Oregon Part 1 - Silver Creek

In late July we last minute headed west to Oregon for 10 days. There were a combination of reasons for the shortly planned trip, I'll name a few: Austin's parents were planning on moving Dental offices and Austin was wanting to help, my Grandpa was sick and in the hospital (he's home now after more than a month, thank goodness!), Austin's family from Southern Arizona was up visiting, Miranda was due to head back to college and won't get another break until Christmas, Andrew had a week break after taking the bar, Maisie was dying to see her cousins, oh and Oregon tap water. Our time was jam packed with family, but it felt good to see everyone we could. Sometimes visiting our home town becomes super stressful because we try to squeeze so much in and try to see as many people as possible, but this time we saw who we could and kind of left it at that. I was dying to stay a whole week more, but austin had to get back to work and we had to return the rental car.

So as our luck would have it we happened to visit during the hottest week of the summer. It was over 105 a handful of those days and let me tell you Oregon is not built for that kind of heat. It gets heavy and uncomfortable quick, but at least drinking copious amounts of water is a treat because the water tastes so good (am I right?). I was born and raised in the Northwest and I can count on one hand how many days were over 100 while growing up, but in this one week EVERY stinking day was crazy hot. It made coming back to our high desert climate very refreshing.

On one of our first days in town we decided to take the kids to Silver Creek Falls, where we were hoping would be a slightly cooler, but it was still hot. Too hot to hike that's for sure- especially with children. So we stayed by the creek portion of the park. The creek felt so good to wade around in (yay for melted glacier water!). Maisie had so much fun going chest deep into the water and turning over rocks in search of crawdads (no luck though). Then there was Ellie, who kept trying to dive in head first and give her Mama a heart attack. That little girl is fearless. She just goes and deals with the repercussions like a champ, even if its a nose full of water. I like that about her, but it's all fun and games until she ends up going to the ER with various broken bones or some other injury.

As you could tell, it was beautiful, but don't let the beauty of the cool lush forest fool you, it was HOT!

Maisie starts Kindergarten!!

First day of school pictures:

Her pictures in her classroom:



These were from early June when her teacher came over to our home to visit with Maisie.

So it happened. The day I have been dreading has come and gone. Maisie has been a full fledged Kindergartener for over a week now. I still find myself distraught by the passing of time, but Maisie is so excited to go to school every morning and that makes things much easier on me. She is so proud to tell me what she had learned about and the fun little songs and quirks of the classroom like "name on the paper, first thing" to the tune of "Shave and a haircut two bits". She has made some friends and she tells me about how she and her group of boys (figures) play "aliens" together at recess.

I look forward to my "jump hug" from her every day when I pick her up and Ellie, while she appreciates the quieter and low-key mornings, is always so excited to see her big sister after school is out.

Our days are busy now, but our family has worked into a nice rhythm. We feel closer to each other and use our time more wisely than before. While I still miss my Maisie Moo every morning, I know she's right where she needs to be and because of that I am happy. And have I mentioned proud? Because there aren't enough words to describe how proud I am of this little person who makes every one so happy.

Sister's Day

There's a show that Maisie likes on Netflix called "Stella and Sam"- it's actually a really cute show. Anyway, one of the episodes talked about "Sister's day". Maisie got so excited about the thought of Sister's day "is that even a real day?" she asked and after a quick google search, I told her that it was on August 2nd (at the time it was a few months away). She was bummed about waiting all that time, but after some reassurance that it would be here before she knew it, she became excited again.

Fast forward to August 2nd... Maisie woke up in the morning and gave Ellie a great big hug and snuggled in bed with her for a few minutes. When Maisie reminded me that it was Sister's day she sweetly asked "Does this mean we get breakfast in bed now?" I laughed so hard because OF COURSE she would assume that because Mother's and Father's day usually entails some kind of treat in bed. Part of me wishes I could go back and say that "of course it does!" and that I would have at least poured some cereal for them to enjoy while tucked in their covers and maybe going forward we will because why not? But instead I kindly explained to her that Sister's day is about celebrating your sister. That it's about doing something nice for Ellie and Ellie doing something nice for her. Maisie quickly turned her disappointment from the lack of breakfast in bed to thankfulness for her sister. It's very rare that Maisie is jealous of Ellie and I think she still thinks it's pretty cool to have a sibling and share her world with her. 

I just love these two sisters so much. My heart swelled with joy when we found out Ellie was a girl because of things like this. I love that they are already becoming the best friends they were destined to be. It's such an honor to see the way they love each other every day and I wouldn't trade it for all the riches in the world. Because of them (and Austin of course) I am the richest person alive.

First Birthday Shenanigans

A few pictures of Ellie from a little photo shoot we did to celebrate Ellie's first birthday and upcoming Sister's Day- I'll post on that soon.











A few more pictures of Ellie's birthday...

I love how lovingly Maisie watched Ellie open her gifts. Not an ounce of jealously, just happy to be celebrating her sister.

Maisie's special cupcake with "gold pixie dust!"

A picture from our birthday breakfast when we had a couple friends come over and celebrate the birthday baby.

It's still hard for me to believe my little baby, who in a lot of ways still seems so little and baby-like, is ONE. She adds a lot of action and smiles to our day and I couldn't have dreamed how seamlessly she came in to our little family. It's like there was always a space for her from the get-go. She was and is so easy to love and we are all still so smitten with our little Ellie bug.

I loved celebrating this little babe. We had originally planned a party with a bunch of friends and their kids, but it turned out that the weekend we had planned it for, EVERY ONE we knew was out of town, had sick kid(s), or some other plans. So we ended up just having a couple friends of ours come over for breakfast (thanks Caden and Kaitlin!). It was low key and very much Ellie's style. 

Even with how laid back it was, that didn't stop her from being spoiled by our families:

-Austin and I got her a Little Einstein's musical toy and a Hape wooden bench w/xylophone.

-Auntie Katie bought her a set of 8 Babylit books.

-Nana and Papa sent a gift card to Amazon so we bought her some cute shoes- which she needed badly.

-Grandma, Grandpa and Miranda got her a babydoll (which she lovingly carries all around the house), the book "If you give a dog a donut" +  the stuffed animal that goes with it and a poppity-pop. 

Now that Ellie's birthday is over, we have Austin's birthday next month and then starts our birthday drought... confused? Starting with my birthday we have a birthday every two months. March, May, July and September. Austin's mom pointed this out one day and followed the observation with "now you guys need to have a baby in November and another in January!" haha!

Cupcake Annihilation

On Ellie's birthday we picked out a special cupcake (ok two, one for Maisie of course) from The Cocoa Bean and let her go to town. I had no doubts that she would dive right in, but I didn't think she would eat the ENTIRE thing like she did. She didn't hesitate a single second and nearly inhaled the thing. Literally. No joke, we had to confiscate the cupcake to clear her nostrils of cream cheese frosting. She was more mad about us taking the cupcake away for the few seconds than she was about breathing in globs of the delicious thick frosting. Silly girl.

Like I said... inhaled it.

This is her sharing face. She was offering a lick of her sticky fingers.

Trying to eat the wrapper after obliterating the cupcake in a matter of minutes.

Ellie is 1!

Can you believe that Ellie is ONE already? I can't. I keep reminding myself that today is her birthday.  Our birthday plans are to just take it easy today (we will be doing a cupcake smash though) and then tomorrow we will have a handful of friends come by for a birthday breakfast.

In case you find yourself wondering all about Ellie, I made an info-graph* for her first birthday. It's packed with information about Ellie's first year and all of the things she has come to love so far.

*I have seen infographic charts for babies first birthdays on Pinterest and loved them, but they are expensive! So I decided to try my amateur hand at anything computer design-y and actually had a lot of fun learning some new tricks and hopefully will get better with more time and practice.