Utah Trip

We had a surprise trip to Utah last week and although it was great to see everyone, but unfortunatly we all had to get together to attend my grandpa's funeral. He has been battling cancer for over five years now so we all knew that his time was coming, but it still came too soon. I love my grandpa and will miss him a lot, but I am glad for the time I got to spend with him and that he got a chance to meet my children. I tried to explain to Alyssa what was going on, buy I don't think she really understood, but maybe she did. It was great seeing my parents because they have been in Jerusalem and I didn't know when we would be able to see them next, and I got to meet my new nephew Will which was really fun. Alyssa and Megan enjoyed being chased by grandpa and playing with Tyler. I think Tyler liked Megan best because he called her doggy and a dog is his favorite animal. It was also great to see Caleb's brothers and their families. Anyway, it was a sad reason to get together but really great to see everyone.

Freakin' Spiders

I love all the vegetation that is in Portland, but I have found a huge downside to it...spiders! There are like these flying spiders here and I hate them. They fly from one tree to another or from a tree to a bush and they go across the sidewalks so when you are walking you walk right into the web and then you feel creepy crawly all over all the time. Sometimes they even attatch to the car from one of the trees, just overnight, and I will reach for the handle to open the car and my hand will be covered with web, I just hate it. Then they also infest the park and create webs in all the corners of the play equipment and I stuck my face in one the other day trying to catch Megan from falling, or megan sticks her hands in the web. Anyway, I don't think they are deadly or anything, but they are big and they can fly and I just hate them.

Madam Megan

Megan is just so cute I thought I would put up some of the latest. Here is Megan with her first corn on the cob.
Alyssa never wore hats when she was Megans age so I think she is really cute in hats.

I usually don't like black and white picuters, but I thought that these looked better in black and white.

5th Anniversary

For our anniversary we were able to get away from the kids for a whole night!! It was the first time away overnight in over two years so we were really excited. We went to the coast to a town called Seaside and it was really fun. We walked along the beach and there were sand dollars everywhere which I thought was really cool because I've never seen real sand dollars in nature before, but Caleb was not as impressed. Then we went and saw Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince which was alright, but not great, but we love to go to movies and havn't been able to go in a long time so it was nice to go. Then we walked downtown where there were tons of shops and candy stores so we got some taffy and fudge. We also ate at a good seafood place.

The next day we went to Astoria where such films as The Goonies and parts of Twilight have been filmed. They mostly just used some of the old homes and some of the beaches, but it was still fun to see. We wanted to find the old shack from the Goonies, but I guess that they built it for the movie, so it isn't there. We went up to the top of the hill and climed up this tower to the highest point of the area (I'm in the red shirt at the bottom).

It was a great view from the top and we found out that Astoria was the first town founded beyond the Rocky Mountains and was the end of the Lewis and Clark trail. It was a great anniversary and I loved spending time with Caleb, it has been a great five years and I can't wait for more.

Camping-Again

I'm not sure exactly where we were camping, but it was a couple hours south of Portland. We went to meet up with another of Caleb's brothers Scott and his wife Sarah and their kids. Although it was domestic camping, we were maybe 100 yards from the interstate and there was a playground right next to our camp site, we still had a lot of fun.

Another reason that we went down south was for Caleb's family reunion. It was fun to see Aunts, Uncles and Cousins that I have never met before and just to hand out and catch up with them. We also don't get to see Caleb's grandma very often so it was nice to spend time with her and have her see the grandkids.

Megan is cute and she knows it.

Here is Megan and Noah hanging out in the playpen while we got the fire going.

Alyssa and Julia had a lot of fun together.

Alyssa admires the fire.

Camping-Silver Lake, Washington

We went camping with Anna, Caleb's parents, Calebs brother Brandon and wife Nancy and their kids, it was a lot of fun. We didn't realize until we got to our camp site that it was a fishing resort so there was no beach to go swiming on and Alyssa didn't understand that the life jacket would make you float so she didn't do much swimming.
Since we counldn't swim we rented some paddle boats and had a good time with those until we got close to the dock and almost got hit my some boats. They were yelling at me to move, but I don't know how many of you have gone in paddle boats but they are hard to get to go in the right directions, but no one died so it is okay (I just got embarased.)

Hanging out on the docks.

We did have some fishing pools but we didn't catch anything worth keeping.

We backed Brandon's truck up to the campsite and everyone piled in to hang out.

Our Family

So I realized the other day that we literally have only 3 pictures of the 4 of us together so I decdied that I wanted a nice picture for the wall because I was pregnant for our last family photo shoot so Megan wasn't in the pictures. This is the best one we got, although Megan is pointing at the ducks in the picture, but at least everyone else is smiling.

We went to a park right by our house which is really pretty and has a small lake right in the middle of it (or a big pond depending on how you want to look at it).

I have yet to master the skills of photoshop, but when I do I'll lighten up the picture a little bit. It was really dark under the tree canopy because it was the one cloudy day in like two weeks.

Megan usually likes Caleb fine, but today she decided that she wanted mommy, oh well.

Grandma Bell made matching dresses for the girls, which turned out really cute, but Megan was just done taking pictures.

Megan finally calmed down when they started playing in the rocks.