May 2021- Flowers, strawberry picking, and a river splash pad

I decided Brent and I needed a date so I asked a YW in our ward to come watch the kids on a Saturday morning while Brent and I went to one of my favorite places in Eugene- Hendrick's Park. The rhododendrons were not all in bloom yet, but it will still so beautiful. 

After the park we went to Costco and bought some flowers for our front porch because I really want to improve our yard!

I put Audrey's hair in pig tails for the first time and it about killed me with how cute it was. She only left them in for 20 minutes or so. 

I had a full day of CPE so during some of it, Audrey hung out with me so that Brent could work. She was a little distracting.

Here's one of my beautiful plants we got from Costco. This just kept flowering and turned out to be so nice for our front porch!

We had our tree removed from the front yard a couple months ago, so we wanted to re-seed and fix the front yard. The roots from the old tree were still all over the yard and were such a pain! Brent spent hours and hours hacking the roots out with an axe. It was not the funnest Saturday! 

On the way to church, it was quiet in the car and all of a sudden Audrey said "e-i-e-i-poop." The kids died laughing. They taught her to sing that for the Old MacDonald song and I keep thinking that Audrey will forget they taught her that line, but she pulls it out at quiet moments.

Mother's Day! I have always loved babies and kids, so getting to have three of my very own has been such a dream come true. We had Karen come over to dinner and had yummy chicken parmesan.

Audrey loves shoes- she especially loves putting on Coen's shoes. She doesn't really love keeping shoes on her own feet though. One day Brent saw she had lined up her baby dolls and was putting shoes on them. Haha.

We tried out a little something new of kid dates- where either Brent or I take the kids on a little date. Brent took Coen to Target and bought him a new pair of pants. 

Audrey loves getting into the bottom bunk bed with Coen every night when we're doing Come Follow Me and Harry Potter time. She squeals as she snuggles in by him. 

Brent continued to plan activities for the YM- this was a lego night.

Audrey looking super cute in Ava's headband. 

Coen had a special Mother's Day program at his preschool- he was SO excited for me to come. They sang songs for us and we had a special treat. 

I know that I am going to miss cute little preschool-Coen with his lisp, wanting to sit on my lap, getting the giggles all the time, and asking the funniest questions. He is also such a stinker sometimes- so stubborn and teasing/fighting with Ava! 

One day when we were driving in the car, I can't remember what Coen had done, but Brent asked him, "Why do you like being naughty so much?" Coen replied, "I don't. If naughty was a person, I'd punch it in the face!"

We celebrated Coen's half birthday with cupcakes. That morning when we were talking about his half-birthday, we had this conversation: 

Coen: Will you make me cupcakes?

Me: Yes, I will.

Coen: And give me presents? I would like 3 or maybe 4 presents. 

Me: But it's only your HALF birthday.

Coen: OK, so only 3 presents then. 

I laughed so much! Sometimes for their half-birthday we give the kids something from the dollar store or Target dollar aisle. This year I kind of had forgotten, so instead of something to open, we let him choose the music at dinner and things like that.

Coen says: I got to choose stuff for my half birthday. I got to choose the silverware for everyone.  And also I got to blow out a candle.

Audrey is such a stinker! She discovered the hose in the yard and constantly turns it on when she goes out back, so we can't let her go alone. Look at the mischevious look in her eyes!

Brent eventually unscrewed the handle so none of us can turn on the hose.

One day we invited some friends over for a play date. Ava had been playing outside with our neighbors beforehand, and Brent told her to put her scooter around the side of the house. We never saw her come back in and assumed she kept playing for a few more minutes. When our friends came, Ava still wasn't home and I was kind of annoyed that she had gone off to the field at the end of the street when she knew she had friends coming. After searching the whole street and asking our neighbors if they had seen Ava, she was nowhere to be found. When our neighbor told us that she had her grandson come in because there were some scary looking teenagers, we started to panic. I had gone upstairs and looked in her room and bathroom, yelling her name, but no luck there either. I was on the verge of tears and we decided that we better call 911, because we had been looking for about 30 minutes and she was just GONE. It was the scariest, sickest feeling ever. I asked my neighbor to drive around on his motorcycle and double check that she hadn't walked off to the park by our house even though that would have been a first for her. While Brent was still giving information to 911, Ava came walking down our stairs all casually. She had been inside the tent in my office, watching videos on her laptop with her noise-blocking headphones. She hadn't heard us calling her and had lost track of time. Oh Ava!!! We were so glad she was safe, and said some extra fervent prayers that night. 

Audrey all of a sudden started "feeding" her baby doll raisins at lunch. Then she would eat the raisin out of her baby's mouth. One is still wedged in the baby's mouth!

I gave Audrey a quick haircut and it turned out so cute! I really just trimmed the sides behind her ears to cut off the mullet.

Something I want to remember about Ava is that she pronounces "technically" as "tentacl-ly." She uses the word a lot too, and I kind of love it.

We met Brent at the rose garden downtown one Friday night. It was beautiful weather and fun! 

The rose garden has over 400 varieties of roses and sits right next to the river.

This cherry tree was the first fruit tree in Eugene and they think was planted sometime around 1850!

The kids had a picnic and we blew bubbles right there by the river. 

Our neighbor got chicks! They died not too long after though :(

We played a lot at the school park this month because we had such nice weather. Coen loves the monkey bars, and I think is going to perfect them during kindergarten just like Ava did.

We had dinner at Karen's and played games. The purpose of getting together was to bring her back her dish, but we forgot the dish haha! We hung out with Karen lots this month! It's nice to have someone fill in the place of family since we have no family around in Oregon. She comes over on holidays, special events, etc, and then just random Friday nights like that one time when Brent was at school all evening and I called her because the kids had been on one, and we could really use some fun. Karen picked up some pizza and came over and played with us all evening. 

Ava & Coen were very happy with their aprons-turned spy kits.

We finished Harry Potter #3! 

We made yummy chicken pesto paninis with our new panini maker from the Groesbecks.

Audrey looked so cute and stylish in her skinny jeans and cardigan.

Our anniversary- we got ribs and tri-tip from a food truck downtown. It was delicious! We told the kids it was going to be like our family's birthday party, and Ava & Coen got very excited about that. Coen requested I wear the Santa earrings he had given me for Christmas, so I did. Hehe.

Ava's first time to try ribs and we discovered that she is very good at eating them- she picked them completely clean! She loved gnawing on the ribs. 

We got to know some new friends in our ward who have kids the same ages as our kids. I asked her if she'd be willing to babysit Audrey for me once a month and it is so helpful to have a few hours to work in silence! Audrey loves going over there and calls her friend Matilda "ta-da."

One of our neighbor girls has been especially mean to Ava, and also not a good influence, so we decided the kids weren't going to go out front and play with the neighbors anymore. It's hard because the neighbors play out front all day every day, so Ava can't even go out our front door without the girl coming over and making fun of Ava or saying something hurtful. One day while Audrey napped I told Ava I would ride bikes with her out front.  Look at my stylish 8 year old!

Ava was doing all sorts of tricks on her bike and making me laugh. 

I took our friends to the park and they all had fun playing. Our special friends are moving and we're so sad about it! A & O have been Ava's and Coen's best friends.

Since we finished HP #3 we had to watch the movie with Karen!

One of Coen's cute preschool projects- those are his footprints.

Audrey wanted to take both her babies to pick up Coen at school.

After school, Ava got herself and her siblings in their pajamas and declared they were having a sleepover. 

After they played for a bit, I told her she had to practice the piano. This is the reaction I got. Because "you don't play the piano at sleepovers."

I just found these selfies on my phone, haha.

We bought a jogging stroller at a yard sale and Brent was very excited to start jogging with Audrey. He went every morning and I joined him occasionally. Audrey was very quiet during the morning rides.

I took the kids to a baby shower at the park, with all of the preschool moms. We played for a long time and had fun.

When I picked up Audrey from her new babysitter's house, they had blown up their jump house. Lucky Audrey! 

What it's like to live with a 1 year old.

Audrey refused to nap one day. I tried for about 45 minutes and she would just jump out of her bed, and cry, etc. So I let her skip a nap, and then this happened at dinner:

A video of sleepy Audrey:

We bought a leaf blower and an edger so that we could keep fixing up our yard! Even though it's the smallest yard it's surprising how many hours we have spent in it trying to make it look nice. We bought 30 bags of wood chips, and laid them in the back and front yard after we had weeded the backyard. It took hours!

We went strawberry picking for our first time! 

Audrey doesn't like strawberries, but she liked picking them!

Coen & Ava sampled some - they were soooo sweet compared to store-bought ones.

They are very organized in the fields and assign you a row to pick, so they can keep track of which row has ripe strawberries. You leave a flag where you left off. 

We went with Karen, and then afterward we came home and had hamburgers for dinner. Then she took the kids to her house for about an hour and Brent and I quickly wrote our talks for church the next day! I spoke on letting God prevail and Brent spoke on the parts of a fairy tale and creating your own happily ever after with choosing light over dark.

We were going to have our friends over to dinner on Sunday but they were sick, so we called around to so many families to come last minute and nobody could. Someone suggested the elders who work in the media zone since they ever get dinner. I'm not sure why, but Audrey gave her baby doll to this Elder to hold. Like 30 minutes later I realized he was still holding it, haha.

Yummy watermelon for breakfast from our friends.

Memorial Day- we went to Sweet Creek Falls, about an hour and a half away. The river is really shallow and the kids can walk around on the rocks, kind of like a natural splash pad. 

We brought a picnic lunch and the kids loved playing in the water! It was such cold water that it hurt your feet! The kids really wanted to get in their swimming suits though, and they had tons of fun.

Ava got in pretty deep- she's brave with cold water! 

After the falls, Brent wanted to drive to the coast since we were almost there. We went on a back-road where you could only go 20 mph so it took about an hour! He loved how remote it was, but I was nervous that we didn't see one other soul! We didn't drive up the coast to our normal favorite spot, so it wasn't the best part of the beach where we got out. We walked out and it was SOOO windy. Brent was laughing so hard because it was so insane! I tried to take a video so you could see how windy it was- Coen could hardly walk. I could barely hold onto my phone filming this!

Windy selfies!

Coen found a big stick that looked like a rifle :) 

We drove home and put the kids right in the bath and then ate pizza.  Even though we both had a ton of work to do that day, I'm glad we took the day off and enjoyed ourselves in beautiful Oregon!