Mommathon

Sean’s highlight last week was that he got an espresso maker.

Colm was busy pitting cherries and finishing his first knitting project…a hat!

Liam spent his afternoons last week at a biology class where they learned about and even dissected invertebrates. They also created their own invertebrate with paper måché with a backstory to go along with it. This picture isn’t a very good representation of his project, but at least you get to see Liam’s smiling face. 🙂

On Friday I took the boys to a pizza/video game place…kind of like Chuck E. Cheese on steroids. It was little much for me, but the boys had a good time.

It was hard to take a picture because they went spinning by way too fast.

These are the last two books I have read. Both of them deal with families that are highly dysfunctional, in different ways, but dysfunctional all the same. I am tired of reading about other people’s problems and will choose a different kind of book next. I need something a little more light-hearted. It IS summer after all. I am supposed to be reading something light-hearted, right? That’s why we have beach reads. Total fluff.

What have we been up to this week?

Bowling

Swim Lessons

Shelling peas with our neighbors

Summer book club for 3rd grade boys…lots of fun and a great way to get kids reading during the summer. We discussed the book, played a game that had to do with the book and then all of the boys and their siblings went swimming. We had lots of snacks for them to munch on while they were swimming and popsicles at the end. If nothing else, no one went home from book club hungry. 🙂

We set out early in the morning again to take part in the Paulina Plunge which is a six-mile trek down a mountain on bikes with frequent stops at beautiful waterfalls and natural waterslides. It was a FULL day and we managed to come out with only a few minor injuries.

Getting ready to head out.

This was our first stop. We parked out bikes and hiked down to this waterfall. Do you know how cold the water is at this elevation? It’s cold. Really, really cold.

Getting ready to jump into the “Boiling Cauldron”.

Then we hiked back up, got back on our bikes and went to our next stop. Have I mentioned how hard it is to breathe at 6,000 feet?

Forest fire…there was a lot of this. Only YOU can prevent forest fires, folks.

Lunch stop!

More waterfalls/waterslides

I have some videos of the kids jumping into the waterfalls and sliding, but I can’t get them to work. I’ll keep trying.

That night we ate some yummy Mexican food and then went to the SunRiver Village for a little fun.

On our last day at SunRiver we slept in (much deserved), packed up, checked out and then went horseback riding. There are no picture of horseback riding. They didn’t allow pictures or cell phones so as to not spook the horses. Any policy that is about not spooking the horses (especially when I am on one) is okay by me. We had a lovely time and Julio, Cinnamon, Christmas and Cowboy delivered us back safely.

We got to SunRiver in the late afternoon, so we took advantage of the extensive bike trails and headed out to explore.

We started out our first full day at SunRiver kayaking six miles down the Deschutes River. We started early in the morning…it was so peaceful and beautiful. Sean and Colm took one kayak and Liam and I were in another. We saw some wildlife along the way, but mostly a female duck that kept following me and Liam. She would fly in super close to our kayak and then paddle along for a while. Just when I thought she was done and we couldn’t see her anymore, she would fly in again. This happened at least three different times. I finally figured out that I think she was trying to get us to feed here.

We don’t have a lot of pictures of kayaking since we were busy, well, kayaking.

Next we went to the Newbery National Volcanic Monument which is basically a spot where a volcano erupted about 7,000 years ago and they made a little trail through it so you could see the devastation. We also watched a video about all of the volcanoes along the Cascade Range that basically said that when Mt. Rainier and Mt. Hood blow, we are all totally screwed, not because of the ash but because they have glaciers on top of them and all of that ice would melt in an instant and flood everything down below in a hurry. Mudslides galore. Oy.

And because we hadn’t already done enough that day, we went to the pool when we got back to the lodge. A little unexpected treat that was next to the pool was a slide.

This little rope and log combination kept the boys busy for FOREVER. It was hilarious. Liam said he felt like he was on a game show. After doing this and going down the waterslides several times it was time to go back and call it a day.

Let’s just say that everyone slept VERY well that night.