30 and 6

It's been a big week for us here in the Budensiek household.  Bryon turned the big 3-0 on Saturday and on Sunday we celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary!  Hard to believe.

Here he is just a few years ago :)  I think he must be around Kai's age here.

And here he is on the day he turned 30!  Happy birthday Bryon!

And now for a few wedding photos as a little walk down memory lane...

The guys kayaked in to our wedding ceremony.  Loved that detail then and still love it now. 

And here we are on our anniversary, six years later...

What we've been up to...Part 2

- A trip up the Columbia Gorge, complete with dinner out at McMenamins, fabulous views, a little hike and lovely waterfalls.

-  An afternoon where napping turned into playtime, and Kai had me laughing when I found him wearing his stuffed dog's sweater :)

-  A living room camp-out with daddy = little sleep and lots of fun.  Here is the aftermath.

-  A lovely viewpoint near our house.  I should have guessed that our son would like the red dirt better than the view :)

- A trip to the coast for some surfing, sand-digging and swimming.

- A copious amount of ice-cream devoured.  How could you not when ice-cream joints like "Salt & Straw" exist, with flavours like "Sea Salt with Caramel Ribbons" and "Honey Balsamic Strawberry"?

Yes, my thoughts exactly.  So so good!

Other non-photographed events:

- Kai's new favourite game = traffic jam building.  Hmmm, how can I tell that we now live in a city?

- Kai deciding to climb out of his crib for the first time just a few days before our big move = not fun!  We would find him all over the house at night, like sitting on the kitchen floor at 3 a.m., sleepily drinking a glass of water.

-  Gearing up for a little bit of homeschool pre-school for Kai this year, and applying for pre-schools for him to attend next year when he's 3!  Hard to believe.  He's recently been playing school with his stuffed animals though, so I guess he's getting ready.

-  Starting the "Couch to 5K" program.  I've done really well at completing the couch portion for the last few years so it feels good to move onto the 5k portion :)

- Leaving our home and friends in Sandpoint behind.  This has been especially hard for Kai to understand.  He still consistently asks to "go home to the brown house", and repeatedly talks about his friends in Sandpoint.  One night he even started packing up his stuff and told me he was all ready to go home once our car was fixed :(

-  Downsizing to one car.  So far so good!  (Except for the long story involving us buying a lemon.  I guess you live and you learn, right?!  We just ended up being a bit poorer along with being a bit wiser.)

- Having a sandbox delivered to our door by a neighbor on the same afternoon that I had been sitting in our backyard wishing we had a sandbox.

So so much to be thankful for, and so many more things to look forward to in the next few weeks as well.

What we've been up to...Part 1

These past couple of months have been filled with all kinds of adventures that come with settling into a new home/city/state.  

- A weekend trip to Bend where we stayed with our friend Sarah, and had a great time kayaking, swimming, rafting down the river, and of course eating.

- An evening trip downtown (Portland) to Jamison Square and its lovely and cool fountains.

- Attempting to stay cool in 100 degree heat.

- A weekend trip to B.C. to watch our niece and nephew play in Beach Volleyball Nationals.  Congrats to Kaden who won 2nd place!  And, Emma played amazingly against girls 3 years older than her.

Hard to tell in this picture just how dirty Kai's face was...completely coated with sand, dirt and blackberries.  He looked like this all weekend since I quickly gave up on even attempting to keep him clean.

Best cheering squad.

There they are on the left.  And, check out the giants they had to play in the gold medal match!  We were just happy they took them to 3 games.  Very proud!

- A visit from our friend Danielle (or Dan-E-elllll as Kai calls her) which came with a high ice-cream intake and lots of fun.  Oh, and we got to see our friend Amy too!

- Building interesting inappropriate sculptures (Kai that is, not me).




Stay tuned for part 2!

Grandma Time

My mom recently sent me these pictures of her time here with us in July, so I thought I'd share them even though they're slightly dated.  She and Kai had quite the adventures while she was here, including lots of breakfast dates to the local donut shop, library story time, play time at the park, berry and Oregon grape picking, visits with new friends (if you know my mom, you know that she makes friends anywhere and everywhere she goes!) and even an encounter with the police :)

"Planting" his own little garden at a nearby park.

Out for an evening walk in our neighborhood.

Yummy Annie's donut!

Kai was quite proud of his sticker from the police.  As the story goes...One evening my mom took Kai berry picking, and left the stroller at the top of the hill by the road while she and Kai went further down to find berries.  The police saw the empty stroller, and stopped to make sure everything was okay and gave Kai this sticker. 

De-stemming the Oregon grapes to make jelly.

An evening at Washington Park.

And the rose gardens.