A Camping We Will Go

Over Easter weekend, we bought a pop-up tent trailer to take our family camping this summer!  I cannot wait to try it out!!!  We all love going camping, but I like something a little nicer than a tent so this is perfect for us!  It has two full-ish size mattresses on each end and the table area folds into a twin-ish size bed.  And plenty of floor room for the dog!  We set it up the other night and let the kids look in it.  They were ready to head out camping that night! 

 

 

Carnival

Erika's school held its annual carnival this past weekend.  For the second year, I helped on the planning committee....we have such a great group of parents helping make this a very successful carnival and auction!  The kids had a blast bouncing in the bounce house, playing games, eating a bunch of junk, climbing the ropes, and winning prizes.  They are lucky enough to have a great aunt Sarah and Grandma Parnell take them around the carnival since I was a volunteer coordinator and had to make sure the carnival was running smoothly.  I saw the kids every once in a while running from game to game and they looked like they had a very fun day!

 

 

 

Easter Weekend

Our Easter celebrations began on Thursday with this adorable little lady having an Easter party at preschool.

 

 

Saturday, we began our busy day at the church Easter egg hunt.  The kids got some much candy!!!  They always have a great time at the church's egg hunt.  Luckily, this year we just missed the rain....it started to pour seconds after we emptied our eggs and were heading inside.

 

After the egg hunt, Levi went to Grandma's house for the afternoon while Sarah and I took the girls to see Rio 2.  Erika loves going to the movies!  Laurel likes being involved and popcorn so she decided to come along.  The theater is too loud for her so she watches movies like this....

 

After a special dinner at Red Robin, we came home to dye eggs with Dad.

 

Easter morning, the kids got chocolate and little dog figures that are all the rage in our house right now.

 

After church, we came home to a ham dinner and a small egg hunt in the backyard.

 

To end the fun day, we drove to Corvallis to celebrate our nephew, Ezra, on his first birthday!  The kids had a great time playing with their cousins and riding in a really fun little car they could drive.  Busy and fun Easter celebrations this year!!

Birthday Beach Trip

For our birthday, Sarah rented a house in Lincoln City for us and our friend, Nette, to stay in over the weekend.  It was a fun, relaxing, laugh-filled beach weekend with gorgeous Oregon coast weather!

 

Our view from the living room....we spent the majority of the weekend in the chairs by the window looking out at the ocean.

Sandpipers

It was super windy and cold the first night we walked on the beach!

Our rented house for the weekend

A perfect way to wake up!

Girls weekend

First Grade Concert

We were lucky enough to witness a musical masterpiece that was the Crater Elementary First Grade Concert!  Erika and her classmates did a great job with all their songs.  A week before the concert, her music teacher sent home the song sheets of the songs she would be singing....I was shocked by the amount of songs she had to memorize!  They sang 12 different songs and said two poems during the concert....quite a bit of memorizing for anyone, let alone a 6 year old!  The concert was complete with little kids playing with their clothes, yawning, talking to their neighbors, scratching their armpits, and giggling when someone sang a note during a rest....it was perfect!

 

Erika's cheering section

 

Cutest concert singer!

 

There were a lot of hand motions for the songs....which helped a lot with the fidgeting!

 

Most of Erika's class

 

 

We celebrated her concert with a trip to the ice cream parlor.  Great job Erika!

While We Were In California...

Matt used the time of solitude to work on our yard.  He started on Saturday morning by beautifying our flower beds with beauty bark.  They look so much better!

 

 

Then, he began assembling the shed he bought.  It came in a big huge box that weighed a ton with all the aluminum sides stacked on top of each other.  After reading the directions, and seeing that it took two people two days to assemble, Matt started the project all by himself....and finished in about 16 hours!  Pretty impressive!  He sent me pictures along the way.

 

Saturday morning he put the foundation together.

 

Then started building the sides. 

 

By Sunday evening, this was the finished product.  It looks great!  When I got home, I helped him tighten a few bolts, but it was pretty much done when I got home.

Here is the inside.

 

And here is the inside once the floor got painted and things started to move in.  Matt moved the work bench from the garage into the shed, built the back shelves, and I think has plans for pegboard and possibly a few more shelves??  We are cleaning out the garage so it can truly be a two car garage and Matt now has a nice shed for all his tools and projects that he has in the works! 

Spring Break - Part 4 - Leaving

Tuesday morning, we played outside and at the park for a super long time to get all our energy out before our long drive home.  We left Jacob and Lisa's at 11:30 and drove about an hour north to the Jelly Belly Factory.  It was a lot of fun to go through!  The kids did great waiting in line for the tour....especially since there was a sample bar that they kept going to for jelly bean samples!

 

 

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful.  The kids watched movie after movie in the car, played with more gifts that they received hourly, wrote secret notes to us, stopped for dinner in Redmond at a Burger King with a great play place.  We stopped in Ashland at 8:30pm for gas and had the kids change into their pajamas.  They fell asleep in the car for the last 4 hours of the trip.  It was a little uncomfortable for Erika.....she had some trouble falling asleep in her seat....but eventually she found a great spot.  We pulled into our driveway at 1:15am.  Sarah then drove herself home and the kids and I went right to bed.  They slept in until 7:30 the following morning and we spent all of Wednesday unpacking and getting some rest. 

The aftermath of cleaning out the backseats of the car.  I can't believe we had enough room for the kids amidst all the junk!

 

It was a great spring break trip!  I was very glad to see where Jacob and Lisa live and for the kids to get to play with Molly and Ellie.  The kids did such a great job travelling that it gives me hope for future trips!