A Hiking We Will Go!

We normally try to go hiking a few times over the summer but just didn't get around to it until today. Cohen starts preschool again this week so we decided to embrace our last day off. Cohen loves adventuring and hiking. Ezra has always been little enough to carry in the hiking backpack but we decided to let him tromp around on his own today. Obviously, it wasn't a difficult hike but the boys loved it and it was so great to get up to the mountains!

Ezra is big into the 2 year old "me do it" phase. He loved climbing all the big rocks by himself and then jumping off just as many other ones.

Oddly enough, for someone who has long struggled with balance and physical motor skills, Cohen is in his element when he's hiking and exploring. For some reason, he seems to be so much more coordinated and climbs rocks and goes over uneven ground without much trouble. It's so great to see. We joked today how awesome it would be if our "wimpy white boy" who spent two months on a ventilator, spent 8 months of his life on oxygen, and was supposed to have "crappy lungs" became a mountain climber! (Well, we know he has already climbed so.many.mountains. but you know, actual physical mountains someday)

Grampa's 2nd Annual Camping Trip

Last weekend was our church camping trip and this weekend was our second year of doing a family camping trip for my dad's birthday. We came home, did six loads of laundry, threw the camping stuff in a pile and then packed it all up again a few days later.

The boys did good, they liked running back and forth between campsites and playing in the dirt. We did get rained on the second night, but you aren't a true pacific northwesterner if you aren't blue tarp camping. When we first got there I knew there was rain in the forecast and I asked Danny to see about getting a tarp over the tent. I came back and he had draped the tarp directly over the tent (instead of tying it to trees above) it was pretty classy and we looked a bit like redneck campers. They did fix it up properly on Saturday which is good since it rained Saturday night.

Cohen was fascinated by the fish the big boys caught. After Danny cleaned and gutted them he had them in a bucket and Cohen just stared and stared at them. "Why aren't they swimming? Hey! What happened to their heads!?"

It has been nice to unplug and just have some family time. I will also be glad to sleep in my own bed next weekend.

Church Campout 2015

This year our first camping trip of the summer was our church campout. We haven't been to one before but went this year and had so much fun! The boys had a blast and it was nice to let them roam knowing we knew everyone around us. We weren't entirely sure if any of us would get any sleep based on the boys' recent poor sleeping habits. The first night was rough but they were exhausted by the second night and slept great! We got home and I immediately put them in the tub to get off 3 days worth of dirt and then started in on 3 loads of laundry. We are only partly unpacking, because we are doing it all again next weekend, this time a family camping trip!

Ezra had a run in with the driveway (and one with Cohen's head and another with a bench) before we left so he had a nice nose/lip owie going on.

(We had fun coming up with captions for this picture..."Wait until I tell you what my mom said! She said she thinks we are going to go to bed EARLY tonight, hahahahahahaha!)

When you wake up at 6 am and the rest of the camp is still asleep, you go for a good morning walk.

This guy is always on the go! He literally jumps around from place to place. He just never stops moving!

Strawberry Pickin'

My sister always plans lots of fun things for summer and we try to tag along when we can. We live in an area where there are lots of berries and we love to take advantage of all the fresh strawberries, raspberries and blueberries! Because of our unusually nice weather, the seasons seem to be a little shorter so we barely got strawberry picking in on time, it was there last day for u-pick!

Ezra loves strawberries and sampled his share along the way, along with some dirt.

Cohen tagged along with his older cousins who showed him how to pick the nice red ones. Cohen was mostly thrilled about finding the "tiny baby strawberries" that were "so cute!". Yep, priorities.