Family photos

For the week of August 18-24

Boy, with buying a house and moving and starting the kids' online school and starting my doula mentorship and being on MOPs leadership... I got WAY behind in my blog. Hah! I'll roll through the last two months and catch up. :) Life has been hard, but so good.

We got family photos taken in Sellwood, and they turned out so great.

Cutie 3 year old. He looks so big!

Ruby picked out her own outfit.

Reid is so funny. He had new shoes, and of course, they got all dirty.

We had a ton of fun though. I sure love these three!

<3

 

He has so much fun drawing.

I took the kids for a lovely summer morning walk.

We went to the park down the street, but the playgrounds were still closed...

So they climbed on the bleachers and said, "It's a playground!" Poor kids.

They definitely make their own fun though.

Reid made us a love note with a dog on it. "Rof"

Miles and Mya

So handy when your 8 year old can read to the other two!

One house we looked at had a cute chicken coop. We offered on it, but there were 10 offers and we got beat out.

I came around the corner to this. :)

And then this. Hah! He loves to take his shirt off.

Ruby fell asleep with the light on. She's so cute. We've been letting her stay up a little later than the boys, and she LOVES that. She has a clock in her room, and when she sits up reading, she makes sure to turn her light off at 8:10, and says she falls asleep by 8:20 (self set regulation). Haha!

Helping Mama bake yummy goodies...

We have had to adopt a gluten free, dairy free, egg free, soy free diet for Ruby, to help with her digestive problems she's had for years. We had one last hurrah day and ate all the gluten/dairy/egg/soy things, including fresh homemade fettuccine alfredo.

It has been a whole lot better with her digestion, and we're hoping to at least be able to add eggs back in to our diet. We're now two months in, and after the next month we'll start trying things again.

She also lost a tooth!

Quarantine week 22: Grandma and Grandpa come visit!

For the week of 8/11-8/17

My parents came up for the week! It was so nice to see them, it had been about 6 months since they came up last. We quarantined really well the week before to make sure we didn't have COVID. 

The kids were SO excited, they were counting down the days! So were we... we got to go on a little two night getaway. Literally the first time we didn't have the kids with us 24/7 since February! It was much needed. Thanks mom and dad!!

The first night, the kids were so excited for story time with Grandpa.

Grandma brought her balloons and made everyone a balloon animal.

On Wednesday we took off right after lunch. The very first thing we did was finding a quiet spot in a park and taking a lovely nap. Hah! Our Airbnb wasn't too far away, and we had a lovely time. It was so nice and quiet.

Meanwhile, Miles built lots of train tracks.

And went on a nice walk.

We ended our little trip with officially starting our house hunt! This was the first of seven that we looked at. It was right on power line park, which was fun, but the lot and house itself were both very small.

Mom and Dad had taken the kids down the street, and they found a fun play spot!

They call it their "secret hideout."

Miles loves this cat Lily from down the street.

My sunflowers bloomed! It's called Ruby Eclipse and is SO pretty.

Dahlias too! We've had so much fun growing flowers this year.

Ruby helped Grandma peel and slice peaches for dessert.

Ruby made some jewelry with Grandpa. :)

Pizza night!

Movie night! We watched Wallace and Gromit.

Sunday was SUPER hot out. After church was done, we packed up a picnic lunch and went on a walk around a lake nearby. It got really hot!

The kids found some baby ducks.

This plant is so cool. The kids are inside of it! It's like a tent in there.

Super concentration.

They played "school."

Ruby made these deviled eggs all by herself! (with a little coaching).

Reid wrote the alphabet two different ways. I love his "g" and backwards "s."

Trying to open the back door while it's locked.

My parents left on the 17th, then we had family game night! The kids did really well. We did have to send Miles down the hall to play with his Legos while we finished. Haha. We're almost to the point where we can all play one together.

Quarantine week 21: Ruby gets sick

 For the week of 8/4-8/10

Ruby started having a headache again on Tuesday morning and then got a low grade fever. We got her in for a COVID test right away because my parents were coming up in a week, and it takes that long to get results right now. Poor thing, two COVID tests. She did great though.

Sick Sissy.

My dahlias started to bloom! They're just lovely.

Ruby felt good on and off for a few days. We got these fun play dough sets in the mail for free (not quite sure how, I think I entered an Instagram contest maybe?), and the kids had lots of fun with them.

Thank goodness Phoenix keeps us occupied.

Reid built all of these pop bead monster robots. Some are good guys, some are bad guys.

By Friday, she really started not feeling well. She said it hurt a little bit when she peed, so I called the doctor to get a urine test. She went in and gave the sample on Friday morning and they gave her antibiotics to take just in case anything got worse. Well, by Friday afternoon, her temp was up to 103.9! They said to start the antibiotics right away, even though her initial urine test did not show that she had an infection. We started those, and she was a lot better by Saturday evening (after another few fever spikes). By Sunday she was back to normal! The urine culture came back on Monday, and it was positive for e. coli. So I'm really glad we got the medication started on Friday and didn't have to wait over the weekend. Her COVID came back negative on Monday as well. The weird thing is that my dad also had a UTI at the same time from the same bacteria. So glad she is better. Dad has had some other complications unfortunately, but hopefully he's past the worst of it.

Andy took the boys out on a walk, and they got some fun leaves and things. Then they played with the air conditioner fan with them.

Miles likes to try to get himself dressed... those are Reid's underwear on backwards, and he found a size too small of his pants in the bottom drawer and put those on backwards as well. Hahaha!

Evening story time. The big kids and I have been reading all of the Narnia books, we finished the Silver Chair this week. It has been so fun!

Summer afternoons outside are the best.

And we are to this stage of the COVID quarantine... sit in a pool in the back yard with no water doing nothing at all.