Yellowstone Family Trip June 2014

We are back from our road trip to Yellowstone to meet up with family.  We did it.  The fact that the  Dora song pops in my head  now - "We did it.  We did it.  Yeahhh. We did it.  We did it.  Hooray" - is very telling of how much time we spent in the car having to listen to Dora.  Road trips with 2 year old twins is not enjoyable.  Lily at age 5 is fine; she was only difficult when it became a 3 kid dynamic arguing about what CD to listen to, who got the biggest piece of some snack or whatever food related topic - they came up with some argument, or what show to watch.

Of all the places we saw, there were a couple places we were surprised by just how much we would enjoy it there: Jackson Wyoming and Missoula Montana.  I went to Jackson never being a country kinda gal of any kind and only knowing Jackson with the Cheney connection there left a bad taste yet left really digging the country vibe.  Missoula Montana was an ideal stop with kids.  The carousal and park downtown is a must see.  Dayton and Waitsburg Washington look like best kept secrets along the Palouse Scenic route south to Walla Walla from Spokane.  The only place that didn't work out well with kids in tow was the Crater of the Moon National Park on the way to Jackson.  Just wasn't worth the extra time with the behavior and reactions from the kids making it too hard for us to enjoy it.

Yellowstone is definitely eye candy for anyone that has appreciation for nature.  There are awe inspiring moments when you see places like the Mammoth Springs or the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone for the first time.  Had no idea there are hundreds of geysers there and even though it's cool because it's different, wasn't really a highlight for us personally.  Waking up for an early morning walk and being greeted by 20 elk was more of a highlight as was taking in the expansiveness of the Lamar Valley and all the herds of bison roaming around.

Being with family is what really made the trip special and truly memorable.  I can look at pictures of bison and waterfalls but witnessing so many moments of love, especially with the kids, is what I'll look back on and truly smile about.  We sure had some fun.

I did want to jot down some other random misc. things I can think of we learned from this trip.

- Pack a towel and vomit bag.  Lily succumbed to queasiness once and threw up.

- There are no buffalo in North America.  Only bison.

- Luggage carts and hotel telephones were a huge hit.  Probably helpful that we have no land line at home

- Long time in the car with kids is still not fun.

- Kids are starting to hug and put their arms around each other now for photos

- Lily swam without her vest for the first time

- Lollipops in the glove compartment as a reward when bribery is needed for some form of good behavior in the car helps.

- Toy cameras my sister in law gave the kids were a huge hit the whole trip

- Lily entered a new phase on this trip - the sulking phase - not a fan.

Quotes from the trip
-  Lily can still be so lazy with me refusing to walk a few blocks to a store but hiked over 4 miles without a complaint with my family.  When Lily asked how she did it, she said "my hiking boots do the walking for me."

- Paul woke up one morning in our cabin and said out of the blue "my butt has two big nipples."  uhhhhh.

- Elise really came out of her shell on this trip stepping up her talking frequency.  On our wagon cookout, she blurted out so loud to everyone around on the wagon  "I EXCITED"

As for the pictures, I wanted to timeline the trip with only a couple pictures from each day of our trip.  I steered away from pics of nature and animals because this was a family trip and somehow equate this trip even more with the moments we experienced as a family.  Call me a cheese ball.  I dare you.

Yellowstone June 2014

Connected

This past month has felt wonderfully full of life.  Spending time with our Portland friends, hosting out of town friends and family, and taking advantage of the fantastic weather by tackling whatever Portland has to offer us has been a blast even with the meltdowns for pushing it too far.  It's been worth it.  I still have these pangs of missing Munich life and the experiences I hoped to have but didn't get a chance to and then I quickly shift to how blessed and almost magical it feels to live in a town that we feel so connected in through such amazing friends.  I love our Beast of a house and the daydreams it provides of seeing our kids grow here for however long.  With the recent development of my parents moving in to the apartment on the first floor of our home this Fall really brings me back to the summer of 2008 when it became crystal clear that I did want to have children after observing my parents with friends' grandchildren.  Now I get to continue to observe my parents enjoy my kids.  Life is good.  I am still in this phase with 3 young kids that an asterisk is needed whenever I say that.  I really do believe life is good but man it's hard.  

Hanging with our good friends the Glumbiks.  12 year old Ty was a ring bearer in our wedding.  I used to babysit them when they were even younger than the twins are now.  Paul reminds me quite a bit of how Ty looked at his age.

I used to babysit Luke and his older sister too and now he just finished his first babysitting stint of our kids so we could go out with his parents.  Very cool.

 Took the kids to open play time at an indoor soccer facility.  Huge hit. Lily's dream now is to be a goalie.  Just need to gently tell her that setting up all these cones is not actually allowed.

 Pizza makin' night.  Chefs hat, apron, and cook gloves on.

 Lily and Liana.  I hope to have many more of these over the years.

 Lots of family bike rides.  The twins are super comfortable on balance bikes now.

 Friends from Munich visiting.  Have our own little Biker gang going.

Hike with another set of 2.5 year old boy/girl twins.  Old NM friend who now lives in Portland.

 Grand Floral Parade.

 Elise trying out chop sticks while dressed Karate Kid style.

 Elise just walked up to Paul and put her arm around him to pose for this pic.  Choked up just looking at it.

Lily is 5

Maybe it's not the perfect day to write this, as Lily was a pain from (and well before, reports suggest) the moment I got home this evening.  But this family doesn't stop for one kid's bad day so neither should the blog.  Ok, it's been a little longer than usual since the last one, but whatever.  We'll fill you in on all the happenings around here another time, because today the topic is our newly minted five year old.

I think this was the first year she really knew that her birthday was coming and was really looking forward to the day and to her party and everything associated with the big day.  But if I looked back to a blog from a year ago I might read the same sentence, who knows.  For the moment I'll smile and appreciate our little girl getting a little less little.  When she woke up on her birthday she hopped right out of bed and got to work making herself a birthday crown.  Just to emphasize the point of the day she wrote a number four on it, crossed it out, and wrote a number five.  And she wore that crown all day, including to a pizza restaurant dinner with the whole family including Oma and Opa who were in town for a long weekend to celebrate.  They actually arrived the day after Grandpa and Grandma flew home from their pre-birthday visit.  We had a great time visiting everyone but we'll get to that next time.

Our new five year old is quite a kid.  She cracks jokes with the other kids while figuring out how to hit a tennis ball softly versus her usual smash, her drawings have evolved from stick figures to full-fledged characters with earrings, dresses, hats, whatever pops into her mind.  Speaking of POP, that is her favorite word to write for some reason.  She's curious about spelling words and what three and five make, she loves riding her bike fast with her butt off the seat for that extra oomph on a hill.  She's a ballerina and a sprinter, she climbs ropes to the point of blisters on her palms.

I wish we had enough time every day to fill her brain up with as much new stuff as it could take, but there are only so many minutes of the day and there are two other towheads demanding some attention too.  Lily is excited to make that big leap into Kindergarten (the American version that is) in the fall and from the look of things she's just about ready to make the leap.  In the meantime we're getting ready for a big family vacation next month and figuring out which day camps will keep Lily engaged and keep her parents from pulling out their hair.

Here are a few pictures from Birthday Week.

April 2014. A snapshot in time.

I have said the phrase "Days are long and the years are short" many times when describing life with my kids but it's not true anymore.  Now it's "Days are way too short and the years are "are you kidding me? Stop Time. Stop!"  Don't get me wrong, I have some very long days but those are the ones that I now definitely know I can forget thanks to living through enough of them and my selective forgetful memory and lack of picture taking on those days. 

I used to think about where I'd like to raise my kids, what values are most important to instill in them, what traditions I'd like to introduce, what activities I'd like to do with them, etc. I can't do that as much anymore because I'm busy living it, making mistakes, trying again the next day, wishing I did this or that, knowing better, enjoying getting something right, and then trying again and just keep going.  No longer is it daydreaming about what I'd like to do like a Pinterest board of how I'd raise my kids.  I am now easily in the thick of it with very impressionable wide eyed kids ready for whatever and a very hard on myself me wishing I could do more, do better, beating myself up, and then at the same time really enjoying the ride.  

Paul is all about riding his balance bike, kicking the soccer ball, and playing basketball.  He can be very easy to talk to and I really get the sense he knows whats going on and can communicate it so clearly.  If Paul stays like he is now, he'll be a well behaved, shy, and sensitive boy with a fierce determination to be good at some kind of sport involving balls.  

Elise is my mysterious one.  I expect curve balls from her for probably forever. She is my most defiant, zoned out,  independent, and silly noise making goof ball much of the time.  Elise enjoys the scooter quite a bit these days.  She isn't as easy to communicate with and says bizarre things that don't make much sense but she's smiling while doing it and still says "Elise happy" a lot.  I don't trust her for a second with stopping before crossing the street or just staying put while out in public somewhere.  

Lily is in a very strong make believe world these days making up stories that she communicates as fact to me as far fetched as wolves visiting her at night (but not scary wolves) or singing and dancing to particular songs at school that I know they don't sing so fibbing is entering the picture a bit more even if she doesn't mean to.  She's absorbing more things from school and iPad shows than ever before and telling us how things work or about some random type of dinosaur.  She's also being introduced more and more to hurt feelings and expressing them to me.  I would say her hardest adjustment so far to Portland has been being the odd man out at the park or at group gatherings and not feeling included as easily.  The girls she knew at 1 and wants to play with again now have their best friends and that leaves Lily working a little harder to play with them.  It hurts my heart a little in the moment but I'm really not worried that she'll find her close friends at some point just like she did in Munich.   

Pictures from the month

Elise schlepping her siblings at a Friday morning play gym

 Tree climbing at the park

 Date with mom trying out roller skating for the first time.  She loved it.

 Tulip Festival!

 Gorgeous spring weather eating ice cream on our front steps

 My monsters

 My 2 swing lovers.  Paul isn't as in to them

 Elise's first haircut

 Paul rocking the balance bike.  

 Our buddy Grant came over to make pizzas with us for dinner.  Our brave and patient Grant.

 Planted some cala lilies in our front yard together.

 Batmobile getting some use on a playdate with Maja

 Putting up our Easter decorations

The Moment of the Shift

As this blog is my witness, the moment of the shift happened. March 12, 2014. It didn't take me by surprise because there were signs of it brewing lately.  The moment I speak of is a noticeable shift in family dynamic.  If the twins have been holding on to all my fingers for their first 2 years of life, Elise more loosely than Paul's hulk-like tight grip, the shift is both of them truly letting go of a couple of mommy's fingers.  They aren't relying on me as much and are interacting with each other and their older sister even more.  The twins are 2 years and 3 months and Lily is 4.5.  The moment happened while I was sitting on a bench watching all 3 of my kids playing nicely together on the play structure for a solid 15 minutes.  I got choked up watching them but they were happy tears mixed with pride.  We've come a long way kids.  You have no problems racing up the stairs to play in the playroom on your own more chunks of the day and you communicate so much more clearly with what you'd like.  The fact that I was able to complete 3 crafty projects while all 3 kids were in my near vicinity is huge.  I spray painted a cozy coupe and turned it into a bat mobile, I changed Lily's blue siding on her Ikea loft bed with a black/white contact paper to better match her pink walls (thanks for the practice contact paper Natalie), and assembled a night stand.  This is HUGE for me.

I love this age with my kids.  I have so many more instances of wanting time to stop compared to their first 2 years of life. It's the first time I'm experiencing an ache yearning for this age of my kids to not change. I guess I'm much more into my cute talkative kids running around then I am holding babies in my arm.  I don't miss the newborn phase with any of my kids as much as I miss things I did with them a week ago.  We'll see if that changes when I grow older.  I think Paul is at his apex of cuteness right now talking so much and having outgrown many of his high maintenance tendencies like being a clingy whiny crying mess after waking up from naps.  We're not quite there Buddy but we'll get there.  Elise is my defiant and more quiet and independent one.  It's often Paul and Lily being loud and playing together and Elise reading a book or playing with Playmobil or wanting me to cuddle with her.   It's also usually Paul who helps clean up the most and then Lily who will clean up more only if there is a competitive edge to it and Elise off in the corner completely tuning us out.

Here are pics from our week.


Twins loving the bike trailer

 Lily was in her first preschool play - The Lonely Octopus.  She was a mermaid and delivered her one line loud and proud.

 Family bike ride home from preschool

 Besides imagining reading books to my kids on our new window seat, I imagined my 3 kids eating at the kitchen island in our new bar stools.  I think this shot will be the picture I continue to take through the years to mark how they grow.

Yard work and Nate finished putting up the first part of the play structure.

 Hi Elise - usually the one sitting with her food the longest.

 Can often find Lily drawing.

 And Paul on the move with his cars, big or small.

Elise and Paul singing Elise's favorite song - Twinkle Twinkle - at the park.

Friendly Portland

Slowly settling into the Beast.  We are happy and healthy and enjoying time with friends and the neighborhood we love and know so well.  It's been super fun running into so many familiar faces and catching up with everyone from old neighbors to cashiers to restaurant workers.   I'm still taken aback by how many strangers will give me such a friendly hello and a smile and even strike up a conversation from time to time.  I can't tell you how many times I thought I had something stuck in my teeth after I'd smile and say hello to someone walking around Munich and I got a blank stare in return.  In the same breath though, I really respect the honest and direct approach I experienced so much of in Munich.  Conversations were straight and to the point, no chit chat curve balls thrown in just because.  I personally just really love those curve balls.

Here are some pics from the last week.  

Girls Night - almost the whole contingent. 

 What up?

 Paul is a big fan of our good friend Christy.

 Elise trying to sit on Paul's lap

 Liana and Lily giving us a show and classic Paul on the potty in the background

Agassi sandwich by Keg and 1/2 pint.  So cool to see some Tennis legends in person.

 My personal pride and joy these days - our new window seat.

Moved in, Lolo, and Beard

We are moved in but not feeling settled yet. It's going to take a while but we knew that. We made mistake #1 when moving into a house with small children.  Do not leave them unattended with open boxes while doing something else.  In the span of about 15 minutes, they were able to empty the contents of every box all over the upstairs.  This included boxes I was going to donate and boxes I so nicely organized before the movers packed them with hope to make the playroom unpacking a little easier.  It's mayhem in here with boxes and disorganization of stuff but I love it.  I just love being in our house (aka The Beast).  It's been full of small moments that are so cool.  Reading books to my kids on the window seat, watching them ride their bikes around the playroom track, and being able to wake up before the kids get up and do whatever without running the risk of waking them.  Elise woke up one morning and said "Elise Happy" out of the blue and Paul blurted out during lunch the other day "Paul loves Mommy" out of the blue (and yes, I cried).  It's already been a memorable first week.  Paul riding his tricycle down the stairs and Elise writing all over the freshly painted stairwell wall with crayon also helped make it quite memorable (side note - Paul is ok besides a couple of little bruises) but we won't dwell on that.

What's made it especially memorable though is my sister's visit this past week.  We all love spending time with Aunt Lolo.  She helps add even more silliness to the house.  Within all the mayhem of stuff to do this week, having Aunt Lolo here was not only a great help but also a great way to keep the laughter  alive and well.

As I sit here on the couch that didn't fit up the stairs to its anticipated destination in the loft, I stare at boxes of books for shelves we do not have, Nate sitting on the window seat catching up on work email, tucked in under a blanket because it's a lot colder in this house than I'm used to, I feel good.  I know Nate feels good too.  I feel a little bit like the beginning after the twins were born.  Haggard and happy.

Speaking of haggard, I wanted to note a big change to Nate's look….he shaved his beard.  Yea!!!!! Lily wants him to grow it back and I do not.  Wife wins this round.  He didn't plan to grow a beard, it just kinda happened.  He stopped shaving on my Birthday which was also the day we decided to put an offer in on the house.  So, it was decided he'd shave the beard when we move into the Beast.  It was pretty fun to take some pics of a few looks before he transformed from mountain man with axe to so young looking and clean cut.

Here are a few pics and video from this past week