It's good someone has time to use this machine

I just wish it were me.

This is why we come see Grandma...


and....

this is why we come see Grandpa...

New organization system

Grandma and Grandpa will need lots of time to reorganize their cupboards to pre-Blake state. He's one busy boy.

Girly time

It's impossible to come to Anchorage without going to Jackie's. She's our awesome Mary Kay lady. I believe my mom started seeing her for makeup in 1988. When Angelina and I became old enough to wear makeup, Mom has always taken us with her. Angelina and her daughter became friends and played soccer on their club team all through high school.

Jackie came over the morning of my wedding and did my makeup for me. Her daughter did my mom's hair. Anyway, all of this background is just to show you how happy it made me to take Carolyn with me. She's been there before, once.


She took great joy in painting her face with purple eyeshadow when I was occupied and not paying attention.

This time I decided to let her play dress up with me while Angelina worked on doing wedding makeup. She picked out an eyeshadow and a blush. She didn't want to put them on because she wanted to keep them, but she jumped at the chance for Jackie to paint her nails.



Carolyn really enjoyed her 'girl time.' After the makeup, she spent the rest of her time coloring and playing with her new friend.

How I yearn for a backyard

Portland has a lot going for it. I really enjoy it, but I also wish for a neighborhood like my parents. Sidewalks down every street, backyards and front yards. Some of that I can get in Portland, but I haven't seen many neighborhoods around there that have sidewalks everywhere.

My kids are loving the back yard, and trees to climb. Carolyn climbed the honeysuckle because she couldn't reach the bottom branch on the birch tree that I like to climb. Well, I should say climbed once. I did it yesterday, but that might be the first time in ten years. I used to sit up there all the time.

Blake likes Grandma and Grandpa a lot more than he did in December. He loves giving them hugs and is learning how to say Grandpa.

This is how I will look when we get a yard!

For cuteness sake!

Berries in the Northwest

One way we've kept busy this summer is lots of berry picking. I have too much going on to try to jam or do any canning this summer. I know I will regret it this winter, but life is crazy. I enjoy the super low prices and my kids enjoy eating as much fruit as they can while we are there.

At the park

We went to the park last night to meet up with my cousin Tyson, his wife, and kids. It's been about 3 years since we saw them last, so it was nice to be able to see him. It seems like everyone is coming to Alaska this summer. It's too bad that Jeremy is still at home in Oregon.


Our cousin Savannah spent her time lining up rocks very carefully.

Carolyn and Blake liked to sit here on this seat. It was fun to listen to Blake say "wheeeee!"
Sometimes there was a whole passel of kids sitting on this carriage. Next to Carolyn is her cousin Sarelle. Next to her is this sweet little boy who came running anytime the children got on here for a ride. He also provided quite a bit of amusement for the children when his dad busted out the bubbles.

Grandma and Grandpa provided the power to help them s-l-o-w-l-y move back and forth.


Grandpa taught Carolyn how to go down this "slide." She was very proud. Also this will help her go down what I call the "slide of death" at the new park by our house.


Blake gave me quite a scare at one point and I couldn't find him. He was hiding in this tunnel. I should have known to look here. He sat in here quite a bit while we were at the park.

Afterward, we went to Arctic Roadrunner for some delicious burgers, although the shake left something to be desired. I just need good shakes! Where's a Cheeburger Cheeburger when you need one?

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.