Life Lately

Well needless to say, we had a busy summer. House hunting took up 90% of that.. but we squeezed in plenty of fun too.

Here is how we wrapped up Summer 2015!

We signed Austin up for swim lessons. He took "lessons" when he was 18 months old but that was basically "float around in the pool with your parent." This time he was with no parent in the pool, just his little class. He mastered a front/dead man's float really well! We are going to sign him up again for this Fall!

Yes, the following picture is of the bruise Neal got playing baseball this summer. He was the catcher and (as Austin would say) the ball BAMMED him! It was pretty impressive.

One of the weekends we were down seeing my parents we went to the Scandinavian Festival. We go for the food, really. Owen had fun riding in his stroller looking around and Austin really really really really wanted a "Viking Sword!!!" so Grampa gave in. Very long serious conversations followed about how he can't bam his brother with that thing.

For awhile now, Austin has really wanted to go to "downtown Portland" so we spent a day walking along the waterfront (and were totally disillusioned by the copious amounts of homeless people... I don't remember Portland being that bad a few years ago....)  but we had fun in the big fountain.

Most of the month of August was spent going through our things, packing up what we could live without and getting ready to move. Obviously we have too many toys since we had all this (and more) still out AFTER we packed a lot of them up.

Austin worked on his dunking skills over the summer... this kid... we aren't going to push him to do anything he doesn't want to do, but it's pretty obvious he loves sports like Neal does. I guess I better brush up on some basic knowledge so I'm not sitting at some game going "was that good? did they score? what just happened? I thought the ball was over there, how did that happen? Oh, I'm not supposed to clap right then? Sorry."

Moving also meant cleaning out the fridge and pantry so we didn't have to move food. Am I the only one that HATES moving food?? You have to pack in a cooler, then you unpack it and wonder why you bothered moving it. So I was determined to clean out as much as we could. I made some of my Dad's venison and Austin gobbled it up! For a picky eater, some of the things he ends up loving shocks me. And yes, we ate on all the random paper plates we had in the house our last few weeks before moving too... Happy Birthday, Halloween.. it was a smorgasbord of celebrations.

Moving day came... and the boys had one last bath in their first home. When we were all moved out, Neal and I did a final walk through, and while we both got a little choked up... we weren't as sad as we thought we were going to be. I think we are both too excited for what the future holds, and growing into our new home and watching our boys get big and even crazier. For now though.. they are little, and sweet and still fit in the tub at the same time. :-)

Then we took over Poppa and Gramma Pete's house for 2 weeks! I'm sure that after the whirlwind of wrestling, tantrums, spit-ups, Ninjan Turtle sword fighting, middle-of-the-night crying, and random chaos... they were glad to get back to their normal quiet house!