Christopher Owen - 6 Months

My little baby turned 6 months last week. Christopher is so easy going, LOVES attention but doesn't ask for it, smiles when you look at him, giggles happily, and has a calm spirit. He grabs everything in site, sits (but does fall to the side after a while), has two teeth, and sucks on his two fingers. He started eating recently and enjoys it! Miles showers him with kisses and gentle hugs throughout the day. They took a bath together for the first time last night and after we noticed Christopher peeing in the tub, Miles copied him. Oh' my. These two boys make me laugh constantly.    

Great-Grandma just finished his quilt and we CHERISH it! It goes everywhere we go. Thank you Grandma for putting so much time, energy, and love into Christopher's baby quilt! It reminds me of the one we had growing up.

Gigi, Gran, Grandma, Great-grandma C, Great-grandma M, Gommy and Mamie - 

This shirt is for you:  "That's it!  I'm going to Grandma's"

Champoeg State Park

Here are a few fun pictures from our little trip to Champoeg park last Saturday. Miles rode around the trails on a trike (borrowed from our neighbors). He can ride for "miles," no peddles, just pushing with his feet! Pops joined up with us and gave Miles a valuable lesson about acorns... who was most interested in seeing how far he could throw them. We ended our outing with a picnic, including cheese sticks for all.

We LOVE time with Grandparents!  Thanks for coming Pops!  It was so fun to watch the two of you run around, exploring, climbing trees and laughing!

Making a Recipe Book

Up until this point, my recipes have been a complete mess.  I received a nice book from my grandma when I went to college and it held those little recipe cards so nicely.  Until I got lazy and stopped transferring recipes from little pieces of paper or 8x11 pages from online ideas onto the cards.  I decided it was time to get organized.  My good friend Kori put together a book like this several years ago and the idea always stuck with me.  

I went to the store and spent $15 on a binder, 10 dividers and 50 sleeves.  I used left over thick paper from our wedding ceremony programs to tape the recipes to and put each page in a sleeve.

The first page in the binder is a list (currently several lists) of ideas for dinner.  I need to make this look a little nicer, but it gives ideas that I might not always have a recipe for (i.e. tuna salad or baked potato).

I bought dividers with pockets to put recipes I've received but have not tried.  Once they are tried and true by this family, they will go on a page of their own.

10 recipe groups:  breakfasts & breads, appetizers, salads, soups, sides

fish, beef, chicken, other mains (pork, vegetarian), and desserts!

I love getting organized.  And it's so much easier to find that perfect recipe for tonight!

1st Attempt at Pumpkin Carving

I say first attempt because this picture was taken about 10 days ago. Looks like a nice healthy pumpkin, right?  We learned a lesson... maybe it was because we purchased a pumpkin from INSIDE fred meyer, maybe it was because we left the pumpkin on the kitchen counter for a few days after we carved him or maybe it was because we just got a bad pumpkin, but the GREAT PUMPKIN as we called him died on day 5. He rotted out and shrunk down to about half his height. Pour guy. We quickly bought a replacement, which we are keeping outside!.. and will wait until a week before Halloween to carve him.  : )

We had to finish the evening with some good old fashion sugar cookie cutouts. A classic smile from Miles.

mt. hood cabin

We headed up to the Corrigan cabin last weekend. It's so relaxing up there and we feel so blessed to be able to escape to the mountains on a regular basis for some quality family time. Pops and Uncle Shawn just fixed the wood stove, so here are my two oldest boys bring in the wood.  Miles loves to help do the manly chores.

We bundled up and went on a long morning walk around the camp.  Thanks to Becky, the boys had matching vests and fun hats.

The background of this shot is the bottom root structure of a huge tree that fell over. New trees were growing straight up out of the old roots. So cool!

So normally we grill delicious meals. But because this was a quick trip, our lunch consisted of box mac and cheese along with a can of beans (and I cant forget about the hot dog we added to it).  Lovely. Drew actually took a picture of the spread but I refuse to post that pic.  Nasty.  I'm not a fan of box mac and cheese. 

A few moments from our afternoon run... I LOVE these two.