Wordless Wednesday: Llamas

 Birthday time in 1 week...

LEGO Harry Potter Castle

 ~This happened in June 2021. A special anniversary gift from Michele.~

I never shared about one of the best anniversary gifts I have ever received. Before our anniversary in June I mentioned that maybe we could get a bigger gift for each other this year because I really wanted the Harry Potter Castle LEGO set. Part of me was serious, and part of me knew that we probably shouldn't spend too much. 

Well a week after our anniversary Michele surprised me by stopping at a LEGO store while we were out and about as a family shopping. He told me to get the set. The kids were there and they were all surprised too. It was so fun to take that huge box out of the store! We've never purchased a set this big. I had fun building it over the next several weeks. I can't remember how long it took exactly, but it took a while!

They offered me a new one in the brown box from the back rather than the one on the shelf so it would be a box that was in perfect shape. We also got 3 free cars (for a deal/offer they had at that time). 

After taking it out of the brown box it has a regular LEGO box with a picture of the castle. It was getting pretty exciting to open up. 

The number of bags inside was pretty crazy. I needed to organize them so I could find them in an orderly fashion as I built.

 

So, first order of business was to put them in numerical order. That way I could put them in the box carefully in a way that I could just pull out the next bag.

There were 4 manuals! That's a lot of instructions!

Finally it was time to start building! I enjoyed every moment of building. 

Slowly, section by section it started coming together.

Seeing the details emerge as I was building was neat. This picture below is of the great hall.

It was finally finished! I didn't keep track of exactly when I finished, so I can't remember how long it took, but these pictures were taken in mid-August. So, I must have finished probably end of July sometime. Probably about a month of building time (in between a lot of life and fun summer activities).

Here's a tour of the inside:

What special gift this was. I am so thankful for a great husband!

Weekly Wrap-Up: The one with school pictures

Life this week...

We just had a nice long 4-day weekend and we're all sad it's over. I guess it's always nice to start a new week though. Not too much happened over the weekend. Just a lot of relaxing at home, getting things done.

Kids' School this week...

I received the digital images from Alex's first school pictures this week. They turned out pretty good. He chose to wear his Taco Bell sweatshirt/hoodie for the picture. I did ask him to remember to take it off. Oh well, it really is a good representation of him this school year anyway. I had the choice of backgrounds, and I chose these 3 for my digital images. I'm having a hard time deciding which one is best. I think the gray one is probably my favorite with the school year on it.

Alexander, 5th grade

 

Mom-school this week...

I started doing piano lessons this week for myself online with Hoffman Academy. I am really enjoying them. I love that I can do it anytime from home. I've been trying to teach myself the piano since I was a kid. I remember using a Nintendo game and a keyboard when I was a girl. I have had a desire to learn for a long time. It's amazing how that knowledge from when I was a kid doing piano on the Nintendo is actually still there and helping now. I think it was this "game" called the Miracle Piano System (click the link to see it on Wikipedia).

Places we're going and people we're seeing...

On Thursday (since Alex had no school) Alex had a Nerf Wars camp at his parkour gym. It was a 2-hour block of playing Nerf games with other kids his age. He was super excited, but when I came back he was so bummed because his Nerf gun had not worked very well the whole time. He pretty much was sitting for most of the time he said. This was a new gun that he just bought especially for this day, so it shouldn't have had any problems. When we got home we checked it out and it shot our Nerf darts fine. We think there might have been some things that might have caused it to not shoot very well. Such a bummer though! Now we know to send him with 2 in case one isn't playing nice.

 

On Tuesday we went bowling for $2.00 Twosday at Langer's. This is the place we went to many times over the summer for kid's free bowling. It was our first time back since summer. Still a lot of fun! I didn't get any pictures of bowling, but I did get a few pictures of him playing some arcade games.

I enjoy the indoor fire they have. I can sit there while Alex plays. Although he wanted me to come and play with him quite a bit this time.

Alex and I tried a new food place called Dave's Hot Chicken before his Nerf War camp. The spice of the chicken was great, but then I flicked a piece of the seasoning in my eye. I thought I was going to be blind. It was so painful. Lesson learned: spicy chicken belongs in the mouth, not the eye. It was pretty tasty though. Alex wasn't a fan of the dry seasoning.

My favorite thing this week was... 

 Alex wanted to make me hot cocoa with peppermint one evening. He kept saying he wanted to do something for me, but it was a surprise. Then he spilled the beans when I asked why we had to get some peppermint candy canes earlier in the day. Such a sweet kid!

 

My kids' favorite thing this week was...

Playing with this Magic Penny Magnet Kit. It was a gift for Aaron last Christmas, but Aaron decided he didn't want it anymore so he brought it out for us to play with. Alex was so excited to finally get to try it out. He really wanted to try it out when Aaron opened it last Christmas. Now was finally his chance!

 

This kit has a whole booklet of fun magnetic experiments, but of course he just wanted to make some cool designs. Fun fact: Most US pennies and US coins are NOT magnetic! The coins in this are just fake ones. 

Things I'm working on...

I am currently finding all the pieces to and rebuilding this LEGO set. It's Benny's Spaceship, Spaceship, Spaceship set. I spent most of the weekend looking through all of our gray bin for all the gray pieces. I'm tired of looking at gray, but the good news is I am almost done with gray! Only a few more colors to go!

 

Something I accomplished...

Writing this post! I have been wanting to blog all week, but just didn't make the time. I am excited to finally be writing a post again!

Movies/TV we watched... 

We watched The Christmas Chronicles on Netflix on Sunday evening for pizza night. That's a fun movie.

Games we played...

Alex and I played SkipBo. I also played a new one: Rack-O, with Aric. We also put together the Harry Potter LEGO game to play later next week.

       

I'm grateful for...

Lunch dates with friends. 

A weekend with the girls

My friend Kim and I have been talking about doing a girls' weekend for a few years. Like since before the pandemic. It finally happened last weekend! We thought about doing the coast, but decided to do something different and went to the mountains. Mt. Hood to be exact. We rented a cabin at Mt. Hood RV Village Resort for 2 nights and had some fun exploring!

When we arrived on Friday night it was almost 8 and we were kinda hungry. Our first order of business was to find something close and still open. We found the Barlow Trail Roadhouse just a few miles up the road. It was a cute little restaurant with some fun Oregon mountains decor.

On Saturday morning we decided we'd head out after a breakfast at the Dragonfly Cafe located right at the resort. All the food we had this whole trip was pretty good. These restaurants off Hwy 26 might not look like much, but they sure had some good eats. Here is my pulled pork omelet that I had for breakfast at the Dragonfly cafe, and their homemade bread/toast was just absolutely the best.

The outside of our cabin. I snapped a picture during one of the few dry moments. It was pretty rainy all weekend, but we enjoyed having this little home away from home to keep warm and dry in.We played some Train dominoes, watched some Harry Potter and Christmas Cookie bake offs, and ate lots of junk food. 

As part of the resort there was also a lodge to go hang out in, a swimming pool and hot tub, and a game room. We went to play table tennis at one point, but we were sad to find that the ping pong ball had been crushed on the floor. So, we never got to do that. Here's Kimmy ready to go to Multnomah Falls:

Saturday morning after breakfast we drove about 45 minutes to Multnomah Falls. It turned out to be a good time with long breaks in the rain. We stayed fairly dry and when we were done it started up again.

There were lots of people. To be expected on a Saturday for sure.

My phone camera definitely doesn't do this beautiful scene justice.

A picture with my girl. When we arrived back at the cabin it was time to go check out the pool. It was pouring rain. It sure was chilly too. As you can see here with April in her big coat and her swimsuit with the pouring rain.

Saturday night we tried out the ZigZag Inn restaurant. Some of the same mountain themed decor as the other restaurant. We thought the antler lights were pretty cool (my camera doesn't catch them very well). 

I didn't get pictures of all the places we ate. We also went to a Mexican food place called Chicali Cantina. It was pretty delicious, and the decor was so fun. I had my first Shirley Temple drink that I've had since I was a kid. I remembered why I loved that drink so much. I also learned from Kim what they're made of to have a true classic Shirley Temple drink: ginger ale, grenadine syrup, and maraschino cherries. Such a fun non-alcoholic drink, and I never knew how it was made until now! 

Sunday morning it was time to check out and go home. To start the morning we decided to have some breakfast and try a hike hoping it wouldn't rain on us too hard. We decided to do breakfast at the Dragonfly Cafe again because the other place we had in mind didn't have a place to sit down (it was just a bakery). April found a short hike for us to try that was just off the Hwy. It was a beautiful hike but there was a pretty good elevation gain which means both Kim and I didn't make it. April could have gone all the way to the top, but I told her I wasn't at that level right now. Looks like I need to get in shape!

On our way home we stopped at Joe's donuts in Sandy. Such a delicious way to end our trip! 

That wraps up this adventure!