Overnight to Bend

I had to have a troublesome mole removed on Friday, and, as there's no dermatologist in our small town, we had an excellent excuse to make a trip to Bend!  We really love Bend, but, unfortunately, it's a little over two hours away so we don't get there as often as we'd like.  This time we stayed in a hotel downtown and had such a good time!  I got to do lots of shopping, we visited lots of parks, we walked around downtown a bunch, and ate a lot of good food.  Bend is such a great city.  It's so clean and well-maintained, and since there's a fancy ski resort not far from there the town has lots of good restaurants and shopping.  The Deschutes River runs right through the town, too.  It's beautiful!  It's always hard for me to come home from a weekend there.

I had to go straight to the doctor's office when we arrived on Friday, so Phil took the boys to a park while I was being hacked away at.  When I called him to be picked up, he sounded quite frazzled.  Apparently, everything was going fine until Jackson stepped in some dog poo at the park.  Phil took both boys into the bathroom to rinse off Jackson's shoe, which also went fine, until Jackson accidentally activated the hand dryer.  It was really loud, and Jackson freaked out.  He started crying hysterically, which made Emmett cry, too!  So Phil had to carry both screaming/crying boys back to the car and load them up to come get me.  Luckily, he was a good sport about it.  Later in the weekend we went back to the same park and Phil took Jackson into the bathroom to go potty.  Phil said when they got in there J kept saying, "Dryer scawy (scary).  I not cry.  I not cry!".  And he was a big boy and didn't cry!  :)

Here are some pictures from our dinner on Friday night.  We're getting really good at being super fast when we go out to eat.

Since we ate so fast, there was a bunch of time left after dinner before bedtime.  We took the boys to a park near downtown and they had a blast.  

The park was right next to the river.  So pretty!

This is Emmett caught in the act of "showing his muscles".  It's the funniest thing - he strains and shakes and groans and gets all red in the face.  We love it!

After the park, we walked around downtown for a little while.  The weather was beautiful.  

And nothing says happiness like waking up in the morning and being able to walk to Starbucks and enjoy your coffee outside in cool weather.  The boys had fun running up and down the sidewalk while Phil and I sipped.  Here's the best picture I was able to get of the boys together.  For some reason Jackson squints his eyes sometimes when we ask him to smile.  :)

And then later we visited another park before lunch.  I think the boys would live at a park if we let them.  

Here's Phil and J waiting to be seated for lunch at the Deschutes Brewery... YUM!

Everyone slept suprisingly well in the hotel room, except for Phil and me.  I thought for sure Emmett would be up all night so I tossed and turned waiting to hear him, and Phil slept in the bed with Jackson and had a knee in his back all night.  :)  The boys never made a peep, though!  Oh, how we wish Bend was just a little bit closer... we'd be there every weekend!  :)

Belated Anniversary Post :)

It's hard to believe that 14 years ago (gasp!) this was happening....

That's me in the white stuffing my face with pizza (and looking HOT!).  And that's my band-trip roommate, Darla, drinking a soda.  This is one of Phil's pictures from his days in the Marching Chiefs at FSU.  If you'll notice, Darla is centered in the picture and I'm just barely in the frame.  That's because Phil didn't even know me then!  We were on a band trip to the Sugar Bowl game (FSU vs. Ohio State) in 1996, and Phil "liked" Darla on that trip.  After the game he invited her down to his hotel room (which he shared with three other guys) to eat pizza, and she brought me along.  I knew that no guys there were interested in me, so I proceeded to eat my weight in pizza and watch TV while Phil and Darla flirted.  HA!!  Well, lucky for me, their relationship didn't last that long, and two years later Phil finally noticed me!  I just had to work my way up the Marching Chiefs social ladder.  :)

And the rest is history!  :)  Almost three years after that we were married, and nine years later we're still happy as ever with 2-1/3 beautiful babies!!  I am so very blessed... Phil is pretty much the best husband and father anyone could wish for.  We went out for a dinner date on our actual anniversary.  With two young kiddos and no family around, that's pretty much the max amount of time we're able to be alone together these days.  After briefly weighing our options for "fine dining" in this small town (Italian, sushi, or steak), we settled on sushi.  It was quite yummy. Thanks, Phil, for choosing me and making me so happy!!!  I love you!

Playing Together

The boys have recently figured out how much fun their little push wagon is when the sides are off.  Emmett climbs in and Jackson pushes him around the house.  It's so great to see them playing together like this.  J is getting more and more loving to E, and there are some moments of quiet playtime together.  Of course, we still have moments of conflict, but things are getting better!

I know Jackson looks skinny in these pictures, but he just had his 3-year doctor's appointment and he's in the 50th percentile for weight and the 75th for height.  So he's growing great!  :)

I love when they play together nicely!!  Here they are with two new battery-powered trains that we bought them at TJ Maxx...

And here's just a cute picture of Jackson and Phil.  Phil spiked J's hair up all crazy after his bath.  It was really long, but he got a haircut yesterday.

Trolley Ride

There is a trolley that runs through our little downtown and every time we are out and about downtown the boys love to point out the trolley and wave to it.  So, my friend and I decided the other day to take our boys and ride the trolley.  I'm calling it a trolley, but actually it's just a bus that is made to look like a trolley.  But the boys didn't notice.  :)  It was only $1 per person to ride and the driver played a recording on the ride that described some of the older buildings downtown and their history.  We didn't listen to too much of that because we were otherwise occupied, but it was still a fun little trip.  Jackson was pretty much good as gold on the ride, but Emmett was a total squirmy worm.  He sat still on my lap for about five minutes and then wanted to get down and run up and down the aisle.  I wouldn't let him do that, so there was quite a bit of wrestling between the two of us.  He is SO active!!

Here are the boys before we left.  I'm not sure why Emmett is pointing... I think maybe I asked him where the trolley was.  Or we tried to get everyone to yell, "Trolley!" and E just pointed.

Trying to keep Jackson in the picture...

My sweet, good boy sitting nicely on the trolley...

Capturing one of Emmett's rare still moments.  Notice he doesn't look too happy!  :)

Our Weekend: Chores and Water Fun

We actually had a busy, productive weekend for once!  It's been hard for me to blog lately because we haven't been doing much of anything, but after this weekend I actually have some things to talk about!  On Saturday Phil and I spent almost the entire day (9-5) cleaning out and organizing our garage.  We have been meaning to do this for the entire two years we've lived here and finally got around to it.  We knew it was going to be an overwhelming job and it was hard to get started, but we feel so much better now that it's done!  We threw away and gave away a whole bunch of stuff, moved some things around, hung some things up on the wall, and I went through about 20 plastic bins of teaching stuff that had been taking up one huge wall in the garage.  I still have about 8 plastic bins of books that I'm saving for the boys when they get older, but I think getting rid of about 12 bins full of stuff is pretty good!  I threw a bunch of things away, but I did set aside a few things that I'm going to donate to a school.  Right now I don't plan on ever going back to teaching, and even if I did I'd probably want to buy new things anyway.  Here are a few pics of the "new" garage... it may not look that great to you, but trust me... it's a huge difference to us!  This is Phil's "supply" wall...

This is the wall that used to have all of my teaching bins against it.  Now they're in a small corner.  We still have a few things to get rid of over here... like boxes of teaching posters against the fridge and a garbage can that needs emptying.  :)

And the boys now have parking spots for their vehicles...

On Sunday I had planned on just relaxing since Phil and I were pretty dead after Saturday, but Phil suggested that we go to Medford.  I never pass up an opportunity to visit civilization, so off we went!  We decided to do some fun things with the boys this time instead of our usual routine of visiting every store we don't have in our town.  We planned on going to a train park and a little splash park.  We went to the splash park first and the boys had so much fun there that we stayed longer and nixed the train park.  It was almost 100 degrees in Medford, so the water at the splash park felt really nice.  Emmett loved it from the get-go, but Jackson, of course, took a little while to warm up to the water.

Here's Jackson sitting back and watching while Emmett runs into the water...

We're there five minutes andddd..... Emmett's completely soaked!

We took a playground break for a few minutes, but boy, it was HOT!

Maybe he got hot running on the playground, maybe he was there long enough to see other kids having fun.  Whatever it was, after our playground break Jackson got brave and started running into the water area.  He never got fully wet, but he did have a blast running through the mist of the fountains and trying to touch the water.  

Love the faces in these next pictures...

Emmett hears an airplane overhead...

It was a fun time!  Here are two short videos of the water fun...