The Last Hurrah Bus Day

One of our most favorite family traditions is our bus day! Our whole family meets at the Bus Barn in the morning and we ride the bus all day long to different family members' homes to eat and do some Christmas activities. We have done a progressive dinner for as long as I can remember and the bus was introduced to our tradition in 1998. From the looks of things, my mom may not be working for the bus company much longer so this was likely to be our last Bus Day. We tried to make the most of it and I tried to do my best to document it. 

The morning started off great with my cousin Sam reading his mission call. He's been called to Russia (I have no idea how to spell the name of the mission so I wont try) He will be leaving in February. Throughout the day I tried to remember the Russian words I learned in Armenia and I could only seem to remember Ice Cream and Okay. 

The first stop  on our Bus tour was our house. We were eating fruits and veggies there and my uncle brought cinnamon rolls. We were packed in my house like sardines and I took this moment to go feed Miles' up in his room so I don't really know much of what happened here except for the food got eaten.

We then went down to Aurora to have incredibly delicious Gyros at the Packhams' house. Oh they were good.

We also got to play Jingo and win great Prizes. Charlie is still pretty excited about his new ball and his ninja turtle Frisbee,.

Then we got back on the bus and Miles got a quick turn driving the bus. We has all sorts of giddy.

The drive from Aurora to Vancouver is the longest stretch so many people took this time to nap.

I think it's funny that babies and children have all these restrictions and guidlines on how they should be buckled into the car but throw them in a bus and it's a free for all. This boy loved the freedom.

I liked that Gwenevere sat with us.

There was food on this kids face all day long. That's allowed on bus day...and it usually happens on every other day too.

SO then Max fell asleep and Charlie sat there wondering what to do with him.

He played with his face and hat.

Timmy and Gwenevere.

In the meantime Charlie is just wondering what is going on with daddy while Max's head continually falls and bonks Charlie.

"What are we going to do about this mom?"

But Max wasn't the only sleeper.

Little Evan

More sleepers.

I saved Charlie so Max tried to sleep more with Miles, Miles was even more wiggly than Charlie.

And this is probably my favorite photo from the whole day, He was completely in heaven riding on the bus and going to all his cousins' houses to play with their toys and eat treats.

Then Charlie and Everett got their turns driving the bus. I know Charlie had been talking about this moment for a long time.

We finally got to Jay and Natalie's house and were greeted with delicious Burritos and Wassail.

We made sure to get our family photo with the bus.

Next we went to my mom's house in Tigard.

Charlie liked sitting next to Uncle Dan and helping (distracting) him with his homework.

We had some pull-up competitions. It turns out that Miles likes to hang.

Sort of...

This little football star showed everyone up!

Max was trying to be humble and only do a couple...he really is good at Pull ups...ah..I swoon!

I tried and still can't do a full pull up but I was stronger than I thought and did some sort of pulling up.

We did the bells at my mom's house. 

Then back to the bus to go a couple blocks to my red Grandma's house for a pizza dinner and pinata.

The pinata is always a highlight!

It took awhile with all the little kids that we have in the family now,

It was kind of a madhouse in here. The young kids didn't really get the idea of staying back when someone was swinging the bat.

We were glad we had Donovan though, he busted it open for us.

I think it also might be a tradition to make hats out of the pinata parts.

At some point all the drivers went back to the bus barn with my mom to clean the bus and get our cars to bring back to my grandma's house. 

And that was it, the end of a very busy and fun day. We will miss having the bus but it will be fun to see how this tradition evolves in the future. 

Out of the house

Getting out of the house is hard these days! With alternating nap schedules, 3 year old fits and rarely getting a moment to shower, we have just stayed home A LOT! I realized that my Children's museum membership expires at the end of the year and we haven't used it much since Miles was born. We wanted to get a couple more outings in.  Our outing went exceptionally smooth. Charlie was much better at staying with me. (he's notorious for running towards whatever catches his eye.) Miles was content to be in the stroller when I needed him to be and happy when it was time to get out and play. Charlie was even being an exceptional listener when it was time to stop to go to the bathroom and stop for lunch. Such a tender mercy.  Anyway, here are some phone photos from our very successful outing.

Zoo Lights!

Last night we made our way to Zoo Lights! We've been wanting to go for a couple years now but we finally did it this year, when Charlie could more fully appreciate it. I haven't been since I was a kid and Max's last time he went was right when he got home from his mission. We planned to go last Thursday but there was a massive wind storm that knocked some lights out and the whole Zoo was shut down. So we went on Monday and it was BUSY! We lucked out and found a close parking spot but then we stood in a long line to get into the zoo. We met up with our wonderful friends, The Hodsons who finally came back after being away for internships. We finally got in and walked around the zoo admiring the lights. It was pretty cold but still above freezing. It was fun seeing Charlie and Madeleine running around enjoying the lights. 

For the first 15 minutes we were in ther zoo, Charlie was talking about the train and  how he wanted to ride it. There was a  2 hour wait so it was not worth waiting in line to ride the train for 8 minutes then go home. Luckily Charlie didn't dwell on the train and was excited to see everything else and touch all the lights.  And oh yeah, I wasn't really sure how to work my camera in this lighting so I got  a bunch of blurry practice.

Our family!

The Hodsons

I love these boys!

Charlie is happy to have his best friend back! 

The jungle

Enthralled with the lit carousel.

Madeleine protecting her baby sister!

And then we saw the elephants, the only live animal we saw in the whole zoo.

Miles was so calm the whole time which was refreshing because he was a screamer on the car ride both ways.

It was a fun outing and we were happy to have some family time and spend time with our good friends.We're not sure if this will be a yearly tradition as standing in lines and pushing through crowds in the cold are not the most fun, but we will probably go again some time

Rub a dub dub

We have an abandoned bath tub in our house. It doesn't have walls and you have to use a wrench to turn it on so it doesn't get much use. We decided that we would finally get some use out of it and get two little boys clean at the same time. (They usually bathe in our huge utility sink or the shower in case you were worried about our children's hygiene) And of course this event needed to be documented..so here you go!

Oh man, these boys love water and can't wait for their next time in the big bath!

8 Months

And here are the MILEStones (see what I did there?) for 8 months.

Speed crawler
4 huge teeth
Lots of giggles
Bald Bald Bald!
Much Improved naps. 1.5-3 hours at a time :)
Waking once per night
Eating solids. Grabbing puffs and putting them in his mouth.
Climbing up on everything and sometimes leaning on his hip so he can stand and hold a toy with both hands.
H can get himself down from standing too which make me happy that he's not standing up and crying in his bed because he can't get down.

As traumatizing as it is for me, the crawling has made Miles a lot happier He can crawl around the living room for a long time and be totally entertained while I get other things done.

He likes to follow me through the house. If I run upstairs for something he crawls to the stairs, I've only seen him go up one stair so far and I haven't left him there to see if he would go up anymore. We'll have to put up the baby gate soon I think.

Also, if he bonks his head on something he will crawl toward me for comfort, usually in his journey towards me, he forgets that he's hurt and starts playing with whatever he finds.

He is switching from his beat up old pack in play into his crib this week. That was his Christmas gift. No more lumpy hard mattress for him.

I like that he's more sturdy and Charlie can play with him but Charlie doesn't seem to like Miles' mobility as he is always encroaching in Charlie's business.

We roamed the Library to celebrate Miles turning 8 months (and to return our overdue books) He loved roaming free.