Grandpa and grandma visit and a beach trip!

Grandma and Grandma came for a visit last week.  They had a fun time playing with the boys and helped (to say the least) with several house projects: constructed shelves in boys' room closet, made a vertical shelf in my kitchen cabinets, built a huge work bench in the garage and helped rearrange and get rid of stuff to make room for the trailer and my vehicle *inside the garage*!!!  It was a great visit, and the boys are very excited to go to grandma and grandpa's house in August.  Up until now, Ben had been riding a small bike without training wheels.  Grandpa got Ben riding his big boy bike.  It's getting closer to reality that this kid will be a school-ager very soon... Eli started 'riding' Ben's old small bike with the training wheels.

 

This weekend, we headed to Andy's grandpa's beach house with his Aaron, Rhonda, Grant and Emmett and Adam and Stephanie, too!  The house is about 2 blocks from the beach, so I think we made 4 trips for beach time fun.  It was pretty windy and about 70 degrees (as you can tell by Eli's hair in some of the pictures), but it didn't stop the boys from having fun and getting full of sand.  The strong wind made for good kite flying weather for the big boys (and Stephanie).

 

Sliiiiip, Slip and Slide.

When Ben received a Slip N Slide for his birthday (thanks, Brent, Patti and Nick!), the 80's Wham-O commercial was stuck in my head for days.  We finally had a chance to bust it out in the 90 degree heat we've been having here in Oregon.  Eli didn't want to try, but Ben got the hang of it after a while.  They mostly liked stomping on the water tube on the side, and splashing the other sibling in the face with the water spray.

 

 

 

 

Oh, and here is a Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly hanging out on a bush in the backyard.

 

 

 

Get outta town.

I felt the need to get out of town this weekend, so after attending a birthday party in Portland, the whole family headed out to the end of the Columbia River Gorge for a hike.  It was a bit too hot and exposed for the kids, so we basically did a little mini-hike until the sun seemed like it was too much for the kiddos (even lathered in sunscreen). It still was a nice drive - Andy said it even felt like we were on vacation, because the scenery was so different than what we are used to where we live.

 We found a nice picnic spot to ourselves right along the Columbia River.

Here are the very cute, but very annoying deer that come through our yard several times a day and stay for long periods of time.  One doe has 2 fawns and the other has just one.

Father's Day!

Father's Day 2013!  The cousins having fun in the shark pool!