Stub Stewart

We love to go camping. Especially when it includes the Woodwards and the Knaupps. Usually we only go camping if they are coming. :) One of our favorite places to camp is Stub Stewart. It has really nice cabins and is only 25 minutes away. Close enough that Dad can join us for dinner and then go home (he's not the biggest fan of camping). And this time was extra fun because our neighbors were there too.

Sitting around the campfire and roasting marshmallows and starbursts are always super fun. Due to lack of chairs we sometime share. And Brother Knaupp's stories are the best.

Stub Stewart has an amazing place called Hill top. Just enough grass to play soccer. And beat Emilee and Adam's team. :) And enough room to drop kick the ball without having to worry as much about hitting some stranger.

BTW those cookies that are like the girl scout samoa's. Super good in a smore.

{Me, Jacob, Lilly, Bronte, Luke, Alexa, Chloe, Adam, Hannah, Emilee, Autumn, Elise, Jenna}

Hikes are a lot more fun when you only have the older kids. 

 {Me and Emilee}

 {Elise, Bronte, Micah, Luke, Chloe, Hannah, Ammon, Me, 

Emilee, Alexa, Autumn, Jacob, Lilly, Adam, Jenna}

I had to put up this picture. Just love my face in it. :)

Trek Prep

{Emma, Emilee, Hannah, Me, Makayla, Claire}

This summer I'm going on trek. Basically you dress up in pioneer clothes, walk 5 miles a day, no showers for a week. While you're pushing a hand cart. Sounds super fun, right! Anyways, we've had to do tons of preparation for it and I decided not to blog about it until we got most of it done. My excuse for not blogging for a while. :) We went on a hike at Gales Creek (the picture above). It was pretty fun. Except that it was the first time I was wearing my hiking boots and I wore short socks. Bad idea. 

The next activity was the stake square dance night. Everyone dressed up in their trek clothes and we square danced. For 2 hours. I went over to Hannah's house with Emilee before to "get ready". I got to dance with a whole bunch of guys and it was super fun.

After the dance we went to Yogurt Munch. The faces we got were amazing. This little boy was staring at us. :) Oh, and the one guy who asked us is we wore our outfits everyday.

Then, more recently we had an activity where we just had fun doing trekky stuff. Not really preppy stuff. Just trekky stuff. It was a blast. We had it at the Woodwards' house. I spent the whole afternoon there before the activity helping get ready. We had egg races, 3 legged races, relays, hand cart safety, and peach cobbler.

{Sam :)}

My favorite part was the relay. To make the boys appreciate the fact that they only have to wear pants, a shirt and suspenders we had them have to go in our clothes: apron, bloomers, skirt, bonnet... the list goes on and on. It was super awesome.

 {Daisy}

 Us with the handcart (I'm in the green)

{Annica, Jenna, Alyssa, Autumn, Hannah, Emile, Me, and Bro McLaughlin)

Yesterday we had our mini trek. It was basically there to make sure we weren't going to die on trek. Again in pioneer clothes, we hiked 8 miles with around 250 teenagers at Stub Stewart. It was amazing.

{Jacob, Me, Michaela}

I wore my hiking boots for the second time. This time with my dad's socks, which are longer on me. You do not want to see my lovely, huge blister. 3 of them. They hurt. The walking wasn't that bad. I didn't really feel super tired or anything. Just restrained in my skirt. That's not that bad though since Hannah and I learned that if you hold your skirt up you have bloomers underneath and you can run. :)

{Michaela, Jacob in Michaela's awesome bonnet)

{Alyssa, Annica, Alyssa, Beth, Emma, Rebecca, Me, Jenna, Emilee, Hannah, Autumn}

When we stopped for lunch we tried to take a picture of all the YW in our ward. It was a little hard since in EVERY picture Emilee was looking at this "justin bieber kid" play football. In case you didn't know, Emilee loves JB. That's why her outfit is purple. And why she sewed a picture of Justin Bieber inside of her apron pocket. Love you Emilee! :)

After we were all done, had gone to DQ and were back at the church Hannah and I took of our skirts. I think my bloomers are cooler, personally. 

Trek is in 1 1/2 months. July. Middle of summer. In Eastern WA. Can't wait!

A bit of sun

We've been lacking some sunshine down here in Oregon. Sometimes we'll have those fun 80 degree days which are immediately followed by pouring rain. Today we finally got some sun that looks like it will stay  for more than a day. I seriously am super excited. Today we went to the beach with the Woodwards. We started off at Tillamook to get ice cream. It was super beautiful and once you were in the water for a couple minutes you couldn't feel the cold. :) We had loads of fun. There was Lilly and Elise throwing sand everywhere (even on me, their pie maker). And then everyone else doing their own thing. We walked around and I learned that shoes are a very important thing when you are walking on rocks that have a tendency for being sharp. :) Then I totally ran into a rock. It was a cave like thing and I totally ran into a rock. It was right in front of my face. I have no idea how I did it. I must be skilled. :) Anyways, my head started bleeding a little and I have a terrible headache that doesn't want to go away. Oh, and a big bruise and a lump on my head. Lovely. Big thanks to the Woodwards for making sure I didn't go to sleep and die from a concussion. Love you guys. :)
And another thing that added some sunshine into the week. We and our exchange student got all approved and what not. We're getting an exchange student this upcoming school year!!! Can you tell I'm excited? Now to clean out the craft room and do some crafty room projects... pictures to come. :)

The Tulip Fields: 2012

 {Elise, Chloe, Me, Bronte, Luke, Hannah, Autumn, Hillary, Alexa and Lilly}

The tulip fields are definitely a tradition in our family. We go every year. We even went a few times while we lived in Las Vegas. Of course, since Las Vegas is a total desert, that was only when we were visiting Grandma and Grandpa in WA. I remember going in 2008, 3 days before Lilly was born. The past 2 years the Knaupps and the Woodwards joined us. This year we just had half of the Knaupps and Hillary since we went a little later because we all got sick. 

{Autumn}

Part of the tradition is pictures. The rule is you have to take your pictures and be good if you want kettle corn or a ride on the cow train (the latter is more of an incentive for the younger ones). 

{Elise}

{Hannah}

{Me}

{Chloe}

Oh. And before you asked we did forget to take Lilly's individual pictures with the tulips. But she did get lots of pictures taken of her.

{Elise, Luke, and Lilly}

We always go to the tulip fields in Woodburn, OR. Seriously, the best place ever. Especially for little kids. Lots of stuff to do plus they have elephant ears.

So the highlight is the cow train. The girls love it because of the names of the "cows". Lilly and Chloe have little friends and Elise has Elsie, which is pretty darn close. For me the cow train was torture this year. Partly because I was wearing wedges (darn you mom for suggesting I match :) ). The other part was because it was kind of muddy due to recent rain and I got mud on my new jeans, on my new bag, etc. :)

A sleepover (at a little kid level)

 I love these girls. Since we're all stuck home with HMFD (NOT FUN) for the next week or so I decided I'd have some fun with these two last night. 

We decided to have a sleepover. Just us three. But at a little kid level. At 8:30 they met us in the guest room with their sleeping bags and a backpack with their stuff.

We ate cheese sticks. 

 Everyone put their bags in the corner.

 And then they took advantage over me offering to read them whatever book they want. After they chose a really long one we changed what we were doing. :)

 Then I offered to paint their nails. They kind of had mixed feelings until I showed them what I had. I don't think they had seen the crackle before because Elise seriously freaked out. So I painted 20 little nails. Elise had yellow with crackle and Lilly went for pink with crackle. It is hard to paint little kid nails. They are super tiny! And then the get messed up in about 5 minutes. :)

 Finally the girls got a little tired. We had some ice cream and then it was time for bed (sometime between 9:30 and 10). We laid out our sleeping bags.

 Don't forget I was having a sleepover with a 4 and 6 year old. So their calico critters joined us. 

 Then we took a picture before we switched off the light. BTW Lilly is pretending to sleep. Lilly wanted a story and I was out so Elise told us the story about Annie (they just watched the movie) word for word with the songs. After a while I told her she could summarize it. 2 sentences later she was done. ;) And then we heard about Rapunzel. Here is an excerpt from Elise's story:

Elise: Once upon a time a wicked lady stole a baby princess. She grew up and had super long hair. Then this BOY came and said "alone at last" and she hit him with a frying pan....

I did not know that she knew all those songs that well.

Then Lilly wanted to change places with Elise. Lilly must have thought I was going to run away because she had to be touching me all night long. And she played with my hair all night long. 

 At 6:30 AM Lilly was up yelling, "WAKE UP, IT'S THE MORNING!" I gave her my camera so I could get some sleep. When I retrieved it at 8 she had taken 145 pictures with the help of Elise. I found these treasures among the pictures of the carpet.

 Yesterday I thought Lilly how to take a picture of herself. I think she was practicing. :) The many faces of Lilly.....

Photos courtesy of Lilly :)

The crazy birthday day :)

We went up to WA this weekend. My aunt and her 4 youngest kids were visiting from Maryland, so we kind of had to. Plus it was a pretty special occasion. You see, my great-grandma, grandpa, sister and cousin all share the same birthday and we decided that we had to celebrate it together. 

 It's always fun to go to Grandma's. They kind of live on a farm with chickens, goats, ducks and bees. We kids get to go play in "the forest" or in the awesome tree house my uncle made a few years ago. Add chasing some ducks around and playing with the goats and you've got heaven.

 For my Grandpa's birthday present we all pitched in to weed and re-mulch his blueberry patch. It took a lot longer than I thought it would, but it looked really nice afterwards. Lilly learned that her big sister, who loves mason bees, is scared to death of worms, slugs, snails, etc. I'm a total bee type of girl, but those slimy bugs don't make it onto my list of favorites.

{Grandpa, Cozy, Grandma Cozy, and Lilly}

 We decided to take pictures of the 4 special birthdayers. Cozy wasn't too happy about the whole thing. Probably because she was sick. :) Then Lilly started acting up.

 I absolutely adore Grandma Cozy and Grandpa. Grandma Cozy can seriously crochet and knit anything. She makes these really awesome doll clothes. If you come to our house you can see a lot of her amazing creations. My Grandpa is a retired FBI (awesome!), beekeeper, and is well known for the socks he knits. To sum it all up, I have an amazing family!

{A not so happy Cozette}

Total change of subject. Look what I put on my bulletin board... Coco and I did some art on my last day and the picture made it my most treasured thing in my room. Love my little girl.

We love our Halmoni and Halaboji {and Justin}

{Halmoni, Hannah, Elise, Lilly}

Halmoni and Halaboji (my Korean grandparents) came up from Vegas with my cousin Justin for Elise's birthday. We had lots of fun with them for the 3 days they were here. We took them to the temple because one of mom's old mia maid's was getting married and we got to see the new visitor's center. It was a beautiful day. A break from all the rain we have been having. Seriously. It was raining until they came. It started again when they left. 

 {Hannah, Halaboji, Me}

{Me and Justin}

 Then we went to Bullwinkle's. My sisters hadn't been there before and they really liked it. We had a lot of fun trying to see who was better at air hockey. BTW I beat my dad. :) We had a really fun time hanging out with family. My favorite part of their visit? Definitely all the Korean food that Halmoni cooked for us. After that chinese food I had for 5 weeks I think I was getting a bit spoiled. :)

{Hannah}

{Lilly and Mom}

{Chloe}

{Justin}