A & P's Wedding

On a beautiful, very warm Saturday, we drove up to Toledo, Washington for Mike's cousin's wedding. 

After we arrived, we had time to hang out on the beautiful grounds. The water bottles wrapped in wedding paper was appreciated, due to the heat!

 The bride's cake!

 And the groom cake (I guess this is a new trend!)

 Reception tables.

 Ahh my hearts!

 I love how they decorated this old truck with flowers and pop cans trailing behind...

 And the bench was the place to do the picture photo ops!

 Funny story here... I had been snapping pictures and Mike was chatting with someone. When I turned to look for Ryan, I found him just turning away from this little table where the ceremony was to be held. On the table were 2 tiny cups with a red liquid. It seemed that 1 was full and the other was only half full. There were some people sitting at the tables who were then pointing at Ryan and talking with each other. I think Ryan drank out of one of the cups.
Towards the end of the reception, I asked the bride if she'd noticed anything. "Some marks on 1 of the cups." I told her what I think had happened, and she had a good laugh. I appreciate her acknowledgment that sometimes kids do funny things like that!

 Grandpa Vee arrives and the boys have such fun chattering and playing around him.

 And then the bride arrives in a '63 Corvette!

 The ceremony was just lovely!

After a lovely time of chatting, eating, and dancing, we got back into our car and headed home, both boys falling asleep quickly.

Multnomah Days 2012

Another year gone by, and it was time for the annual Multnomah Days parade again! This year, I gave Jake the option of watching the parade from the sidelines as we have always done, or participating by walking with the Foothills Soccer Club, which he just joined this year. Jake wanted to be in the parade! 

He and I left early and walked to the beginning of the parade to wait with a group of soccer players of all ages. Unfortunately, we didn't know anyone, but the excitement of being able to throw candy to the kids watching the parade was an opportunity Jake did not want to pass up.

 Ryan and Mike had gone ahead and found a place to sit to watch the parade. After we went through, we joined them to watch the end of the parade.

 After the parade, Jake got to play a bit at the Kid's Zone area. I'm sure this was especially fun while wearing a slippery soccer uniform!

While being in the parade was fun in the sense that I got to spot lots of people that I knew and waved at them, I missed getting to see the whole thing. So Mike and I will swap parade duty every year as long as one or both boys wants to be a part of the parade :)

Black Butte with Cousins

After Amy and Tyler's wedding, my cousin David and his family joined us for a few days at Black Butte. We drove over in 2 cars on Sunday and had a great 4 days!

On Monday we spent time at the pool, which was fabulous after the busy, fun wedding weekend. Max (almost 6) and Jake loved, LOVED being together and swimming together. 

You can't really see it in this picture, but both their goggles are of "lizard eyes." They are the coolest goggles, ever. Max needed goggles so he found those at the gift shop. They were so awesome that Jake needed a pair, too. So that's what we did.

Tuesday we all went for a long bike ride. Stopped in the Big Meadow to take pictures.

Arrived at Paulina Springs to play for awhile.

Jake fell into the spring. Since the spring originates RIGHT THERE from the mountain snow melts, it is really, really cold. Good thing I brought a couple towels.

A bunch of bikes :)

And there were snacks.

I love this picture -- barefoot and grounded in nature yet on the iPhone.

Tree stump hopping.

Finally back to the house at the end of the bike ride. David, Jackie, Max, Mike, Jake, and Ryan.

We made pizza the last night we were there. It was yummy.

Ryan spends as much time as possible outside, which is great. He loves to pedal the truck.

And he also loves his balance bike, and he's actually getting quite good at it, gliding along at times. Impressive.

These two spent much time together on the top bunk of the bunk beds. They were best friends for the entire time. It was really wonderful.

The adults had a great time, too. In the evenings after getting all 3 boys to sleep (or the toddler asleep and the 2 older boys "settled"), we would turn on the TV to watch the Summer 2012 Olympics, which was a treat for me because I love to watch the Olympics but we do not have cable at home. One night we played Apples to Apples and there was lots of laughing. A real treat!