My Two Little Monkey's Bathroom

I've been meaning to post these pics for awhile. I'm finishing some projects that I neglected for awhile. It took me a long time to decide what I wanted to do with the boy's bathroom. I saw this cute monkey stuff, but their bathroom is in their room and an interior design rule is for the decorating to flow from room to room. I could have done the same colors in their bathroom, but I decided to break the rules and do the monkey theme. It is just way too cute, and Porter LOVES the monkeys!

Porter and Hudson's finished room...

I finally finished their room. I really like how it turned out! Porter loves the different vehicles on the wall.
This was the first cross stitch that I ever did. It is the poem "Babies Don't Keep". I love this poem and it is always a good reminder that cleaning and scrubbing can wait till tomorrow, for babies grow up, we've learned to our sorrow...

Fun Summer Day

We had a fun summer play group yesterday. We went to a free movie (Porter and Hudson made it through the whole thing!) After the movie, we went over to a water park and played in the water and sun. The water park was free, also! I like spending a whole day having fun and not spending a penny! Porter had such a blast playing in the water. I was surprised how well Hudson did. I could tell he didn't know what exactly to think, but he liked to crawl around in the shallow water. They were having so much fun that we ended up staying there for 31/2 hours! What a fun way to cool off on a hot summer day! We will definitely be visiting this awesome park again!

Oregon Strawberries Are Here!

We got our berries! They were sooo good! The nice thing was they were already washed, stemmed and sliced! I hardly had to do a thing to make the jam! I froze the rest for smoothies. Porter loved helping me out...

He was snitching so much that I gave him his own bowl full to eat!
Porter LOVES any kind of berries!
The finished product. I think I went over board on the jam! It was just so easy to make that I kept making it! I ended up with 20 jars! They're good gifts, though. I made half of them sugar free, so I don't have to worry about Porter overloading on sugar.

You're The Bestest Dad!

If Porter could talk better, this is what he would say: "Thanks, Dad, for being so great. I love when you play ball with me, take me on father-son campouts, wrestle with me after work, rock me at bedtime, and laugh with me when I burp at the table! I love you so much, even when it doesn't seem like it, because I am not listening to you and doing things that make you want to pull your hair out! I am so lucky to have a Dad like you!"

If Hudson could talk, he would say: "I love my Daddy! Thank you for holding and snuggling with me, to give Mommy a break. I love that you don't think I am too young to wrestle with you and Porter, because a boy can never be too young to wrestle on the floor with his Daddy. I love when you blow zerbits on my belly and throw me into the air. I am never scared because I trust you with my life and I know that you will always catch me. I am so lucky to have a Daddy like you!"

Angela: "You are the best Husband and Father that anyone could ask for. I love seeing you be a Daddy and teaching our boys. I love how hard-working you are to let me stay home with our kids. I love your sense of humor and happy personality. I love that you love being a Husband and Dad more than anything in the world! I am so lucky to have a Husband like you!"

My Little Cruiser

Hudson is crawling! He started crawling right after he turned 7 mo. He just started doing the "one knee" crawl like you will see in the video. That's how I crawled!

Snuggles

I just had to post this picture. I love it! Isn't it just the cutest thing? I love my boys:)

The park and the rain!

Last week, we had play group at the park. It was a cool park that I had never been to. It's kind of hidden and not very many people know about it. The equipment is nice and looks new. It was drizzling a little earlier, but when we were there it was nice and sunny. Porter had a blast playing with his friends and running around the park bare foot looking for tigers (or whatever it was they were looking for!) After play group we went home and a while later I noticed some dark clouds rolling in. I'm not used to seeing clouds like that here. Porter saw the dark clouds and asked what they were. I said that those clouds mean the rain is coming...and it came! First the wind blew like crazy and blew the shade tent we had set up on our patio. Then the rain came. Our power went out for about 4 hours. It was quite the storm for Oregon!

A garden and more

As if we don't have enough going on right now, I wanted to get a garden planted. I know it's kind of late to plant one (June), but I decided to anyways. I planted strawberries, onions, 2 kinds of cucumbers, green peppers, broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, summer squash, pumpkins, carrot seeds, and 11 tomato plants (I only bought one of those plants, the rest were given to me, so I guess I will be canning spaghetti sauce and salsa this fall!) Mid-July, I am going to plant sugar snap peas for a fall harvest, since I was too late to plant them for the summer. I'm excited to see what I get!
Our pretty roses. We have peonies, roses, daffodils, tulips, and another kind of flower that I didn't know, that were already here. It's nice to have a few plants that we didn't have to plant!
This is our small side yard. We didn't want to have to worry about mowing it, so we placed these stepping stones and planted moss around them. There are two kinds of moss that are different colors of green. The moss will spread and make a ground cover around the stones. I think it's going to look so cool!

Sand Box Heaven

Porter was so excited when I told him that we were making him a sand box to play in. He wouldn't stop talking about it! I guess it's every boy's dream to have a sand box... and since we have two of them, we thought a sand box would be a must-have item for our backyard.

I dug out the hole, while Brandon was busy with building the fence.
Brandon and Tim laid the landscaping fabric and stones.
Then we filled it! It was the easiest project we have done so far! We still need to make a lid for it, but we are trying to decide what kind we want. I'm tempted to keep it simple and just do a tarp, but we'll see.

Lucious Green Grass...

That is what we are hoping to have in 4-6 weeks! I am so sick of dirt. Porter can't play outside and when he does, he is filthy when he is done. I can't keep my house clean because so much dirt is tracked in! I can't wait to send Porter outside to play in a fenced, grassy backyard!!!!

Planting grass was quite the ordeal. There were so many steps we had to complete. First, we bought 11 tons of top soil and 6 tons of sand! Most of the sand we used for a different project. We used to top soil to fill in low spots and level our yard. Brandon shoveled every speck of that dirt, and I raked it until it the yard was level. Porter had a blast being a boy and climbing on a mountain of dirt!
Next Brandon rolled the dirt with a drum roller.
Then I spread the seed.
After the seed was spread, it needed to be raked again, to cover most of the seed. After it was raked, Brandon rolled it with the drum roller, again. It was quite the process! Now we are watering, watering, and watering it some more!
Our friend, Jess, helped us remove the HUGE debris pile that was on our side yard. It went so quickly with his tractor. We have the coolest friends! Porter loved watching him the whole time!
Now that our side yard is cleared, we still need to plant grass there, but that is a lot smaller area, so it should go quickly. I will post pictures when we have grass! Yeah!!!!!!!!

Life has been Crazy!

Life has been CRAZY here since the weather got nice. We started doing outdoor projects. I feel like these projects have consumed our time and we are still not even close to being done! Brandon tilled our whole yard (which was very hard to do and he had aching muscles for a week afterward). We raked and leveled it (which I helped with and that was not fun, either). Then we put the yard on hold and started building our fence. We have a beautiful, newer fence all the way around our house, just leaving an opening for the driveway. If we had the money, it would be perfect to put in a retractable gate to close our whole property in... but that is not going to happen on our budget, so we want to fence in the backyard. Luckily it's not too much fence building, but it is still a huge project!

Brandon digging the post holes with the help of an auger (I don't know if that is spelled correctly). Porter was enthralled with the big machine.
Some of Brandon's fam came to help. Sharron and Sharri were a BIG help helping Brandon get the posts in straight.
Here are all the posts on one side of the house. Luckily the other side isn't so big!
After the posts were all in, the actual fence can be built. That is where we are still at, with the fence. During the fence building, we started another project of planting our grass, so we have been doing that most recently. When the fence is finished, I will post more pictures!
Thank you Uncle Tim for being a help to Brandon and keeping Porter distracted.

{Buddies}

We went over to Brad and Ali's house the other night. It was so fun to see a bunch of friends we hadn't seen in awhile. Garrett, Blake, and Porter are all close to the same age, and had so much fun playing together! Hudson even got into the mix a little bit. We decided to take pictures of all of the boys and this is what we got...
Porter wouldn't take off those silly glasses at first, but everyone else was smiling and looking at the camera.
Still, everyone is looking at the camera, except Porter. Come on Porter! We finally got Porter to smile at the camera by bribing him with dessert.
By the time Porter started cooperating, Garrett had had enough of the picture taking!
This is as good as we got! Notice, Hudson was the only one that stayed put the whole time, and that's because he couldn't move as fast as the other guys! Blake did a good job staying put, too! Go Blake! Way to show 'em how it should be done!

"I'M DANCING!"

Our little man, Porter was watching "So You Think You Can Dance" with us before his bedtime. When it became time for him to go to bed, he decided he wanted to be one of the dancers. This video proves he is a dancer...look at the moves. Brandon and I could not stop laughing which probably didn't help much. Ohhhh...The 2 1/2 year old 'tude we got this night! Porter always seems to find ways to put smiles on our faces!

Need Help!

I am trying to upload a video and I can't figure out how. Actually, I am trying to upload it to YouTube first, so I can then upload it to Blogger. Brandon has uploaded a couple videos a long time ago and he can't remember how he did it! I noticed that the videos he uploaded were mpeg files. The video I have tried to upload is a jpeg, and it says it needs to be converted... the problem is that I don't know how to convert it! This is driving me crazy!!!!! I know it can be done, because it has been done before, but I have been trying to figure this out for awhile now. Any one that is more computer saavy, Can you help me?!