Spring Love

The house we are currently 'renting' in Oregon has a very charming front & back yard. You can tell that the previous owner (she lived to be 101 I might add) had spent many years caring for the grounds. The tree in our front yard has the sweetest bird cage hanging from it which I can see from the large living room window. The birdcage is old, broken, and covered in moss but I think it is so beautiful and I can only imagine how much it has seen over the years. We moved in at the end of Feb so all of the trees/shrubs were dormant from winter. Over the last 2 weeks I have been seeing bits of Spring peaking through. I just love the changing of seasons. I cannot wait to see what the yard looks like when it is full this summer, but until then ... here is the beginning of Spring.

I cannot wait to go to the Tulip fields in Oregon this April! Good thing I just bought a 'rain coat' for my camera (and no I'm not kidding - lol!) We have had 29 straight days of rain ... we are all well hydrated here ;)

Honestly

I need a break from life. I feel like a ticking time bomb where at any minute if pushed too much I will just burst into tears. I guess you could say stress has taken front/center stage in my life and I just want a break. When I was at IAA, when I became stressed I would just wander out into an empty field, meadow, grotto, cliff (anything in nature) and collect my thoughts. It's how I process. I seem to find myself when I try to lose myself. I am so desperate for that right now.
This weekend I am headed to Napa for a girls weekend but I secretly want to steal away for days and go find some deserted place, with my camera and just have 'me' time. I hate that when I come back all that stress will be waiting for me at the baggage claim (no pun intended). It's true that in this case bottles and bottles of amazing wine might not be the cure (never-the-less it sounds amazing and I'm going to take full advantage!) Here is to hoping I find my 'happy' while in Napa ...& de-stress a bit!


Aubrey Love

One of the best parts of the new house is that we live minutes away from Dani & Aubrey, so we have been seeing lots of them. I take a ton of pictures on my iPhone and so I decided to do an "Aubrey" post and put up recent pics of the cuteness that is Miss Aubrey. We just love her to death and she has our names down which melts my heart every time I hear "Liiiiiiiiisssaa!" or "Ke-eb!" LOVE!

We met up with Dani & Aubrey at the park to play on a beautiful (rare) sunny day about 2 weeks ago. Ok, the first pic is of my loves but all the rest are of Miss A.

MELTS my heart <3

These next ones are from last Sunday - Caleb & I watched Aubrey for a few hours to give Matt & Dani some adult time to celebrate their engagement. We watched ammovie, played, and ate lunch ... OH, and Caleb even changed his very FIRST diaper. And yes, I do have photographic evidence! Hah!

She really loves pretending to drive - it was all smiles till I had to put her in her carseat ...

These final two are from a few days ago as we (Aubrey, Mommy, Nana & I) went to OHSU for A's MRI. She was such a trooper and we were all so proud of her. I added a video to the end of A doin her little dance in the waiting room. She does this funny 'crab walk' that Matt taught her. I didnt take the time to edit down the video so sorry about that :o) Enjoy!

Rain Drops & Sunshine

The weather has been all over the place today. As I left the mall this evening, it was pouring rain on me with black clouds to the North and sunshine to the West (lucky for me, I was headed West!) When I got home the evening light was flooding the field next to the house so I quickly said hi to the pups and grabbed my camera. Each day flocks of wild geese land in the field and it is amazing to see their numbers and even more amazing to see them all take off at once. My (bred for hunting) pups find the geese very interesting and if I let them out they will point & flush them out. As I turned around to head inside I saw a sad Miley staring at me through the window wondering why she wasn't outside with me.

You can see all the rain drops on the window from the big storm that had just passed through. OH! And I got my new camera!! :D More on that in my next post.

3 Years Old

Our twins turned 3 on Feb 22nd!! Where has time gone?? I swear we just came home with them but it is hard to imagine life before we had them - love our kids to pieces. Oh, and yes I am talking about our dogs Miley & Koda for those who are wondering :o)

Twins ... why does everyone call them this? I swear, like twice a day I get asked if they are twins becaue they are 'identical.' Yes, they are litter mates, brother & sister, but if you want to get technical about it they are from sextuplets. Either way, I just think its funny that EVERY person goes "Ooooo, they are sooooo cuuuute! Are they twins?!"

Here are some pictures of Miley & Koda right before we moved - Moving day was their actual birthday.

{Top: Koda & Miley playing with their football; Next: Koda age 3; Last Miley age 3}

The Move

Trailer #1 before it was full

Since 2011 started it has been BUSY. We knew we would be moving sometime this year (we were thinking like April-ish) so we had been looking for houses and seeing what our options were.  Well, in about 2 weeks total our lives were turned upside down. Long story short, we now live in Sherwood Oregon till we find our home in Vancouver Washington.  I personally think it should be called Vancouver - Portland.  We rallied and packed up our whole house in less than a week and after 3 straight days of moving - loading moving trucks, driving 8 hrs round trip from WA to OR and back, and battling freezing temps and sideways snow - WE MADE IT!

I cannot tell you how blessed we feel to have had all of the help we did.  On the WA side of things a HUGE thanks to Scott, Coop, Matt, Josh, Loren, Skip, Ben, Taylor, Ken, and Mark. A few of these guys came out 2 days in a row which was so amazing I cannot even tell you.  Did I mention it was snowing sideways which sent it straight into the moving truck? What I CAN tell you is that we would still be loading that moving truck if we didnt have the help. On the OR side of things a HUGE thanks to Dave & Shelley, Matt & Dani, Ed, Marcus & Alissa, Scott and Lorens nephew who all came out to meet our moving truck before Caleb and I had even arrived and had it pretty much unloaded when we arrived. I seriously almost burst into tears I was so happy.

These are all iPhone photos so sorry about the quality ...

my view the entire way to OR - Dave left with the moving truck and Caleb and I each had a car/trailer load with us.

The other view ... 4 hrs in a car with 2 cats = fun times all around, NOT! lol

Shelley put together a fruit basket which was in the kitchen at the new house - so sweet.



Leaving Portland at 6am the following morning in the moving truck to head back up to our house for move day part 2



Snow & freezing temps through Vancouver

my view from inside the moving truck - the thing was HUGE!

Caleb driving the moving truck.  They wanted me to drive it ... hahahahahahahah, funny stuff.  I did NOT.

Sky cleared up in Tacoma but then it started dumping snow when we got home.

Headed back through Tacoma a few hours later ... pretty dark for 2pm!

Gorgeous sun break with a HUGE black cloud ahead of us ...

which lead to more snow ...

the roads got pretty bad at one point but then it cleared up a bit and we made it safely day 2.

I didnt manage to get any pictures of the moving truck or other things but I guess my excuse was we were pretty busy moving! I'm just glad to be settled into a new place with about 10% of our stuff unpacked till we move again in a few months. Hopefully at that point we will have had a few garage sales - nothing like a move to help you purge unwanted/unused items! :o)