Gymnastics and Sunshine

We finally got Miles into his first gymnastic class.

The out-of-district rec center had a much better program than the rec center in our area so we finally just did it. I swear Miles' strong little body is made for gymnastics. He got to take it with his good friend Ember and during his class I got to visit with Heather (Ember's mom). Anyway, on the last day we were invited to watch and see all their tricks.

 

 The photos of Ember turned out way better than Miles' photos...so here are some of those. haha!

 Maybe he will be a break dancer in the future...is that still a thing?

 

When we left gymnastics, it was lunch time but the sun was out so we decided to go to the park instead.

 

 Edwin doesn't really like swinging.

 A successful day!

Gingerbread

We had our tradtional Gingerbread cookie decorating party. We invited two families, only one of them were able to come, but we still had lots of sugary fun! Miles and Max had just arrived home from their trip and Miles was passed out on the couch at first.

But then the party got started. Our family wore our matching pajamas, except Edwin who grew out of his sometime in March. 

 

The focus is off Miles face and on his pile of a cookie for a reason....

Anyway, we ended up with a whole lot of festive sugar and great memories. 

Oh Christmas Tree

Since all of our Saturdays were full of livestock activities (see last post) we had to settle for getting our tree from a parking lot. This is pretty much an abomination for my family of Oregonians. But we really had no daylight hours to go get a tree from a farm and there were trees at the local hardware store and it supported our local high school. Once we got there we saw how crazy our kids were and we ended up being grateful that the whole activity only took 20 minutes. So we were able to get our tree and decorate it all in an evening.

 I mostly followed this busy boy who thought he was in a magical place anyway!

And decorating was fun and stressful and as usual, multiple ornaments broke. But we love having a somewhat fresh lit tree in our living room. 

Sidenote, we got most of the gifts during black Friday and cyber Monday so they were already wrapped and ready to put under the tree. My kids have never seemed to try and open them so it works for us.
Merry Christmas!

Pig Roasting and Cow Wrangling

I've been getting behind on my blog again because we have been busy living life and so this post is to document two unrealted but similar events.

Part 1- The Pig Roast

Our church congregation decided to have a traditional Hawaiian Christmas luau! Somehow, Max along with the young men in the church were assigned to get and roast a pig. Max put a lot of time and energy into the planning aspect of this party and it turned out great!

The pig supplier sold the pigs frozen so naturally i had to pick up the pigs a day before the event (while Max is at work) and thaw them in our bathtub....oddly enough, it wasn't the first time we had a pig in our bathtub.

Anyway, After I dropped Miles off at preschool. Edwin and I went to the store for the pigs. We picked up a 75 pound and 40 pound pig. Thankfully the store employ loaded them into the car. After I got home, I got the 40 pound pig up the stairs with no problem, the 75 pound pig I was able to pull into our living room but thankfully my good friend Marie who is super strong, raised and showed pigs as a kid and is a highland game champion, came over and helped me take the larger pig up. (They were frozen in boxes.)

Since this was such a unique event my friend Heather came over too with her little boy and all the boys loved watching the pigs.

 

 

And it really was so weird to see a whole pig in our bath, I had to continuously change the water and at one point I walked in and the pigs eye was wide open...staring at me. I had to run out of the bathroom, take a moment to compose myself then go back in to change the water. (The ear was frozen over the eye when we first started thawing the pigs so I didn't know if they still had eyes.) 

 

Ok, so this is not really the point of this post but it seemed pretty significant and memorable for me so there it is. The next day. Max was going to be gone all day roasting the pig and Charlie got to go with him and the other young men from church. 

Thankfully we didn't end up doing it in our yard. (The original plan) Our friends already had a pit in their yard so they got to use that pit.

All the boys chopping wood for the fire. (Charlie is totally wearing his little brother's sweatshirt...)

Charlie was a great helper and interested in every little bit of it!

Charlie thinks he's one of the big kids.

 

In the meantime, I was home with the little boys trying to find islander clothes and making my hair look like Moana. haha. The only Hawaiian thing I could find was this lobster shirt.

Anyway, the party was amazing, the authentic food was excellent, and no one got food poisoning (I had nightmares about this before picking up the pigs, i was worried the tub wasn't going to be sanitized enough or that I would thaw it too fast then not have a fridge to store it!) And there are no photos from the party. Also, Max's river grandma came with us, so that was fun!

Event 2: Cow wrangling
This event isn't really related except that it involves more quality time with the kids and livestock.
The following Saturday, Max uncle let Max know that their cow was about ready to take to the butcher. Max's Uncle Jay raises meat cows on his property and Max and his brother have been helping Jay work on his ranch house in central Oregon in exchange for a cow.  We were going to get our Christmas tree that day but decided to get in the Friday night before (that will be another blog post) So Max could go out to Central Oregon and have some one-on-one time with Miles who really needed it. They went Saturday morning and stayed until Sunday afternoon. They went and checked out the cows and worked on the ranch house. It was cold and snowy there. And they had a good time. For some reason, there was so much going on with the house that they decided not to wrangle the cow and take it to the butcher. But they did get to visit and feed the cows. Miles loved it!

 They pulled these large hay bales across the property and dropped them off the back of the truck and the cows would come running. Miles thought this was hilarious.

In the meantime, I wanted my time with Charlie and Edwin to be extra special.  We started our Saturday morning with cleaning the church. One of Charlie's favorite things. They were actually great helpers with cleaning the fingerprints off the windows that they probably put there.

 We then made our way to Chik-fil-a for a late breakfast. I have never been to an Oregon location and only went once when living in Utah, but everyone swears that it is amazing so we finally made the 20 minute drive. And we were pleasantly surprised by the food and the excellent play place. And since it was Charlie's day, we just played for a long time. not rushed at all to get to the next place.
Funny Side Story: There was another family cleaning the church with us and as soon as we pulled into Chik-fil-a, they were there too. haha, (did I mention it was 20 minutes away and he hadn't told anyone our plans?)

 After a long time of playing, we made our way to the nearby Target so Charlie could pick out his Christmas gift for Edwin. So that was fun.

When we got home we worked on writing Charlie's talk for church the following day. It was fun to actually put time and study and thought into his talk, so he could feel confident with reading it for his primary class.
 
We also enjoyed some game time, making ornaments designed by Charlie, and making cookies from one of his birthday cookbooks. 

It ended up being perfect. Charlie kept talking about what an amazing day it was, and Miles loved his time with Daddy. Neither boy was jealous of the other. And we can just appreciate our chilren more when they get some one-on-one time. 

Max and Miles got home about 15 minutes before our gingerbread decorating party started on Sunday evening....which will be in another upcoming blog post.