WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN...

Madison (from down the hall) excitedly announces, "Hey Mom, I potty trained Brennan!"

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MADISON!!

MADISON TURNED 4 TODAY!! She is very proud to be four. We had fun celebrating with friends on Saturday and then with just the family today.

Castle Time

Maddie and I had fun one day building a castle. The best part was that she wrote 'Belle' on it by herself (I told her how to spell it). It is so fun to see her learn and grow.

Absolutely Silly!!!

Brennan is always very entertaining! If you remember a few posts back he insisted on sleeping in his shoes...well a few days after that he slept all night with socks on his hands!
He is talking non-stop. Some of my favorites are:
criker creaters coming (trick-or-treaters coming)
huwts...BERWY BAD (hurts very bad - while pointing at a boo boo)

The other day in the car Madison said, "Brennan, I am going to tell you a funny joke. The chicken crossed the road." To which Brennan cracked up and responded, "dat vewy funny mannie"

hats...

We went to a freshman football game the other day and while the kids didn't get too into the game (until halftime when they went down onto the track and threw the ball around) they got into getting ready for it. They were very excited to wear these matching hats, and as you can see, Madison is very into posing for pictures!

Some things we are loving about Oregon....

We have really enjoyed the beautiful fall, and have actually had a couple weeks of beautiful sunshine, which I am very thankful for!
Mike's favorite things: the view of the mountains off the back of our house(which you can't see in the picture because of the low clouds, but I thought the trees were pretty), and even more than that, the view of mount. hood out front.
My favorite things: being just down the street from a great mall :), and the walking paths that are everywhere. They are great for the kids to ride bikes and scooters. The only thing I don't like about it, is the walk back is all uphill...and you know no one is riding bikes or scooters by that point...so I end up carrying it all!

Halloween

We had a fun Halloween this year. The kids got to go to two different Harvest Parties (one earlier in the week) and then when we got home from the Church last night they handed out candy to the trick or treat-ers. Maddie really got into handing the candy out, once she realized that she didn't have to give them her candy. We didn't get to much into costumes...just what we had around the house, but we tried.

BRENNAN IS 2!!!!!!!

Times goes so fast...we celebrated Brennan's second birthday on Monday. We stuck to a quite family birthday, with lots of trains and cake. Now that Bren is 2, he has become very independent and opinionated. His favorite thing to say is,"SELF, mommy" and as you can see in the pic, he insits on wearing these shoes to bed!

ZOO FUN!!!

Ok, this was hilarious! We went to the Oregon Zoo yesterday and it is so great there. It is amazing how close you can get to the animals. When we were leaving the orangutan's house, Halley the little girl that we went with leaned in and kissed the glass goodbye. And what do you know, the orangutan(I think that is what it was) kissed back. It was hard to get on film because the girls heads block it, but if you watch towards the end of the video, you will see the big guy kiss the girls goodbye!!!

Portland, Oregon

It has been so great to finally unpack our boxes here in Oregon. The kids have loved seeing thier toys again, have really transitioned well. You can see that Madison is eager to help out in the kitchen, and Brennan enjoys Madison's attention as he plays 'golf'. Every time she would get up from the bench, he would say, "SIT DOWN MAN-Y (maddie)Golf game!"

We have been settling in here in Portland, and the kids have been great sports with all the chaos. They love when we open something new - they play in boxes and have sword fights with all the packaging.

SO SAD....

Well...I have no pictures...I am sad to say that my camera was stolen. And, of course, since it was stolen, everything that has happened has been picture worthy :). I hope to get a new one soon, and hopefully until then I can steal some off my mom's camera, but for today I will just tell you about a picture that I took.
While we were in Missoula we would go to the Carousel often. They had the greatest sign there that I had to take a picture of it. It said,

"UNATTENDED CHILDREN WILL BE GIVEN AN EXPRESSO AND A FREE PUPPY"

It made me laugh every time!

China Dolls

I just thought this was so cute. The kids found these hats in the house we are staying at in Montana, and they had a blast playing with them.

Just for Fun!

Vacation at Glacier National Park

We have been in Montana for the month of August and it has given us lots of opportunites to have some great family time. We took two days and went to Glacier National Park and had a great time. We took a 5 mile hike one day past signs that said 'mountain lions frequent this area' and 'entering grizzly bear country'. Mike told me that was really nothing to worry about...I worried about it for the first mile, and then I was so tired and hungry (Madison hiked about 1/4 of a mile and then we had Brennan in a backpack and carried Madison) that I didn't care if I got eaten! The best part of the trip was sitting on the shore of the lake and watching the kids play. Maddie spent an hour trying to catch 'Nemo' and Brennan was fully content to throw rocks into the lake.

Odds and Ends from the last few weeks

With packing and moving I have been a terrible blogger, so here is my attempt to fill in some of the holes from the last few weeks. This is Madison with her little friend Julia at our end of the year stint retreat.




A last, and wonderful I might add, trip to Epcot, The Animal Kingdom and Magic Kingdom. On our last trip to Disney we were able to watch the shuttle take off! IT was a such fun night!
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All dressed up for the fourth. We were in our neighborhood parade...sort of, we could not actually keep up, and then we enjoyed fireworks at Church.

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And, last but not least, here is a little clip of Brennan Dancing at the end of the year stint party. It is pretty hard to see, but I thought I would give it a try.

Moving again...

Well, we are finishing up our STINT year here in Orlando and gearing up to move again. We are trying to take in EVERYTHING Orlando has to offer before we go...

WE CAN'T GET ENOUGH OF DISNEY!! I don't even know who these bears are, but we take pics with everyone we see!!!

This is our Life Group that we have met with all year. We got to go out to Downtown Disney and see the Cirque du Soleil a couple of weeks ago - amazing!!!
This week we had a great lunch at the Lake Nona Country Club for our last Development time. It was beautiful there. It was just this time last year that we were moving out of Samara...has it been a year already????

Princess Belle

Madison prefers to go by 'Belle' now since she met her at Disney! And Brennan is pretty sure that Cinderella is not real....