Spend Overs, Honey Harvest and Pumpkin Patch

Piper had a spend over with her friend Hazel a few weeks ago. They had so much fun and it was super cute to kind of hear them chatting way, so excited to be staying up late.  It was 9:30pm before they finally fell asleep, which is pretty late for Piper's usual 7:30pm bedtime.  At around 9:00pm when I went up to check on them, Piper asked "if it was midnight?"    

Hazel and Piper on their first spend over at 17 months

Oh man I love these boys!  They are so darn cute in these hand me down PJ's of Pipers.  Jett screamed at first, but finally came around to the ballerina's and Calvin had no problems with his pink monkeys.  I don't think I'll ever get over how cool I think it is to have twins.  Watching their differences and interactions together is so interesting and fun.  I love seeing them play together.  Piper was around friends her own age a lot, but she always seemed disinterested in the other kids and pretty much did her own thing.  These buddies are always together and totally play together, they chase each other, bounce a ball back and forth, zoom cars, look at books together or play with their own toys, but somewhat near each other.  How lucky to be a buddy!  

Holy honey!  Our bees were busy this year.  It is so fun having the hive in the front yard and watching them busily buzzing away and returning with heavy loads of pollen on their legs.  It is a beautiful thing to watch and such a cool hobby.  Not to mention the successful harvest of 67 lbs of honey this year.  Go team bees!  Yum!

We had the extra help of my mom in town for the honey harvest this year which was a huge help to have her keep the boys busy, as it is an all day project to extract the honey, filter out the floating wax and dead bees and of course fill all the jars.  Piper's favorite part is being the official honey licker which is an important role to keep a tidy work space while filling the jars.

Speaking of my mom...Grandma Linda is officially retired from her 25+ years working at the Seattle Public Library.  Yay! She now has the freedom to come down for several weeks at a time.   We have a great connection with the landlord of our old rental 2 blocks away and we can rent the apartment above the garage as our official Grandma headquarters.  This works well for the longer stays and makes for a fun special treat for Piper to have spend over's with Grandma.

We love all the extra help with the kids and of course they love all the extra love and special attention from Grandma.  And there is the added bonus of my mom constantly helping to clean, wash dishes, run to the grocery store and fold laundry.  My house has never been so tidy!  =-)  

Our play group all met out at the pumpkin patch last Friday.  What a beautiful day full of fun.  We got to do a hay ride and feed the cows, try to catch chickens and pet bunnies and pigs, and play in the hay maze, tube slides and obstacle course.  After all that we forgot to pick a pumpkin from the field!
  

Feeding the cows was an exciting event, they basically chased the tractor we were riding on until we stopped.  Piper and Jett loved feeding the cows, Calvin was not so sure and kept a tight hold on Grandma.

With a day like this, I can officially accept that summer is gone, but only because our Fall has been so nice.  I even snuck in paddle board outing during nap time, what a beautiful day.  Thanks Grandma!

McKensie River Camping

Summer is coming to a close, but we are trying to squeeze in as much fun as we can before the cold weather takes over. In the last two weeks we have chalked up more lake days, mountain biking, and even swimming in the river. Then the end of last week the weather predicted to get into the 30's at night. There were a few days where it was windy and quite chilly out during the day. Fall is looming, but we didn't let it stop us from camping last weekend on the McKenzie river with some friends and their kids. What a fun time we had in this beautiful area on the "other side" of the mountains. It is funny to get back on the green side of the world, with ferns and moss and thick forests. It is so refreshing and brings back memories of how the world is supposed to look at least from my perspective growing up in Seattle. I am used to the high desert and sunny skies now, but it felt good to breath in the lush green forest for the weekend.

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The Donnellys and Maxwells made for great camping partners. Owen, Josh, Hazel, Piper, Calvin and Jett all played well together. Riding bikes, building fairy houses, roasting marshmallows, hide and seek in the RV, climbing rocks = fun, fun, fun and more fun.

And the adults got to take turns mountain biking the McKensie river trail. Yay for mountain biking!

Love this picture of Piper headed to school with her four braids!

Family Visitors,More camping & 9+ years

Grandma Alice and Aunt Kathryn came to visit last week, which was perfect timing as Piper's school was closed. With both being retired teachers, they kept the kids busy with lots of art projects and book reading and even cookie making. They went to parks, played in the yard and woke up early every morning with the kids. What a nice break with twice the help feeding the kids, getting them dressed, changing diapers, filling water bottles etc...

Then the extra special gift that Alice and Kathryn gave us was a night away for our 9th anniversary! We chose to take the camper up to Elk Lake and enjoyed a simple evening of peaceful paddleboarding and dinner at the lodge. Then slept in until 9:30am before heading back to the lodge for a lazy breakfast and adventurous hike around Elk Lake. Just the two of us, it felt so great and EASY! We love our kids, but the freedom of a kid-less 24 hours is sure rejuvenating. It was fun reminiscing the last 9 years and trying to remember what we used to do before our kids dominated our every move. We hiked. Every weekend we would pick a different hike in this book of hikes we had and just go! We covered a lot of ground in those days, we still get out just not to the same level as back then. We snuck into movies, 2 at a time on those especially dark rainy winter afternoons! Shhhhhh don't tell! =-) We traveled. There was one year we were gone four months out of the year. Not all at once, but 2 weeks here, 10 days there, a month somewhere else. Ahhhh flexibility.

I feel so lucky to have had the past 9 + years side by side with my best friend, soul mate and man I want to spend the rest of my life with. I knew from the moment we became a pair that my life would be more interesting/exciting/scary/amazing than I could have ever imagined on my own. We live outside the box, and I love it. I am so thankful for the path we have been on, our life is good. I am also excited to see where our path takes us as we change together and choose together as our life journey moves on. Cheers to our marriage as the love has deepened every year, may the connection we feel be infinite +1!

After the anniversary bliss Gma Alice and Aunt Kathryn drove the kids up to camp before heading back to catch their flight back to Arizona. It felt great to know that their time with the kids went smooth and they loved every minute of the grand kid time too. Thank you Alice and Kathryn for your great visit and all the love you poured into our children!

The rest of the weekend was spent camping with the Kuhn Family. Brandi and Josh were some of our first friends in Bend, so it was fun to continue the memory making times! The kids all got along great and had fun swimming and paddleboarding too.

Just before we were packing up to head home Dave, Piper, Josh, Kaya and Zoie were playing on the floating dock. Doing flips, handstands etc, when a voice from a near by boat came shouting over to Dave with something sarcastic. Ha, it was my Uncle Jack and Aunt Joanne visiting Bend from Seattle for the weekend. Kind of crazy to run into them up at a random lake (there are hundreds of lakes along the Cascade Lake Highway), but it was fun to see them and chat it up for a little bit.



Our friend Jeremy brought his newly acquired sailboat and the guys took it out for a wild ride one windy morning. They were having lots of fun until a pin came loose and the sail ripped as it plunged into the water. Luckily they were close to shore and able to paddle back to the boat launch.

We also had a visit from Grandpa Richard for several days in which we packed in lots of our favorite Bend activities to show off how we live. We rode bikes, went to parks, walked to restaurants and Grandpa Richard even got to try out the paddleboard! It was a great visit, thanks for visiting, hopefully next time Grammy can come too!