Celebrating Miles

We did it! Miles made it to his 3rd birthday. Miles has actually been a pretty easy child. He has always wanted to try and listen to me. He is thoughtful in his actions and is usually aware of his surroundings. He was very specific of what he wanted for his birthday celebration. He wanted, balloons, a square chocolate cake, and a trip to the beach. So easy to please! He loves being outside but has a limit (so different than Charlie who would be outside all day and night in whatever weather if we let him.) He loves to make people laugh! We have to be careful and not laugh at things we don't want him to repeat or else he will repeat them a lot. For his 3-year old photos, we made our way down to the Portland waterfront, in hopes of seeing the beautiful cherry blossoms. We didn't see any, and found out later, they were much better up river. Oops. Anyway, we still had fun.

And this is at our house before we left. He's a clown.

Miles is a very grateful child, he says thank you to everything. Whether you are giving him food, or buckling him, playing with him, he usually thanks you. One time we were mentioning something about it raining outside and Miles said. "mom, thanks for telling me about the rain"

An exciting accomplishment for Miles is that he has gone through the whole Harry Potter series. Max read it out loud with him starting a little over a year ago and they finished the last book the night before Miles' birthday. A lot of the reading was done after he had fallen asleep but Max continued to read out loud so I'm sure he is already absorbing his love for Harry Potter.

Some Miles quotes over the last year...
Miles comes up with interesting and thoughtful things to say everyday! I haven't been very good at documenting them but here are a couple I remember.

"Tea is a yummy thing, and T is a letter, that rhymes!"

"I'm eating because there is nice cheese"

We had a family lesson on service, and shortly after that, I asked Miles to pass me Edwin's binky, this was his response. 
"Yes, I can serve you and Edwin"

"You're a nice girl, but I don't want you to button it." I think I was asking him if he wanted help buttoning his pants

"Your heart is my treasure"

"Mommy, you're not a good Spanisher...but you're a good Spanisher with Ur-menian"(My personal favorite)

"Charlie is learning me how to talk"

After a little girl at the park asked me if Miles could talk, he spoke to the little girl and said "You have one purple boot and one green boot, they are not the same!' Which was completly accurate!

Bohemian Rhapsody came on the radio, I turned it up and said Miles, this is a good song. He said "I don't like it can we listen to the instrument music" (classical)

Miles: "My penis is hurting me." Mom: "What happened to your penis?" Miles: "It broke, it broke off"

"You are a beautiful Christmas queen, you have christmas lights on you!"

After throwing up, in a calm voice he said..."I kinda dripped"

And of course, a birthday interview. This took quite a while to complete and there was a whole lot of silliness!

Name: Miles

Nicknames: Barles  , Everett... (I don't even know...it was just his answer...)

How old are you? 3

What is your favorite color? Gray

What is your favorite animal? Lion

What is your favorite book? The Cat in the Hat

What is your favorite TV show? Little Einsteins

What is your favorite movie? Little Einsteins

What is your favorite song? "We're going on a trip, in our favorite rocket ship, climb aboard get ready to explore, little einsteins, little einsteins" (The Little Einsteins theme song) 

What is your favorite food? Brocolli

What is your favorite drink? With the red water bottle.

What is your favorite snack? Z bar

What is your favorite treat? red vine

What is your favorite outfit? The clothes that I'm putting on. 

What is your favorite game? "The one that has a fishing pole in it."

What is your favorite toy? "The one I'm playing with, my new train"

Who is your best friend? "It's only Edwin"

What is your favorite thing to do?"Rolling cookies"

What is your favorite thing to do outside? "Run around and try to catch Charlie"

What is your favorite holiday? "You're a holiday mommy!" I then explain what holidays are and Miles responds "My birthday"

What do you like to take to bed with you at night? "My monkey I got from the library with Grandma Sharolee at the zoo."

Where is your favorite place to go? To the beach for my birthday

What is your favorite restaurant? The restaurant that has pizza and pancakes

Where do you want to go on vacation? "Maybe the beach"

What do you love?  "I love Pizzas"
What did you do on your birthday? "I go to the beach, and play with my sand toys."

What do you do really well?"Hopping around"

What makes you laugh?"Charlie does"

What are you afraid of? Um..a scary bear"

What do you like to do with your family?"save scary things"

What do you love to learn about? "I like to learn about...umm..treats"

What is your mom good at? "Ummm...jumping jacks"

What is your dad good at? “Ummm...going at home"

What is Charlie good at? "pushing you"

Tell me a joke? Silly robot....silly robot, I'm a silly robot!"
What is something you learned this year? "flying home"
 What makes mommy laugh? "Being silly"
 What's a nice thing you have done for someone?"Tell if there is a bad giant in our house.

And there is a post about our Miles. I'm sure I'm forgetting some details but we just love our Miles so much. 

Pictures of a square chocolate cake and beach trip coming up soon...

2 months

Well, I'm super behind on my blogs and I've been working on Miles' birthday post and then I realized I wanted to get Edwin's 2 month post up before he turns 3 months. haha!

I just want to say that Edwin is an amazing little baby! He has been a great sleeper. He lets me set him down if I need to and he is very content. (this is great since I'm always pumping) He smiles so much and expresses his happiness with his whole body. He loves making eye contact with anyone in his family and doing some good baby talk with them. He can keep a conversation going for quite awhile. He is still only drinking pumped milk and I'm pretty proud of myself for making enough for him and some to store (the more I store, the sooner I can quit all this pumping business) He is a healthy little boy. At his 2 month check up (it was more like 2.5 months) he was 12 lbs 11oz, 40%, 22 inches 15%, and head circumference was 80% (I don't remember the inches) So our doctor called him a lollipop! Small guy with a big head! His eyes are becoming a dreamy blue! We love our little Edwin!
  More on his blessing day will come up in a future blog post...

Outdoor Movie Night

We did our first outdoor movie of the season. This is always a challenge to find the balance between a cold night and kids bedtime. The warmer the night, the later we have to start the movie. We tried a movie night in January once with a bon fire but it was too cold, the only plus side was that we could start the movie at 6. So we tried a Spring Break movie on the only day there wasn't supposed to be rain. The weather ended up being perfect, we have been doing a lot of landscaping at our house as well so that was a bonus. The only problem was that we were hoping to start the movie at seven, which ended up not being dark enough. We still started it and no one cared they couldn't see the movie since there were s'mores and friends!

Anyway, we watched Moana, and it wasn't all that cold so it was a good night. 

 

Charlie insisted on sitting on the same chair as Tali

Denver Transformation

I've been gathering the photos for this post for awhile. Mostly because we wanted to have a record of our first flip transformation. And other people seem to be interested as well so here are some of the details.

This house is in a super desirable area of North Portland but the layout was crazy. There was just one bathroom and it was in a bedroom. So we knew some things would need to change. We took down walls and added other walls to switch the living room and bedroom, so the bathroom would be off of the living room. So some of the indoor before/after photos are more difficult to see what is going on but here is a little glimpse.

Here is the plan Max drew out. It represents the old and new floor plan. In the old floor plan, the living room and bedroom #1 were switched. Also, the washer and dryer were just sitting out on the opposite side of the dining room and we closeted that off.

Before Photos:

My boys love to participate in the demolition, and I love it too. It also excites me that they get to see how we can make something beautiful out off something that originally scared them. (Charlie really doesn't like walking through the "yucky" houses." But once he started to see that we were making it nice he wanted to "fix lots of houses so people that don't have houses can live in them."

Also, the roof went really low in the dining room at the back of the house so they did have to raise the roof a little more to make the space more usable.

I know it would probably be better if I put the before and after pictures next to each other but I didn't, so you get to use your imagination.

Shortly after the house went pending we went over because I wanted to do a family photo on the front porch to represent the beginning of our family business.  So that's what we did!

 And Charlie gave us a lesson on John the Baptist, because we had come straight from church. He also asked multiple neighbors if they wanted to see his "church lesson" He's such a little missionary already.

And there you have it. I'm so proud of Max and all his hard work and problem solving skills to make this happen, and make the other houses happen that are in the works!