interuppting the peace.

I cherise the time I get to spend at the gym. I especially cherish my yoga class. One whole hour to concentrate on nothing but my breath, reconnecting with my after-baby body, and seeing how far I can push it. I have always enjoyed yoga. Yesterday I dropped the kids off in the daycare like normal, and high tailed it to class. I got in the groove, my blood started boiling, oh how I love sun salutations. As we start into balance strength poses the daycare lady appears at the door... crap... I run out with my bag thinking it must be a poopy diaper. No max is crying... why? no-one knows. I get to the daycare area and max doesn't really seem upset... so I sit with him a minute, the nursery worker starts blowing bubbles and I make my exit. Get back to class and we start on inversion poses (which I don't really like, just because I am not very good at them, by the time I get my body all contorted and upside down, my cleavage is pushed up almost to my nose and I can't breath.... I am to round still for some of this stuff...heeh) right as we are working on the stupid head stand, whatever with your elbows on your knees, I see the girl again. COME ON... it is only an hour, can't they at least try to entertain him. I make my way to the nursery again, max is crying, pulling at his bracelet and asking to go to mommy's car. Well at that point there was only 15 minutes left of class.. So I went back to class just to grab my stuff, loaded up the boys and came home. I was SO cranky. The best part of yoga is laying on the floor at the end and just letting everything stop. your mind, your body, it is my favorite part... and I missed it, jerked out of my peace and back to the craziness of my life with 2 little men...

I guess it helps that they are cute, but still, come on... it is only an hour a day I ask for... I am just hoping this is not a trend, I will let you know how the gym goes today..

A little side note, you know the local bread daves killer bread .. I think Dave is in the yoga class I take... the dude looks like the drawing and a daves killer bread honda passport is always in the parking lot on yoga day... I might work up the nerve to ask him.... haaaa... it is kind of funny.

B's company picnic.... lame-o

So I am not in love with B's job, yes I should be thankful, it pays us enough for me to stay home, and for that I should be grateful. so I will shut-up about it! Okay back to the picnic, it was up at Mt. Hood "Adventure Park"... so lame.

it is really like a backwoods country amusement park. I was not impressed. We got there late (imagine that, my family late..ha) so we missed out on the BBQ... but the event was scheduled at 3:00 pm... hello, it takes an hour to get there and that is right at the end of naptime. Ollie is not one to be awokin from a nap early, he is almost impossible to deal with, so when he sleeps you let him wake up on his own...period.

so yeah, we were late. It was hot, the boys were to small to really enjoy any of the few rides they did have. Ollie and I took the chair lift up and slid down a cement alpine slide, that was okay, but pretty anti-climatic. I was looking at the brochure and it is $20 bucks a person for that place... LAME.

Anyway the best part of the day was stopping at Tollgate campground, and hitting the DQ on the way back. I camped at tollgate a long time ago and remember it being really pretty. So we stopped and checked it out with the boys. I think we will try to get up there for a night of camping before the summer is over.

This is B trying to give me a heart attack. He walked out on fallen tree trunks over the river, than took ollie out with him. This is not the swimming type of river, it is freezing and moves pretty fast, I kept seeing ollie and max being swept down stream. so B safely returned the boys to the rocks, not dangling out over the water... They thought dad was pretty cool though, and mom was a party pooper.. Well boys, your still alive, so I did my job well.

Garden Update..

My Garden is doing lovely! I planted way to much lettuce and forgot to plant the zucchini. But did plant butternut squash and eggplant so that is cool. I also planted beets I think, I planted them right next to the Kale and can't really tell what is the beets and what is just kale greens, oh well I will figure it out when the little tops of beets start sticking out. I was late planting my peas and green beans, but they will grow, we will just have them later this summer. My tomatoes are popping out little green balls all over the place, I can't wait till they start turning yellow and red, there is nothing better than tomatoes right off the vine. We also planted some broccoli late, the boys for some reason love to water that little planter the most, so our broccoli stays well watered, it is still growing though, so whatever. I try to have them help me allot in the garden, I think it is great for them! Yes, stressful at times for me, but the good out weighs the bad.

I love being able to go out in the back yard and pick out veggies for dinner, we love kale, so our little kale patch is a gem. I can't wait for the rest of the veggies to come in!

we heart family reunions....

So it was that time of year again for the third annual Meier/Bartel/Sessums/Raetz/Payne (missing a meier and 2 samarins) Black Butte trip.
We spent the first half of the week with the two and a half (mom) Meier and Payne families, and missed out on hangin with the Sessums/Bartel crew.
It was super fun even if half the fam was missing. The previous week we had been in California visiting Nana Barb, came home for three days and than went to the mountains for the weekend, by the end of the weekend my boys were vacationed out!

Lets see last year we had becki our private vegan chef, which we missed terribly, this year we did pretty good though... there was allot more meat in our menus though.

We rode bikes, played allot of Wi (we need one of those),

*check out Max's face in the photo he was having a blast.. and look ma no pants!

hung out at the pool (max is a swimming machine) Ollie just wanted to hang out in the hot tub. Me and Shannon made it to one morning of Yoga which was fantastic! and went fishing. It was relaxing and crazy and super fun... we are already looking forward to next year! (bex and jo put it on your calenders now, we missed you)

I was trying to get a good pick of all three boys... they were to into climbing! "look mom I am going to fall in the lake"
you can't really see maxes hand but he had a big piece of wood, he was headed over to hunt caveman style!
ohhh and here comes daddio rickshaw
Max helping papa mike work on his investments and check e-mail, while munching on his breakfast of champions.. the cheerios.

Daddy and Ollie on there boy bonding time.

They picked me some wild flowers, Ollie however is not at all interested in getting his photo taken with me... the blue is leaving his eyes.. he will totally have mamas green eyes... ladies beware.

like my new layout.. i think it's purdy...

Happy Fourth of July....

We went to my mom's for a little bbq 4th celebration, she lives in Vancouver were all the fireworks that are illegal in oregon are legal. So we sat on the drive and watched a great neighborhood display in every direction.

Happy B-day Nana Barb...

We were so lucky to get to go down to California for a second visit this summer. Nana Barb had to have surgery the beginning of the month on her lung, Not fun.... so me and the boys headed down to help around the house (I mowed the lawn, only the second time in my life mowing a lawn.. impressive....) and to celebrate her b-day.



Nana Barb has a swimming pool and the boys love it. Since we have been home they keeping asking to go to Nana Barbs... sucks it is a 12 hour drive to get there!



It was a great visit, barb and I haven't spent that much time just one on one, so it was nice to have a low key week to just hang out...


We got to drive out to french camp and visit with great grampa joe... the boys like it out there, I think grampa joe likes it too!



We got the boys hair-cuts (or hair fixes... I just can't help chopping at the boys hair..)



We also took them to see Kung Fu Panda, They were so stoked... It was the first real movie both of them have been to. We take them to the kennedy school theatre, but it is not the big movie theater experience this was. I forgot how much I loved the theater out in riverbank... it is soooo freakin nice the chairs are roomy and lean way back without squishing the people behind you. We went to an early matinee so there was hardly anyone in the theater. Max made it through about half the movie before wanting to wiggle around.. which was fine, we spent the last half of the movie running along the side aisle by the exit... than he curled up in my lap and fell asleep. We got the boys a little tray of popcorn, I think max kept thinking I was going to take it away he was shoving that stuff in with both hands at one point.

So we have another visit planned for early September, I think, or maybe the holiday season, we really want to take the boys to Disneyland and maybe instead of doing a normal christmas, we will do a trip instead.. hmmm something to think about.

This is a shot of our ride home, so much smoke between Sacramento and Ashland it was crazy, it felt like I was in a war zone....

lavender is for cranky old woman..

I stopped by salem on my way down to cali to go to a lavender festival with kari and claire. I thought it would be a great break before we sat in the car for four hours to medford. It was the 100 degree day we had 3 kids under the age of 3, and kari is 30+ weeks prego. I don't quite now what we were thinking...

It turned out fun though, our kids were hot and sweaty, ollie kept getting rocks in his crocs and kickin them off than crying because the ground was hot. I was suckered into buying undercooked messy homemade brownies for the kids (what a mess). When we stopped to take a rest in the one shady spot on the quilt yard, an old woman shooed us off, and proceeded to put a cooler on the blanket. She never used it the whole time we were there... would you really shoo off a group with small children and a pregnant woman?

Kari got cut off by on old woman to get the bathroom... and we both felt that the staff of the event kept walking by to make sure we weren't ruining the quilt we were on... and you know what our kids weren't really crazy or anything...

So next time old woman want to throw a lavender festival, please put "children and pregnant woman not welcome" on your posters... and we will leave you and all your weird hats alone... but we like lavender too!

After the old lady fiasco, we stopped at a little fruit stand/restaurant and had lunch before we hit the road, our kids did pretty good, for being hot and sticky and coerced by there moms to sit still so we could feel like a normal part of society.

After our lunch we gave the kids quick sponge baths in the bathroom, changed diapers, strapped them in the car, and I proceeded my lovely drive through oregon, and into burning california....