Our little Edwin was 5 months old....3 months ago. And I took a bunch of photos of him. He was an awesome sleeper back then and very mellow and delightful. The whole crawling thing has made him a little more wild these days. And the fact that he climbs up in his bed now makes him not the greatest sleeper. He's actually still pretty good...I just got spoiled for the first 7.5 months of his life. So here's our Edwin.
And Charlie was helping me out with the photos by making Edwin smile but then wanted to be in some photos with him.
Which then reminded me of Charlie's 5 month photos...
Charlie can get the biggest laughs and smiles out of Edwin and it's fun to watch, except I'm just waiting for Charlie to figure out how to be more gentle.
And here are Miles 5 month photos for comparison...
Remember when it was warm and the days were long? It seems like a lifetime ago. But here I am, blogging about it. We kept with tradition by going to the parade on my Grandma's street and watching the fireworks show at our High School.
Baby's First 4th!
Getting ready for the parade!
We added a new stop to our tradition by making the walk up to my green Grandma's house. She hadn't met Edwin yet, and after all, he is named after her father.
It was a pretty hot day so we made lots of stops.
We looked like we had our own parade going down the street.
We made it to Grandma's house and the boys immediately requested Uncle Gary's cool marble game.
And Grandma got some Edwin snuggles.
My Green Grandma (Marion Virginia Lovett Roemhildt) Her Father's
name is Ralph Edwin Lovett. And here is a little story of how Edwin got his name...When we were realizing that we needed to
come up with another baby boy name we had looked at our family trees to
see if any family names popped out at us. I started making a list of
anything that seemed like it would make a decent name. Family names
included Walter, Edwin, William, Coleman, Murphy...(there were many more
but those were the ones I wrote down, there were also many other names
on our list that weren't family names) I read the list to Max and we
both agreed that the names that stood out to us most were Walter and
Edwin. A couple weeks later, out of the blue Max says...What do you
think of the name Edwin?...it was almost as if he had forgotten our
whole conversation (he probably had) and had come up with the idea all
on his own. haha! Then at some point we must have been talking about
names with our boys because one night as I was putting them to bed we
were talking about naming our baby and Charlie says "por favor can we
name the baby Edwin, por favor?" At that moment, I felt a bond with the
baby that I hadn't felt before (and that our boys had a bond with him)
and was almost certain that his name would be Edwin. I was not certain
with our older boys until they had been born and Edwin had never been on
our name list during previous pregnancies so it was weird that I felt
so strongly that our baby would be called Edwin. I strongly believe that
my ancestors know my babies before they are sent to me and that there
is some reason that he was to be called Edwin, I have an incredible
story of how I received my name that involved many of my ancestors. I will share that sometime on here or in person. SO the point is, we wanted
to learn more about my Great Grandpa Ralph Edwin Lovett. My grandma
spoke so highly of him. She said he was a lawyer but he didn't love that
work and she thinks that maybe he had been pressured by family to do
that profession. Many of his cases were divorces and he had a hard time
seeing that happen to families. She said that he had the most beautiful
full head of silver hair as he aged and that he was a loving father and
husband.
Here he is pictured with his wife, Marion Henrietta Davies.
Anyway, it was a great visit and it is always fun to feel connected to the past generations.
We
then made our way back to Red Grandma's house. (It was about 2 miles
round trip.) They were starting some fireworks, so we watched a bit then
loaded up our stroller and got Charlie ready for his little business.
Max helped Charlie set up a little glowstick business. They
made his little tray together and Charlie purchased all the glow sticks
with his own money. He went around yelling "glow sticks for sale" At
first he was just walking and yelling and not really aware of people
that were interested but he started to figure out to watch for people
that were trying to get his attention and just from walking around the
high school for 10 minutes, he sold tons of glowsticks and made more
money than his original investment (and he still has quite a few
glowsticks to sell) He was super proud and had lots of practice talking
to people and giving people change. He said, half of his money is for
his mission and half is for fun things like a hot air balloon ride.
After some glowstick sales, we found our seat, busted out some snacks and got ready to watch the fireworks.
I didn't even try to take photos of fireworks, I just snuggled with my boys and enjoyed them!
A year ago, Max participated in a 24 hour scavenger hunt/good deed/competition call Questival in Sandiago as part of his 30th birthday Celebration!
They were so close to winning last year, and the Grand Prize was supposedly a trip for your whole team to South or Central America. it's all a little nebulous but I think this year it was money towards airline tickets.The basic idea is that you have a huge list of tasks you can accomplish for points and you take photos/videos and submit them through the app.
So, this year Questival came to Portland! And since they were so close to winning last year, they knew they could do much better in their home town. Max and Nathan and Kerri were on board. The other couple that did it with them in San Diego was out of town so they couldn't participate.
So we made a new dream team and my mom volunteered to take on all three
of my kids. Our friends Heather and Brad joined the team and it was
perfect. We were totally serious about winning. We had planning
meetings, maps, designating assignments and everything. Anyway...The
event started at 7pm on a Friday evening. Everybody participating met at
Sellwood park for some pre-event activities and the kickoff. we were
then set free for the next 24 hours to complete as many tasks as possible and rack up points. the trick is that points are not enough...your submissions need to be unique and creative because you are also graded by your peers. Here are some highlights from our submissions.
Do a team wall sit...
Have someone on your team do 50 consecutive push ups.
Go roller skating/blading and hold a limbo contest
Give flowers to a stranger...this turned out to be the best!
Do a blind taste test! Another great one!
Make a campfire scented cologne commercial
Hold a team plank
"Dance on the ceiling, I don't care how" were the instructions for this one.
Video a teammate throwing a doughnut hole as fast as they can at another teammate's face (Protect your eyes!).
Make your own grape juice by grape stomping, and then drink it.
Decorate your face like a cake. Frosting, sprinkles, whip cream, etc. Get a teammate to taste your face. Watch it...it's so creepy!
Use kitchenware to perform a boyband song of your choosing, modern or classic.
As a team play hard boiled egg roulette. Make sure to clean up the mess, no littering.
Ok, there's a story here. Max had pulled out a bowl of eggs from our fridge and assumed they were hard boiled. I thought the bowl of eggs on the counter were brought by someone else so I didn't question anything...this is the result.
Do your best gymnastics trick on a trampoline that you have permission
to use. The rest of your team needs to hold up judging point cards.
Heather's art skills making a Llama pancake!
And if that isn't enough of a glimpse for you...here is the link to all of our submissions...You should seriously look at it. if for nothing else, to get a glimpse of how many things we were able to do in 24 hours! http://questivalteams.cotopaxi.com/teampage?id=6R5BbtWaZt
We ended the event and instead of going home to sleep we made our way to get ice cream at salt & straw. then we went home where i pumped milk (haha, I'm pretty sure it is because of this event that i dried up but that is another story) We were able to sleep so well since my mom had the boys for another night and after getting a good rest we were all pumped to do it again next year. Oh yeah, and after all the points were calculated...we ended up taking 3rd place...out of 340 teams. Pretty good but we didn't win a trip...we did however win a Cotopaxi gift card. Hurrah!
