Cheeses and Beaches

We trekked out to the coast on Thursday. We made the most important stop first: the cheese factory.



It was totally weird. This farmer still had a binkie. Someone should tell him he is getting a little old for that kind of behavior.


After we ate ice cream and bought fudge, we drove out to Cannon Beach to enjoy a little sand and surf. Blake was not such a big fan. He tried to climb up his daddy's legs so his feet wouldn't have to touch the sand.

Eventually we bribed him with some toys and then the world was good again.





Unabombers? Nope, that's just Grandma and Aunt Diana.

One year older

We took Carolyn's 4-year pictures and Blake's 18-month pictures last week. Aren't my kids just the cutest?

The sun is here!

We thought we might be doing outdoor swim lessons in 55 degree weather, but the sun came to Portland just in time. This is what we are doing for the next two weeks. Usually, swim class is enough to fill our days, but we are also fitting in tons of activities with Grandma Horner and Aunt Diane. Our children are exhausted but loving every minute of having guests.

It's that time again!

It's party day!!

We've been counting down to this ever since Chandler turned 4. Carolyn had a birthday. We went for an all-out puzzle theme.

This was the bane of my existence last night.
I found out that coloring is quite tedious if you have any time constraints. It was totally worth it though.

Each kid was supposed to put the missing puzzle piece (their face) in the spot.

We had a definite winner...

I asked him if he could see or was he just that good. He replied, deadpan, "I am just that good."

This year was awesome because I told my child who never eats cake that I was not making her a cake. She could pick anything else she wanted for dessert. She picked ice cream. How easy.

The kids colored dinosaur puzzles to take home with them.

Carolyn had a blast. She is fantastic and stretches me everyday. These are my favorite things about her right now:

• This girl sings and she can remember songs well, but sometimes just half a verse. We will hear that on repeat all day long.
• She counts to ten and then continues 11, 12. 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 21...
• Her favorite joke is either "CHANDLER!" or "WATERMELON!" Really, that's it. That's the whole joke.
• She calls Blake "boy." As in, "Come here, boy." "Over here, boy, I want to show you something."

Philly fun

We really love zoos. We went to the Philadelphia Zoo with Grandma Horner, Aunt Melissa, Uncle Ian, and their son, Noah.

Noah couldn't resist pushing Carolyn around in this stroller. Grandma helped so Carolyn wouldn't end up in the bushes.

The zoo had some sort of Lego project going on while we were there. I was pretty impressed.

This exhibit used 95,000 Legos.


Here we are with the Philly Fanatic.

I found a new love in Philly. For awhile it was Rita's water ice. But now it's delicious shakes from Cheeburger Cheeburger. They actually use real ice cream! This shouldn't be such a revelation, but I haven't good shakes in Portland. And no, Dairy Queen doesn't count. If any of you are near, I recommend a Dark Chocolate Mint shake. Mmmmm. Blake enjoyed his first shake. His car seat also got a good helping of shake as Blake pulled out the straw and dumped what he could.

There weren't a lot of pictures of our trip back East, but we had a great time. We are home for awhile now. We hope life slows down a little bit, but we are headed in celebration season for the Horner household. Anniversary, Carolyn's birthday, Father's day, and Jeremy's birthday. All coming up soon.

Back from Philadelphia--finally!

I took this picture from my seat in our plane. First off, everyone is fine. None of the drama included our family, unless you count having two young children stuck in Denver for an unexpected 6 1/2 hour layover.

Jeremy and I spent a week in Philadelphia with Jeremy's mom. We had a great time spending time with Grandma and some of Jeremy's siblings. It was nice to have the children be so flexible and adjusted to the time switch. It came at a small cost. On the trip to Philadelphia, Blake stayed awake the ENTIRE time. We had 15 hours of an awake Blake where he didn't sleep a single wink. He actually did quite well until the last 20 minutes of the final leg.

I was apprehensive leaving Philadelphia because this time we had a 3 hour layover in Kansas City. We made it to Kansas City and Blake actually took a 30-40 minute nap on Jeremy. It was wonderful. We boarded up for the last leg of our trip--direct to Portland. After about 15 minutes in the air, they requested help from medical personnel. After awhile, they determined to divert our flight to Denver to get a crew member to the hospital as soon as possible. We came in fast and hard to save time. We were back on board about two hours later after we got a replacement crew member and the plane went through a safety check. We taxied for takeoff and got going quite fast when we heard a giant pop and had some bumps. The pilot braked and announced that we blew our tires. At this point, I had to laugh to keep from crying. It was 8pm East Coast time, and the kids had been up since 5:30 am, minus Blake's blessed nap at Kansas City. The first picture was taken while we were on the tarmac and the emergency response teams came out to help.


This is a really low quality picture because it's from my cell phone through a bus window. What looks like white stuff by the plane is flame retardant. They sprayed it everywhere to make sure there was no chance of fire from sparks or anything. We eventually deplaned, went back to the terminal to wait for another plane to come in and take us home. We left Denver 6.5 hours after our original emergency landing.

Jeremy and I were grateful that our two children were asleep before we were in the air. If you know our children, you know what a miracle that was. They both slept the whole way to Portland and Blake slept off and on until we got to our house. We walked through the door at 12:15 West Coast time. That's about 21 hours of travel door-to-door. We were grateful to be home. The kids went straight to bed and both slept really well.

I have pictures from the rest of the trip and those will go up soon.

Washington Weekend

We took a whirlwind trip up to Washington this weekend. Saturday morning we drove up to Olympia to visit my grandparents. They are avid birdwatchers which made Blake happy to look out at their bird feeders.




Grandpa livened things up a little bit by letting the great-grandkids take a ride on his scooter. Blake got a turn first...

then Carolyn was allowed to take a stab at steering. She did a pretty good job. I think she only ran over three people.

Blake took this opportunity to woo Great-Grandma with flower petals and leaves he picked off the bushes.

We took our leave in the early afternoon hoping to get Blake's nap in while we drove the rest of the way to Seattle. He did sleep for a little while in the car, which we appreciated. The drive took longer than expected because we made a detour to borrow a pack n play. Yup, we forgot to bring ours. Whoops.

Jeremy took the kids to the hotel pool while I attended a bridal shower for one of my good friends from back home. Of course, I left my camera in the car for that. Whoops.

And then, Carolyn's favorite part of the trip--staying at a hotel. Man, I sure am glad that I have a separate room from my children for all the other nights in my life.

But I also am glad that we get to take little trips like this and get pictures of big smiles like this. Sunday was beautiful and we visited with some good friends from college. No pictures from that either, which might be a good thing since Blake left their house in his sister's monkey pajamas because he managed to soil every other piece of clothing we brought for him. Whoops. It was a weekend of "whoops", every other minute it seemed, but it was so wonderful. Jeremy might disagree, but that's because he sat in the back and tried to please Blake for the last half of the ride home.

Pajama Popcorn Party

We had some friends over last night while their parents went out on a date to celebrate eight years together. The kids were crazy. They were good, just all over the place. I found the perfect way to keep them quiet at the end of the night.

Best friends

I used to lose my mind over Carolyn's inability to leave Blake alone. Sometimes, I still do. But now, it is so nice because they play together. Carolyn has always needed a lot of attention and now she has someone who idolizes her. I caught them playing this game today. It made me happy.

Bike time

Nothing says Saturday fun like bike riding with the cousins.


We tried a bike switcharoo, but that didn't work out so well. Carolyn needs pedals to feel comfortable.

After biking, all four children concentrated on making a giant pile of chalk dust.

Grandpa Wilde visits

My dad came to town about a month ago. I caught this moment on the couch...



...and it reminded me of this moment when Carolyn was only eight days old.

Games

Blake and Carolyn made up this game where someone gets dragged around on a blanket. It doesn't sound like a whole lot of fun, but it really is for one very good reason. Blake. He just flops himself on the blanket and enjoys the ride. If any blanket is left out on the ground, he lies on it, waits, and then looks around hoping someone will start dragging it.

I demonstrated for Jeremy how to do the game.

But to do it right, it needs to be Carolyn dragging Blake.

Memories

Jeremy's dad passed away last month unexpectedly. We miss him dearly and these pictures are how we will always remember him--a doting grandfather.

Harry holding Carolyn when she was 12 days old. She is his first grandchild.

Carolyn and Harry at East Goshen Park in Pennsylvania. He went on every child's toy with her.

We made time for Disneyland when we were all in California for Kent and Erica's wedding. Harry gleefully carried her around and pointed out all the sights.

Oregon Zoo, 2008

This is a classic photo because Grandpa was happy to have the children on his lap, but he also wanted to be able to see ESPN.

This is one of my all-time favorites. Harry and Carolyn (Mom) took us to a concert for children by Ralph's World. We had never heard of it, but Carolyn Ann loved all the music. She was doing a jig on Harry's lap in this picture.

We are grateful to know that families are forever. Harry loved his family more than anything else in his life and we loved him.