Back to Eugene with an Unforgettable Eclipse

We arrived home in Eugene on August 16.  This blog covers a month, through September 16, so grab a drink, because is going to be a long one. 

Ava crying to me about ants in our kitchen, getting to our candy bucket. The ants actually didn't make it into the candy, but we did get invaded by ants the day after we got home! It took us weeks to get rid of them- they kept appearing in new rooms in the house. It was so hard and annoying! I felt a little bit like how Ava looks.

 We went up to Emily's in-law's home in Salem to watch the eclipse. I had heard that Salem was in 100% totality, so when we were buying the car from Emily's father-in-law, he invited us to come sleep at their house and enjoy the eclipse with them. We later found out that our house was in 99.9% totality, and driving just 15 minutes north we would have been in 100% totality! That's ok though, we had so much fun at the Nelson home!

We drove up to Salem (a little over an hour) on Sunday evening and Ava and Ashlynn hit it right off. The Nelson's daughter and her family live there too.

 This is the view from their kitchen.

 They played a lot of dress-ups.

Waiting for the eclipse felt a little like counting down till midnight, only better. It kept getting darker and darker. 

 Our view for the eclipse. It was a strange dimness, not not exactly like a sunset.

 They made these for the kids to make sure they didn't peek out around the side of the glasses.

 Right up until the last second before totality hit, we still could not look at the sun and it was really dim outside. Then totality hit, and it went significantly darker and we could now look at the moon with the glowing penumbra around it. It was SO amazing. When it got dark, it startled Coen and he ran to be near me.

In this video you can hear people all around us (that were camping in a field below) cheering when it hit totality.

 Our friends who stayed in Eugene in 99.9% totality told us that it never went all the way dark and they of course didn't get the effect of the penumbra. Just that tiniest sliver of sun was enough to totally change the eclipse for them, which makes me appreciate how powerful the sun is.
We were stuck in some major traffic going home even though we waited three hours and thought it would die down. That's ok, we felt like it was a once in a lifetime experience to get to see the eclipse.

The city does a program at quite a few parks M-F where they provide games, activities, and lunch for the kids. It's amazing! Brent took the kids almost every day while I worked the first couple weeks when we got back before summer officially ended.

The sunsets here are beautiful. We try to get some fresh air and go on a walk around our neighborhood 3 or 4 times a week. Having to walk to our mailbox at the end of the street provides a good excuse to get out.

Mr. Troll

 Here's a video of Coen saying "Aurora." He can mimic almost anything we ask him to say.

I took Ava school shopping at Target. She really liked this rainbow shirt.

They had face painting at the parks quite a few times. The kids loved it.

They turned one of the slides into a slip n slide. Here's Ava going down it.

Ava doing some ballet/interpretive dance to our opening song during family night.

I've been trying to use this dress as a chance to teach Ava about modesty. The back is pretty open, so I have told her she needs to wear a shirt under the dress so she will be modest. Etc. etc. So one day while I was working, Ava came into my office in the dress, without a shirt underneath, and told me, "mom, I look so beautiful in this dress.... without the shirt on, huh?"

Oh this girl! I told her that she is beautiful but that if we go outside she'll have to put a shirt underneath. That seemed to satisfy her.
Then she decided she was going to draw a picture of me. I said, "ooo is it going to look like me?" and she smiled and said, "I hope so!"  Here was the result:

She makes me laugh so much and definitely pushes me, prods me, and stretches me as a parent.

One day Coen decided he would like to go pee on the potty like Ava. I sat him on the potty and he immediately went. I was so surprised! We got out the training potty and he goes on it a couple times  a day if we think to ask him. He thinks it's pretty fun but is still happy to be in his diapers. Here he is with a sucker as a treat for going on the potty. We don't even give him treats every time- he just likes to go and doesn't seem to care about the reward as much.

These two have been dress-up buddies! Their favorite thing is to get in dress ups and dance around the coffee table. We need to work on getting some boy dress-ups. In the mean time, we have some pretty funny pictures:

The kids have started playing better together. They'll play for a little while in their room, which is really nice. The trade-off is that their room sometimes ends up like this:

We have all loved having our covered back porch.

You know you live in Oregon when:

This is a bathroom at Brent's school. Just in case you are wondering, there were no urinals in there (only stalls). And luckily when I took Ava in, there was only one other female in there.

We drove up to Salem to pick up our new car once it was ready. We ended up staying and having dinner with the Nelsons.

Again with the dress-ups!

The inside of our car.

We went to see the capitol building. Coen saw it and said "temple!" It really does look like a temple with the gold statue on top!

The trees around the capitol are just huge! You can't even tell from this picture but they're the same kind as in the redwood forest. 

We went to a farm near our house called Lone Pine and they had goats to pet, lots of fun toys, and amazing produce from their farm. I bought a big box of tomatoes and made my own tomato sauce for the first time.

Brent went with his friend, Chris, to a Ducks football game when they were playing SUU. Chris' wife, Alex, came over to our house and had waffles with the kids & me.

After the game, the boys came back and we had a mini half-birthday party for Ava with our friends. She got princess figurines from the Disney store that she's been waiting all summer for. We watched the "un-birthday" song from Alice in Wonderland, and she was so happy with her celebration. I try to remember that it doesn't take very much to make a difference to the kids. It was the simplest party but she talked about it for weeks.

There were a lot of wildfires in Oregon during this time and the smoke got so bad around Eugene. Sometimes visibility was so bad that we could only see our neighbor's house across the street but nothing beyond that. It hurt our eyes and throats to go outside, so we stayed in our house. Brent did get out with some friends to take the kids to the mall to play, but there was even smoke in the mall! 

Coen really loves Batman. Here's a video of him singing his theme song. "Batman!"

For family night we talked about our family theme for this school year: Stand ye in holy places and be not moved. We talked about what we can do to keep our home strong, and then we built a strong lego fence around our toy home. This scripture kept coming to my mind over and over and I feel like this is what our family needs to work on.

Ava had her first day of preschool and was so excited!

She even let Coen try on her backpack.

Ava goes to her morning class with Mrs. Tigue from 9-11:30 Mon-Thurs. Her afternoon class is with Mrs. Gray 12:30-3 Tues-Thurs. Ava ran into class and was so excited to jump right in. She really liked her first day of school.

That night we had a first day of school party which included a blanket pile, Princess Sofia show, and chocolate pudding. It was the first time I made pudding for the kids and they each only ate a few bites and didn't seem to love it.

Coen still loves music. At dinner one night he was swaying to the music and totally just feeling it. I tried to get a video of it:

We continued to have lots of families over to dinner from our ward. It's a great way to get to know people, and then they get a tour of Brent's movie collection too :)

Coen started doing this in his car seat. How is this even possible?

Ava looked so cute on her way to preschool.

The kids had lots of warm weather in September to enjoy playing outside.

You're going to hate this picture, but we battled the ants long and hard in our house! I finally got them out of the guest bathroom by setting out this poison gel.

Coen has been getting into my makeup all the time. He can open any drawer or cupboard in our bathroom and unzip the case where I keep my makeup. You can't tell too well, but he has blush and then concealer all over his cheek. He sits there and puts on the makeup so seriously like he has a big job to do.

Ava asked to go to the coast, so we went the Saturday before Brent started orientation at his school since it was basically our last free weekend. It was SO cold when the sun wasn't out. I was wondering why we even came when we first got there, but after a little bit the sun came out and the kids had so much fun playing in the sand.

We had a picnic on the beach and the kids loved throwing pieces of their bread to the little birds.

The Oregon coast is very beautiful in its own way. This is not the sort of "beach" I grew up with, but I can appreciate it!

We walked over to where a river enters the ocean and these rocks were really pretty.

We raced home and then went to get our babysitter, who watched the kids while Brent and I went to a social for the graduate students in his program. 

And that was the end of the LONG summer Brent had. I got really spoiled being able to work whenever I wanted to or needed to, and always having him around. It was a great summer but we are excited to get started on his PhD!