Love having visitors

We love having visitors in Oregon! Sarah came from Cincinnati with her kids to visit Trevor and Trisha. Jared wasn't available, unfortunately, on the day Sarah was here, but the girls and the kids went exploring in Portland with the crew. 

We managed a temple date night with Trisha and Trevor - we are so glad to have such good friends so close!

 

Boys watching movies

Our boys have great reactions to movies. We watched Chronicles of Narnia, and Jacob was nervous the entire time.  Even though he had read the book and knew what was going to happen, he kept asking what was about to happen. Liam, on the other hand, was loudly and enthusiastically cheering at the "fightin' guys!"

Torin doesn't normally have a lot of time to watch, but when he does, he does with gusto, too!

Piano Recital

We got to go to Jacob and Claire's piano recital this weekend. They have worked hard in preparation, and we and they were proud of their performances. Claire played a song called "Autumn" and the Harry Potter theme. Jacob played two Star Wars songs.

We love having Andrea as a teacher - they love playing music that is interesting for them, which helps them feel excited to practice. We have seen some real growth in their ability this past year.

Last day of school - bring on summer!

School's out for summer!!!

Rose Festival

Portland's annual Rose Festival puts on quite a show.  We attended the Rose Parade with the whole family and got a great spot to watch the floats go by.  The kids were entertained by all of the different animals

including a giant turtle!  Jared, of course, called out, "Noggin!"

I loved the picture of the shiny old car with the reflection of all of us!

After the parade, we made our way down to the riverfront to watch the dragon boat races.  The boats are Taiwanese-style boats.  There are 4 teams in each heat, and a few of the heats were quite close!

The kids struck a pose in front of the river.

Poor Torin just wanted to keep cool in the heat - and finally caught a little nap.

We took a walk down the riverfront, walking by Navy boats.  One, in particular, was interesting - a Vietnam War era river boat that would have been filled to the brim with ammo.  It was interesting to hear the veterans describe serving on the boats during the war.

Tiny Torin turns 1 - and eats an entire cake!

It's hard to believe this little guy is already 1 year old!!! We have felt blessed to have him in our family. From the time he was born, he has had a peaceful spirit, and his sweet spirit has been the source of peace on hard days. 

We celebrated his birthday with some presents and cake.  Torin was pretty excited to open presents, though he more just liked the wrapped boxes... at least, until they were opened and revealed fun toys!!!

 

Easily the most entertaining and memorable part of the birthday celebration was him eating his birthday cake.  We got him his own little cake, and set it in front of him.  He started in slowly, with two fingers dipping into the frosting and eating it.  After his first bite or two, he started eating a little faster, and eventually, his fingers hit cake.

At that point, he started going by the fistful, digging into the cake and stuffing it into his face.  He started getting more excited and would shake his hands all over the place, flinging cake all over the kitchen, from the sliding glass door all the way over to the couch, with cake sticking to the walls behind him.  Finally, he started kneading it in between fistfuls, at which point we finally decided he was through.

It was a sight to behold!  Good thing one of his presents was a new high chair cover!!!

Imagine Dragons

We got tickets to the Imagine Dragons concert this last week.  It has been a while since we've gone to a concert, and we were pretty excited for a fun show.  We didn't particularly care for the opening acts, who were overly loud (even the teenagers in front and behind us thought so - we weren't just being old people), but Imagine Dragons was AWESOME!!!

The stage show was awesome, musically they were spectacular, and they were very engaging with the crowd.  We enjoyed their rendition of "Forever Young" and all of their originals. We found ourselves wishing we knew all of their new album, and we went home and downloaded all of it, and the kids are now obsessed with it too.