Fresh Produce, Home Projects &Taking a Break

These past two weeks my life has been threatened to be overcome by a multitude of fresh produce. I, however, have not been easily subdued.

All that fresh produce has led to things such as this:
As well as this:

Craig has spend his last two weeks working on projects around the house like this:

Painting our bathroom a new shade of green (and I finally framed the photos Jessie took last summer!)

Also, this...

Tearing down our old metal patio cover and bulding this new white, light, and beautiful one with his own two hands.

And (not pictured) taking EVERYTHING out of our shop/ laundry room, painting the whole area, including the cabinets, building new shelving, and finally, re-organizing everything!

So, Saturday we took a break from our projects and hit the beach with one of our favorite families.

It was fun making time for things like this:

And, of course, this.

Then coming home for this:

And all this, cuteness....

A little bit of this

And (what else???) more of this.

So, after a much needed break, I'm now planning on tackling this

And these.

Wish me luck!

Fort Stevens

We've been busy and on the go lately, and here is a bit of what we've been up to. We spent some more time camping with some of our good friends at Fort Stevens. We had LOTS of fun, and LOTS of pictures to follow:

The three at Fort Clatsop, dressed in Lewis and Clark garb

5 of the 6 kiddos peering off the dock
W & W getting ready to climb the Astoria Column

We made it to the top! Made me dizzy, but was worth the gorgeous view. The kids each had a glider to send down.

Family shot

Finding beachy treasures

Drake and Anna chasing seagulls

The daddy's helping built the ultimate sand castle (while mommy's sat on beach chairs and relaxed!)

Sippin' a capri sun in Front of the Pirate ship (Peter Iredale)

Exploring Battery Russel

Not Pictured:

S'mores

Kids playing the in sand in our campsite

Numerous bike rides

Late night talks around the fire after the kiddos were asleep

Yummy breakfasts

Dogs being pulled in baby bike buggies

Fishing at Coffenbury Lake

& countless other memories

Thanks for a GREAT trip, Williamson's!

catchin' up

We've been busy this past week and I'm just now finding time to catch up the blog.

First, we spent a couple days with our good friends Brian and Jessie who were visiting from the east coast. We stayed at a beach house and got to meet their (almost) 11 month daughter Ava, for the first time. Jessie is an amazing photographer and took some family picture of us on the beach the evening we arrived. We had planned on doing more beach photos the next morning, but woke up to rain. So we settled for some indoor shots of the kids. None of which I have seen yet and I am very excited about them. She always does a great job.

Our kids with their new friend, baby Ava. She is adorable!

This week we have been busy with Wildcat Hoop Camp. Craig and Brian, a fellow teacher, coach, and friend have run this camp for 8 years now. It makes me a little sentimental thinking back on how I used to bring Will at age 1 to visit daddy at hoop camp and now both my boys are old enough to participate. Will is competitive and gives his all. He looks forward to each day and hopes to get an award at the end of the week. Wyatt wasn't so sure. After the first day he was hot and tired and said he would rather be home picking flowers with me and digging for worms. I told him that you have to go every day to get a medal (each kid gets one for participation) so then he was inspired. This morning he was up and dressed in his bball gear before I even knew it.

We may have another hoopster on our hands, yet. He's a little wild and crazy on the court, but we'll see.

Will practicing little dribbles
My two younger nieces are doing WHC as well. This is sweet Hilary with Wyatt. She is about 7 month older than Wyatt and Wyatt just loves her. Really, and truly he does. In fact, he tells me all the time "I'm going to marry, Hilary, mom".

(Side note: bandaid on Wyatt's face due to him sliding down carpeted stairs on his face at the beach house. Nice rug burn!)

Next up: The Good News According to Uke!

This is Will's ukelele class. He had been taking lessons from my mom (an avid uker herself) for the past 6 weeks. Notice he's the only boy among the 6 other girls! He is such a good sport and is coming along with his songs. Next week they perform for a group of retired folks at an assisted living facility. They do lots of gospel songs and hope to share the good news according to uke. Thus the name of the group. Aren't they cute??
And lastly I have squeezed in a little sewing. This is a re-usable grocery bag I made with (you guessed it) fabric from my stash. It is designed after a plastic grocery sack, and turned out ok, but I'm still not sure if I really did it right. I am currently working on a different style of grocery bag (designed more like a paper sack) and if it turns out well I want to sew up a bunch for Christmas gifts or to use as gift bags. Going green, you ask? No, not really. I just like to sew and this is a good way to use up my fabric. And I get .06/each for bringing my own bags to Ware Mart! And let's face it, who couldn't use an extra .06??
The remainder of our summer is pretty much all planned out including swimming at Aunt Paige's pool, a trip to GP, one last camping trip, school shopping, and my parents keeping the kiddos overnight so Craig and I can go to IKEA. I know it's bound to go by fast, so I am treasuring these last few weeks of summer!