Howdy...it's been a while. Sorry 'bout that!

I'm fully aware that I haven't posted since April.  Life has just been that lately.  We've been settling into our house, doing gradual updates, traveling, celebrating anniversaries, growing twins (the ones we already have, not another pair, thank goodness!), working graveyard, and generally enjoying life!

Not much of note happened in May, that I can remember, besides a training for work which found me watching some of the local fire departments burn down a house.  That was pretty entertaining, to say the least!  Oh, and my parents finally got home from Mexico!!!  Woohoo!  They threw the boat (ok, fine, they gently placed the boat) onto a large ship and had it shipped from Mexico to Vancouver Island.  They would then spend the next two months, a couple of days at a time, moving the boat down to Astoria where it now has a permanent berth!  No more disappearing to Mexico for months at a time, we're thrilled!

The beginning of June was kicked off by a trip to Baker for Nathan and I to celebrate our 5th anniversary, while my parents watched the boys for the weekend.  We had a great time!  We stayed in the Prospector Inn, a little B&B type thing right in downtown Baker...it made it super easy to just walk home from Barley Brown's brew pub, were you could find us each night.  The first night, we met up with some of our old Homebrew club and just chewed the fat for a few hours; I had forgotten just how much fun those people are, and how much I miss them!  We also got to meet the new master brewer for the new brewery that is opening in Baker...and we then proceeded to see him pretty much everywhere we went for the rest of the weekend!  He ran the 5k I ran at the Interpretive Center, and then at the Main Event where we went to shoot some pool on our last night.  It was pretty funny.

Also in June, Nathan's sister's husband Eliot graduated with his PhD in Ethnomusicology from University of Oregon.  We now have three doctors in the family; my dad, Nathan's Aunt Diane, and Uncle Eliot!  Woohoo!  Our adorable nephew James also turned one, so we no longer have any babies in the family.  When is that niece I ordered going to show up, Kate?!  At the end of the month, I joined a few friends at the Hillsboro Relay for Life...I managed to walk 9 miles, and was rewarded with about three huge blisters.  Did you know that running shoes are not the same as walking shoes?  'Cause I sure didn't!

Nathan was a darlin' and let me join my parents in Hermiston for 4th of July weekend, which gave me the chance to see my Uncle Denny for the first time in a few years.  He's not technically my uncle, but he was there at the hospital the day after I was born, and has been an important person in my life ever since.  Unfortunately, he has been battling prostate cancer for a year now; after several rounds of both radiation and chemo, he has decided to to into hospice.  In fact, Nathan literally just called to tell me that Dad got a call saying that Uncle Denny is losing his brain and liver function.  So please be praying for both Denny's family, and my dad who is losing one of his best friends.  Needless to say, the chance to spend time with him was invaluable to me.  I also took the opportunity to make my first fondant cake, in practice for the cake I'm going to make for the boys' birthday.

A couple of weekends later, my parents took the boys again while Nathan and I headed to Seattle for a Mariner's game with Nathan's dad, as well as the wedding of one of our college friends, Denise.  We had a blast seeing a lot of people we haven't seen since college graduation.  Good times were had by all!  The weekend before that, I got to go into Portland to meet all the girls for Denise's bachelorette party...we descended upon Darcelle's en mass, and went a little crazy...but in a good way!

August seemed to slow down just a little bit, in terms of travel.  The first week was filled with a friend's baby's first birthday, having dinner with some friends on the Rooftop bar followed by seeing the Guess Who at the Yamhill County fair, then heading up to Hillsboro the next night for another friend's surprise birthday at Big Al's Sports bar.  If you haven't been there, it's INSANE!!!  Not only does it have a great restaurant with absolutely HUGE flat screen tv's (we were watching 9 different baseball games at the same time), it also has a full arcade and TWO full bowling alleys...all under the same roof!!!

Later in the month, we began extricating the fireplace from our living room.  Nathan had ripped all of the face stone facing off of it, then pulled the darn thing apart in order to clean it before we started putting up the tile and wood mantle.  Unfortunately, during that process, we discovered the stupid thing was 100% non-operational.  We're talking major fire hazard here, folks.  So Nathan's dad came down, my parents took the boys overnight for a fishing trip, and we proceeded to pull the entire thing out.  Ok, technically, Nathan and his dad pulled it out...I spent the day organizing and cleaning out the garage and attic.  That involved three trips to Goodwill and way too much garbage to fit in our garbage can.  Nathan and Dad managed to get the entire thing out, including the chimney, and got a new wall put up.  Sounds simple when you put it into one sentence, but I'm going to do a post of just photos from the last few months, and you'll see how intense this was!

Last weekend, Nathan's dad came back down and helped Nathan do some intense wiring throughout the house.  They put the necessary wiring (both electrical and ethernet) needed to mount our tv and game consoles on the wall, put two more outlets and ethernet out in the garage for our router, and installed two more switches in our breaker box.  Yes, I'm aware that may not all be the correct lingo, but you get the point.  Meanwhile, I threw the boys in the car and drove to Arch Cape, where we joined my parents at a friend's cabin.  The weather was absolutely perfect, the beach was beautiful, and the company was a ton of fun.  We even got to go to a neighbor's potluck, complete with a live band.  It was a long drive home that night, but totally worth it.

Last night we got back from Mt. Rainier.  But that's a whole post in and of itself.  So stay tuned!

Other than that, the boys are continuing to grow and change.  Every day brings new challenges and joys.  They turn three this month and...well...you know how people always joke about the "terrible two's"?  Gotta say, I think the three's is going to make the two's look mild.  Not saying that the boys are terrible or anything, they're just...boys.  And there's two of them!  They have SO much energy, they're so curious, that you can't sit down longer than about 2 minutes before they need to you get them something, get them out of something, or provide them with a new source of entertainment.  But I love them so much.  I love seeing the world through their eyes and watching them discover new things.  I love seeing them increase their communication and learn to express themselves more and more each day.  I love watching them be brothers together.  They're pretty much the best.  Ever.