Snow on Autry's Birhtday

My Little Boy is 4

Autry turned 4 on December 29. It was a really fun day. Him and I woke up early in the morning and made pancakes. When the pancakes were ready he got to go wake everybody up so he could open his presents. He got a Caspian book, a bible (it is the best children's bible I have ever seen), a pirate ship he could make, and this little dinosaur thingy. Autry and I went on a date and read almost the entirety of his new bible. Grammy and Grampy came over after nap and he got a few more presents, including his present that was "his best part of the day", His Prince Caspian, Peter, and Edmond figurines.

It started to snow so Grammy and Grampy had to leave. Autry and Randy played outside for a few hours, making a snow many and making a huge snowman. Then we had birthday dinner (hot dogs) and his Susan's Magical Horn Birthday cake.

It was such a fun day, I cannot believe that my little boy is 4. He is such a kind boy. Whenever his sisters wants something, he almost always gives it to them. He loves his sisters and his mommy an daddy so much. His favorite things to do is to have books read to him. When he knows how to read I don't think he will ever stop reading. He is full of information about everything and loves to learn. For his birthday we were able to go to the seaside aquarium and he was able to feed the seals. He thought this was the coolest thing ever. He gets so excited about everything. Autry loves people, and always wants to be around people. He loves his friends and all of our friends. We are so thankful to have such a kind sweet boy.

Christmas Day on the Beach

Christmas Day Making Gingerbread

Christmas at the Beach

We had a wonderful Christmas at the beach this year. Instead of doing Christmas presents this year we decided to have Christmas in a small cabin in Cannon beach. It was a perfect Christmas. We had the beach and town basically to ourselves on Christmas Day. On Christmas day it was almost 60 degrees and we were able to play on the beach almost all day. It was a lot of fun. Throughout the course of the day we also read through the entire gospel of Mark. We had so much fun together as a family. Christmas Eve we had our traditional gumbo, gingerbread for breakfast, and a huge turkey dinner. We had a lot of fun and Randy and I were even able to sneak in naps in the afternoon. In Randy's words, "This was the best Christmas ever".

Our Little Christmas Tree

We moved at the beginning of December. It was sad to leave SE and the proximity of many friends, but we LOVE our Beaverton home. WE love the backyard, the color of the walls, our huge garage, and the closeness of all the places that I do my grocery shopping.

The move at the beginning of the month severely pushed back the getting of our Christmas tree. We weren't able to get it until the 16th, and we didn't want to pay for the regular price for a tree when it was only going to be up for a little while. So we drove out to our traditional Christmas Tree Farm Loch Lolly, and cut down a small little tree, then we went out to our favorite after Christmas tree Mcmenamis, Rock Creek Tavern, and enjoyed ourselves some happy hour hamburgers.

It was so much fun to watch the kids decorate our tree, it was just their size. They were able to put all the ornaments on themselves. We weren't able to fit all of our hundreds of ornaments up, but most of my favorites were put up. Having a tree the same size as the kids also has it downfalls, in that a lot of ornaments were broken this year. All in all it ended up being a perfect tree for our family, I think a little Christmas tree that the kids can decorate may be a new family tradition.

Halloween (cont.)

Halloween

Addie and the Pumpkin

Pumpkin Patch and Pumpkin (cont.)

Playing with Daddy

NOT IN HIS UNDERWEAR....IN BASKETBALL SHORTS

Addie turns 1

This is Addie on her 1st birthday. So cute. She is such a big girl, and such an easy baby. She loves playing with her brother and sister (except when they hurt her). She is such a happy and content baby, I can't hardly believe that she is one. Grammie, Grandpi, Nana, Papa, and Auntie Mollie were all came over to celebrate our birthday girl.

Pumpkin Patch and Pumpkins

We went to the pumpkin patch and it started downpouring about 10 minutes after we got there. The kids played under the covered area for a little while, while the parents talked and hung out. It stopped raining so we decided to go outside to get our pumpkin. Then it started raining again, we got our pumpkins at New Seasons this year.

Random end of Summer Pictures

Since I didn't post for months and months here are a few summer pictures

Autry's swimming lessons.

The first couple weeks of September Autry took swimming lessons. He loved it so much. He can now put his head in the water and blow bubbles for 5 seconds. His teacher's name was Allison and he asks to pray for her every night at dinner.

Family Pictures

I think we are watching to much baseball

Autry said to me this morning, "Mommy, can you please find in my bible the story where David struck Goliath out"

Emilie's Mother's Day Birthday at the Beach (cont.)

Emilie's Mother's Day Birthday at the Beach

Reading with Grammie

Sick Clarablle

Claire was sick for two weeks with various ailments, and was as pitiful as pitiful gets

Where can we find the answers to all our questions?

Autry: Daddy who in the world was the catcher at your baseball game?
Randy: I don't know
Autry: We better look it up online

Autry riding his bike

Sunriver

We had a lot of fun in Sunriver this past week. I am pretty sure that Sunriver is my favorite place to vacation. Every time we go (we have been twice) I have so much fun. I am not sure why, but I just love it. We went with our friends the Eriksons. They have three boys similar ages to our kids. The kids played together all day long. Diane and I hung out and tried to do as little as possible. Erik and Randy went to the Deschutes Brewery, took the kids sledding, played frisbee golf (of course), went bike riding etc. The adults had a lot of fun playing games when the kids went to bed. The first morning we were there, we woke up to five inches of snow, the kids had a lot of fun playing in it.