The ultimate photo dump.

On Sunday night, when we were doing our planning Max let out a sigh and said, Man, we did a lot this week, let's not do that again." This last week we were constantly busy whether it was different outings, church responsibilities, car shopping, or having fun with family. I don't think I want to make an individual post for each event so this is where I will do a photo and story dump to get the memories out there!
And I'll also throw in some events from beyond this last week that somehow got lost in our busyness.

The day before mother's day, Brent and Lisa were in town so we decided to spend the morning walking the trails of Tryon Creek State Park. It was a beautiful overcast but warm morning.

The moment we got on the trail the kids were running!

They only stopped to explore, sticks, slugs, or interesting stumps

It's great having a big cousin to help you out (and occasionally knock you down)

I love the green that is  everywhere! 

I love that Charlie has so many cousins close to his age that he gets to grow up with. Some of my best friends growing up have been my cousins!

And my runner is off again!

early last week we got to have Charlie's best friend Madeleine stay with us for a couple of days while her parents were at the hospital pushing out her baby sister. We knew it would be a bit of a challenge as I'm still learning to have 2 kids but Kerri and Corbrett are wonderful friends of ours and Madeleiene is most comfortable around us and we love her so it seemed appropriate. We watched a lot of TV and Madeleine and CHarlie fought over who could go potty while taking off their pants all while I was nursing Miles and having a hard time breaking up their fight but we survived. (And when I say they are best friends, that doesn't mean they are without their 2-year-old disputes) We would do it again if needed. And then the next day after Madeleine was home with her family I realized having 2 kids was easy and I feel like i've been a better mother since. Anyway...here are some pictures of Charlie and Madeleine.

These first couple of photos are from a family night obstacle course we did a couple weeks ago.

 Max gave her a fancy braid! 

She was visiting us on memorial day so we took her with us for a BBQ at my grandma's house. Charlie and Madeleine had fun running around and hugging.

Until Charlie knocked her down and there was some crying.  

He pushed her into the bushes!

And these are photos of Miles on Memorial day

It was fun to spend time with family and have Madeleine with us. We are sad they are moving in a week!


Next topic...car shopping. We were working with a mechanic to price out some electrical repairs on our car. When we got the final quote for the repairs, it ended up being higher than the worth of our car so we decided we wanted to sell our car and get what money we could for it, then buy a car that would last us a long time. We liked the idea of getting something a little bigger that could fit another person in the back along with our two carseats. We started shopping on craigslist and weren't liking what we were seeing so we started looking at dealerships. With it being the last week of the month and Max having great salesman skills we were pretty sure that we could work a deal from a dealership. We started looking around and eventually found an amazing deal on a Toyota Rav 4. We have been wanting a Toyota because of how long they last and their great resale value. We have been looking at Rav 4s for a couple years now but weren't ready to buy one. With the deal we found, we realized it was actually in our budget. Long story short...we got one and we are very excited about it.

We are excited for some road trips now!

Also that same weekend, on Friday, my brother's family came into town for Miles' baby blessing. That will be its own blog post. They came in town on Friday night just in time for them to babysit our boys while Max and I went to a concert. Max's boss's mom had purchased tickets to a James Taylor concert but wasn't able to use them and somehow Max and I inherited them. I wasn't very familiar with his music but it was still a good time. He was a great musician and we had a great time holding hands and dancing! That was our second out of the house date without two boys. We feel pretty lucky for the wonderful people that have taken such great care of our boys while Max and I are able to enjoy dating.


Can anyone tell what's going on in this amazingly clear photo?


Next, randomly there was a deer in the yard. Yes, we live in a big city and it was kind of exciting to look out and see her. It was 10 am and for some reason, Charlie was still sleeping. I kept going in his room hoping he would wake up to go see the deer but he didn't wake up until the moment the deer ran off. He missed it so I just excitedly showed him the pictures.



Grandpa George came over and started a garden with Charlie. They prepared a small piece of land and lined it with bricks. They then planted carrots and pumpkins.Charlie loved it and he remembers to water it much more often than I do.


With James and Elizabeth in town we wanted to go out and have fun. We made it to the Children's museum and OMSI. It was my first time going to either of these with my two boys. It actually wasn't as challenging as I thought because Miles mostly slept in the Moby wrap and Charlie stayed with me a little better than I expected.  
I love it when I get to see my nieces!

ON Monday was the Children's museum.

Everett on top of the volcano slide!

Grace and Elizabeth built a house inside a treehouse

Charlie always like drawing on his face.

There was a new outdoor exhibit that was just finished a couple weeks ago. We didn't explore it a ton, we mostly stayed in the toddler area but it was pretty neat with a fun fountain pond to play in and a sand pit. 

I let Miles get his feet a bit wet. 

LAter that evening we went to my mom's house for family night and dinner. We also played "Don't eat Pete" Then Max took the boys home and I stayed and did a workout with my mom and Elizabeth. 

The next day we went to OMSI. They have a new dinosaur exhibit that Charlie and I were really excited to check out. 

This guy greeted us at the beginning of the exhibit.

My cell phone pictures don't do this exhibit justice. It was full of huge moving dinosaurs. Charlie ran around with a giddy grin yelling dinosaur! Grace was super nervous from the beginning and made her mom take her out. Gwenevere was nervous but brave and stayed really close to her daddy. Everett slept. But seriously, they were so lifelike, I would have been scared if I was still little.

Wow, so that is just a part of how we have been spending our time. Stay tuned for a posts about Miles' blessing, our Rose Garden adventures, Miles' two month update, and a beach trip but that's all for now. 

Family Men

There has been a lot going on over here and I have lots to blog about and share but to get started, I'm just going to do this short post about a funny story Max told me.

So we've been car shopping for awhile and Max had been surveying everyone he runs into about car choices, He's been talking about it at work a lot. We were trying to narrow our search down. we knew we could go for a cheap car to use for short time or make a longer term investment that we could use for years. Then we had to decide if we wanted a sedan, SUV, or just go for a minivan.

While working in the office, the guys  (all fathers of young children) were discussing mini vans Max shared this you tube video that has got to be my all time favorite you tube video. Watch it! Especially if you are a parent. You will not be dissappointed and the rest of the story will make much more sense. 

Isn't that amazing! That guy is pretty much Max in a couple years. Anyway, after they watched this in the office they started researching mini vans. They started being wowed with all the comfortable features of the mini vans. The spacious a comfortable seats were a thing to covet. I'm not sure how long this research went on but one of the guys eventually said something to the extent of...wow most construction guys would be looking up sports cars or boobs but here we are dreaming of minivans. 

Anyway, the point is that Max works for an awesome, family centered company and we love it!

They even all have these stickers on their work trucks!

And here are some pictures taken at a lunch get together we had a couple of weeks ago. 

The hard workers

The "hot wives" with our baby boys. 

You can't really tell but Miles has a Grow Construction onesie and Charlie has a Grow sweatshirt too (the logo is just on the back)

 The pink ladies!

 The whole gang.

The point is...Max works with great people...so great that we wear matching clothes!

May 22, 2004

Here's a little flashback, ten years ago today Max and I went to our first prom together. I was a senior and Max was a junior. It was held in the Crystal Ballroom downtown Portland. We had dinner on the back porch of his parents house and then went to the dance. 

We were both sporting the braces!

We went bowling after the dance. 

It was some fun times with my best friend!

Documenting

I've never been very consistent at journaling and the random journals I have done are really awkward...just ask the two living people that have read them (Max and Anna) On second thought, don't ask them. Yikes! Anyway, In the LDS church there is a strong focus on family ties and part of that is documenting your life events so that future generations can learn about their ancestors (and for many other reasons) In a Sunday school lesson a long time ago we were learning about keeping a journal and someone had mentioned that a main reason they keep a record is to make sure that they live a life worth recording. I loved that. Make your life worth documenting and interesting enough that people will actually WANT to read about you. I guess that is what keeps me writing on our family blog. I love that we have our story written here at least from the time we got married. I like that our pictures and stories are all together and we will eventually get our blog printed in a book. And hopefully our future children and grandchildren will enjoy reading about the lives that we have tried to make noteworthy.

That is not what I meant this post to be about...I wanted to show off our photo books, which is somewhat related.

Shortly after Max and I got married, My amazing sister in law Elizabeth put together a wedding photo book for us. It was one of the most amazing gifts we have ever received. That made me want to continue to create an annual photo book or family yearbook. And that is just what we have done. We now have a collection of 6 photo books, one for our wedding and another for each year we have been married. There have been many occasions where Max or I are trying to convince the other to do something exciting or new and we use the argument...think of the pictures we can put in our photo book. (Speaking of making your life noteworthy) You can read about paintballing here, Max used the photobook argument for that and somehow convinced me. Sadly, I don't think I added any paintball pictures to our photo book because it was so traumatizing. Anyway, this post is getting really random.

Here are our family photo books

And our amazing wooden sign came in the mail! 

And that is a little bit about our attempt at keeping a family record. 

Month old Miles

We survived the first month of having two little boys. We love our little boys and some things have gone much easier than expected and then there are some things that have surprised us. 

Miles has been growing like crazy. He loves to eat and poop. He is even a decent sleeper. When he was in the womb he would always start to be active right at midnight. I could set a clock to it so I assumed that we would have a hard time adjusting his day/night schedule. I guess I shouldn't speak too soon but he hasn't had any trouble with being awake for long periods of time at night. He will just wake up to eat then go back to sleep. I think we got lucky on that because I remember pacing the house in the middle of the night with Charlie for hours trying to get him to go back to sleep. He usually sleeps for 3-4 hours stretches but we have been lucky to get some six hour stretches already. Since he is gaining enough weight now we don't feel like we have to wake him every 4 hours to feed him. I do however have to make sure I don't go longer than six hours without pumping so I have to occasionally wake up to pump in the middle of the night when Miles is still sleeping. Definitely my least favorite part! Over the last week or so, Miles prefers to be held while falling asleep. Before then, he had been content sitting around anywhere and falling asleep on his own. He still is content most of the time just sitting and observing which really makes it a ton easier to play with Charlie, get my pumping done, and even do some blogging.   He really has been a delight to have in our family. Even though it's not that fun to get up in the middle of the night, I think it has definitely become easier with the second child, or maybe it's the fact that Max gets up with me almost every time to feed the boy while I pump so I don't have to be awake twice as long. 

PS, we think Miles is almost a breast feeder which , if you know me and our issues, is a huge miracle and we hope to not be pumping much longer and that Max can get more sleep. 

Miles was a month old on Cinco de Mayo so we tried to get a little festive. For the record, Max got this blue blanket in Spain when he was in the eighth grade and said it had never been used so it seemed like a great occasion . 

I still feel like Charlie is adapting well. He likes his little brother but mostly leaves him alone and hasn't shown any signs of jealousy. He will occasionally hold his hand, ask to hold him and he sometimes even shares his toys. (and then gets disappointed when Miles wont hold them). We've found that Miles will kick his little Soccer ball if we put it by his feet so we've had fun playing with that. 

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So there you have it, we are going to make this two kids thing work!