ABC Photography 2016

Once again, it seems I've fallen off the grid. Just when I was about to begin posting earlier this year, life went crazy on us! Long story short (since the very few of you who actually read my blog probably already know the story), we are packing up and moving back to Iowa in 9 short days. My husband has been back since mid-April, and is enjoying his new job with one of his former bosses.

Meanwhile, the kids got out of school yesterday, so we're on to SUMMER! I am so relieved that this is my youngest's ABC photography summer. Why, you ask? Because that leaves me so much room for flexibility and very little need for planning.

Don't get me wrong, of course I have a plan. It's just that this plan is pretty easy peasy compared to past years. We are going to be taking photos of signs... I began by listing out the alphabet and then thinking of places that mean something to us for each letter. Since we are still here in the Portland area for a few more days, we're going to take some photos out here, and the rest back in IA. Here's the list, and then I'll explain a tad bit more:

A- Ankeny (this is our kids' hometown and where we will once again be living soon)
B- B***** County Courthouse (Ross & I had to drive through this county to see one another when we were dating, and it's our youngest's name)
C- Camas (this is our home in WA)
D- Des Moines Playhouse or Art Center (whichever sign is cooler looking... I can't remember)
E- Elephants in the Park (our favorite lunchtime spot in Portland)
F- Fair (as in "Iowa State")
G- Geisler Family Farms (fun little pumpkin patch/corn maze near Ankeny)
H- Helen Baller Elementary (which all three kiddos attended here in Camas)
I- Iowa (possibly from the sign crossing over from Omaha, NE, on our drive back)
J- Jordan Creek Mall (best shopping in IA, and shares one of my nephews' names)
K- Kirkendall Public Library (also in Ankeny)
L- Lake Ridge (the lovely neighborhood sign up here... we're actually in Lakeridge North, but our particular neighborhood doesn't have it's own sign; I'm calling it close enough)
M- McMenamin's (one of the most unique restaurant chains out here)
N- NW (from our street sign, but also for the Pacific NW)
O- Oregon
P- Portland (I'd like to get both O & P from the famous Portland, Oregon white stag sign downtown)
Q- QuikTrip? (sadly, this is a convenience store chain in the Midwest, albeit a fairly nice one... Q is hard)
R- Reiman Gardens (beautiful place located on the Iowa State Campus)
S- S******** (our last name... maybe from one of the old gravestones in my husband's hometown)
T- Terrace Hill (the Iowa governor's mansion)
U- Uptown Ankeny ( a fun place to shop & eat great pizza)
V- Vancouver (the town in WA where we've attended church)
W- Washington (again from one of the state line signs)
X- ? possibly from a RR crossing sign somewhere? There are a lot of trains that go through Camas (sometimes even a small Amtrak train)
Y- YMCA (where I taught yoga for 8 years)
Z- zoo (probably the Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines... we don't have time to get back to the Oregon Zoo again before we leave).

So... the plan is that B will take a photo of the entire sign. Alongside him, I will attempt a close-up of the letter that sign is highlighting for us. It may be interesting... we shall see.

The best part is that I have to let go control a little and go out of alphabetical order (I know! The horrors!!!). We'll get what we can out here and then get the rest back in IA. I will post them (in order) once the summer is wrapping up and we're a bit more settled.

Happy summer!

2015 Advent activities

If you've read my blog in the past, you already know that I LOVE Christmas. When Thanksgiving falls early in the month, I can't make myself wait until the 1st Sunday in Advent to start fun stuff with my kids. We start as soon as we can! Rather than shop on Black Friday, I deck our halls with Christmas decorations, and the next day is the beginning of Advent for us. This year, that means today! I just put notes with each day's activity inside our Advent calendar and the kids rush to it each morning to see what's planned.

I wanted to share our list of activities, and at the end I'll give you the links to past years' ideas. In the past, I have focused a lot on sugary treats/crafts. This year, I attempted to move our activities away from the sugar focus.  There will still be plenty sweet in their lives, I'm sure. Merry Christmas!

27 days until Christmas: Zoo Lights at the Oregon Zoo
26 days until Christmas: Festival of Trees at the Hilton Vancouver
25 days until Christmas: Watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas
24 days until Christmas: Play Christmas BINGO and Memory
23 days until Christmas: Pick up tags from the Giving Tree at school and watch the lighting of the Rockefeller Christmas Tree
22 days until Christmas: Watch Prep & Landing 1 & 2
21 days until Christmas: Go to the downtown Camas tree lighting
20 days until Christmas: Breakfast with Santa at Liberty Middle School/E gets to choose a Christmas movie for us to watch
19 days until Christmas: Christmas concert and Advent Festival at church
18 days until Christmas: E's piano recital (of Christmas music, of course)
17 days until Christmas: Take gifts to the school for the Giving Tree
16 days until Christmas: B gets to choose a Christmas movie for us to watch
15 days until Christmas: L's band concert
14 days until Christmas: Live nativity at Son Rise Ranch (where E takes riding lessons)
13 days until Christmas: Christmas at the Fort (Fort Vancouver)
12 days until Christmas: Watch Beethoven's Christmas Adventure
11 days until Christmas: Watch Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer
10 days until Christmas: Look through our Christmas I-Spy books
9 days until Christmas: Watch The Polar Express with B while L's in school and E's riding
8 days until Christmas: Take Christmas gifts for the teachers
7 days until Christmas: L gets to choose a Christmas movie for us to watch
6 days until Christmas: Drive around in our PJs and look at Christmas lights (especially Peacock Lane)
5 days until Christmas: Go to Miracle of a Million Lights at the Victorian Belle Mansion
4 days until Christmas: Make treats for our neighbors
3 days until Christmas: Deliver the treats to our neighbors
2 days until Christmas: Watch The Santa Clause and make cookies for Santa
1 day until Christmas: Read 'Twas the Night Before Christmas and go to the Christmas Eve service

For years' past, check out the following:
Our Washington ADVENTure (2014)
Advent is Coming (2013)
The 12 Days of Christmas (2013)

I am also going to do the trendy thing going around FB this year... I'm wrapping up 24 Christmas books to put under the tree. Then starting on the 1st, I'll let the kiddos choose one each night before bed and we'll read it together. Just one more fun way to make the most of the holidays and hopefully make more fun memories for our children!

How Did Life Get This Busy???

My husband and I have never been big mainstream sports people. He did play basketball his freshman year of high school, but track was his big thing. A few years after we got married, he became a competitive cyclist and began shaving his legs. Definitely not mainstream. I am not athletic. In the least. But, I always loved watching tennis, so my junior year I decided on a whim to join the tennis team. I had fun, played all right, and had an awesome tennis partner (one of my best friends). My senior year I played again. Right up until they bought us new uniforms. The uniforms included skirts, which I found very lame and sexist. Now, don't get me wrong... I've never been a full-fledged tomboy (though I had many, many Matchbox cars as a child and I attended several car races with my dad), and I would have worn a dress to elementary every day if my parents had let me. But, after years of male and female tennis players wearing shorts, reverting back to skirts seemed archaic. I wore my uniform for the yearbook pictures and then I quit.

But, I digress... My point is, we are not the types of parents to get our children involved in sports at an early age. Our pediatrician agreed that age 9 was really early enough to have them in team sports. I was fine with that. Yes, that means that our children are far less likely to qualify for any varsity team in the future. We're okay with that. We decided early on that we would only sign them up for something if they asked to participate in it. We also agreed to not let any one child participate in more than two activities at a time (that would include clubs or music lessons). Over the years, our oldest has tried karate (which he was great at, but didn't love going to class twice a week), soccer (through our church in IA, which has a great program focused more on fun than competitiveness), and a couple years of basketball through parks and rec (one awesome experience and one terrible... all came down to the difference in the volunteer coaches). He also attempted soccer last winter here in WA since all of his friends were playing. Didn't love it. At all. Instead, he participated in chess all through 5th grade and qualified for the elementary state chess tournament. He took golf and tennis lessons this summer and enjoyed both, but neither sport is offered until high school. This year, he is running cross country with the middle school, and he'll likely attempt track in the spring.

Our daughter did a year of ballet, jazz, and tap in kindergarten. Her recital was adorable, but the poor children had to be in not one, but two four-hour long shows in one day. She decided that weekend that she was done with dance. She, too, tried soccer at church but didn't love it. Last year, she began riding lessons at a horse ranch. This seems to be her non-mainstream "thing."

Our youngest hasn't asked to participate in anything yet, and we're okay with that. He might give chess a try later this year, might try horse riding next year, and we think he'd love karate, but we'll see...

So it would seem that we should not really be all that busy as a family, right? We're not running to soccer (or baseball or football) practice every day after school or to games every weekend. And yet... the calendar still fills right up. I have plenty to keep track of and manage.

Since middle school starts an hour before elementary out here, a few moms in our neighborhood started a little carpooling group for our middle school boys. I only have to drive the four of them on Tuesday mornings; other mornings my son is picked up by one of three other moms. Because he is the only one of those boys in cross country, we are in another carpool for those practices. I pick them up on Tuesdays and every third Friday (they don't have practice on Wednesdays). L has drum lessons Monday evenings (he previously took two years of piano and one of drums in IA).

Wednesdays really are our crazy day... E has a piano lesson (albeit right down the street) at 7:30 in the morning. Once I have the younger two to school, I have Bible study. The elementary gets out early every Wednesday, so I pick them up at 1:10 and take my daughter to her riding lesson, which is three hours long. After we pick her up, we go to church (which is 20+ minutes away) for dinner and leave L for youth group. He is brought home by another parent that doesn't live too far away so we don't have to go back for him at 8:00. I am helping as a table leader at MOPS for one final year on the 2nd & 4th Thursdays of each month. When I am home, I often work on my new part time job, which is being the "content coordinator/editor" for a local magazine.

Now our oldest wants to join the Science Olympiad team, which will probably meet once a week. I don't know yet... We don't want to deter him from participating in something so educational. But, it's one more thing to add to the schedule. I have mentioned before, I am beginning to feel more like a "stay-in-the-car mom" than a stay-at-home mom. And the littlest guy isn't even involved in anything yet! Next year, I'd like to get him into beginning piano lessons. The thought of adding more to the calendar kind of makes my head spin.

Not sure how other families handle all of those seemingly-constant practices and games; especially when they have three, four, or even more children involved in different activities! Our children will only be young once. Right now, all three of ours are out in the woods behind our yard enjoying the sunny Saturday. I am relieved we don't have a game to be attending. We even skipped the cross country meet this morning because it was two hours away on the coast. Instead, we slept in (well, I slept in), had pancakes, and lazed around on Minecraft before heading outdoors. Life is busy enough without filling any more time with practices, games, or lessons. I am content to be home with my family as much as possible. :)

The Importance of Flexibility

Yes, I did teach yoga for nearly 8 years and have been a practitioner many, many more than that... But, that's not the kind of flexibility I am talking about today.

As parents, we know that the best-laid plans sometimes have to go by the way side. Someone gets sick, the weather doesn't cooperate, someone makes a few bad choices and loses the privilege of experiencing whatever we planned, etc. That is why I typically go in to my ABC summer plans with several "Plan B"s in place.

Those who followed our adventures this summer know that I really went out on a limb (for me, anyway) and changed the way we celebrated the letters. I still couldn't do the alphabet out of order (I just wouldn't be able to sleep at night...), but I did decide that we'd go through the entire alphabet not once, not twice, but THREE times in one summer! The kids loved the idea, and in implementation, they still loved it. Somehow, it made the summer seem longer to them.

At the end of our summer, though, we had to be even more flexible than ever planned. I had been waiting excitedly all summer long for our final O activity: going to OMSI (the Oregon Museum of Science & Industry), which is supposed to amazing. I had on the calendar that my oldest had cross country practice late that afternoon and 6th grade orientation, which I assumed would be in the evening since parents were highly encouraged (i.e. expected) to attend. About a week before that date, I got an email with details about said orientation. It was scheduled from 1:30-4:30 in the afternoon. As for cross country, practice was moved to mid-morning. There was a whole day shot. No going to OMSI, after all.

A couple days after that informative email, my husband's dear grandma Helen passed away. When his other grandma, Violetta, left us in March, he went back to IA for the funeral and only took our oldest. Violetta had suffered from Alzheimer's for several years, and he was the only one of our children who had memories of her before that. Since we were all very close to Helen, we reassured the younger two back in March that when her time came, we'd all travel back to celebrate her life. In July when we road tripped back to IA, we visited Helen and she showed us all around her new care facility. It was beautiful, and she was in great spirits that day. That's why we were surprised when just over a month later, she was gone. We promptly decided to purchase plane tickets and head back.

That meant leaving the day after L's 6th grade orientation (Whew! So glad he didn't miss that!). Which, in turn, meant that we'd be missing not only the letter O, but also letters P-V. Because our Q activity was something that I absolutely did not want to miss, we included it on our N day earlier that week (it was finding the statue of Ramona Quimby in Portland). As for the other letters, I let go control and told the kiddos that we were skipping the final round of them and we'd pick up with W when we returned. They were a little reluctant to give it up and pointed out that we'd be packing ourselves into a plane on P day. Ahhh, they are related to me. ;)

We ended the alphabet as planned after we returned three days before school started. It was very bittersweet to end our final blow-out ABC summer, but our youngest is now officially a Kindergartner. Not sure how we got here, but here we are. I have the next couple of summers loosely planned, but my children are already asking what we'll do after that. We'll just have to remain flexible and see, I guess!

All Things X, Y, and Z!

It is my final Pacific Northwest ABC summer list of ideas! School starts on Tuesday, so I just made it before summer break ended. ;)

X, Y, & Z Places/Activities in the Pac NW:
* study eXplorers like Lewis and Clark
* Yakima Sportsman Recreation Area (Yakima, WA)
* Mary S. Young State Recreation Area (West Linn, OR)
* Young's River Falls (south of Astoria, OR)
* Youth Outdoor Day (you'll have to search for what day this is held in your state)
* Y restaurants
* zoo (Portland, Tacoma & Seattle each have one)
* Zig Zag Mountain (Mt. Hood area; best in August & September)

Other X, Y, & Z things we'll be doing:
* do something X-tra special for someone
* be your best
* remember zero as meaning there is nothing you can't figure out

The original X is for..., Y is for..., and Z is for... lists include places to go, things to do, foods to eat, Bible verses, and photos from my oldest's ABC photography summer. The pics from my daughter's ABC photography can be seen here.

Thank you for sticking with me this summer! Next year my youngest will be having an ABC photography summer that we're already planning. Please continue to share this blog with your friends. I'm sure I'll find some other randomly overplanned things to post about soon. For now, if you haven't read how all this ABC summer craziness began, read it! Happy new school year to everyone!

All Things W

This will be the last post of a lone letter (X, Y, and Z get to share a post). Wishing summer would last forever, but... it won't.

W Places/Activities in the Pac NW:
* Waffle Window (Portland)
* Wahclella Falls (on the gorge near the Bonneville Dam)
* Wallace Falls State Park (NE of Seattle)
* Washington Square Mall (arguably one of the best malls in the area)
* Washougal River (countless areas to swim, tube, and play)
* Watchman Peak Trail (Crater Lake)
* Waterfront Park (Vancouver)
* Water Resource Education Center (Vancouver)
* Water Works Park (Vancouver)
* Weather Machine Sculpture (Pioneer Courthouse Square - weather is predicted here every day at noon)
* Westmoreland Park Nature Play Area (Portland)
* Whatcom Falls (Bellingham, WA)
* Whitaker Ponds Nature Park (Portland)
* White Pass Scenic Byway (Hwy 12 through the Cascade Mountains, WA)
* Wildflour Cafe (Washougal)
* Wildlife Safari (Winston, OR)
* Wildwood Recreation Site (Mt. Hood; best in August & September)
* Wild Waves Theme Park (Federal Way, WA)
* Willamette Mission State Park (Portland)
* Willamette National Forest (central Cascades, OR)
* Wings & Waves Waterpark (McMinnville, OR)
* Wintler Community Park (Vancouver)
* Woodburn Elementary playground (Camas)
* Woodland Park Zoo (Seattle)
* World Forestry Center (Portland)
* Wunderland Cinema & Nickel Arcade (Portland)
* other W restaurants 

Other W things we'll be doing:
* watching out for others
* wandering

The original W is for... list includes places to go, things to do, foods to eat, Bible verses, and pics from my oldest's ABC photography summer. My daughter's photos can be viewed here.

The whole point of this blog is to give other parents fun ideas, so please pass this on to others! And encourage them to read the origin story of our ABC summers.

All Things U & V

It's a combo post! Not many items for these letters...

U & V Places/Activities in the Pac NW:
* Umpqua ice cream (made in Portland)
* Umpqua River Scenic Byway (south of Eugene, OR)
* go underground (either on the Max train to the Children's Museum, which is the deepest transit station in North America OR on the underground tour below Pioneer Square in Seattle)
* Urban Adventure Quest: Portland (a three hour Amazing Race-type scavenger hunt)
* Urban Farmer restaurant (Portland)
* Valley of the Rogue (Rogue River near Medford, OR)
* Vancouver (WA or BC)
* Vaux's Swifts return to Chapman School chimney (Google it... looks unbelievable... hundreds of birds swoop back down into this chimney every evening in September)
* Vista Balloon Adventure (hot air balloon rides in Newberg, OR)
* Volcanic Legacy Scenic Highway (from OR into CA)
* Voodoo Doughnuts (Portland)
* other V restaurants 

Other U & V things we'll be doing:
* use kind words
* play UNO
* volunteer somewhere

The original U is for... and V is for... lists include places to go, things to do, foods to eat, Bible verses, and photos from our oldest's ABC photography summer. The pics from our daughter's ABC photography summer can be viewed here.

As always, please feel free to share this blog. I love sharing the beginnings of our ABC summer adventures.