We had a tiny bit of snow last week.
Other parts of the city and nearby cities are getting much more than us. Apparently we live in some sort of weather free zone or something.
This was the first we got all winter and it lasted until about noon.
Which is just fine by me.
We enjoyed a rare clear winter night last week and got out the telescope for the kiddos.
Do you see the moon's reflection on Ellen's eye?
Dave took this one. Pretty sweet, huh?
The kids thought this was absolutely fascinating.
(Dave took these pictures by the way)
"Whatchyou lookin at??"
It's been sunny around here the last few days. Incredibly beautifully sunny, but still pretty cold at the same time.
I think Brennan's favorite place to be is outside, so we took some food out and joined him.
One of the kids favorite backyard activities is "test the integrity of the deck by pounding on it with a croquet mallet". Good good fun.
Isaiah's favorite way to stay warm - put on the muscles.
The look I got when I said it was time to go in - "Are you talking to ME?"
We drove up a little ways to Fort Stevens which we read had the oldest shipwreck on the Oregon Coast.
Ellen and I took off to go investigate.
The boys came out for a minute and felt the wind that had picked up and decided the car had a completely satisfactory view.
Ellen and I went down and got a few good shots and then headed back since my toes were getting cold. (there's no way I was putting wet shoes back on)
Ellen climbed the dunes on the way back to the car.
Next we drove on toward Astoria - Brennan got sick of the sun on his face.
In Astoria we took a little walk on a pier and were told by the kind folks at the Visitor center that there was no "Goonies" beach there - only the house. So we had some ice cream and headed home.
Ellen's become a full blown reader! I'm rather proud of her.
We finally came home had some delicious Papa Murphy's and some tasty and delicious Claim Jumper chocolate cake.
It was a pretty darn good birthday.
I have a new power cord! Yay! So you get coast pictures. Yay! :)
We started off at Seaside.
which had a huuuuge long beachy sandy shore.
Dave thought he'd take a nice beach nap.
Isaiah thought he'd play the drums.
Ellen working on her name in the sand.
The tide was waaaay out and some sort of animal had had a large tasty crab and sand dollar meal.
We kept hollering "look! here's one! here's another one!" and then Ellen found her own treasure - "Look! here's a bag!!!"
It was fairly warm, but not quite warm enough for me to feel comfortable taking off jackets.
Brennan, of course, loved that there was so much water. He kept walking into it. Over and over and over. When he first walked into about a half inch of water he got so excited he laid down on his belly (in his jacket and shoes) and just laughed and waved his arms in it.
I love this one with Isaiah jumping. I didn't even notice it at first cause I was looking at Brennan walk out into the water. And looking at someone else's big bum on my body.
I finally took off his shoes and let him walk into the water and the very first wave knocked him right over. He was not pleased.
poor little guy.
Next years Christmas card.
We left fairly quickly after Brennan's dunking. Luckily I had thought to bring everyone (but me) a change of clothes, so we got dry and drove off toward the next beach.
Last night, the minute we sat down after putting the kids to bed when Dave was all set to watch his basketball game and I was planning to post things on craigslist (2009 is the year of purging and organizing around here), we heard a loud boom and all the lights went out. The kids *freaked* which was a little interesting to me since they were all already in bed and the lights were already off in their room. I guess that night light gives off a lot of light.
We got them all up, lit some candles, put them all back to bed,
and I read recipe books and planned this years garden by candlelight while Dave tracked down batteries to listen to the rest of the game by radio.
And then we went to bed crazy early. Candlelight makes me sleepy.
Toward the end of last week the kids started talking about school again. Isaiah asked if watching a certain movie counted as his math for that day. He went into the school room and got out some workbooks and got busy with them. Hmmmmm, actually it seems it was just Isaiah talking about school.
At any rate, yesterday I realized it was the last day Dave was going to be around to help me lift heavy things and I got busy moving and assembling furniture to get the school room a little closer to my vision for it.
I didn't finish till the kids had been asleep for a long time, so when they woke up this morning they were pretty stoked on it. Mostly at this point its just filled with tables to work (space to spread out!!) and bookcases of all our schooly stuff.
I planned to have Brennan working at the little table, but I somehow forgot he hates to be by himself.
So the kids made some room for him.
The kids are super stoked with it. They can see and access all kinds of puzzles and games that have been hard to remember to work on before. Ellen told me today that she never wanted to leave the school room.
Still on my list for this room is new paint, locating and painting white some thrift store chairs, one more bookcase and getting the PC set up in there. We were close to bringing it up last night, but ran into the minor no-phone-jack-for-the-internet snag.
I also brought up a lot of the kids arty/crafty stuff and we spent a good chunk of the afternoon drawing and painting. I loooove this Ed Emberley fingerprint book. We had to return it to the library today, but I seriously cannot wait to check it out again. We even went and got a non-toxic stamp pad so as soon as we check it out again we can stamp fingerprint drawings all day.
How cute is this little frog?? So cute.
I got a little into it.
And when the kids discovered I'd brought up the real paint, well, lets just say they went on a little painting spree.
Today Dave made us cinnamon rolls. They were super tasty.
Today we threw nuts outside for the squirrels who have been having to fight off the crows while they search for the food they hid all over the yard.
Today Ellen and I got out for our first walk in a looong time. She thought it was super fun to hold onto my hand and slide down the ice patches.
Today Brennan carefully placed a raisin his nose.
Today Dave,
and the kids made puzzles.
pretty fun.
Today Brennan perfected his smile pose.
Today Brennan carefully placed a second raisin up his nose. It was far enough up that Dave had to get it with tweezers while I held his arms still.
Today Brennan has been prohibited from eating any more raisins.
Today the kids got super excited when we took them to Chuck E Cheese.
Today was pretty darn good.
