Wednesday, August 27, 2008

#2 makes 2 + 2

I am not a patient person. That is what this all comes down to. I apologize to my family and friends whom I pledged my commitment to of keeping the gender of this baby a surprise, but I broke. I hope you can still trust me.
I don't know if it was the weird pregnancy dreams, lack of sleep due to the Olympics, marathon reading of "Breaking Dawn", overall hormonal anxiety, or a combination of all of the above, but I couldn't do it. We found out. (Honestly Jim never really wanted to keep it a surprise, so it was an easy choice).

It's a GIRL!!


She is about 5 inches (head to rump), 12 ounces, and all the correct body parts are there.

(Whew, no vampires for us after all.)

LHFP Company Picnic

Last weekend, it was all fun & games at the LHFP company picnic.

We raced with eggs and tossed eggs (a fun game we seem to keep trying to do at home).
We scored candy from the pinata.
We ate ice cream.

And rocked the sack race competition. Leah and Bridger are contenders for London 2012.




After the picnic, our friends took Bridger to play at their place (thanks again Heather & Michael), so we could go jump off a cliff at Punchbowl Falls without the distraction of a toddler. :) Thanks for joining us Chad & Misha!

Don't worry mom - I only jumped from the small cliff.

Fun in the Garden

This summer have been moving by fast. However, I look back and realize that we really haven't done much, we just have been enjoying our OWN backyard and our OWN dirt and our OWN little try at a garden.
However, I am at the point that I am willing to fully admit that I am no green thumb. Below is attempt #1 at growing something. There were originally 5 little Basil plants in this container, carried over from our apartment. Didn't go so well.
Attempt #2. I picked a little corner of our backyard and planted some more basil, parsley, 2 tomato plants and a red pepper plant. I know, a random selection, and certainly not something we could sustain ourselves with, but I was still recovering from the killing the basil. And look! Success! The beginnings of life. The fruits of my labor. They did not die!
However, my little helper (the innocent looking one below) picked up on the fact there was something cool happening in the corner of our backyard. He climbed up 2 feet of tire tracks, climbed into the coveted garden bed, picked all the little green tomatoes he could find, threw them down to the ground, climbed down from the garden area, and gathered up his loot. This is the point where I caught up with him. I could tell all the budding tomatoes were history, and asked him what he was doing.
He very sweetly, held up the green tomatoes in his hands (some had little teeth marks on them), and said very resolutely, "Appoes".
How could I resist this little guy? Oh well, the good news is there has been a few more tomatoes pop out. I guess we will wait to see if they actually stay on the plant long enough to turn red before they get picked.

Monday, August 11, 2008

Concerts in the Park

One of the things I do love about the summer here are the outdoor concerts in August. We went to the Rose Garden to hear the Portland Symphony.


This is Bridger playing peek-a-boo with the lady sitting next to us. He thought this was a very clever way to hide himself.

For the last song of the evening, they invited all the children to go up near the stage and play along with the symphony. Despite the chaos of the kids, you can still hear some nice music in the background (thank goodness for the professionals). Bridger had a great time and has a nice, new noise maker!

Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Monday, August 04, 2008

Fun with Flugtag

Bridger and I attended the Redbull Flugtag event in Portland on Saturday along with 60,000 of our closest friends. For those of you not familiar with what Flugtag is, imagine home-made human-powered go carts launched off a 30 foot platform in hopes of achieving flight, but ultimately smashing into the water below. Check out any of the videos posted on youtube for a flavor of what it was like.

My favorite was the team that looked like Lego's. We made it through about 18 of the 31 teams before Bridger had had enough and we ended up playing at the fountains.

The fountains had a nice, kid-friendly spray going on and everyone was happy. Suddenly the big firehose-like jets turned on and Bridger was caught in middle of the vortex of water.

So as you can see, I had to step in for another water fountain rescue, but thankfully we all survived, and even left smiling.