2 Brothers and a Mom

Last week went by so fast! Lot's of playing outside... lots of eating... in fact we have now resigned to having TWO dinners every night. One is "Quinny" dinner - as soon as I get in the door he announces "I'm hungry, pick me up!" so I make dinner. Quinn eats, Ronin and I nibble. Around 7 Quinn is hungry again, and this time so is Ronin. So we fix dinner #2. A couple of evenings last week Quinn was extra grumpy and tired - I find it kind of amusing to discover what things will cause a break down. Example: a piece of chicken fell out of his pita sandwhich - he screamed "IT FELL OUT!!!!!!" and proceeded to cry until I "fixed" it again. He drank his brothers water and a few drops got on his foot "I'M SOAKED! DRY ME OFF!!! I'M WET!!!!" and lately when food falls off his plate onto the breakfast bar it's cause for screaming too. Although when the cat scratches him or he falls down there's no tears or even acknowledgement that anything happened. I'm amused.

I had to buy a huge bottle of bubbles because the boys love their bubble-guns so much.

At least they gave up on hitting each other with sticks for the time being.

I got the kiddie pool out last week- Ronin went to the neighbors house to go swimming in a real pool, but Quinn and I enjoyed the tiny pool just as much. I love these action shots - he kept making me say "ready, set, go!" so he could jump in and splash me.

Ronin coming back from swimming

Last week was the fair! We got to see llamas, cows, goats, rabbits, chickens, even Guinea pigs, which the boys got to brush. Of course they want one now- the owner showed them how you can brush them backwards and they 'oink' for you. Actually I kind of want one now too... No, just say NO to new pets...

Brushing the pig

Yay rides!

There was a pirate ship with a "pirate" and his parrots at the fair, if you held out a dollar, one of the birds will fly to you to take the dollar and put it in the tip jar. Ronin thought it was pretty amazing.

Very pushy cow

Hungry goats

We got to eat fair food, see animals, go on rides, play a couple games - the boys wanted to do more but I ran out of money quickly :( I think I will take them to Oaks Park another time where it's cheaper to ride and play games. ooh, and there's roller skating too!

I brought my yoga mat and DVD's home from my locker at work. Ronin really wanted to do some yoga last week.

Getting into plank pose...

Quinn grabbed a bulb of garlic from the pantry and decided to carry it around one evening. He tried biting into it but didn't care for all the skin.

One morning I came into work and found this on my monitor.

I still don't know who left it, but I thought it was nice. Although Robert said it was probably my lack of deodorant making me "strong"... ha ha

Taking Kiera for a walk

On one of our walks we found this. weird.

I'm going to guess this was Chocolate milk...

Painting the letter "Q"

Painting/glittering the letter "R"

I tried making cake pops... apparently you aren't supposed to use frosting. :/

Over the weekend Alesha and I dyed each others hair dark, the boys got their hair cut and we went on a few hikes and did a little Geo Caching. I only had to carry Quinn for a few feet to the car because he said his legs didn't work any more. haha We found snail shells, mushrooms, and squirrels on our hikes. Ronin even found a half eaten crawdad claw. ew.

Brandee's dogs igloo

I tried to find the trail that went around "Round Lake" by Lacamas Lake but instead we found another park called Fallen Leaf Lake, the trails were empty of people, so that was kind of nice.

Trying to get a nice photo... haha

Quinn wanted to drag my purse up the hill for some reason.

We found this cool log foot bridge - I image the ground gets a little swampy during the other seasons... but there's a trail right above so I'm not sure what it's purpose is.

Cheese!

We went to Moulton Falls with Alesha later that day. I didn't realize it was so close. Very busy but we got lucky enough to grab a parking spot as someone was leaving. It smelled so good out there- Quinn said it smelled like grapefruit. haha

Where's his foot? I didn't even get the words "don't!" out before this happened.

Grabbing rocks or those snail things...

Alesha making plans

Sunday we went Geo Caching -- we only found ONE this time. The super small ones are way too hard for us to find, but this was pretty clever - the hint was to look for the garden gnome, we were looking at the ground, he was in a tree.

The Geo Cache "treasure"! They swapped out goodies.

Whew, I took a lot of pictures! We had fun and the boys are really liking hiking - it will be fun to take them on day-hikes when they get older-- once Quinn stops asking me to carry him when his legs are tired. :/

Ronin and I ordered a book about all the world religions, it's kind of interesting to read and tell him about other places in the world. I'm learning a lot too just looking up answers to his questions. He's very bright, and his concept of the world is still pretty small, but he wants to know more about what "other" people do and how they live, I love that. We were going to make a solar system model last week but the craft store doesn't sell foam balls individually and I didn't want to buy a ton - so we are going to make them out of paper mache next week... which is going to be super messy, but it will look pretty cool.

Quinn is a little night-prankster lately. One night after I put him to bed I was walking down the hall to my room to get something and he was just standing at the end of the hall with his blanket over his head. He scared the crap out of me! When I let out a yelp, he started giggling! Silly guy. A couple nights ago everyone was in bed and I had just shut my eyes when I heard his glow-worm music turn on. It kept getting louder for some reason, and when I opened my eyes Quinn was standing right in front of me with his glow-worm. I think he likes creeping me out! haha

That's about it... the boys are with their dad again this week. And summers almost over. I'm ready for it to be over. I love the sunshine, but I love lazy rainy days too.

Lots of love,

This last week we took a day-trip to Astoria, Oregon to go exploring. We started out at the Bow Picker - it was raining for our whole drive until we stopped here for lunch. It's an old fishing boat they turned into a place to order fish and chips- which just happens to be the best fish I think I've ever eaten! The boys loved it too, which says a lot since they were dipping it in ketchup. yuck. After lunch we went to the Maritime Museum. I didn't think they'd like it very much but they got to touch everything and board the U.S.S. Columbia docked right outside in the river.

Right outside the museum - Ronin is holding his breath like he's under water. haha

After the museum we headed to Fort Stevens. Since it had rained earlier that day there weren't a lot of people doing the touristy things, which was lucky for us, we had the place to ourselves. The boys loved this place, but Quinn got a little scared when we went down into the darker concrete rooms, he called it the "spooky place" after we left there. haha Looking at the photo below it does look a bit spooky and ominous...

After Fort Stevens we headed to Fort Clatsop, and lucky us, they were having a "Kids Day" there where the boys got to fill out an activity book to earn their Junior Ranger badges and make pressed flower bookmarks. Quinn got his face painted with a snake too.

Hanging out with Sacajawea

Filling out their Jr. Ranger books

This old guy gave a fire demonstration... he also fell off the bench. haha

On our way home, barely out of Astoria

Also exciting news - Ronin asked me to take his training wheels off his bike. I was a little unsure at first, but I took them off, he fell three times and then he was riding his bike without training wheels! He's growing up! I'm pretty proud that he wanted to do it on his own and did it. Now the neighbor kids have created a formidable biker gang...

Quinn is pretty proud of his brother - and he's trying to get away with something here...

His first ride without the extra wheels- I think he's concentrating really hard.

BFF's - Bella and Ronin

We had a fun weekend with Nana visiting. We got to have a BBQ and do some visiting :)

Us goofing around before Daddy comes to pick them up.

They called this a brother-hamburger... seems fitting

And now they are gone for the week. :( Ronin had a little harder time leaving me this time, I'm not sure why. It makes me sad when he gets sad so I told him to have a super-fun time and not to worry about me because I have plenty to do until they come home again.

Quinny's new favorite song is apparently "Pumped up Kisses" (Pumped up Kicks), and we had to listen and dance to it over and over on Sunday before they left. I like Pumped up Kisses better than Kicks ;)

Some random pictures: