing out on the boat.  I might have been caught snoozing a few times.

It's so pretty in the middle of the lake...

 I am so blessed to be a mama to these kids.  It has been a wonderful and full weekend.  

Happy Mother's Day to all you great Mother's out there! 

Desiree

Canoe trip!

We have a Daddy that loves to canoe, so he took half a day off work one day recently to take a trip on the Tualatin river!  It was a peaceful afternoon.  The pictures say it all.

By Desiree

Fun Mother's day gift idea using dollar store items

I am helping in the littles class at our co-op, so I was trying to think of something for them to make or do that used flower arranging.  That's where this sweet little idea came from.  Then, I thought it would be even better if it could double as a Mother's day gift for their Mom's, so I found some old sour cream containers for the "pot."  They decorated the outside, and had fun poking the flowers into the green foam! I wish I could have gotten a picture of all the flower arrangements lined up when they were done.  They were so proud of their beautiful flowers.

Here are all the supplies I picked up at the dollar store (except for the plastic container, those are recycled).  Oh, and the tape is not from the dollar store, but you can use any tape you have on hand.  The butterfly stickers, flowers, green foam, and decorative butterflies all came from the dollar store though.

 I hot glued the green foam into the plastic so it wouldn't come out, and they were pretty stable.  I also clipped the flower bunches apart with wire cutters so they were individual flowers.  The kids just decorated the outside of the plastic with tape, and butterfly stickers. Although you could probably paint them instead, but I didn't want to deal with paint in the space we have the class.

Desiree

Tulip festival 2015

We didn't make it to the tulip fest last year, so I was so happy to go this year, and it was beautiful!  I loved taking pictures.  I haven't been picking up my camera as much lately, so it felt good to take some nice pictures again.

I love all the fields of color.  It's always amazing to me to see.

My little ham.  He was trying to smile, or something...

Such vibrant colors.  Aren't flowers amazing?

A little boy in the flowers, melt a momma's heart.

These red ones are so neat with the yellow edges.

He just loved posing for the pictures!

This is my all time favorite picture, ever.  I saw a friend post her kids doing this last year, and I remembered at the last minute.  It turned out so cute!

 Deep purple.  These are very pretty too.

I could not get a normal pose out of this boy!

Where's Aaron?!

I wanted to get good shots of all the kids, but this boy was too distracted since we went with our homeschool friends.  He just wanted to keep up with them.

I've been bringing this girl to the tulip fields pretty much every year since we moved here 10 years ago.  It's amazing how much she has grown! Wow.

Another one of my favorite shots...

She loves the pink tractor...

We took a ride back to the main area to play after looking at the flowers.  These are all our homeschool friends.

Aric pulling Alex in the cow...

I'm not too big yet!

He fit his whole body inside this clog.

Alex pulling his friend T.  We loved being there with such great friends.

It was nice to be back at the tulip fields this year. 

Desiree