bucket

Some things are still appealing one year later almost to the day:

Ukrainian Day 2011

Some of what you missed if you weren't at Ukrainian Day in Springfield last Saturday.

If you want to see the whole day recapped, in a much more professional manner, I think you can still order from http://www.downthebeanstalk.com/ for $15!

In each of these videos, at least one person is related to me/Isaac.

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It was a very fun day! Maybe next year Isaac can dance. He kept saying that he wanted to dance this year.

sweet cousins

We had a wonderful visit from our cousins on Monday! It was perfect, because London was with us too. Isaac and Louisa are about the same age and London and Josie are about the same age too.

Sweet little girls!!

 Isaac liked to play with the younger cousins too.

 Louisa! And Isaac's godfather (do you capitalize that..? Hm...... I don't know.).

 London and Isaac!

 Isaac's beautiful godparents and all the kids!

 We went to the park...

 and swung a little....

 It was London's first time swinging, and she loved it!!

Louisa can swing by herself on the big swing. Isaac still wanted help from Mama. "I'm too little," he said.

 Now we are over with Auntie Anna and baby London in Central Oregon. Today we went to Cline Falls, but Isaac fell asleep on the way.

 London swam around a little bit! She is a natural little swimmer girl.

We get to spend the rest of the week here too! It is so nice to finally spend a lot of time with family.

what we've been up to

Here are some various things from since we've moved.

The sweetest cousins :)

 I looooove them so much!

 London has been eating so much lately!

 We went to Lucia's birthday party too! Isaac also liked that!

 We had some baby birds in our dryer vent. They had their little nest in the flexible tubing. Luckily, they left on July 26th. Isaac liked to try to "help" them... We had to borrow a ladder from our neighbors to put one of the birds back in the nest because it freaked out and took a little leap out... which we accidentally got on video.

We also got a passport for Isaac... because we are for sure going to Burkina Faso in December! :) I thought I would save some money by taking his picture myself. Then I read the fine print, and they said "no snapshots". Oh well, we got a few cute pictures. If you want to feel like pulling your hair out, try to take a good picture that meets a bunch of specifications of a two year old. These are my favorite ones. 

 Isaac likes his necklaces... especially the shiny ones.

 We have our little container garden, and I've gotten one good zucchini off of each of my plants. The basil is doing really well too. It is a fun little adventure, although not as satisfying as digging in the dirt.

 Here it is!

 We also helped some teenagers draw with sidewalk chalk in one of our Eugene parks.

London and Isaac just love being around each other :)

4th of July weekend

Finally we are putting up pictures from the 4th of July weekend. We went to an unconventional baby shower for our cousins Nick and Tiia. If you can guess the game in the second picture, you win some sort of prize.

 It might help you guess to know there were two pink balloons on the other side.

Isaac and I went for a walk on the beach. The wind was constantly blowing what felt like 20 miles an hour at least. We enjoyed some time on the downwind side of some driftwood.

Isaac is able to find the joy in any situation. We also saw fireworks that night.

 Isaac was pretty nervous about the big booms, and would not allow himself to be held by anyone but Nana.

 The next day we had lunch at Grandma and Grandpa's house. Isaac sat in Grandpa Wally's chair.

 Isaac took a bath in his old bathtub, which we have lent to baby London.

The fireworks video ended up here, and I was having trouble moving it.

 And I finally finished that scarf I had been working on while we were at Nana's house.

It was a good weekend!

move

Here are some videos from the week of our move.

So sad to leave where we were. It was just so nice to have all the kids around. But Isaac is adjusting to the "new house" pretty well. He has had his moments of confusion, but I think he likes the stairs being inside the "house"! One night, he went to sleep with Papa, and woke up a little upset that he wasn't where he was used to being. He ran out of the one room and into the bathroom. We said, "Isaac, wrong door!"

Isaac has started asking "What?", not "why?" yet, although he did ask just once the other day.

He also said, when we were at the library the other day and he was looking at a brother and sister with their mama. He said, "Mama, I want a sister."

"Oh," I said, "you want a sister now?" He has been saying he wants a brother so this was a change.

"And I want a brother too," he added.

So Isaac would like two siblings. A sister and a brother. Maybe I can have fraternal twins sometime. :)

We are kind of disconnected from the internet and phone right now. It is kind of nice in a way, although somewhat inconvenient to come to the library all the time. Oh well! We'll see how long we do it for.

strawberries

Sorry, I don't have any pictures...

But before we go off for the 4th of July weekend, I wanted to just write quickly.

We went strawberry picking with our cousins Erin, Lucia, Malachai and Peter on Friday. It was fun! Isaac had more fun eating the berries than picking them, but we got our bucket eventually. Letting him eat the berries was the main reason we went, because our strawberry patch has stopped producing. Anyway, Isaac had fun with his cousins running around and exploring all the other things they had on the farm, like a playground, goats, and a "panning for rare gems" water thing they had. He was really tired afterwards and fell asleep on the way home. Mama got a sunburn (oops). I wish I could have taken pictures, but the memory card on the camera was full, so I didn't bring it. Next time, I will though.

Then, I made jam with a lot of the strawberries, and was happy that all the jars sealed (even one that I couldn't fill all the way). Man, canning supplies can be expensive! Luckily, I went door to door trying to find something that would work for canning pint jars, and it turned out one of my neighbors actually had a canner. It worked really well.

That's about it, I guess! I'm glad we got to the strawberries before the end of the season and was even more glad that we got to go with our cousins.