7 Months

Yes, I feel huge. Thankyouverymuch.

I'm definitely a different shape than when I was pregnant with Jake. This may mean something, it may mean nothing. This shape is not easy to deal with, though! I get jealous when I see people easily bending over. I wish I had one of those grabby arm thingys so I could pick up after my toddler without having to do a weird squat or simply get down on my hands and knees. I have to remind myself that this too, shall pass.

In any case, we are starting to get very excited about meeting our baby. All of Jake's baby clothes have been washed and made ready. Cloth diapers are next. Then birth supplies!

Clackamas County Fair

Off to the fair! We parked and rode this open-air trolley. The boys loved it!

Max with Jake and Lee.
Ellie and her mom, Ami.

Fun to climb on huge machines!

Another one.
Very serious about his driving.
The rabbit was so soft.
Petting piglets! Thank goodness for the stations of hand sanitizer posted everywhere.
Now that is a lot of babies to nurse.
A wonderful drum in the Pioneer Village.
Kettle corn and rides with friends, can't beat that.
Listening to a story in the teepee.
Then the rides! Jake and Max teamed up and joined a construction company.
Waiting for the next ride.
Then they decided to become spacemen.
But in the end, the motorcycle gang was the way to go.
Serious biker face.
Then back on the trolley and home to naps!

He's a Fish!

Jake has been taking swimming lessons this summer. In June he took the "Big Fish" class for the 3rd and last time (for this class, a parent is in the water with him). The instructor told us he was ready for level 1, which is for ages 3 and up. After only 8 level one class sessions, he graduated today to level 2!

He got a little ribbon and a sticker to cover up "level 1" on his certificate :)
To pass level one, you have to be able to do 10 relaxed bubble bobs. Next level has to do with being able to glide on your front and back and hold that for 5 seconds. Pretty cool!

iPhone

Why is this person so happy? It's because he got his new iPhone this morning!! This was the birthday present he'd been wanting and it was a gift from his mom. Yay!
With the iPhone, he got the super-duper protection system -- the otter box and a rubber holster. He has never been kind to his devices... see his well-used blackberry below, which looks like a dog chewed on it.
It was never actually chewed on by a dog, but it was run over by a car, dropped more times than either of us can count, and was dropped from the top of a skyscraper, fell 9 stories, and landed on a platform roof. And still worked. This is the pager equivalent of the ToughBook (a laptop that is supposedly indestructible) and has been perfect for Mike. But technology is even better now and the iPhone is so nice, although we recognize its fragility as compared to this old blackberry, so the protection system is necessary.

Anyways, Mike is happy and Jake is, too. Hard to tell which one of them likes it more.

P.S. This iPhone, with the GPS system, is a great help for finding the job sites where he has to work for his new job!!

Multnomah Days

Every year our village has Multnomah Days (which should really be called Multnomah Day because it is only a one-day affair, but whatever). It is still a wonderful and fun event and I'm sure we'll be going for years to come, especially since we don't have to worry about parking!

Jake and I left the house in the morning (Mike was working) and wandered down into the village before the parade started. All the booths were set up. It's really neat to be able to walk down the middle of this street once a year.
The parade started, and first came the pooches. Lots of pooches, and many of them were dressed up. Quite amusing.
Jake lit up when he saw the 2 fire trucks come down the street!
With his balloon, waiting for more parade.
Signing "candy." The parade cars/people/groups throw candy to the kids watching the parade. In the beginning, Jake had no idea what to expect and just watched other kids scramble to pick up candy pieces. Then he finally got it but then there was a long, dry spell where no candy was thrown, and if it was, the bigger/older kids got to it first. Jake started to get discouraged and was turning to me every 2 minutes. "Candy." It was so sad for this mama!! So I finally had to get up and encourage the parade people to throw candy in his direction and then defend the area for Jake while telling him to "Go get it!! Pick up the candy!!" He finally got a few pieces and was quite pleased. Then two different older kids voluntarily came up to Jake and gave him a piece, each (they had goodie bags quite full). Very sweet.
There is a new mural being put up and it was cool to see some of it in the parade.
There were dancers.
The train was a big hit with my little guy. (Who of course wanted to get on it.)
Mama really liked this one. A plug-in hybrid that gets 100 miles to the gallon!
And there were even chickens. Ha.
Jake's "sucking on a hard candy" face.

More Zoo

We love having zoo membership.

We decided to go today and just let Jake play in the giagantic sandbox for awhile, something he's never done before! That meant Mama didn't have to do a ton of walking around, but we still got out.
After a picnic lunch on the big, grassy area, we visited some of the animals.
The polar bears were in rare form today. This one was dancing forwards and backwards, it was hilarious. The other one was playing in the water a bit.
In the mother bear den. (Yes, this is just a picture.)

Cake!

This year, instead of the usual zucchini-chocolate cake, Mike wanted a German-chocolate cake for his birthday, which has always been his favorite. So I made a regular chocolate cake from scratch and then found a recipe for the frosting and made that as well.
The cake doesn't look perfect, but it tasted amazing. And that's what really counts, right?
Happy birthday dear Daddy!

Dino-mite!

Jake would like you to meet Rex, Steggie, Bob, and Tim.


Steggie (big green one) is the newest member of the dino family in this household.

Growing Bigger (and smarter)

Our three year old is becoming more independent each day. But sometimes, we have to let him know that he's still too young to help us with something and we tell him that he needs to grow bigger first and then he can help.

Jake likes to have us build a "house" out of the couch cushions, then destroy it, and build it again. And again.

The other day, Mike built up the house, which Jake immediately jumped on and destroyed. Jake asked for Daddy to build it again, to which Daddy said that Jake could build it himself.

Jake responded that he was still too little and he has to grow bigger first.

It's my birthday, give me coffee!

It was Mike's birthday today! Unfortunately, Tuesdays are the busiest days for our family so we didn't do much birthday celebration. After swim class, Jake and Mike went to the bento hut for dinners of salmon and halibut, so Mike had a nice birthday dinner with his boy. I was at my final photography class. More birthday stuff to come later this week/weekend... I'm looking forward to making a cake and generally stretching out the celebration!

I had my final photography class... a few weeks ago one of the class assignments was to photograph a place, to get the sense of the place. I took pictures of the Village Coffee in Multnomah Village, where Mike gets his coffee and is on a first-name basis with some of the baristas. The pictures turned out to be pretty cool! Then, for our final class assignment, we needed to produce some kind of finished product, which could be a framed photo, a scrapbook page, a photo album, etc. Those all sounded rather boring to me and I didn't have any particular pictures I'd taken lately that I wanted permanently displayed. But then I got to thinking about those coffee shop pictures. And the very next day Mike said to me "for my birthday I just want a new coffee cup -- my favorite one is worn out." Well that sealed the deal. I killed two birds with one stone, made a birthday present for Mike and did my final class assignment.

I used 3 of the pictures I took of the coffee shop and found a good coffee cup and arranged them on there.
Mike's Coffee! ahh...
Then I used contact paper to cover everything. Pretty cool, a personalized coffee cup for him!

In class, the photography teacher asked us to put our final projects on a particular table. So my coffee cup was sitting there with quite a few framed photos and a photo album. She looked at everything but totally overlooked my coffee cup until I pointed it out to her. Then she laughed and laughed and loved it. I don't think she's had a student do the assignment quite that way before!

Fantastic Day

After the heat wave, we wanted to get out of the house and do something fun. So we decided to go to the zoo and ride the Washington Park Zoo train. In the summer it takes a long route that has a stopping point at the Rose Gardens/Children's Playground.

After spending way too much time driving around the parking lot looking for a spot, we entered the zoo and walked to the train and luckily were the last people to get a seat on the train, meaning we had zero waiting time. Score!

Jake, as usual, was very excited. This doesn't get old.
The breeze from the open windows was refreshing and it was pretty scenery!
I rode this train/route a few times when I was younger, was fun to take Jake.
We stopped at the mid-way point and got off and walked to the playground. Jake ran around like a wild thing. We had a picnic lunch there.
The slide was his favorite thing. He only went down about 50 times.
And convinced Daddy to do it once.
There was some time with the sand.
Then we headed back to the train station.
We got lucky again!! We were again the very last ones on the train and just walked right on. It was a different engine this time. Jake and I had a conversation comparing the Thomas the Train engines with the engines that were pulling us on this track. We decided the engine was more like Thomas than Gordon :)
Happy boy.
Back to the zoo where Jake insisted on seeing the giraffe.
We totally lucked out and happened to catch both the tiger and the leopard walking around. That never happens!
And then a visit to the very cool stellar lion tank.

Then back to the car where it was exactly time for a nap.